All systems stop

Our plumber arrived this morning to take off the old radiators. A simple enough job, you might think, but I've been fooled by such thoughts before. There's always a frozen joint or a corroded bit of pipe to trap the unwary, and the last time I tried to do this for myself we had to put up with a weeping crack for weeks. I vowed there and then to leave such things to the professionals, so here he was.

Removed in a jiffy (to reveal some truly hideous 1970s "pine effect" wallpaper) I felt comfortable calling the plasterer to fix a date. Had I been more of a project manager, I could have dovetailed these two jobs nicely together. But we know the score on that one, so I'd done things serially. As a result the plasterer has now entered a busy period. He can't fit us in until July 4th, so the whole project has moved back three weeks. Still, I can't approach home projects with the same level of planning (and stress!) associated with work projects. They don't, except in rare circumstances, have deadlines, so we'll take the three weeks delay and use it to do something else :o)

Rain stops work

After yesterday's DIY success, today's scheduled task was decidedly more mundane: applying woodstain to the patio doors to complete the ambient patio-and-conservatory look of burnished mahogany.

The Lords of the Cumulonimbus had other ideas though, and as I stepped out onto the patio in my painting duds with stirrer in hand, a few drops fell splashily onto my ever-baldening pate. I stepped back inside sharpish. Never let it be said that I'm a determined and weather-defying wielder of a well-loaded brush. No, the slightest excuse is enough for me, and even though the rain passed over in a few minutes the sun that followed it was sufficiently strong for me to declare the task void for the day.

I busied myself instead with a few more chapters of Rebecca - the book club book for June - and followed this up with chopping the chicken and veg for Nikki as she prepared a chilli chicken dinner for the four of us. And then, as it was Father's Day today, I indulged myself with the director's cut of Blade Runner, which neither of the girls had seen before as far as I could tell.

This has long been at the top of my list of favourite films, but for some reason I watched it today with a more critical eye than usual. The story is set in 2019 and the closer we come to that date, the more far-fetched the image of "futuristic Los Angeles" becomes. I've written before on the dangers of predicting the future. I guess when Blade Runner was made (1982), 2019 sounded sufficiently far into the future to be credible. Now it's not much more than ten years away, flying street cars and genetic designers creating snakes and owls (not to mention humans) from scratch seems laughable. We're only just on the verge of creating the very first lifeform from man-made DNA, but it'll be a bacterium of some sort, not an owl. And off-world colonies? We were closer to that in the 1970s than we are now. Note to self: if I ever write any hard science fiction, make sure it's set at least a hundred years in the future. At least I'll be dead by the time it's proven wrong.

The old film still manages to move me at the end though, with Rutger Hauer's impeccably-delivered line: "I've ... seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those ... moments will be lost in time, like ... tears ... in the rain. Time to die." It's worth watching just for that.

Wired!

Having (finally!) worked out the correct wiring sequence for the new sockets, today was the day to put it into action.

I pulled back the second spur cable I'd laid last week and connected it between the two new sockets. This meant I could fully wire up the right-hand socket as at this point neither its incoming nor outgoing cables were connected to the mains. With everything ready for the final connections, I cut the power to the downstairs ring (having first ensured the channel to the first new socket was wide enough to take two cables before I left myself with no power to drill a wider channel, and boiled the kettle for a pot of tea).

Deciding which of the two cables leading to the original socket was the one I needed to pull back required some assistance from Nikki - to see which one wobbled when tugged - but having selected the right one, disconnecting it from its old position and wiring it up to the first of my new sockets was a doddle. I took time out from the job to feel smug and have a cup of tea before tackling the final connection: from the second new socket back to the original socket whose incoming connection I'd just "borrowed."

Knowing that no job is EVER as simple as it appears, I should have saved my smug feelings for later, because I was now faced with two problems.
(1) the channel to the old socket was even tighter than the one I'd been worried about before, and pulling out one of its cables hadn't really helped at all.
(2) the floorboard I'd lifted to gain access to this socket was just slightly more than an arm's length away from the wall, and hence quite awkward to work with.
Try as I might, I couldn't get the new cable up into the channel from underneath, and I couldn't push the gash piece of cable I'd been using as a pull-through down from the socket to the underfloor void. Even knocking out all the plaster from beneath the socket didn't help. There was something behind the skirting board blocking the channel.

I had another cuppa while I pondered the problem and then hit upon the obvious solution: Nature's toolkit. In the shape of a wire coat-hanger. Untwisted and straightened out, it shot down the channel like a rat down a drainpipe. With the hook of the coat-hanger hooked over the grommet and the twisted end bent over to take a piece of strong twine, I tied the coat-hanger to the new incoming cable and pulled it all back. With my arm jammed under the floor up to my shoulder to give a bit of gentle assistance from below, the cable snaked slowly up through the constricted channel and popped out into the box. Until it appeared I hadn't even realised I'd been holding my breath.

The old socket was swiftly wired back up and with only the briefest of frissons I flicked the power back on. The phone beeped, the radio came on and the cooker flashed 00:00. All was well. And this time, my smugness didn't fade.

A day of quiet satisfaction

One of those days when things just feel right. It has its own slow, measured beat and whatever you do, things turn out well.

