Today I was on a course all day. It was a quick, rough and ready introduction to Microsoft Project Manager. Useful for me in as much as I project manage several things each year, but pointless because with usual departmental efficiency, I still do not have the application on my PC and am not likely to anytime soon. Already the benefits of the course are sliding from my brain and by the time I am in a position to use the software it will have gone completely.

Still, I was home a little after 5.15 and had a free lunch, so can't complain.

I have just got around to downloading some photos off my phone. I took them on Monday while I was on the train coming back from seeing the family in Shropshire. I wish I'd remembered to take my digital camera, but there we are. A couple of views of The Wrekin.





I always know that I am near my roots when I see The Wrekin standing larger than life looking out across the north Shropshire plain. It makes me feel as though I am at home and safe.

For those as don't know it, the hill is not particularly big, but it dominates the area around it - especially to the north. There is an Iron Age hill fort on the top, which the MOD once graced with a radar station. That has long since gone and there is a TV transmitter instead. The Wrekin is a beacon hill, one of those set in readiness for the Spanish Armada that never landed in Elizabethan times. I recall the becon being lit for the Queen's Silver Jubilee in 1977, and then moments later, seeing another beacon flaring on the Welsh border, miles away as the chain spread across the country. I guess that was where Tolkein got the idea for the beacons of Gondor.

There's a few legends about the formation of the Wrekin; my favourite involves a stupid giant, a wily cobbler and a grudge against the citizens of Shrewsbury. Many Shropshire legends involve a supernatural being being pissed off with the citizens of Shrewsbury. More than one involves a wily cobbler.

What was it in medieval times about shoes, the town and revenge?

In the terminology used by estate and letting agents, what precisely is a "short let" and a "long let"? Does anyone know?

Awfully grateful for help!

I was feeling peckish, so having flailed around unavailingly for spare biscuits in the office – I tell you they are prime currency around here; the plates of biscuits provided but not consumed at meetings – I absorbed a banana on the grounds that it would put the boot into my hunger pangs and I could also feel virtuous for eating fruit instead of processed lard and sugar.

I rather wish that I had abstained entirely now. The banana was fine, a prime example of the genre, but it is clear that my hunger was rather more psychological than real, unlike my now stuffed giblet that is rather more real than psychological.

Between bouts of frenzied work, I have been indulging in a little nostalgia for the mid to late 1980s, a period of time during which I lived in the only slum in SW7, drank far too much lager and faffed briefly in a backroom band we dubbed the Belvedere Bad Band, whose motto was talent is killing music, aping all the taping is killing music stickers and warnings of the time¹. Only one permanent band member could play any instruments and it wasn’t me. Only one permanent band member could sing in time and always in tune. That wasn’t me either. What I could do was hitch up double banks of ghetto blasters for overdubbing and getting rudimentary stereo and phase effects. I was also a dab hand with sound effects. Ribbed shoe horn and plectrum rhythm section was my (unpatented) invention. 10cc and their gizmo that did odd things to guitar strings paled in comparison, I tell you.

After a couple or three original compositions, we found our niche in recorded but thankfully unperformed plagiarism.

Heady days. And the chicken and chips take-outs from the café on the other side of the Cromwell Road were nice, too.


¹Ah, plus ça change. Music was supposed to have been destroyed by home taping. These days it is supposed to have been knifed in the ribs by illegal downloading and yet, somehow it’s still there…

How rude.

The letting/management agents were supposed to phone last night to let us go and see a flat a little further down the High Road from the Athenaeum Club. In the event, there was no phone call and no visit. Admittedly, at three bedrooms, the flat is bigger than we are looking for, and the quoted rent is a little higher than we were hoping for, but a viewing would be welcome as it would give us an idea of what is available and what we can expect for our money.

Who knows, we might even have decided to take the place.

I suppose that we really need to register with a number of agents now. We have to move in about 6 weeks, so time is beginning to crack on and places are beginning to be advertised that fall vacant just when we need them.

Did I mention that I hate moving?

It was actually chilly this morning and raining, too. A proper English spring morning: could have done with a bit of fog too, just to make it perfect. People have been lulled by years of climate change and season shift. Spring is like autumn in reverse, so the weather patterns should be similar, but they never are these days. Everyone thinks it’s summer come 1 May, when any schoolboy knows that 20 or 21 June is the first day of summer¹ in the northern hemisphere.

