Some UK shops, including Marks & Spencer, Bhs, Debenhams and Next are already complaining of stock shortages and warning of price rises – not that surprising when you consider the sheer scale of clothing being held – 59 million jumpers and cardigans (that’s one for every person in the UK) and one and a half million bras.Not since Eva Herzigova was pictured wearing a Wonderbra in the 1994 “Hello boys” advertising campaign, causing numerous complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority (and apparently quite a few car crashes), have bras featured so heavily in the headlines and caused quite so many newsreaders to blush.Now it is absolutely true that I don’t need any more clothes Not now and probably not ever. I don’t have five consecutive days to spend on shopping, nor the creative vision to know what something will look like before I’ve seen it, though I am rather jealous of the friend whose lovely dresses I frequently praise only to be told they have been made by her mum.Therefore, like most people, I am dependent on the high street, and am a regular visitor to the shops that have a quick turnover of cheap clothes in the latest fashions, taking great joy in buying something for just a few pounds that looks great now but may be laughingly last season in a few weeks.Unfortunately, the detention of millions of Chinese-made clothes in ports and warehouses around the EU at the moment due to trade quotas may put a stop to this while negotiations for their release take place. My companion and I went a little overboard perhaps, spending five days in the town and most of that time in the clothes shops. The process of buying a whole new wardrobe was so enjoyable for its own sake that it barely even mattered when I got home a couple of months later, having lost rather a lot of weight backpacking, to find that my made-to-measure clothes were as lovely as I remembered, but my measurements had changed.
Such methods of shopping, however, are not so practical in the UK for non-backpackers. I had a wonderful time in the tailor shops of Hoi An in Vietnam a few years ago. Tailors catering to tourists produced copies of various Western clothing catalogues and we could point to any style we liked and any material in the shop, and have a made-to- measure version ready by the next morning. If you have to leave your pet at home, try to provide excitements to relieve the monotony.

Videos of the postman, clockwork mice on timers, rainforest soundtracks, that sort of thing And ring the changes. But carefully: a friend of the Binge Drinking Leader Writer was left with a large vet’s bill after she moved the ladder in the budgie’s cage overnight.. But don’t worry, as, in this instance, for once, there are solutions.
Here in The Leader Department, for example, we operate a pet open-door policy No pet need be home alone. Imagine the happy daily scene as owners, deep in thought, sucking strongly on pipes, stare fixedly into the middle distance while their dumb (!) chums doze contentedly at their feet, or charge, gambol, slink, scurry, scuttle, slither and flap about, depending on how close it is to lunch.It works surprisingly well, too, now we all know what the Africa Leader Writer’s python is capable of (the Political Leader Writer’s Yorkshire Terrier, sadly), and the Defence Leader Writer’s parrot has learnt to shout warnings.Not all employers are as enlightened and generous as ours, though. You and I may long to be left alone; you might also think solitude preferable to the precarious positions on the food chain occupied in the wild; you will, though, have difficulty putting this across. Our neighbours consider Ukraine a regional leader, and keenly watch what is happening here.We can overcome all difficulties We have enough talent and strength for it.

The most important thing is to be united – divided we are nothing; united, we are everything. It is only when we work together as a community that we can ensure no return to the past.. Sometimes one surveys the news agenda with something approaching despair: is there no end (apart, of course, from the obvious one) to Life’s problems? So many, and so insoluble: no wonder stress abounds And now, I see, it’s affecting our pets. Too many of them are being left alone for too long, and it’s getting on their nerves. Ukraine now has the opportunity to become an important nation within Europe.

What is important is that the nation has awakened to its responsibilities as a free country.Ukraine’s example proves that the peoples from the Baltics to the Black Sea can successfully modernise their countries and develop democracy. There are a lot of honest professionals in Ukraine and we will open the way for them.Corruption is slowly backing off. The government and law-enforcement agencies must introduce tougher control over customs, agrarian relations and the issuance of licences. We must intensify efforts to fight corruption and step up financial support for medicine and higher education establishments.It will take time, but the way to prosperity is never strewn with flowers. A journalist like Georgiy Gongadze who criticises the authorities doesn’t risk his life any more. I have signed a decree presenting the Hero of Ukraine award posthumously to Gongadze.