BBQ preparations

For one reason or another this year's neighbours barbecue is on a Sunday. This has all kinds of negative connotations about early finishes, work the day after, and the weather forecast not being so hot for that day, but on the plus side, it gives us a day to prepare - particularly important this year as we've dropped for the salads.

So today I spent a happy five hours making three-bean salad (shown here), Italian pasta salad, tabbouleh and good old British potato salad. At least, it was a happy five hours at the start. By the end my back and feet were killing me and I would happily have given up seeing a chopping board, or a knife, or another Jersey Royal as long as I live.

Finding room for four huge bowls of salad in the fridge was a challenge too, but we managed it. Just have to suffer warm tonic with the gin tonight.

The other major task for today was defrosting the freezer in preparation for the mender man coming on Monday. Managed to find some kind neighbours with spare freezer space, so we didn't have to live on strange concoctions for a week to use up all the supplies. Just bagged it up and shipped it out.

Friday Five and we return from The Lakes

Arrived back from a week sharing a farm house with 3 mates and their partners this afternoon. I'll post a link to the travelogue as soon as it's done. For now suffice to say we had four days of glorious weather, followed by an overcast day, a day of rain (which we spent shopping) and a final glorious day yesterday when we walked around Buttermere. Don't think I've been this relaxed in a long, long time.

And so to...the Friday Five
1. Last laugh?
Too many to count this past week. As a group of eight we share such a long and varied history that we can make each other laugh just with a look, or a word. Several themes developed over the week, so after a couple of days we were splitting our sides regularly, and to add to the general hilarity we watched Holy Grail and Life of Brian on a couple of evenings. Brilliant.

2. What do you love?
Ahh...so many things. Sunsets, open water, rain, sunlight through a forest canopy, a long cold gin and tonic with a slice of lime, a hug from my daughters, a quiet evening in with Nikki just *being*, the smell of hot summer tar, trees, bees, pebbles from a clear mountain stream.

3. Gold or silver?
Gold for me.

4. Who do you hold hands with?
Nikki.

5. Friday fill-in:
There's no time to ____.
stand and wait, I hurry to procrastinate.

Friday Five

1. Are you a good worker?
If I'm interested in the task, yes. I'll match all those clichéd phrases - go the extra mile; give 110%; work all hours God sends; burn the midnight oil - you name it, I'll do it if I love the work. If it's boring, or I don't feel appreciated, or it's work I think will be wasted, ignored, or shelved, then I'm not going to put myself out. Been there too many times in the past.

2. What do you carry?
About five stones in excess flab. A lifetime's experience. The world on my shoulders (but I hide it well). Enough dreams to sink a battleship and enough love to float it again. Oh...hang on. You mean my laptop bag, don't you?

3. Do you know your neighbours?
Yes! As regular readers will know, for the first time in "thirty years" I DO know my neighbours. They're friends, we socialise, we can ask them for help and they us. And you know what? SO many people are surprised by this, I understand why it took me/us so long to find a community like this. They hardly exist any more. Other friends and colleagues say to us "What... you actually TALK to your neighbours?!?" Sad, really, that life is so insular for so many of us.

4. Where do you like to go for a day trip?
Anywhere by the sea is OK with me. Or the Lakes. I don't like city breaks much. Seen one city, seen them all. Although having said that, I enjoyed New York (mostly. For at least some of it, that was "enjoyed" pronounced "endured").

5. What is at your feet?
My PC. That bit of carpet my chair sits on to protect the rest of the carpet from wear (and which insists on creeping to the right and climbing up the side of my PC). One or two bits of junk mail waiting to make their way to the recycle bin.

Stop Press: a plasterer calls

Wouldn't you know it? He rang literally ten minutes after my earlier post. Yes, his phone was playing up, but he also had a minor RTC as a result of rushing to get here, and then decided that we wouldn't want to see him in the mood he was in. Probably right ;o) Anyhoo, he's coming tonight (armed with a map).

Has anyone seen our plasterer?

He was supposed to come by on Monday to quote for replastering the new lounge. We had a call from him about an hour after he was due to say he was completely lost and could we give him directions, which Nikki duly did.

About half an hour later, he called again having misinterpreted the directions and overshot the house by a mile and a half. I gave him remedial directions and we sat back down to await his imminent arrival, since at that point he was only 10 minutes drive away at the outside.

