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Searching eBay to see whether or not the pile of old tat we've brought back from Mum's is worth selling has had a strange result on my emails:

"You recently searched for these things. Still interested? Grab them now!"
OR
"Based on what you looked at you may be interested in these.."

Things that have appeared in the list, and which I am DEFINITELY not interested in acquiring more of include:

• bakelite castors
• Elizabeth & Philip silver wedding coins
• vintage OWZTHAT cricket games
• mediaeval style "Jousting Knights" wall plaque

etc.

A-building we will go

But first, a-shopping. To somewhere I didn't even know existed: the Northern Computer Markets held at Bowlers every Saturday. How, you might ask, can any self-respecting geek live in Manchester for ten years and not know that was there? And you might ask. I don't have an answer. But I know it's there now :o)

Wandering round trying to stop the drool from soaking into my beard was hard enough. Then we smelled the bacon and egg baps. Then we looked around a bit more, worked out a buying strategy and started spending. A Gigabyte 3DMars case, power supply, a 22" LG LED monitor (just the one for now), a 2TB hard drive (Western Digital of course) 8GB of Kingston memory, BD rewriter, Gigabyte motherboard, i5 processor, Nvidia graphics card, card reader, wireless card, new keyboard and mouse (why not?) and we were done.

Back home on the double to start assembling and by about 4pm the machine was assembled, booted first time, and I was busy reinstalling software. Bloody brilliant.

The old machine, stripped of its disks (the 1TB to keep, the 250GB installed just long enough to suck its data off) is over there, pretending to be a door stop.

Bargains and hot new music

Had one of those marketing emails from Amazon, or Play, or HMV (frankly, they arrive so frequently that they all blend into one) this morning entitled, rather breathlessly, "bargains and hot new music."

The first linked entry in the body of the email? Simon & Garfunkel's Greatest Hits.

Well at that price it wasn't a bargain, and I hardly think it qualifies as "hot new music" either, with a release date of 1972 :-\

Our new baby

If we'd waited a day, we could have picked her up on 11/1/11, which would have been even more memorable. As it is, we couldn't wait! The lifelong addiction to that new car smell proved too much, and we collected her from the dealer yesterday.

Truth be told we hadn't exactly planned to replace the old one, even though it was beginning to look a bit beaten up and had long since passed the 130,000 mile mark. That mileage, and seven-and-a-half years, still isn't exactly old for a modern car, but a combination of circumstances - the cancellation of the GM Card scheme and consequent time limit on "spending" the points; some good VAT-increase-beating deals; the sudden availability of some spare cash - all came together at once and nudged us over the edge. Only 50-odd miles in, and I'm already loving the ride, the handling and some of the whizzy new features, which I'm sure I'll be blogging about sooner or... well... sooner.

The green challenge

Some time before Christmas we were watching a programme about how easy it was to "green up" your life by taking small steps such as making sure you separate your trash (paper, card, cans, bottles, etc), compost your garden waste and - a first for programmes like this in my experience - take more care in the retail environment about how much "stuff" you buy, and where from.

The presenter, who was clearly well into the whole green agenda, announced "I challenged myself to go a whole year without buying any new clothes."

We looked at each other for a split second and then both fell about laughing. I must be about the greenest person on the planet in this respect as I seriously can hardly remember the last time I bought any new clothes. Had it not been for our recent trip to Toronto, it would certainly have been more than a year ago. Fashion victim I am not.

Finding amusement in simple things

I wouldn't dare to claim that I never feel grumpy (at least, not on a post with open comments), but I have always been able to find amusement in small things. I think it's a gift, being able to find something to smile or laugh about in even the darkest times, and it helps to lift a humdrum day out of the ordinary and into the sublime, even if only just into. It's a small glimmer of the kind of spirit that kept the Chilean miners going, and helps most of us get through the boring work day. Without it, we would be that other kind of people. The kind who growl and scowl their way through life, determined to look on the black side and make everyone else endure that black side too. The kind you find on, say, the London Underground.

With one massive decorating project ahead of me, and about a dozen smaller "finishing off" jobs still hanging over from earlier projects, we've been to B&Q for the last two Saturdays on the run. Exactly the kind of mundane trip that provides the opportunity to exercise a finely-honed sense of the ridiculous.