I started the day helping Natalie move out of halls. It only seems like last week since I was carrying stuff in for her and here I was carrying it out. Only - as is always the way - there was much more to bring out than there had been to take in. I can't believe she's already completed her first year at Uni. Time slips away from you when you're not watching. Another era begins in a few weeks when she gets the keys to her new digs. Somewhere - hopefully - that will be "home" for a couple of years. Alongside the two other homes she already has. Three homes is more than enough for anyone, I reckon.

By early afternoon I'd finished the design document I'd been working on. Ahead of schedule, so I could revel in one of those lazy Friday afternoons when you can savour the approach of the weekend and pretend you don't have a care in the world.

And then, as I listened to the measure tones of Carolyn Quinn on the PM show, came the best news of all. That Ireland had voted NO to the EU Lisbon Treaty (aka a Constitution By The Back Door). Well done to the Micks and Paddys. One of the few countries to actually give its populace a chance to express an opinion and they got it bang on. Brown and Blair should forever hang their heads in shame for not allowing us the referendum they promised in their manifesto pledge (going back on manifesto commitments should be a criminal offence) but in the end Ireland has done our work for us. Hopefully that'll be an end to it, although I suspect there'll be a lot of wriggling and weasel words from Brussels to get through yet. Apparently some of the institutions and procedures that the Treaty calls for have already been implemented ahead of ratification. Typical European disdain for due process - steaming ahead with it anyway because a handful of Eurocrats think they know what's best for us. These should all be dismantled now, but do you really think they will be? The French are not exactly well known for sticking to the letter of the law.

Environ...mental

In the news recently - a pensioner prosecuted (and fined) for putting a tea bag in her regular bin, instead of with the garden waste.

This madness isn't restricted to the home. Here in my office we've had our bins taken away. Another "good corporate citizen" initiative that looks good while achieving very little, and making everyday life just that little bit harder. We now have to march halfway across the office to the "recycling point" and decide which of two bins to put our rubbish in - recyclable material or landfill. So off I stroll with my little parcel of lunch detritus. Two apple cores, two Babybel cheese skins (purple wax) and a banana skin. All into landfill. Yet the majority of it could be composted, so where's the "green" in that? And after the above incident with the tea bag we're told we shouldn't throw food waste into landfill because it gives off methane (a Very Bad Greenhouse Gas, children), so where's the "green" in THAT?

The bins are clearly marked, but on the evidence to date people are clearly confused as to what's recyclable and what isn't. Even with the help of the little pictures on the bin lids (God help us…it's like being back in primary school), folk are still tossing their recyclable plastic cups from the drinks machine into the landfill bin.

Now I know this might sound elitist and snobby, but the people who work here are supposed to be of above average intelligence. We only recruit graduates, and everyone is busy designing high-powered systems for use by central and local government and key financial institutions. And yet, even with the aid of pictures, some of these geniuses still can't work out whether a plastic cup should go left, or right.

I give up and return to my desk. Via the gents, since having carried my parcel over to the bins my hands are rather damp and sticky. Still it could be worse. I could be the one sifting the contents of the bins into the right piles for different recycling plants. Or searching through the landfill bin for misplaced cups. Someone MUST be doing this, right? They can't simply be chucking the bags into a skip. Can they?

Sorry?

Been a while since I saw any licence plates worth commenting on, and then in the traditional manner of buses, two came along at once.

The first on my visit to Slough this week: V60 RRY. Only it was spaced with the V out on its own and from a distance it read: V SORRY. Wonder what the owner was sorry about?

The second I spotted in the office car park on my way out: M30 HMY, again spaced out - somewhat illegally - as M3 OH MY (me oh my), which although mildly amusing did strike me as a bit pointless (don't they all?), even if it was attached to a BMW M3.

It's called a what?

Our recent trip to the Lakes with mates (travelogue still waiting to be written up. I know, I know) held a mystery. Walking along the beach at Seascale, we saw a large number of these either drifting about in, or resting beside, rock pools. The photo gives no clue as to size, but it's about the same as a small clementine.

Ritchie speculated that it might be a sea urchin skeleton, but despite having similar markings I thought it was the wrong shape for that. So I saved one, intending to research it later. This isn't the one I saved. Sadly that one went pop when I bent over to collect another memento of our visit. I'm a bit of a magpie when walking on beaches. Trying to find a replacement for that first specimen was a task, as many of them had been pecked to pieces by marauding seagulls.

In the end, and quite out of the blue, it was Natalie who discovered what the mysterious creature was. With a breathless phone call, and in the midst of much laughter, she told me. It's a sea potato.

The ultimate irony of that will be lost on most of you but trust me: it's too funny.

Feeling congested

So it looks as though Manchester will be getting a congestion charge scheme after all. Not until 2012 or thereabouts, but with the amount of bribery subsidy on offer from the government, it's looking likely. The ten local councils all have to vote on it too, but since 7 out of 10 have already declared themselves in favour, there's no hope there either.

No word yet on what the scheme will mean for residents, although a local pundit on the radio today suggested that only 30% of the local population would end up paying. By this I think he meant many people will be able to "avoid" the charge by using public transport (which until they extend the tram system both South and East won't be an option for either of us, and unless they install guards on every tram to protect commuters carrying laptops from marauding hoodies I wouldn't use even if the routes were in place) or travelling outside the charge hours (7.00 to 9.30 in the morning and 4.30 to 6.30 in the evening - again not really an option for us).