When he still hadn't arrived after another half an hour I called him back, but his phone went straight to voicemail. He never did turn up, and we eventually gave up waiting and had (a very late!) dinner. I assume he'd got lost again and run out of battery on his mobile, but I left him a message yesterday and he's still not got back to us. Maybe he's decided the roads around here are just too confusing and he's not going to risk it again!

On a more successful note, the fitter came to size up the fireplace job and left us with a very clear picture of what to expect and what we needed to do in advance. As an added bonus, he was happy to knock out the old fireplace for just the cost of disposal (£25) so that saves me a lot of sweat and blisters!

I've seen the future

Our weekly tech bulletin this week included this entry from an IBM think-tank style gathering. A handful of industry luminaries thinking Deep Thoughts about how life will look in 2050.

As some of the commenters on that entry have already observed, this is all a pile of tosh. It's not even yet 50 years since the last instalments of Tomorrow's World were predicting various social trends only twenty years out, and getting it wildly wrong. Mind you, they were never very good at it. Many of their articles were so far behind the curve we used to call the programme Yesterday's World.

But my point is, predicting this kind of thing is impossible, simply because the things we'll be using then haven't been invented yet. It's all very well extrapolating from technology trends, but all that tells you is what you'll be able to do with stuff we already know about. Yes, processor speeds will be incredible and storage capacities unthinkably vast. Someone once calculated that you could store your entire life's memories in high-definition video, with audio and notes, in about 26 terabytes. For those of you not familiar with the term, a terabyte is 1,000 gigabytes. Single terabyte discs for home computers are already available. By 2050 it's virtually certain that kind of capacity - 26TB I mean - will be available in a hand-held camcorder.

But being ABLE to do something with something is not the same as actually DOING it. Or wanting to. And predicting the future from a point before a life-changing invention just ends up being totally wrong. Look at the transistor, and the (now "humble") PC. And then go and watch a movie like Soylent Green, which is supposedly set in the future and which has its hero searching for information in piles of... what did they used to call it?... paper, all stacked up in a... you know... library. No Internet or desktop computers in sight.

This - this very blog you're reading and others like it - that keeps us in touch with people we have never/will never meet - is a phenomenon on the up. Web 2.0. Content created by real people for real people. Something that was not conceived of much more than 5 years ago. And something that may be almost dead 5 years from now. Bloggers may by then have realised that the effort of recording their insignificant lives is not worth the investment, or maybe the next sliced bread will have arrived fresh and hot from the bakery to take their interest, attention, and spare time.

Nanotechnology; biocomputing; genome manipulation; graphite sheets: these are all exciting new areas of research and many of them could be extrapolated with some degree of certainty. But it still won't give you the right answer. This time next year we could be hearing about something totally new - and there's still 40+ years to go until 2050. Think back 40 years - 1968 - and remember how you were spending your time and what the "hot new topic" was. The world would only need half a dozen computers (said the IBM think tank!!), the PC was yet to be invented, networking was in its infancy. Extrapolation was dangerous even then - we were about to land on the moon and the talk was of Mars being the next stop. Who predicted investment in space technology and exploration would be ratcheted back and we would be stuck on Earth for the next 40 years?

Those predictions by that small group of very clever people may look learned and erudite now, but when viewed from the perspective of the real 2050 they will look every bit as naff and silly as those offered by the people from Tomorrow's World.

Warning: philosophy alert

I've had this throat infection for two weeks now, and the antibiotics haven't really touched it. That is, I've stopped sweating, shivering and sleeping badly, but I'm still coughing. Perhaps it's an Aftermath. Anyway, with no remaining excuses (or, more pertinently, days left on my sick note), I went back to work yesterday. God, I'd almost forgotten how boring it is.

Still, it could be worse. It could be as bad as it was six years ago when I wrote this. Or, on a slightly more global scale, it could be Myanmar bad, or China bad. But we each have our own challenges to rise to, don't we? For some poor unfortunates, it's watching their bloated dead babies drift away on the outgoing tide, or wondering if they'll be able to catch enough rainwater off the roof to stop their family dying of thirst. On that kind of scale, my challenge - the challenge of dragging my sorry arse into work every day when I'd rather be at home writing - seems more like something I should be celebrating. And therefore: whinge over.