First visit we were amused to notice that someone had been at the sticky letters (those you might use, for instance, to spell out your house name if you were pretentious enough to have a named house - although obviously not that pretentious if you were considering naming it with sticky letters) and had rearranged the first row of letters to spell C O C K.

On our second visit - last Saturday - one of the things on the list was a black bucket to replace the one I'd "lent" to the builders and never got back. It's the kind of thing that - being not electrical, or illuminatory, or woody, or decorative, or (particularly) gardeny - doesn't have a natural home among the labyrinthine shelves, so we scoured the aisles for several minutes looking for them... in vain. We then repeated our aisle-scouring activities in the hope of finding a B&Q operative of whom we could enquire the location of the buckets. Rounding a corner into the very last aisle, we spotted a group of three operatives enjoying a cosy chat. They were standing next to a large pile of black plastic buckets.

Good verses evil

I just received one of those endless advertising emails from Amazon, attempting to persuade me to buy another game for my PS3. I bought a game, once, so naturally their marketing droids assume I'm going to be interested in any game they care to throw my way.

I noticed this one was billed as the ultimate fight of "good verses evil."

That'll be good versus evil then, you illiterate morons.

Seasonal bombardment

This year will go down in my memory as the year online retailers finally caught on to the use of email to whip up business. I'd already done my Christmas shopping (almost all of it online) by the end of November, but back then things had hardly even got warmed up in terms of emails. Guess I can't call them spam, because I signed up to them when I joined, or used, the sites, but damn there's a lot of them!

During December I've been getting at least one per day from
amazon.com
play.com
ebay
hmv.com
the PlayStation Store
Xbox Europe
thorntons
iwantoneofthose.com

not to mention all the usual stuff inviting me to "review my shopping experience" and the odd seasonal message from other retailers - like the local garden centre - we've used during the year. It's going to feel really quiet in my inbox once all this dies down. Unless they're just as keen to drag me back for the January sales! ;o)

One downside to shopping early is that I've missed out on some deals, but that's always a balancing act even with traditional B&M shopping. On the high street some places have been offering 50% discounts, or better, in the week before Christmas. Personally I'd rather be sure I've got everything covered, and it's all been delivered, in time for a leisurely wrapping experience in the few days before the main event. This year especially, with the weather causing major disruption to deliveries, I've been grateful for putting my innate procrastination to one side where gift buying was concerned.

So now it's looking quite festive under the small tree in the lounge. Everything's done - apart from cooking the bird - and it only remains for me to crack open the wine, light the fire, and wish all my readers a very happy Christmas and a peaceful, prosperous and successful New Year. May 2010 be the year everyone stops referring to the date as "two-thousand-and-something."

Cheers!

Tanked

After our visit to the spa, we stopped off at the new house of two of our mates to partake of their excellent hospitality & general housewarming. The party went really well, but that's not the point of this post. Nikki spied their new aquarium - a "BiUbe Pure" from Reef One - and was sufficiently intrigued to investigate further.

To cut a long story short, I ordered her one for Christmas earlier this week and it was delivered yesterday. With extreme self-control, we waited until today to start setting it up. The kit contains everything you need for coldwater fish, but we'd decided on tropicals (I've had a coldwater aquarium before and it wasn't a happy experience) so the order included a heater and a thermometer, as well as a few plants and a "volcano" structure to hide the central tube.

The first job - washing ceramic media in which the biological filter (i.e. bacteria) will eventually grow - gave me a painful reminder of my previous aquarium existence as the brown water swirled around the sharp little rocks. This time round, that should be a one-off task as the BiUbe pretty much looks after itself. We positioned the volcano, thermometer, and heater and carried the whole thing through to the living room before filling it with water.

As fishy enthusiasts will know, tap water is deadly for fish - all that chlorine and chloramines - so it has to be treated. The BiUbe kit is complete in this respect too, with a sachet of "Stress Coat" water conditioner to remove all the harmful chemicals. Once we'd positioned the plants and turned on the air pump, I squirted the contents of the sachet into the water and sat back for the 24-hour wait before we can add the bacterial culture that will grow on the bottom of the tank and process all that fishy waste.

To be honest, it looks the business even without fish. Maybe we could just leave it bubbling away in the corner and convince any visitors that the fish are hiding?