We live inside the M60 orbital, so presumably leaving this area in the morning and heading out of town won't incur a charge, but if I were to be working at home and giving Nikki a lift to work, I suspect I'd incur a £2 fee per day simply for returning home from Northenden, and if I'm going into the office too, I'll pick up a charge when I leave the orbital and head into town from the other side. Sheesh.

An opposition pundit pointed out that drivers already raise £45 billion of revenue a year in one way or another, and this is just another tax on the poor motorist. With the prospect of a change in government in a couple of years' time, maybe this will all be scrapped. Or maybe by the time it's implemented everyone will be so hacked off with the cost of driving there'll be a mass non-payment protest like there was with the poll tax. A lad(*) can dream.

*Use of the word 'lad' not meant to imply age restriction. No warranty implied or given. Interpretation subject to status. Terms and conditions apply.

A day for DIY #2

Forecast fine for today so I leapt into action after morning coffee to apply a coat of woodstain to the conservatory.

Despite the previous owner having told us it should be done every year, I don't think he ever did it. Either that or he used some naff hummus-muncher's compound that's kind to the environment but doesn't last five minutes. Whatever the reason, the woodwork looked decidedly grey after only 18 months, so I took my brush firmly in hand and my swizzle stick in the other (for stirring, you understand) and off I went.

Three hours or so later, the edifice was glowing a deep mahogany brown and I was glowing a slightly less attractive shade of red since the sun had reached and passed its zenith and the day was more than a little warm.

By way of a break, and because it was slightly cooler indoors than out, I then took my courage in both hands and attempted to refit The Brackets. This was not a cool job. Either physically or emotionally. But after much cursing, and an interim abortive selection of yet another wrong fixing (even though supposedly designed especially for medium weight tasks in a traditional brick wall) I did prevail.

Just with The Brackets though. By the time I got through with them, I didn't trust my temper with the Actual Pole. Not to mention The Finials which, being glass screwed into brass, tend to fall apart at the slightest provocation. No. Not today. Calm, calm, calm.

A day for DIY

I could have called this post "string theory," as I spent much of the morning working out how to string together the new sockets in the (new) lounge. [Aside: I confuse myself with the name of this room in its interim state. I guess it's still "the dining room" at the moment, since it hasn't changed function yet, and we're still lounging in the old lounge, but it's also occasionally referred to as the new lounge, which is also correct in its own way, since we can't use it as a dining room while it's in the process of being refurbished]

After an inspiring suggestion from Annie I realised it would be quite simple to incorporate them into the ground floor ring rather than spur them off from existing sockets, but this suggestion came too late to avoid me laying two lots of cables across the room (using the sub-floor space as described earlier) where only one would have been needed had I thought of it earlier. Still it's a much better solution all round, so the next time I'm in there I'll be pulling one of those cables back and connecting it between the two new sockets.

I also made a start on my third attempt to erect Nikki's curtain pole. There has been an abortive second attempt using a fixing that proved useless. Its uselessness was not apparent until after I'd tightened it up in the hole though, whereupon extracting it necessitated the removal of a large section of wall along with it. Many expletives were expleted. Explicitly. Today I began the process of filling the hole back up again prior to attempting to refix the brackets with more suitable fixings.

I love old houses, but I do NOT love the walls that come with them, with their crumbling plaster of unknown depth, and extremely hard bricks that cause drill bits to draw childish patterns in the plaster as they skate across their surface.

Friday Five

1. What's your weather?
Overcast. Forecast is rain for this morning, brightening up in the afternoon. I'm not usually bothered, but today I'd planned to give the conservatory a coat of woodstain, so I'm holding off for this afternoon. Doesn't LOOK much like rain at the moment thoughbut.

2. Where are you on your way to?
Downstairs to get another coffee (you might have guessed I'm writing this on Saturday morning - does that count as a Friday Five? LOL).

3. Are you good with directions?
Yes. As long as I know where I'm directing someone too, naturally.

4. Do you know your neighbours?
Haven't we had this one before? I know 13 out of 15 of the closest neighbours and socialise with 6 of them on a regular basis (the ones that like to socialise).

5. What do you smell?
The coffee I just fetched. The fresh morning air coming in through the study window. And, when I go downstairs, that funny soil smell I told you about before (but getting fainter now).

First fix fire

Our fitters came today to rip out the 1950's monstrosity and prepare the chimney breast for plastering, and to install the gas. I may have mentioned this before, but the surveyor had told me these Edwardian houses with suspended floors had little "hatches" in the floor so tradespeople could crawl about underneath to do their work without spoiling the line of the floorboards.

Very enterprising, even if it did give me a visual of a small boy climbing up a chimney.

He'd hunted for the hatch and concluded that it must have been under the stairs before the downstairs khazi was fitted, but after he left I discovered it at the far end of the kitchen. True to his word the fitter disappeared in a subterranean direction. This turned out quite serendipitous, as it meant he had to crawl past the point where the old boiler was installed. And where there's a boiler, there's gas. So he had a ready-made supply to tap into, and "all" he had to do was run the pipe along the rest of the kitchen, through the hall, and elbow into the new lounge. Simple. I wouldn't have done it though.

Meanwhile his lad was ripping out and making good, leaving a fireplace looking something like this:

The bags of rubble are for back-filling, which ensures the heat from the fire doesn't disappear into next door. The whole job only took a couple of hours (ripping out alone would probably have taken me a whole weekend) but left the house with an unmistakable smell of old soil. Couldn't work out if this was coming from the underfloor area, stirred up by all the crawling about, or from all the fine soot that had been knocked out of the hearth.