Aspiring writer seeks new tale

I've been searching for a handle on my new novel. Hang on. New novel? No. On the idea I've had for my next novel. The one I'm going to write next. Yes, I've finished one already. All bar the shouting. Where shouting equals dealing with the comments of reviewers, maybe a little bit of rework and a final polish. And then more shouting at all the letters of rejection I'll undoubtedly receive from agents and/or publishers. All part of the game, I'm sure. I take a philosophical view. The writing is not about the publishing. It's about the writing. About having a tale to tell, and telling it. Whether anyone reads it is neither here nor there. That's the tale I tell myself, when I'm not telling myself one of the other tales.

So having finished one tale, I've been on a hunt for more tale. A new tale. And I think this is where writers get their reputation for being hard to live with. Because it's been occupying me. Pre-occupying me, even. When I'm cooking, I'm plotting. When I'm eating, I'm plotting. When I'm watching telly, I'm plotting. What was that you said dear? Sorry, what? Didn't quite catch that. Oh yes, pre-occupied all right. Especially when driving.

I can't quite put my finger on when I first crossed the line between having to think about driving, and arriving home having no conscious memory of the journey. It was probably thirty years ago. At least. Autopilot is one thing I do really well. I think I may also have mentioned my least favourite journey. The one where I come home from returning my daughters to their home(s). Their home that is not with me. The loneliest journey. The one that is the furthest away in time from the next time I see them. And therefore, in many ways, the most perfect journey for plotting a new tale (JB: silver linings a speciality).

I've considered several options for book #2 (as it will certainly be known for a while, before revelling in a working title and then, some way down track, being gifted with a real title. Apparently it is at least possible a publisher (at the point where the shouting ceases) will, even later, require a final change of title, but that's a subject for another day), but none of them really felt right. Yesterday, sometime during The Loneliest Journey, I hit upon something that felt right. Not only right, it gave me chills. Scarily right. Challengingly right. It will be a stretch, but like a cat, I enjoy stretching.

The day of rest

Not that I'm a traditionalist in that regard or anything - in fact I had intended to make a start knocking out the old fireplace today - but as it happened I didn't feel like it. Back to work tomorrow after being off sick for two weeks, so I wanted to make the most of my last day of freedom.

We did pop over to the fireplace place to place (!) the order though, after waiting in for a guy who was coming to collect a spare bed we no longer needed. Long live Manchester Freecycle - finding good homes for your unwanted tat without resorting to landfill!

Here's the one we've chosen. The Bedford mantel in light oak, with an arch inset, gas fire, and a matt black quarry tiled hearth. We had decided on a slate hearth, but on reflection (i.e. after being warned how easily slate scratches) we revised our decision. The quarry tiles look almost as nice as the slate, and are much harder wearing.

We had a small worry about heat output, since this model doesn't come with a hot box option, but it is a 3.9kw fire, so I reckon we'll be warm enough once it gets going. And "get going" is what I now need to do. Have to have the old one knocked out and the room replastered before we can arrange a date for fitting.

A bit of a chiseller

It's been a while since I did electrics, but when the old dining room becomes the new lounge having only two double sockets in the whole room will be way too restrictive, so I decided to install a couple of extras on the other side of the room. It was a pity to have to lift any of the floorboards - the floor in this room is one of the best in the house and all still original - but some of them at least are going to have to be raised to supply gas to the new fire, so I didn't feel too bad about it.

Employing Isaac Asimov's principle of Minimum Necessary Change (it's incredible how often that concept has popped back into my mind since reading The End of Eternity "over thirty years" ago) I selected a single board that would give me access to both new socket points, and set about removing it. I'd like to say I got it up with no damage, but there was a small amount of splintering. Nothing that will make the floor wobble or creak when it goes back down though, and as we're carpeting the room the only real damage was to my pride.

If I'd chosen 25mm boxes, I could have got away with just removing a section of plaster, but I prefer to have more room for wiring even though the new boxes will only be taking a single cable (the most load each of these sockets will carry will be a table lamp, or perhaps occasionally a vacuum cleaner), so I'd opted for 35mm boxes. This will certainly make life easier when the house is eventually rewired and the new sockets are included on the ring, but the downside for today was that I had to chisel out a 10mm depth of brick. Luckily the bricks on this internal wall weren't too hard, so this didn't take too long. Even so I was knackered by the time I'd completed the second box.

Friday Five

1. Who do you adore?
Nikki, and my daughters. Nuff said.

2. Who adores you?
Umm, not surprisingly, I think the answer is: Nikki, and my daughters. And my Mum, probably. Anyone else hasn't mentioned it yet (and let's hope it stays that way).