Sofa, so good

One thing guaranteed to dispel the doom and gloom of impending redundancy is a good old spending spree. I have an almost schizophrenic approach to spending money. I can go for months, or occasionally years, doing a passable impersonation of Ebenezer Scrooge. Living quietly within my means, not eating out much, not reinventing my wardrobe (I'm about as far removed from a fashion victim as it's possible to get), not splurging on any of the fabulous gadgetry that I admire from afar.

And then comes a tipping point.

This time round two tipping points have coincided, with almost tectonic results. Relief at still having a job, and exasperation at our ultimately tired, flabby and therefore distressingly uncomfortable sofas combined to force us out into Manchester's marvellous marketplace and not to return until we'd signed up for this:
Two of them actually: a three-seater and a two-seater. And two foot stools.

We tried to go for an armchair too, but after several hours juggling our existing furniture around in the living room alongside assorted chairs pretending to be something they weren't, we regretfully concluded that the current arrangement of sofas was the only one that made sense and we'd have to stick with a like-for-like replacement.

And I must just add: what a difference seven years has made to DFS! When we were looking to furnish our previous house in 2002 we wandered desultorily around their store and couldn't see a single thing we liked. Today? Well I could almost have bought anything in the store. There were dozens of super sofas of many different designs and fabrics. I think we sat on virtually everything in the store. But this one - the Harewood - was definitely the most comfortable, and also had a good story in terms of its likely resilience. The last thing we want is a repeat of the disaster we ended up buying back then. Something that after barely five years started to resemble a sack of potatoes and which a couple of years further down the track is almost as uncomfortable! The one we sat on has been in the store 18 months and still looks brand new (apart from the film of dust at the back of the arms).

Its wood bits are hand-carved, the leather hand-stitched, it's the first to offer pocket-sprung cushions, and since it's easily disassembled for awkward deliveries, there's no worry about whether it will fit through the door. All we have to do now is wait 12 weeks for delivery.

Shifters, shifters, there were never such devoted shifters

It was all hands to the pumps today to help the shifters... shift. The idea being that if each person took responsibility for their own stuff the job would go a lot smoother. Many hands and all that. 'Course the theory falls down when some of them can't make it owing to prior engagements, so we ended up wedging two lots of desktop kit and three people's boxes into the back of the car for the short journey to Cheadle.

Ironically, this was my first sight of Nikki's old offices. Having parked outside them virtually every working day for almost three years when picking her up, I'd never ventured inside. As you might expect from a small office in an old building, they looked very tired. The general demeanour was not helped by the empty desks, piles of boxes, and small heaps of detritus left behind when desks had been moved from positions they'd occupied for 30 years. But even looking beyond that it was clear that the offices would have been quite poky and dark to work in. Narrow corridors, old furniture, and very reminiscent of the kind of working environment I "enjoyed" for at least the first ten years of my career.

We dodged around the professional removals men who were taking the old desks away to a charity auction, and soon had the car loaded up and ready to roll.

The new place is a complete contrast. In fact I get the impression the amount of space has taken everyone by surprise. The phrase I heard most often after arriving there was "it didn't look this big on the plans." Which, you know, is nice for them all. Plenty of light, airy space. Brand new furniture. A newly-fitted kitchen (not yet complete when we were there, but with fitter beavering away), new phones, new network and, for those who had not had flat panel monitors before, all new monitors.

All this newness inspired Nikki to want some new desk accoutrements, so we headed off round the ring road to IKEA and wandered through the store enjoying the fact that we didn't have to rush for once. She found exactly what she was looking for: a set of two stand-up magazine holders and an in-tray (both called, confusingly, DOKUMENT), and we picked up a few things for our place too, including a pair of KASSETT boxes for the study. No amusing ikease names jumped out at us today, sadly.

A quick hop back to the business park, narrowly avoiding the Canada geese that have settled in by the lake, and an even more rapid assembly of Nikki's new in-tray and we were ready to come home and enjoy a midday cuppa. Our leaving was delayed slightly by the arrival of her new IP phone. We had a play with it before we left but disappointingly I was unable to find a CTU ring tone. An admittedly small drawback in the face of all the smart newness.

Fun at IKEA

Bit of an oxymoron you might think, but the daft Swedalike names that IKEA use for all their products never fail to amuse me. I know, I'm a big kid. You have to do something to relieve the boredom during a trip to somewhere like IKEA.