This evening we were treated to a visit from our friend Christine who lives in Winnipeg. We met up with her for a drink in the club and she brought along a couple of friends - the parents of Andy Whyment who plays Kirk in Coronation Street - who proceeded to regale us with behind-the-scenes tales from the studios and also from Soapstar Superstar, which Andy famously appeared in a couple of years ago alongside Richard Fleeshman.

An eventful trip to the smoke

Normally my train journeys to the smoke are very mundane. Read the paper on the way down, do the crossword on the way back, or sit with my laptop open working, writing, or playing cards. Either way, I'm in a world of my own and that, for the most part, is how I like it.

Today was a little different.

On the way down, I was joined at my table by a pair of golden boys - businessmen with their trademark cropped grey hair, loud ties and stripey shirts, who proceeded to spend the rest of the journey jousting with each other to see how many buzz-phrases they could cram in to the smallest sentence. I wish I'd had my Buzzword Bingo card with me, cos I'd have scored a full house in no time. We had downsizing, going through the process, utilising, pushing the envelope, empowerment, game plans and leveraging galore. If I'd been offering extra points for combination play I'd have won the lottery.

Anyway that's not the main point of my story. What really made this a journey to remember was the return trip, when I was again joined at my table by two people. Young women this time, and they had a third friend who elected to sit across the aisle from the first two rather than squeeze in around the table.

I kept my head buried in the crossword to start with, looking up occasionally to answer questions on the location of the loo and the train shop. And did they sell drinks. And when would we be getting into Manchester. And did I do this trip often.

When they returned from the shop with three small bottles of coke and proceeded to extract a litre of Bacardi from their handbag (can you have a collective handbag?) I had a gestalt realisation that I wasn't going to be finishing the crossword this time round. Sure enough their conversation became ever louder and more bawdy as the trip progressed, interspersed with the odd "sorry" from the girl on my right - who I later learned was Chris - as she kept nudging me with her elbow. Chris it was who first failed to work out how to lock the toilet door (there are instructions posted on the inside, but they must be fairly incomprehensible to most folk, as not a trip goes by without someone pressing the toilet alarm instead of the "unlock" button), and was walked in on in the middle of ... err ... proceedings by a young man, causing an explosion of giggles from all three. During the course of the journey one of her mates also failed to decipher the mystery of the lock, and was also walked in on by another, different, young man.

The three of them were off to sample the delights of the Greater Manchester conurbation, in the shape of three of Bolton's finest lads they'd hooked up with via t'Interweb. This coincidence having given us a common frame of reference, the remaining hour of the journey passed in shared conversation, which eventually incorporated the other two occupants of our section of carriage - a Mum with two (very) young children in tow and a single woman who initially appeared tempted by their offer to seek a fourth mate from Bolton if only she would accompany them on their sojourn to Moon Under Water. Name of establishment not an instruction for submarine exposure activities, lest there be any doubt.

By the end of the journey the six of us, and just about anyone else who happened past, were all behaving as if we'd known each other all our lives. Stories had been shared, jokes exchanged, as well as promises to let us all know how they got on with the modern equivalent of a blind date. We parted at Piccadilly with hugs and smiles and wishes of good luck, and I was left marvelling at how a normally boring trip had been transformed by the liberal splashing of a bit of Bacardi and bonhomie.

Here be workers

Busy day here at Chez Digger. After our recent break-in I decided our alarm system needed a couple of minor upgrades - a PIR motion detector in the hall (together with an alarm panel upstairs so we can activate/deactivate without setting it off!), and a shock sensor on the window used for said break-in.

We had the security firm install a couple of infra-red-activated lights too, down the side of the house where it's dark, there's plenty of tree cover, and it's way too easy for someone involved in nefarious activities to lurk undetected. If they try it now they'll be blasted with several hundred watts of arc light.

While the alarm man was crawling around in the attic finding a power supply for these lights, the freezer man arrived. You'll remember it was playing up before we went off to the Lakes. It took him about a minute and a half on his initial visit to discover the problem - the heater element had burned out, meaning the auto defrost function wasn't working. The consequent frost build-up forced the poor compressor to work overtime and still fail to keep the temperature down. This meant (a) he had to order a part and (b) we'd have to defrost the freezer (which we did on Saturday).

So his task for today was to remove the burned out element and fit the new one. A tough job apparently, as the element has to be carefully "threaded" through the fins of the freezing unit. Clever stuff this - the heater comes on once a day to blast off any frost build-up on the freezing element - which then drips down the back onto the compressor and evaporates.

"This is the hardest part of my job," said Mr Freezer Man, "these are really difficult to fit. Luckily they're extremely reliable, so I don't have to do this very often."
"There's a certain irony," I rejoined, "in you telling me how reliable they are while you're fitting a replacement."

BBQ 2008

Sure enough, the weather god pissed on us today. If we'd held the barbie yesterday, as normal, we'd have enjoyed glorious sunshine with enough fluffy white cloud cover to avoid any serious sunburn. Today, the only thing we were in danger of was rust.

As a result of the weather only around half as many people turned up, so the food was quite heavily over-catered. And, ironically, none of it was barbecued. Thank heavens for our hostess's large oven. At least the kids had their hot dogs, so all was right with their world.