Remember: Ne’er cast a clout ‘til May be out. Whatever that means.


¹Except Iceland, where they are generally so happy to see more than 20 minutes of day light that 1 April is the first day of summer. They break out all the Bjork records and party like it’s 1945 (or a quarter to eight). Other supermarkets have a similar problem with Christmas, which they think starts in August.

Bah. I find myself scheduled to go on a course in about 10 minutes that I should have gone on two years ago, only it didn’t exist then. Today, then, I shall be sitting and paying attention to see if all the ‘fixes’ and intuitive leaps I have used to coax answers from our proprietary application in any way resembles the methodology I should be using.

I live in hope –though I shan’t hold my breath – that I’ll be able just to pick up the mouse like a microphone and just start speaking, ”Computerrr…”.

Lose valuable geek points if you don’t get the reference.

ETA: Having taken Monday off, I find that I am a day out of synch this week, but bizarrely in the wrong direction. The course is tomorrow, not today. Duh.

The Tube was hot and sweaty this morning; a typical start to the working day, then. Despite being out of the office for two working days, I shall be sneaking off early as the landlord’s management agent is coming around at about 6.15 this evening to take photos of the soon-to-be-decommissioned Athenaeum Club as the landlord wants to re-let it.

Best of luck, mate; all those repairs you never did for us will put all newcomers off, I strongly suspect.

There is a flat available across the High Road that they will be showing us straight afterwards. We will take a look, but it is bigger than we were after, with 3 bedrooms, a little more expensive than we were hoping for and probably on the market 3 or 4 weeks earlier than we would like, so I doubt that it will be of any use to us, sadly. Still, we will take a look just to get an idea of what the money buys these days. I suspect that we will have to start moving a little more sharpish now, if we are to find a flat by the end of June, so weekends will probably become a little moiré fraught as time ticks away. I really hate moving, but I am hopeful that wherever we end up will be in a better state of repair than the old Athenaeum.

I just wish we could afford to buy something, but finances are tight , local house prices too high (despite the much touted property price falls which do not seem to have much impact upon London) and the mortgage market is just a (bad) joke as the banking world reels from the US sub-prime fiasco.

Bloody international economics. Bloody economics generally, actually.

Well, I'm back at The Athenaeum Club to find out that the only computer in the place that will speak to teh intarweb is Furtle's Mac which I am currently using. My desk top cannot find an IP address and when I plug my laptop into the router, it tells me that there is no DNS server, which is patent balls since the Mac has found it. Though it will obligingly let me use MSN Messenger, which my PC won't.

I have absolutely no idea what is wrong; the router seems to be working - viz this post, but the Microsquash aspects of our shared technology seem to have given up. I do know that I powered down and unplugged my PC when I went away and that evening Furtle was having connectivity problems that mysteriously sorted themselves out the following day at about 8.30 in the morning. She turned my PC on in my absence whilst checking the connection, but didn't look at it again when hers started working, not unnaturally. The upshot is that until I can fathom what has happened, we are a one computer house (although when she gets back, I might fire up Furtle's Mac notebook just to confirm that it is a microsquash software problem, which I am guessing (hoping) might be at Plus.Net's end. In the meantime, I haven't a clue what to try.

If any of you IT gurus out there have any ideas, I'd be happy to listen.

Anyway, the weekend.

Shropshire was meltingly hot (for an Englishman at any rate). I went out to the pub on Friday evening with my niece, Hayley and my nephew, Tom, to celebrate the latter's 18th birthday. That went well enough, though we were bothered slightly by some drunken and over friendly Scousers, but they wobbled off eventually, so no harm done.

Traipsing around Shrewsbury on Saturday was draining, but I managed to get Mum some stuff for her birthday and pick up new trousers for me at the same time. Sunday was given over to watching footie on the telly, what with it being the last day of the Premiership season and the title and relegation places had yet to be sorted out. In the end, of course, it all ended up pretty much as expected, but there were nerves along the way.

Yesterday evening I took Tom to see Iron Man, he not having seen it and me thinking it worth a second viewing. Slight problems though at the movie's end at 10.30. It seems that the last train back to Wem was at 10.50, though I think it might have been earlier. Despite the pair of us tanking it up to the station in record time we arrived to find only one train scheduled and that not going anywhere near Wem. So an 18 quid taxi fare home made it a rather more expensive evening than envisaged.