3. What's in your pockets?
Normally, or now? Right now I'm at home wearing trackie bottoms, so nothing. Normally a coin purse, a hanky, car keys and my wallet.

4. Who can you talk with for hours?
Quite a few people, but I don't *usually* like to talk for hours.

5. What sounds great today?
"We're offering you early retirement on full pension."

Chim chiminee, chim chiminee...

Bit of a blast from the past today: we had the chimney sweep round. We'll be fitting a living flame gas fire in the new lounge, and although we've been here 18 months and never used the grate in the dining room, we know the previous owners regularly had a fire in there, so it was certain to need doing.

Halfway through the job, the sweep - a gentleman I would put in his early sixties - called me down from the study to ask if I'd like to go out and check that the brush was sticking out of the chimney. Wow! This traditional proof that the sweep has actually done his work took me flying back to my youth, when my Mum would send me running to the end of the garden to watch for the brush popping out of the chimney pot.

I really never expected to see that again!

Aaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiii - V - R!!!

My latest experience with IVR systems. A bugbear of mine, as regular readers will know. I mean, what is the bloody use of them?

We bought a new fridge and a new freezer when we moved in here. AEG. Very nice. We were offered the usual extended warranty, but they're a right rip-off aren't they? I've never needed one on any of the appliances I've bought over the last 30 years, so why start now right?

So immediately, you know what's coming. After 18 months - 6 months past its warranty - the freezer has started playing up. Not maintaining its standard recommended temperature of -18°C and occasionally getting warm enough to set the alarm off (-11°C). Indeed the ice-cream we all had last weekend was definitely more cream than ice. We tried leaving the freezer on Turbofrost, which is intended to fast-freeze the new food you've just put in, and turns itself off after 50 hours. During those 50 hours the temperature gradually crept down to -17. The morning after the turbofrost cancelled itself, it bounced back up to -14 as quick as you like. By lunchtime, the alarm was sounding again.

So I called the service company and started jousting with their IVR system.
"Please choose from one of the following three options:
If you are calling to purchase a spare part, or about an ongoing repair, please press 1
If you require a repair on an appliance under 12 months old, or on an older appliance covered by an extended warranty, please press 2
If you require a repair on an appliance over 12 months old, which is not covered by an extended warranty, please press 3"
So, already feeling like a second-class citizen, I press "3"
"Please choose from one of the following three options: (because it's never simple enough for a single-level IVR question is it?)
If you would like to purchase a spare part, please press 1 (a feeling of deja vu descends. Wouldn't I already have pressed "1" the first time round? I start to think my "3" hasn't registered, but the message continues...)
If you require a repair on a product which is not covered by the manufacturer's warranty, or an extended warranty, please press 2 (yes, that's the one I opted for before)
For all other enquiries, please press 3" (and there was an option to hold for an operator at the first level too, so basically this second level menu offered me

• an option I've had before, and declined
  
• the option I wanted, and which I'd already selected, and
• a default option of "anything else" which I'd also had before, and ignored then too)
  

I press "2"

And I describe the problem thus: "I bought a freezer from you about 18 months ago, and it's failing to maintain its temperature."
The first question they ask? "How old is the appliance?"
Well, I bought it 18 months ago. From the manufacturer. So it's...umm...18 months old.
"Do you have an extended warranty?"
Well no. That's why I selected the option for those people who don't have extended warranties. Twice.

Is it me? I mean, I already gave you all of this information. Either verbally, just now, when you weren't listening, or on my key pad, mere seconds ago, which your STUPID IVR SYSTEM is too crap to show you, on your little screen. So carry on with your "Customer Relationship Management" script. Don't let me bother you. God.

And then. The piece de resistance. A wonderful little scam for those people who haven't been suckered by the extended warranty the first time round. I'm quoted an "average cost of repair for this type of fault" of £138, and offered "option 1" - to pay the repair guy in full at the completion of the job. But! There's "option 2" - "which most of our customers find more cost-effective."

You bet they do. With a bill of £138 staring them in the face, who wouldn't be tempted by ten easy payments of £14.90, which incidentally covers you for any other faults over the next 12 months? I know I was. And they took my bank details for the direct debit right there and then. How efficient is that?