So we dropped in there last night during the journey home on account of Natalie needing some new stuff for her latest student digs, and tickled ourselves helpless at the merchandise's expense.

Later, at the dinner table, we relived the hilarity of the visit for Nikki's benefit and recalled that the woman in front of us at the till had, among her other purchases, a toilet seat.

Not knowing what the actual name of this item is, I set everyone a challenge of inventing an IKEA-type name for it. Here's what we came up with:

POOJAR
POORING
CHET
BUMSIT
ÅRSRING
and, my personal favourite, DOKNUT

It's actual name? Online research reveals it to be almost funnier than anything we came up with. It's called RACKEN.

Argy-bargy

Yesterday we went to Liverpool for the day.

Quite frankly it wouldn't bother me overmuch if I never saw that drab, uninteresting place ever again. I'm not one for "city breaks" at the best of times, and Liverpool has the added disadvantage of being populated by Liverpudlians who in my experience are all weighed down by enormous chips on their shoulders, but Paul wanted to see it, and I didn't have anything better to do, so off we went.

At least the day started well. I didn't have to drive. We took the train, which gave us the opportunity to breakfast on bagels from The Bagel Factory. It was around then that things took a turn for the worse though, as I hit the wrong button on the ticket machine (by millimetres) and bought us three SINGLE tickets to Lime Street. Which, as it turned out, was only ten PENCE cheaper per ticket than three returns, thereby costing us an extra thirty quid. An expensive mistake which didn't do much for my mood, especially bearing in mind the destination.

Arriving at Lime Street around 11am, we trudged off to visit Paddy's wig-wam, and from there went down to the Albert Dock to mooch disconsolately around the rusting hulks and newly refurbished visitors centre selling the same tired old tat you always get at these places, along with the usual assortment of coffees and fast food.

From there we hiked the five hundred and eighty miles to the St John Centre, a stunningly original shopping centre with no roof and an array of shops never before seen like Gap, M&S, William Hill's, Dolcis and Waterstones. You begin to get a flavour of why I think visiting cities is largely pointless. Even a late lunch in Wetherspoons did little to alleviate my feelings of impending doom. Mainly because we revisited The Richard John Blackler, which has just about the worst online reviews of any Wetherspoons I've ever visited, and lived up to its poor reputation for dirty tables, late food and disinterested staff.

Somewhere along the line we also wandered past the Cavern Club, and took the concrete steps down into its dingy interior. The air was redolent of years of sweaty bodies packed into what is effectively an underground toilet, the acid rock stage reminiscent of my student days when we would hump such a construction from one end of the student union to another to accommodate some random event or other, and every available surface is covered with graffiti from those strange people who think it's important to record the fact that they've visited a place like this. In that respect, maybe this blog is like a slightly more sophisticated form of graffiti. The differences being that I'm not really bothered whether anyone knows I've been there or not - it was just another stop - and, of course, that this graffiti is here, rather than there. Anyway, it's a dump. Famous only because one of the world's most recognised bands played there a few times, still living on that reflected glory fifty years later, and now hosting bands that just want to be able to tick the box that says "we played the Cavern Club." Sad.

The highlight of the day proved to be a visit to the Apple store, which unusually for us turned into much more than a quick wander round and a drool. For once we did talk to one of the demo guys and learned quite a lot about what you can do with an iMac, what's in the box, etc. They're still expensive for what you get, but they're bloody fast, almost virus-free and beautiful to look at. I know that description will sound a lot like Linux to at least one of you (apart from the expensive bit), but it was an interesting hour for all that.

Today Nikki & Paul headed off for a walk around the Salford Quays/Castlefield canals, so I took the opportunity to stay at home and do not very much. Our day was rounded off with another evening meal at Wetherspoons followed by some TV. Perfect.

Shop til you drop

I hate shopping. Have I mentioned that before? I mean the kind of shopping where you don't really know what you want, you wander aimlessly around the mall or the city centre streets looking for something that you're not sure exists, battling against crowds and elbows and noise and smells.

That kind of shopping, I hate.

I can just about cope with short bursts as long as I know what I'm going for, where I'm going for it, and we can get in and out and done in as short a time as possible. And sometimes, like today, I realise it's unavoidable.