The quiz quizzed and the rain passed over just in time for a half-hearted three-legged race, but the day had a dampness to it that went beyond the rain. Tomorrow being a work day, many people started drifting away around 8pm, and as usual once a party loses its critical mass it turns into just another bunch of people sitting around drinking.

Even the karaoke wasn't up to much this year. Last year we were singing until 3am. Today, with only two-and-a-half good singers and no-one else much interested, we limped along with it for a desultory hour or so and then gave it up.

The end of an era? I don't think so. We've decided to "book" the barbecue weekend in advance next year so everyone can plan around it, and it'll be back to its normal Saturday slot.

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.

Book Review: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Another month, another classic selection by the book club and, sadly, another tedious read that I absolutely hated. Full of the supposedly witty epigrams for which Wilde was famous (and which Monty Python parodied so brilliantly), such as "there are only two kinds of people who are interesting: those who know nothing and those who know everything." [quoted from memory only - I can't be bothered to trawl the book for the accurate text]

Each of the male characters appears to be a thinly-veiled Oscar Wilde, and the book a vehicle for his pontifications on the state of the world and his place in it. His dialogue is stilted and wooden, his characters forget who they are talking to in every sentence and have to repeat each other's names to remind themselves, and he regularly changes perspective in the middle of a scene. With more judicious editing (or indeed, any editing at all) this would have made a very good short story. As a novel it's a royal snoozefest for the first 170 pages or so.

In particular, reading the passages where Dorian is diverting himself in various pursuits feels like one of those dreams where you're running as fast as you can and not getting anywhere. I'm not a huge fan of skim-reading but it was the only way I could crawl my way through this section. It was that, or give up on the book entirely. The scene where he convinces Campbell to dispose of the body is so ludicrous as to be laughable. I could sum it up as: "I want nothing to do with you Dorian. Oh, go on then, I'll get rid of your body for you." The pretext of a dreadful secret of Campbell's that Gray threatens to expose is not even foreshadowed.

The story finally picks up in the last few chapters but the payoff is hardly worth all the life you've wasted reading almost 200 pages to arrive at the "good bit" such as it is. Another candidate for this summer's book swap, I'm afraid.

An injection of adrenalin

3am. My sleeping ears hear a noise downstairs that my brain interprets as someone trying to open the cloakroom door. Again.

Only this time they can't, because I've fitted locks.

I leap out of bed, put something on (unlike last time O_O), grab my trusty weapon (thanks, Paul!) and head downstairs, making as much noise as possible and turning lights on as I go.

I unlock the cloakroom door and fling it open, ready for a confrontation.

There's no-one there, and the new window is intact.

I check the kitchen and study. Nothing. I peer out to the back, and to the front. Nothing.

I return The Weapon to its resting place and climb back into bed. "Did you hear something?" Nikki asks.

5.20am. With adrenaline still coursing around my body, I check the clock for the fiftieth time in two hours.

6.20am. The alarm wakes me up.

12.45pm. A colleague with whom I'm lunching, and who has also been burgled recently, asks me how long the paranoia lasts. "At least six weeks," I tell him wrily.

My erection subsides

Finally, after a week of cajoling, chasing, and being put off by the weather, the scaffolding started to be...umm...whatever the opposite of erected is. De-erected. Reducted. Taken down.

They still had to dodge the showers, but by the time I came home from my briefing session (around 1pm) most of the top platform had gone. Apparently it takes almost as long to take down as it does to put up, which I suppose makes sense because the fastenings all have to be undone by as many turns as they were done up with, and the poles and planks have to be hauled back to the truck and stacked for the next job. The only part of the task that is slightly more complicated and time-consuming on the way up is making sure the base is secure and the platforms level, which I guess wouldn't take long for an expert.

So it'll take two full days to be completely rid of it, which might stretch into Wednesday, but at least it's all down from the front of the house now, thus making the property less attractive to burglars.

I need a creative sat-nav

It's an interesting limbo I find myself in now. I've never been here before, so I don't know what it's supposed to feel like. Before I started my first novel, I had a very clear idea of the main plot points of the story. It was the only story. The one that had been bubbling around in my head for ages. Of course, it needed the application of some craft. Some technique. It needed a full synopsis, and that then needed work to heighten the dramatic tension; to provide action and reaction; tension and release, or whatever you call them. It needed characters fleshing out, interactions designing and all the usual stuff (which, for the avoidance of doubt, was nothing like "the usual stuff" to me back then, because I had no idea. I learned as I went along).

So there was a path, with some clear milestones, and above all there was a destination.

It's been an 8-year process to get here. On the way, I've had other ideas and, as per good practice, I've kept a note of them all in my log lines folder. In a way, then, I'm much better off than I was in 2000. I have eight years worth of learning and practice under my belt, a much clearer idea of the fictional narrative, character development, and all that good stuff. And I have at least a dozen ideas where before there was only one.

And there, Horatio, lies the rub.

Which one to choose? Which is the best one? Another technological thriller; or a science fantasy; or a character-driven, feel-good meander through the lives of a handful of characters we haven't met yet but would recognise in an instant? Or should I spend a while dreaming up a totally different idea? This is tough! I need more tea...

