Ash and cash

Mme and Mlle Inkspot, plus girl cousin, went to New York to have some fun and are stuck there by the Icelandic earthfart. Of all the thousands (millions?) of people in this situation they are some of the luckiest; they have grandparents to stay with and a beautiful (especially in the spring) city for entertainment. God knows how long they'll be there, so I had an idea: enroll them in school. Precisely, put them in Hoboken High School (the grandparents are in Hoboken, across the Hudson from midtown Manhattan; when planes crash into the World Trade Center or land on the river my father-in-law doesn't have to move from his desk to photograph it). I read that HHS is New Jersey's second most improved public school of 2009, so they should acquire valuable life skills such as buying drugs, smuggling boyfriends' weapons past the metal detectors and catching STDs. Completely brilliant though I say it myself. The girls put their feet down at this prospect of re-enacting West Side Story so they're going to a completely reasonable school elsewhere in town, starting today.

And what are the mice doing meanwhile? Playing poker it must be admitted. Last night was a catastrophe, wiping out most of the previous week's gains. Swings and roundabouts, roundabouts and swings.