Because I'm off to Augsburg for a two-day business seminar (plus a day's travelling) on Tuesday and the dress code is business casual in the day time and smart casual in the evening and that gives me a big problem. For months I've been working at home most days, slobbing around in Ts and jogging bottoms. Even on the days I've been hauling myself into the office, I've been wearing jeans. Not a good image for Augsburg; something had to be done.

Then, a miracle happened. We arrived at the Trafford Centre just as it was opening up, went straight to BhS, found two pairs of large-waisted chinos and two decent shirts for not much more than fifty quid, found a few extra Christmas presents for people we'd been struggling with, picked up Christmas cards for close friends and family, had a rather nice panini and coffee while listening to the Sally Army band blowing their way brassily through some Christmas favourites and were home by one o'clock! Result!

If shopping was always this quick/painless/successful I wouldn't have a problem with it.

And really, the fact that we somehow managed to also pick up almost a hundred quid's worth of movie DVDs and music had nothing to do with my feelings of satisfaction.

Fine Foods in small quantities

We attended last year's Northwest Fine Food Festival and were so impressed that we determined to squeeze in a visit to this year's event even though we were expected in Chesterfield later in the day. We figured a swift jaunt over there after breakfast would still leave us plenty of time to get to Chesterfield by mid-afternoon.

What a disappointment. Whether as a result of the blimmin' credit crunch, or because retailers had concluded that spending a couple of days handing out freebies to grazers who walk around and don't buy much was not the most profitable business model ever invented, I don't know, but the show was much smaller than last year. Roughly half the size, at a guess, and with much less variety. The cheesemakers/vendors were still there, as was the farm-fresh meat, but the vintners, chocolatiers, cake and pudding makers were in short supply and the whole place had an air of desperation about it. Quite sad really. For the second time this weekend, we didn't stay long, and we didn't purchase much.

Some interesting and original marinades, some mature cheddar with added chillies and a free sample of organic coffee, and that was about it. On the basis of that experience, we won't be bothering next year, unless there's some promotional material to convince us that the show has returned to its 2007 standard.

I'm such a pleb

There's a lot going on this weekend, so to fit it all it we started this evening right after work, with a visit to the Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair, which is on at Manchester Grammar the whole weekend.

We didn't know what to expect, but if it turned out to be "things" for sale made by craftspeople then we figured maybe we'd find a nice new ornament for the lounge, and if it was craft suppliers for crafters, then maybe Nikki would discover some useful bits and bobs, or even a new craft altogether.

It was the former. Unfortunately for us though, it was definitely at the high brow end. Three rooms of stalls populated by people who are barely on the planet talking in hushed tones about their art and thinking a ceramic bowl is worth £2,200. Too much jewellery, too much glass, too much attitude that something is worth hundreds simply because it took them (a) a long time to make it or (b) a long time to learn how to make it. Or both.

Whereas to me, it's only worth what I'm prepared to pay for it, and that figure will vary up or down depending on how original or well-made a thing is, and whether it appeals to me or not. Let me tell you, not much in any of those three rooms appealed to me at all, and the few things that did were so outrageously expensive I walked right on by with a pained expression.

I guess there are those who would be prepared to take a punt and give house room to an ugly lump of clay in the hope that the artist will become famous and the price of their incunabulae rocket. I'm not one of them. We didn't stay long.

A Fantastic Find

I keep remembering things that happened while I was taking a break from blogging. Towards the end of the outlaws' visit, we made a brief sojourn to the local craft shop so that Shirley could stock up on all those patterns that aren't available over there. While that was going on, I sneaked off to Borders to check out the books and DVDs.

First stop: the bargain 3-for-2 table (I'm such a cheapskate) where I made the find of the decade. Book 2 of the THIRD (and, according to the cover notes and strapline, last) Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. Book 2? I hadn't even known Book 1 was out. I'm clearly not spending enough time in book shops.

Twenty years ago, the first and second Covenant trilogies were among my all-time favourites. I devoured them avidly, reading and re-reading the entire series as each new edition was published. I know there were many naysayers around who thought Donaldson's world a cheap imitation of Middle Earth, but I was never one of them. In my view, there's only so many fantasy creatures to go around, so it was entirely sensible that The Land had a people who lived with horses, and giants, and magicians, and a single, powerful, evil overlord - in Donaldson's case, Lord Foul. His narrative style was sufficiently different, his hero even more tentative than Frodo, to make me dismiss suggestions of plagiarism as mere jealousy. I loved the Chronicles, then and now.