Friday Five

Didn't fancy the last one, so I'm now caught up with these :o)

1. When did you last get lost?
That's a test of memory!! It doesn't usually happen, because mostly I know where I'm going, or have a map, or an atlas, or sat-nav (someone else's, so far). The most recent time I can remember is travelling back to East York from Newmarket one "fateful" night (*vbg*) driving through torrential rain when neither of us really knew which way we were going and, eventually, where we were. We got there in the end though ;o)

2. Have you ever been flying?
Yes, many times. As a passenger, never in anything unusual, although having said that, I have had three VERY memorable flying experiences. In reverse order of size: the 21-seater jump-jet between Toronto and Kingston (both directions); the 10-seater private charter jet that EMC Corporation flew me to Cork in, when they were trying to sell me a storage solution (both directions, with cucumber sandwiches served both times); and the sea-plane from Vancouver Island to Vancouver - 8-seater and just about the most exciting trip I've ever made. One direction only that time, cos I went over on the ferry.

3. Who do you always listen to?
There's no-one I ALWAYS listen to. Nikki and my daughters come closest.

4. When does the day feel long?
Those days when I have to go into the office, and I don't have anything to do, so I have to make it look as if I have something to do. For eight hours. Sheesh.

5. Friday fill-in:
Are we _____ ?
having a cup of tea?

I could never be a project manager

I've known this for a long time of course, but it was brought home to me again today when my roofer called to check whether the scaffolders had been to take it down. No, they haven't. So off he went to chase them up. And there, right there, is the reason I don't make a very good project manager, and in a similar way, I would almost certainly make a lousy producer.

I totally and completely hate chasing people up to chivvy them along to do something they said they would, or that I asked them to, and haven't. In fact it took me years ("thirty years" probably ;o)) to realise that you needed to do that at all. Surely, I reasoned, if you'd asked someone to do something, especially if it was their JOB, they'd do it. And years of experience to the contrary were not sufficient to ram that message home: that you need to be on top of people, or across the situation, or whatever the latest term is, ALL the time to make sure it gets done, gets done right, and gets done on time.

Knowing that it's a necessary part of a job is still a mile away from doing it though, and I continue to avoid situations where I'd need to behave like this. Like most things, it's probably down to some childhood trauma. I certainly have a lifelong hatred of being told what to do and, even worse, reminded when it needs to be done by, which may well explain why I dislike doing the same thing to others.

Hiatus

As you'd probably noticed, I've been off. Off from here, I mean. It wasn't intentional, but having reached the end of my intense novel-writing activity - at least until the comments come in from reviewers - I've been kind of regrouping for the last week. Taking some time for new ideas to steep. Reading around the subject. Wondering what to do next. What direction to take.

And, as a result, not writing. Or at least, not blogging. I guess any activity vaguely connected with writing counts as... writing. I could call it research. Or "filling the well." Or thinking.

I remember working with a guy once who spent a lot of time thinking. He would always look as if he wasn't doing anything. He had a rubber (an eraser, I mean) he used to fiddle with. Spin it round in his fingers, nibble little bits of it away with his nails. Or just sit and stare at it. He was designing software. In his head. At the time I thought he was just... well... lazy. Bored. It was a good lesson for me. The absence of any sign of activity does not necessarily mean the lack of activity. Like a duck - there was a lot going on under the surface.

At the end of days of apparent wool-gathering, this guy would turn on his PC and write an entire design from beginning to end that was complete, coherent and almost entirely bug-free. He wasn't an impressive guy to look at or, as I've explained, to watch. Most of the time. But he sure ended up impressing the hell out of me.

So that's where I've been and what I've been doing. Only without the rubber.

Gifted

I was watching Channel 4's "Child Genius" tonight. A rather sad look at the lives of children with extremely high IQs - as in, the maximum score possible: 170. I'm not going to go into the details of the programme, but one aspect of it sticks in my mind. One of the super-bright kids' brother was being tested for the first time and the family waited with bated breath to see how he would do.

His result was 137. "Oh, good for him," his exceedingly intelligent elder brother scoffed, "he's quite bright." Difficult to know how he could possibly have invested that simple sentence with more disdain, tinged with relief that his brother hadn't bettered him (which, being "exceedingly intelligent" he should already have worked out was impossible given he already had a perfect score).

But I digress. My point is, the announcer declared 137 put the brother within the definition of "gifted." Who knew? When I was 12 my IQ was measured at 144. Hey - I'm gifted! Was I sent to a special school? Was I tutored at home? Did my parents fuss around me and make sure I had access to all sorts of mind-stretching and creative endeavour? The answer, as you may have guessed, is no. I just got on with it, like everyone else I knew.

Which, for me, begs two questions. One: how would life had panned out if I'd had more pushy (or maybe, more aware) parents, prepared to treat me differently on account of me being... different? (And from where I sit now, the answer to that - at least one potential answer - is very scary. I'm glad I grew up with something-approaching-normal socialisation, friends, mistakes, challenges and triumphs).

Two: how many more "gifted" children slip through the net, and end up not fulfilling their potential, simply because their parents never conceive of them being gifted, and their teachers are too hard-pressed to notice? That, perhaps, is the most scary thought of all.

Fourth draft put to bed

Last month I told you I'd completed the third draft of my novel. Today, I'm even happier to report the fourth draft is put to bed, only a little over a month later.

There's a few reasons for my greatly enhanced speed of working. Firstly, I've resigned from the large and significant project I've been working on for the last two years. Its first release went live successfully and on time last month, and this milestone presented me with the opportunity to leave gracefully, having led the project technically through its proof of concept, procurement, development and initial delivery phases. This gives me vastly more spare time, which this month I've devoted almost entirely to writing.