What a shame the booking of the repair appointment wasn't quite so efficient. Having read the model and serial numbers out to them AGAIN, not to mention repeating the job reference and warranty reference numbers they had just given to me (because of course, it's too much to ask that the warranty selling department and the job scheduling department could actually share any of this information, isn't it?) they offered me Friday.

"No, sorry, I have to go out Friday afternoon. If you can come before three that would be OK."
"Oh, no, I can't guarantee that. Monday?"
"No, got to be at work."
"Well the next appointment I have available is Thursday of next week."
"Yeah, that's fine."
"Would you like morning, or afternoon?"
"Excuse me? I thought you just said you couldn't guarantee to come Friday morning. Now you're offering me Thursday morning?"
"Yes, well, there haven't been any jobs booked on that day yet."

I should have realised. That makes all the difference. Runny ice-cream, anyone?

What goes up...

Well actually, I was hoping that in this particular case what went up wouldn't have to come down. Only it did. With a bang.

There I was, sitting at my puter minding my own business, when I heard a peculiar crackling noise. Just briefly, over on Nikki's side of the study. I figured it was a bird landing on her window sill, or a bee crashing into the glass, or the heat of the day causing part of the building to expand. Nothing to worry about.

Ten seconds later, her curtain pole fell off the wall. Leaving these rather unsightly holes in the nice new plaster, and shattering tiny shards of amber glass finial over a wide area of carpet and desk.

Bugger.

More filling, sanding, painting, drilling, fixing, and putting back up. Only this time, with longer screws!!

Budge up a bit

We've had to be a bit creative about where to store all the dining room furniture while the new lounge is created. My Mum's treasured dining table now has... err... pride of place in the... err... hall. Tucked away behind it is the mirror that we took off the walnut sideboard to make it easier to move. I could easily get used to having a table here actually - it's real handy when bringing in the groceries!

Not quite so handy is the "old" lounge, where the large sofa is pushed out to make room for the main dining table, shorn of its legs, and at the back of the room the drinks cabinet looms ominously over the sofa, cutting out a surprising amount of light to say that it's positioned end-on. The smaller sofa hasn't avoided disturbance either: it's been moved away from the wall to accommodate the girls' PC and some of the dining chairs.

Finally the rest of the sideboard, minus its mirror, has taken up residence in the kitchen. Much to the cat's disgust, as she now has to eat and drink on the other side of the room. Not much of a disturbance you might think, but she's getting on you know. She prefers routine. Probably best if she moves out then - lol - there's precious little routine around here!

The emptiness of the erstwhile dining room

Moving several large, heavy items of furniture from one room to another is perhaps not the best choice of occupation when one is suffering from a chest infection, but the urge to decorate is sometimes even more infectious, so with many rest stops, coughing, spluttering, wheezing and sweating, we emptied the dining room of its artefacts during the course of the day.

I'm always surprised how empty an... umm... empty room sounds. And how deceptively large it looks. We started talking about additional items of comfy chairing, until we reminded ourselves that the objective was to have a comfortable, pleasant space. We don't exactly do minimalist - we hoard way too much for that - but neither do we want a room where you have to edge around chairs and tables before you can turn the TV off.

So here are the obligatory set of "before" pictures. There are more, which I'll certainly stick on Flickr before long, but these three give you a flavour of the room. A traditional 4-bed house's front room with a somewhat-less-than-traditional colour scheme. One of the few remaining examples of our predecessors' unique taste in decor. Unfortunately we'll probably have to hang on to those curtains for a while, having just learned that the fire we like has blown the budget by a few hundred quid. Usually, we manage to get more than a day into a project before we blow the budget. >sigh<

Here we go again

After a blissful six months of just *living* in the house, we're gearing ourselves up to our next project, and the first of 2008 (if you don't count having the roof replaced).

They say life's full of surprises, and if you'd asked me this time last week which room would be the next to be done, the one we've opted for would probably have been last on my list. But that was before the two-hour drive to Ian's 50th birthday party last Sunday, during which Nikki managed to convince me it would be a good idea to swop our front room, currently used (occasionally) as the "posh" dining room, for the lounge.

