back again much more quickly than usual. This isn't so much another post as a continuation of the last one.

Very glad to see the bankers' bonuses getting so much attention.

The banks indicating that they want to pay investment bankers the kind of bonuses that were paid before 2008 makes me wonder if we will find that this is a double dip recession; it looks as if it could be that the bankers know they need to get their reward now because they can see more problems ahead than the rest of us; at least as far as investment banking is concerned.

We've heard quite a lot recently about how it's easier for banks to make big profits at the moment because there aren't so many banks to compete. This suggests that it hasn't needed exactly top notch investing skills on the part of the staff for the banks to rake in good profits and that there should be more competition for bankers jobs and, hence, a good reason for reduced remuneration.

The obvious conclusion to draw from a bonus bonanza would be that there is an investment bankers' network or inner circle. Or maybe the indispensability of the bankers is similar to a person playing a hand in a card game. I that partner has to leave, it would be difficult for someone else to pick up that hand and play their best.

I'm inclined to think that the regulators and the legislators should make a start on insisting that the bonuses are paid in shares that can't be sold for 3 to 5 years. Ordinary staff share schemes work like that. That would at least address the possibility that the investment bankers are planning a mass migration to paradisial bolt holes in the next few months.

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Last Sunday had an excellent article by Andrew Sullivan about why President Obama is such a wilely operator. He's waiting for his opponents to make mistakes and for his range of options to crystallise - as it were.

I've also read a strange police procedural, 'Morituri', by an Algerian with the nom de plume, Yasmina Khadra. Khadra whose work is shot through with pain and bitterness about modern day Algeria, lives in exile in France. It was interesting to read a writer from a muslim country who was so resolutely non-committal or even sceptical about religion.

I've also been reading one of Fred Vargas's novels about Commissaire jean Baptiste Adamsberg, 'This Night's Foul Work'. Very good. Adamsberg works his detective magic by intuitive genius, rather like the fool in King Lear working as a plain clothes policeman.

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We had a pleasant stroll around Witley Common today and saw some great toadstools (fly agric - red and spotty). No time so far this week for a longer walk as the gardening is crying out for attention. Partly, this is reaping the consequences of putting things off when it was warmer but maybe there are just too many plants making for more work in the trimming and cutting back season.