Secondly, I designed a small macro to highlight "danger" words. Running this against my work made it much easier to spot overwriting, run-on sentences, passive voice and a host of other no-nos, so I was able to rattle through and correct all these things much more quickly.

And finally, there's nothing better for focussing the mind than the possibility that your work may actually see the light of day. I can't say very much about this at the moment, but let's just say I'm much more hopeful of finding a publisher now than I was a couple of months ago.

So is it done? Well, not quite. Editing my way through the whole thing this time round, it was clear that the second half is much better than the first. You expect the pace to build up later, I know, once the characters and the plot have been established, but even so I feel I can do a better job with the first half, so I'm giving myself one more go-through to make the thing as good as it can be.

I'll need to concentrate more on the job at hand though. All too often I reach the end of a chapter and realise I've just been reading it rather than editing it. Tsk. Concentrate!

The welcome of the Twisted Spire

I'm still nervous about leaving the house unoccupied with the scaffolding up all around it, but we didn't have much choice this weekend. Drove to Mum's right after work Friday to deliver the birthday present she's been waiting a month for, and perform the "duty visit." Having listened to standard conversations 1 through 10, we escaped to the pub as soon as politeness allowed and although we hadn't planned on a long session ended up staying until around 11pm.

Saturday breakfast was followed by standard conversations 1 through 10 again, at which point we made our escape again, this time in the direction of Chesterfield - the real reason for the weekend's travel. The "excuse" - insofar as we need one - was to have a planning session for our upcoming week in the Lakes, but really we don't need a reason to enjoy the Welcome of the Twisted Spire.

We had our third attempt at walking around Chatsworth too, previous tries having been aborted owing to family illness and inclement weather respectively. This time round the rain was threatening again, so forking out for the formal gardens seemed like a waste of money. We wandered around the various tat shops for a while and walked up and down past the children's farm, until everyone decided we'd had enough fresh air and it was time to head for the Robin Hood and go into a huddle around a couple of pints.

Then it was back to the house and time for the girls to run through the essentials of provisioning and menus for the week while the lads pored over maps none of us really understood, and planned the rendezvous point and the route from there to the cottage. Yes, I'd have to agree that we had the easier job, but then we are blokes so we couldn't cope with anything too taxing.

Planning complete, we negotiated a short walk to another of Phil & Vicky's locals for a session that ended up going on far longer than expected, after which we "walked" back to the house for a later-than-anticipated (but still fabulous!) meal. These days the result of four pints and a wonderful meal is inevitable, but the embarrassment was relieved slightly when I discovered I'd been joined in the Land of Nod by two of the other three guys and at least one of the girls. At which point we all made our excuses and headed for our rooms. Is this how it's going to be in the Lakes? I expect so - we'll have days full of fresh Lakes air and walking to contend with then on top of the other factors!

We returned at lunchtime today to find the house still in one piece. I'll still be happier when this scaffold is down though.

Friday Five

Thank God for Friday Fives, cos there's no news on the flippin' roof today. The whole day was a wash-out, weatherwise.

1. When were you born?
On a Saturday, just before breakfast, in a 20th century November.

2. What's your favorite photograph?
This is a really tough one. Partly because there are so many, but partly because I don't really think of things this way. It's unfair to pick one, and even if I did I'd probably feel different about it the next day. Or hour.

3. What's the longest distance you've run?
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Right.

4. What is familiar?
My home town. Family. Mates. Comfort food. The smell of a spring day. Weekend routine.

5. What do you count on?
Things never being simple.

Noisy stripper

We've had a noisy stripper on our roof all day today.

Yes, finally the weather took a turn for the better and some real progress was made. The gang were working at the front, but even so the noise of several hundred tiles slipping and sliding onto the scaffold could be heard all over the house, and went on for about an hour and a half.

Followed shortly by the noise of battens being nailed back on over the new felt. This created a serious cleaning up task in the attic room, as just about every clout nail on the ceiling has now popped and showered everything in the room in small pieces of plaster.

Felt a bit sorry for the men at the end of the day, actually. With only a small section left to do, the heavens opened and the rains came down like stair-rods. They must have been drenched within seconds, but having started that final section they had to finish it to make the roof weathertight.

One side to go - but it's the complicated side, since it has 3 Velux windows.

Conveying the tiles

The tiles arrived today, so the target for the day was to transport them all to where the action is. Remember I said you learn a lot watching tradesmen? Apparently you're not allowed to carry this stuff on a hod these days. Health & Safety. The only thing allowed on a ladder is yourself and your tools. Materials have to be conveyed with a crane, an elevator or, as in our case, a nifty little conveyor belt with a small two-stroke engine.

Such a small belt, actually, that had a special stick to support it halfway up. Bless.

When the tiles had all been racked and stacked, the rain started up again, so that was it for progress today. I reckon that's a day-and-a-half lost to weather so far (out of 3).

Rained off rip off

A day without action on the roof today, as the weather remained determinedly weathery all day. Here's the rear gable, taken from one of the upstairs Velux windows. These give a totally different perspective on the operation.

From ground level the scaffolding, as I've mentioned before, resembles a huge Meccano set. From above, it simply looks like a path around the top of the house. Maybe if I could cope with getting up there in the first place (and down again, of course) I could be a roofer after all! No?