In the end I couldn't deny the logic. Being north facing, the room is a lot cooler and hence more comfortable in summer. With a new gas fire and modern efficient radiators fitted, it will also be really cosy in winter. It's darker, so more conducive to watching movies at the weekend during daylight hours. It's easier to carpet than the current lounge, as we don't have to worry about what to do with the conservatory doors. It's also not in use full-time at the moment, which means the project can go ahead pretty much without disturbing the rest of the house. There are knock-on benefits to using our current lounge as a dining room too. The conservatory space makes it better for entertaining. We don't have to worry about carpeting it. And so on.

The debate, and online research into fireplace options and colour schemes, continued pretty much all week until today, when we sat down in the garden with cold drinks, paper and pen and planned out the project. If all goes to plan, it looks like we should be finished well before October: the next date when we plan to have house guests.

Friday Five and I'm still alive

A dearth of postings this week on account of me being sick and having almost total lack of energy and enthusiasm. Which is a shame, cos it meant no write-up of Annie's party, or Ian's 50th do in Nottingham (which was a cracker). Can't even bring meself to document them retrospectively at the moment. Maybe later.

And there it was: Friday again. I guess if you wait long enough, it's inevitable, but somehow the wait never seems that long. I did the book meme thing last Friday, so here I am a week behind again. No, a week behind, not a weak behind. God.

1. Describe where you grew up:
A three-bed semi-detached council house in an average suburban street, except that it was a "close" rather than a street. A T-shaped dead end with two circles at the ends of the T's crossbar. Which gave rise to the expression "I'm going to play in the circle," meaning we would play marbles in the inspection covers, or hopscotch, or football, or cricket, or any of the other 50 or so street games I can't remember now. I lived there from ages 0 to 18. I had a 10-minute walk to primary school, a 5-minute bus ride to junior school, and a 35-40 minute walk home from big school (which catered for 11-18s). We had a stream at the bottom of our garden which ran through a wood further down. We used to wade in it, dam it up and generally mess about in the wood, until they dug it up to build houses when I was about 15. There were acres of fields at the back of my house too - as far as the eye could see. They've all been built on now too, but that didn't happen until after I left home.

2. Do you wear any jewelery?
A gold chain, permanently. I have a gold ring too that we bought in Rhodes, but I don't wear it all the time.

3. What do you have too much of?
Stuff that I'm "going to sell on eBay" one of these days.

4. Who is a fool?
Anyone who answers this question, probably!

5. What's your nickname?
Digger. On account of my initials being JCB.

Book meme

Snagged from Diane. Like her, I am finding recently that reading "classics" has been boring me to tears. Not classics like Jane Austen, Dickens or Emile Zola, but "modern classics." The book club has been choosing them serially for months and it's an eye-opener. All those books I've thought "I really must read..." turn out to be not worth the effort.

The idea of this meme is to embolden the ones you've read and italicize the ones you own but have not read.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose (coincidentally the book club's choice for this month, but as I can't go to the meeting I probably won't bother reading it)
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses (someone threatened to choose this!)
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveller’s Wife (very first book club book. I loved it)
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales - in the original.
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray (last month's club choice - I hated it. Reviewed earlier this week)
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune (one of my favourite books of all time)
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon (didn't expect to find any I'd bought but not read yet, and here's the second!)
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse
Cloud Atlas (yuck, yuck and thrice times yuck)
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

Lads' night out

Since we moved, "the girls" (i.e. wives and partners of the neighbours) have had three or four girlie nights out. After each one of these is organised, "the lads" mutter about "having to do something" to arrange a lads' night out. "How hard can it be?" we all say. "Just need to set a date," we agree. And then we go home, close our doors, and forget about it until the next girls' night.

So last Friday, at another neighbours' event (the combined "80th" birthday party for the lads at the end), we finally harumphed our way to an agreed place, date and time. Pool night at the local snooker club. We had eight takers, which made a perfect set of doubles over two tables.

That is, until one guy realised he's going away tomorrow and has loads to do before that, so he cried off. And another guy couldn't persuade his missus to forgo her bingo night just once. And a third guy decided he was actually busy until after 9, but he'd come along later. Only of course he never did.

Which left 5 of us. It still worked though, one of us dropping out in turn from a game, therefore playing 4 games out of 5. And the rates are good too - £12.50 to stay on a table all night (which by the time we arrived meant 8-midnight). And the beer is good. And the company was even better. We had a really good time and will definitely be doing again, I'd say.

It was noticeable though, that at the end of the pool we all went home. When the women go out, they tend to congregate back at a house and carry on gassing and drinking until the early hours. We need to pick a non-weekday night next time, methinks.