was bemused.

I read the British newspapers online-everything from the Times and Telegraph to the Daily Mail. You never know what you will find, and it is a great way to delay any possible urge I might have to do housework until that fades away.

Today I learned that every royal family in the world has sent someone to Beijing, that they might build a big monument to Queen Elizabeth in the middle of Trafalgar Square (very varied opinions about the appropriateness of this plan), Selfridge's Christmas Shoppe was opened by Sarah Ferguson sitting on a topiary elephant (arrgghh!) and that people no longer know how to curtsy properly.

However, I bet these three ladies can dip with pointed toe and straight back:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1042702/Time-Warp-Wives-Meet-women-really-live-past.html

Haven't we all longed now and again to be living in a different time? Historic re-enactors do it on weekends, dressing up in costume and pretending. But these three women have done it-and are doing it-full time, full out. They are old-fashioned housewives living in little time-capsule houses, fitted out with authentic everything. The mind boggles at the amount of time and money they have spent to avoid living in the present.

I'm bemused at the single-mindedness of these ladies. They have achieved something I would have thought almost impossible. With a slightly different twist to their determination, they obviously could be running the world...but they would consider that man's work.