In additional news, my nose seems to have either regressed thirty-five years, or the heat has had an unforeseen effect, or maybe I have eaten too many lard sarnies, or a combination of all three. Whatever the cause, it is breaking out in annoyingly painful zits, which combine well with hayfever to make life more miserable than it ought to be.

Happy days.

Right, weekend bag is packed and I'm off.

I have no idea what the computer situation is up in sunny Shropshire, so I may or may not post before Monday afternoon. Either way, I'm off now. Everyone have a good weekend and I'll see you on the other side.

Ciao, Dudes.

Hmm. Meetings finished for the next few minutes. I must go and get a sarnie before my next one at 3.30, during which I go through lackey’s performance review.

I think I shall slope off relatively early tonight. These meetings have given me the fear; we have too much to do and too little time to do it.

Still, quiz night tonight and then I am out of the office until Tuesday. I shall have plenty of time to worry about what we’ve been let in for then.

Now: food – and some more coffee.

I have been reflecting, with a certain lazy envy, on the fact that three of my friends have published books in the last twelve months. That’s two novels and one political tract.

I think I like the idea of writing a novel more than I do the actual writing. It does not help that I have neither an idea for a plot nor a steady written style. I am also less than sure that I have the stamina to stick at it, should I obtain a plot and concentrate on maintaining a written voice. The thought of clutching a book that is all my own work appeals immensely, even if no-one else buys it. The thought of actually sitting in front of the computer to write it appeals much less.

All that happens when I try to write something more important than a journal entry is that I end up googling my way around the internet and discovering dust bunnies under my desk. My coffee consumption, already high, sky rockets and the pleasure I get from staring into space thinking of tumbleweed and the colour purple expands to fill all available memory. Looking back on it, I find that I can no longer work out how I ever wrote anything for NWO games and even the reality of that is that my written contribution was less than my memory makes it.

I have been amused in a way that I know the author probably won’t be to find that if I google the title of one friend’s novel, I get a couple of hits on Shakespeare and TS Eliot, one on the book itself and innumerable hits on Andromeda, the sci-fi show least admired by the man in question.

Rather than writing anything of value yet again, I find myself contemplating with wonder the nefarious ways and means of the Karma Pixies

Never let it be said that I do not learn.

After yesterday’s taramasalata and humus fiasco, I have reverted to Plan A and eaten a sandwich for lunch and then some bananas. In a little while I may venture to neck an apple. Whether I do or not, is of relatively little importance. What really matters is that today, unlike yesterday, I do not feel manky and generally nauseous after eating lunch. In fact, yesterday I dispensed with dinner when I got home, though I had a little ice cream late on. Tonight I shall face no such restrictions!

Having caught a glimpse of the video, I find myself wondering if there will be a stand up, knock down fight between The Last Shadow Puppets (in no way the Arctic Monkeys) and the other Beatle wannabes, Oasis.

Of course, given that there are really only two of each band (as far as I am aware) maybe they should team up for a video, just to get the numbers right. I must remember to load the video up on YouTube when I get home, see what they sound like.

Now I know summer is on its way in. We have had two warm days in succession and I am already wilting and croaky with pollen-related sniffles and such like. I always assumed that as I got older I would discover new interests and pass times. I did not anticipate these manifesting themselves in collecting hay fever pills and ensuring that I remain well stocked with disposable hankies.

I guess the protective layer of tar is well removed from my lungs and other tubing now, so there is nothing between my pipes and the outside world, so here I am: Sir Sniffle of Congestion.

Be that as it may, I am beginning to think that I should put away the black jeans and the tweed jacket (it’s not as if, hand on heart, they match anyway, though I have never let anything as paltry as colour co-ordination ruin my day) and dig out instead the chinos and pale jacket. The irony of course, is that I have donated my panama hat to the charity shop, so a proper Sydney Greenstreet impression is out of the question. That said, I do have a rather tatty, though better fitting panama rolled up in the bedroom drawer or somewhere.

However it turns out, I shall have to think of ways of remaining cool on my way to and from work every day. This is a lesson I have to relearn every year since my memory discards everything useful on the subject as soon as temperatures start to decline and I can gratefully clutch at a jumper and over coat. I pointed out to colleagues that I like the temperatures of winter, but with the daylight of summer. One of them suggested that I want my cake and eat it.

Yes. With cherries on top, please.

