EU's Hopes for Brexit Talks. Puerto Rico Needs Help. Paper Hedgehogs

Book Hedgehogs at the Community Cafe

Michel Barnier had been very polite yesterday at the press conference at the start of this weeks Brexit negotiations, cautiously expressing some hope that Prime Minister May's Florence words would be transformed into practical and detailed negotiations. A similar low key, hesitantly positive response came from Donald tusk as he met with the Prime Minister at No 10 today.

President Trump is having a mixed bag of a day. The NFL spat has been pushed out of the news for the moment by North Korea and Puerto Rico - and the failure of repealing Obamacare today. 

Puerto Rico is a Commonwealth of the United States after its being seceded to the US after the US-Spanish war. Whilst residents are citizens of the United States, they are disenfranchised in national votes for the President and Vice President and, because the Commonwealth is not a US state, it is not represented in Congress. Is this absence of electoral power why its plight after the massive destruction caused by Hurricane Maria a week ago is only now entering the political limelight.

First day back home and it was Milton Community Cafe time. As co-organiser Sue was on holiday, I had two runs to collect the less mobile today whilst Jane prepared the room in the Community Centre Lounge. The Cafe was a pretty full house today. Nathalie, our baker, had made a pear cake, a grape cake and some custard tarts. someone also brought along a carrot cake. Jane and I had not contributed any ideas for the craft table, but Janet had - Hedgehogs. They were created using old paperbacks, ribbon and toy eyes. A bit of patient folding and we had a tribe of hogs and hoglets by the end of the afternoon. Personally, as a bibliophile, it somehow seems sacrilegious to treat old books in such a manner, though no bolt of lightning struck down the craftists.