No, you're right. It's a bit physical. I'll stick with hammering a keyboard.

The rip-off begins

With scaffold erection complete (yesterday! Much to the annoyance of my roofer who actually wanted to start last Friday), the stripping off of tiles could start.

Stripping off also entails re-felting and battening so that the roof remains watertight during the whole process (amazing what you learn when you're having work done!) which means when the weather is unpredictable it's prudent to work in small sections, felting as you go. This takes longer, but ensures you aren't stuck with an entire side to felt in the pissing rain.

As it happened, today, the team managed to strip only the front and back gables (or whatever the pointy bits are called) before rain stopped play.

Friday Five

Paul and I attended the "mandatory first night curry" with the Players last night. Only it turned out to be not quite so mandatory after all, with most of the cast and crew crying off having "already eaten" or "thinking they'll go tomorrow." In the end it was an intimate soiree with four of us in total. If Paul & I hadn't come out specifically for the curry it's certain no-one would have bothered. Added to that, owing to the lateness of the hour we had to use the Azad Manzil: the only curry house that will serve after 11pm and even then they were all stood around the till tutting as we left.

When I first came back to Chorlton 8 years ago Azads was a really good meal. Not sure if it's changed hands, but the quality has gone right off. My "chicken madras," while full of large meaty pieces of breast meat, was soused in an indistinguishable bright red sauce that tasted of nothing but hot. Like they'd simply amalgamated whatever sauces they had left over, and splashed in some chilli essence to bring it up to Madras temperature. Disgusting. I won't be going back there. After years of listening to people say how much better Asian Fusion is, having now tried it twice I have to agree. For a local curry, that's my preference from now on.

After an abnormally long outage caused by various trips and computer kerfuffles on the part of my "source" for these Friday Fives (*wink*), here we are again:

1. What song frequently gets stuck in your head?
I don't have a single ear-worm, but I DO remember being told years ago that the way to clear them was to hum the theme from Hawaii Five-O. And it works! For some reason this song doesn't simply replace the one you had stuck and get stuck itself. It's a bit like mental Febreze!

2. Choose one line from a song that sums up your life thus far.
I drove all night, to get to you. Is that alright?

3. Do you have one all-time favorite song (if so, what is it?) or do you skip around?
I skip around, but in a small pool. In common with most people there are songs that evoke particular memories or times in my life that will always be my favourites (even though in some cases they may not be especially "good" songs!). Some that spring to mind, although not because they are necessarily *more* significant - just the ones I can think of right now - are: Seven Seas of Rhye, Have I Told You Lately That I Love You, Samba Pa Ti, Baker Street, anything from T'Pau's Bridge of Spies.

4. How do you listen to music most often (pod, radio, etc)?
At home: MP3s off the PC*. In the car: short journey - radio; long journey - iPod via iTrip Auto FM broadcast.

5. American Idol: fantastic show or overrated?
Love it. Missed the first two seasons but I've been an avid fan ever since and am currently glued to Season 7. Just a shame the results show airs here two days later than in the US, so we have to stay away from online resources to avoid spoilers.

*Stop Press: Since drafting this, I've bought a Logitech MM50 speaker station for my iPod, so I can use that in the house now too :o)

The Scaffold

No, not the old Liverpudlian crew who did Lily the Pink. *Our* scaffold. For the roof. The erection started yesterday. Imagine that! A two-day erection! Makes your eyes water.

Fascinating watching it go up though. Not a job I'd fancy at all. Once they get going the structure grows by the minute. Reminds me of my old Meccano set.

Since I've still not recovered emotionally from the recent break-in, an unfortunate side-effect of having this framework surrounding the building is that I'm even more nervous now that access to the upper storeys is facilitated by a glorified climbing frame. Fortunately it should only be up for the next two weeks or so.

Abigail's Party

Dress rehearsal for the Players' latest production tonight, so I thought it would be fun for Paul to come along and get snap happy at the same time as I was taking "the production photos." Boy was I glad he agreed.

With new flats in use for the first time, and everyone and their auntie having been "raped" (the Director's phrase) for seventies gear, the set looked really spiffy, and the production as a whole proved to be every bit as hilarious as the BBC One original thirty years ago. Indeed, in keeping with my regular reference to that era on this blog, the reason for staging Abigail's Party was that 2008 marks the thirtieth anniversary of its seminal appearance on the telly.

Without a doubt, the funniest moment for me was when "Ange" (played by Charlotte King) got up to dance with "Lawrence" (played by James Kerr). This girl's comic timing is impeccable, and she totally inhabited the character of Ange. The start of the dance was a pant-wettingly funny moment.

After taking over 200 pix of the event, I flicked over to review some of them before leaving the hall. My camera declared "no valid picture to display." Huh? Unable to work out what was wrong Paul and I returned home, where I discovered the 200+ pictures had been replaced with a single 9MB file with an unpronouncable name, and which Windows refused to move or delete from the memory card. Some sort of corruption had occurred, resulting in the total deletion of everything I had taken. I had to reformat the card from scratch.

Hence why I was so pleased Paul had been there. If not for him, we would have had NO photo record of this cracking production. Thanks, mate! (As a bonus, two of his pix were later published in the local free rag, which gave the production a glowing review)

Only thing is, now I'm worrying when my 2GB memory card will sick up on me again :(