For lunch instead of a sandwich followed by an apple and/or banana, I thought that I should ring in the changes.

I have the fruit already, so it was just a case of finding something to supplement it; I have learnt from bitter experience that simply eating fruit at lunchtime leaves me hungry part way through the afternoon. Well, I mooched around Marks and Spencer’s food hall and happened upon a tub of taramasalata and a tub of low fat humus. I then realised that they were there in a 3 for 2 deal, so I picked up an additional humus to take home. Next order of business was pitta bread, which was quickly acquired. Of course, this all seemed like a good idea at the time. Low fat, more vegetable and some fishy bits to provide proteins and things.

Except that now I feel rather bleh. I am full and have a half pot of humus remaining, which will have to follow the other one home: I don’t trust the fridge here in the office. I also have a half pack of pitta bread left. That will doubtless be too solid to eat tomorrow, or get forgotten until it is – or has sprouted those interesting blue spots that suggest it might not be good eating any more.

My coffee is looking at me accusingly. It knows that I shall drink it, but IO shall probably have to wait until it is virtually cold. I had forgotten that pitta has much in common with rice and just keeps on expanding in the stomach.

It will be some hours before I can face an apple or a banana.

Sandwich tomorrow, then. Bleurgh…

Today is Furtle’s first day in her new job and this morning the poor soul was nervous and broadcasting jitters with such power and on so many frequencies that I started feeling nervous too!

I accompanied her on the Tube as far as Embankment, where we needed to go in opposite directions and she was lat seen on the opposite platform looking for all the world like a rabbit caught in the headlights. I don’t think that sudden and proper onset of spring has helped, as it is warm and getting warmer, though we did remember the antihistamines this morning, so excessive sniffling should be out.

I am looking forward to hearing all about it when she gets home tonight. I am sure she will get on fine and as is generally true with these things, reality is far different from the anticipation: bad for birthdays and Christmas; good in interviews and jobs!

My boss was surprised to see me this morning thinking that I was off until Thursday. She is now equally surprised that I am off on Friday and next Monday. Good to know I’m not the only one to have issues with the electronic diary!

Why I have to live in a world where "long weekends" are too short, is beyond me; it one of the great mysteries of life.

Here I am, just getting to enjoy my time away from the office and I have to be up and out to go to work in seven hours or so. I have searched my family tree within the decent bounds on consanguinity and have to report that neither land nor money nor saleable-on-the-American-market-Earldoms are destined to come my way. This means that unless pure chance strikes, I am doomed to making a living as a 9-5 drone for the remainder of my allotted span. Maybe I should give pure blind chance a hand by buying a lottery ticket?

Still, it is a three-day week for me. I have booked Friday and the following Monday off for a trip up home to Sunny Shropshire. My nephew is 18 on Thursday and Mum is 80 on Monday. This is a combination of significant dates that requires the presence of the Son and Heir, especially a son and heir who has not ventured home since Christmas.

I have no idea yet, what to get Mum for her birthday; I am sure that something will suggest itself. My nephew, on the other hand, is displaying distressingly chav-like tastes and I am informed by my sister that she has bought him a three lions ring - presumably based upon the FA's England badge. My niece is buying him a Liverpool ring, God help us, and Mum has asked if I will pitch in toward the cost of a Liverpool FC chain for the lad. Apparently he likes it. I confess to feeling both bewildered and rather crushed by this evidence of poor yet expensive taste in bling by one of my blood line and am at a loss as to how I should go about setting the lad to rights, or whether it may be a lost cause already. I discover, too, that he now has three tattoos. I don't have anything against the odd tattoo and have on occasion considered it myself (though the fear of pins and ink has always steered me from it before any actual tattooing has taken place), but three tattoos before the age of 18 is, in my hide-bound world, a little too much. And if you beg to differ, let me tell you that while I have forgotten what one of them is, I know that he sports a Liver Bird on his leg and "You'll Never Walk Alone" inscribed on his forearm. It is to weep; nothing discreet about this body artistry. I can appreciate a good tattoo, and don't even mind the big ones, such as the Maori patterns some people have on their arms, but adornment in tribal football colours?

Oh well. Not really my business, I suppose, though some might say that as his Godfather I might have suggested he do something else.

Other petty annoyances accumulate on the horizon, suggesting that 2008 will be a year of expenditure. There is, of course, the forthcoming evacuation of the Athenaeum Club, with attendant expenditure. Given the landlord's track record, I do not expect to see much if any of my deposit coming back to me (to be fair, that's probably my own damned fault for taking short cuts when I moved in, but I was expecting to be here more than three years at that time), whilst we will have to find the money a) to move, b) for the first month's rent in the new place and c) a new deposit of about the same magnitude.

I seem to have perfected the art of leaking money as efficiently as others make it.

Adding insult to injury, I am coming to the conclusion that I need a new computer, too. I am not sure that I can expand this one much more and I am now so low on space on my C drive that I can no longer defrag it. I do not know which bits of all the crap in the Windows directories I need to keep and what are redundant. What I do know is, that the machine is very slow and almost constantly accessing one of the hard drives for virtual memory. Perhaps additional memory will do the trick, but I may be past that point. Ironically, on various drives I have huge amounts of free space, but things will insist on installing themselves into the C drive.

Finances permitting, I am toying with the ultimate heresy of migrating to a Mac. But not just yet.

Despite all this, I am feeling quite chipper and am in a good mood. Though I may yet buy that lottery ticket.

I am feeling very smug; at midnight I shall be able to cross 4th May off my calendar and that will make it exactly one year since I gave up smoking. Actually it will be 366 days. Trust me to pick a leap year, but there you go.

My next target is to finish crossing off the days up to and including 31 December, which will mean one calendar year - all of 2008 - smoke free.

This is particularly aimed at boroshan, but there are others of you who may be able to help me in my puerile quest.

Some years ago - and I am talking in the 15 - 20 years ago mark, boroshan and I found a series of truly awful Dracula books; books so awful that they, like any movie by Ed Wood, transcended the genre. I can only recall that they were set in an approximately modern time (mid to late 20th century) and that someone, maybe Van Helsing or a descendant had captured Dracula and was using him to help detect and foil crimes. This seemingly impossible feat being accomplished by the insertion into Dracula's chest during daylight hours of a small radio-controlled electric motor and magnet affair with a small stake made of a broken match. When the motor was switched on, the stake would me removed from Dracula's heart. When it was off, or the battery failed, the stake plunged back into his heart thus providing an on-off switch.

You can see where this is going can't you?

Anyway, I can't recall the name of the series or the author and it has been plaguing me.

New slippers make for happy paws and that is the position I am in at the moment. For a fiver I acquired happy paws. My old slippers were not that old, but the soles somehow have managed to crack and crumble, leaving bits of themselves scattered around the flat, like tiny black bullets. This has never happened before: usually I buy slippers and the soles are immortal, evincing not the slightest signs of wear no matter how tatty the uppers become.

These new ones were acquired in North Finchley where we briefly wandered this afternoon. They were the prime reason for disappearing down there, but we took the opportunity to empty three TARDISes and a fat pig of all their secreted loot (pennies, tuppences and five pence pieces by and large, but a couple of twenty pence pieces and a Barbadian ten cent made it through the sift) yielding is £37.69 from the coin sorter in Sainsbury's - it should have been a little more but about 20p worth of coins wouldn't go through for some reason. We had a meal and a pint in the local O'Neill's pub and then went to spend our bounty in Waterstone's. We still have about half of it left, but I picked up Byzantium by Judith Herrin, whilst Furtle acquired, after much thought, Book of the Dead by Patricia Cornwell and Andrew Marr's A History of Modern Britain. Since these were acquired on a 3 for 2 deal, I nearly blew the remainder on Battle Cry of Freedom, but I know that I used to own a copy and am hoping that it is not lost, but merely miss filed. Similarly I talked myself out of reacquiring Suzanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell for the same reason.

We returned home, watched an X-Files, Dr Who, another X-Files and then forty-odd minutes of The Constant Gardener on DVD, before deciding that rather than watch the remainder, we should simply eBay it in the hope that someone out there hasn't picked up on the fact that it is less engaging than pickling tree bark. So we watched another X-Files. There is a season and a third left before we run out of it and cast around for something else. We may go back and watch the last two seasons of West Wing or opt for the second season of 24, or even the first season of Twin Peaks, which I am hoping has aged well.

My task for tomorrow is arduous: I Have to listen to the second CD of After the Day, and the remaster of Once Again by Barclay James Harvest and if I find the time, The Travelling Wilbury collection.

I may even do some drawing. Or finish my model.