Finding that after a gap of twenty years, Donaldson has picked up the story of Linden Avery and returned to the Land centuries after her last visit, gave me a thrill of expectation I haven't experienced for a long, long time. Picking up a copy of book 2 - Fatal Revenant - I almost ran to the fantasy section and soon found a pristine copy of the first book - The Runes of the Earth. On my return home Wikipedia revealed that the Last Chronicles are planned as a tetralogy, with book three expected in 2010 and book four in 2013. That's a long wait, but I know it'll be worth it, and meanwhile I have over a thousand pages to pore over with geeky delight. The only question now is: should I dive right in, or bow to tradition and reread the other six books first?

Assault with Battery

My watch stopped a week or so ago. Quite a rare occurence these days isn't it? I reckon I get somewhere between two and three years out of a watch battery. Even that's old tech now. I mentioned it to my career manager and he flashed his watch proudly. It has a small solar cell that keeps it going forever, basically. Doesn't even need sunlight. There's enough oomph in normal office or home lighting to keep it topped up.

Me, I'm still in the dark ages, and I haven't been wearing the watch since it stopped. Faced with a choice of glancing at a bare wrist several times a day, or at a watch set permanently at twenty-to-midnight, I chose the former. Why has this been going on so long? Well since the jeweller's closed down in Chorlton several years ago, it means a trip into town or the Trafford Centre to get the battery changed.

Or does it?

No. Nikki found a place on eBay selling watch batteries. 99p! Or you could buy a pack of six for not much more than a couple of quid, but as I pointed out - seeing as they last for three years, by the time you came to pull another one out of the packet they'd probably all be dead. So anyway, we ordered one. The P&P was twice as much as the battery, but we figured we were still quids in since jewellers charge about five quid and then another couple of quid to fit it.

Great service too - we ordered it yesterday and it arrived today. Fitting it was fairly straightforward. Being a well-made watch the battery is held in by a little arm that was a bit fiddly to get back into place, but I managed it in the end. Then I tried to refit the back. It's a tight fit. A very tight fit. Several times it snapped into place and I thought it was on, but there'd be just a little gap between the backplate and the case, and within a few seconds it would pop off again.

I set the watch carefully on my desk and stood over it, pressing down on both sides of the back with my thumbs. Snap! There. That had done it. Pop! Oh no it hadn't.

This went on for half an hour or so, until I decided I needed more leverage. Using paper tissues to protect the watch from the jaws, I used pliers to try and snap the back into place. But as soon as one side snapped shut, the other side would pop out again. The back has a clearly correct orientation, with a little tab on the side opposite the winder which you use to pop it open, and a gap cut in the bezel on the winder side for the winder shaft to pass underneath, so I knew I was holding it the right way. It just wouldn't shut. I fetched another pair of pliers. With two opposing pliers, and leaning on the handles from a standing position, I still couldn't apply enough leverage to snap the back on. I began to fear that I'd either scratch the case or crack the crystal, so I gave up. Looks like I will need a visit to a jeweller's after all!

I trip off the road trip

Finally received email confirmation today that I've been credited with the cost of the iPod RoadTrip that I bought by mistake and returned before Christmas. Now I can go ahead and order what I thought I'd ordered in the first place - an iTrip Auto (pictured).

I was surprised (delighted!) that the original company had refunded the full amount including postage. The Amazon charter suggests that they're under no obligation to refund postage if the fault is not theirs, which it wasn't. I'd simply ordered the wrong thing. So top marks to Add-ons World for being an excellent supplier but unfortunately they are ten quid more expensive than anyone else for the iTrip Auto, so I'll be ordering that from another Amazon marketplace vendor. Customer loyalty only stretches as far as the edge of my wallet!

Friday Five and the year's nosedive

What a week. I knew I had to be in Croydon on Tuesday but what I didn't know until I was checking my email on the train that morning was that I would have to be in Slough on Wednesday AND Thursday. So there's hardly been time to breathe until now, let alone blog. I'm just grateful for the chance to work at home today, as well as spend some time with Natalie and Blythe (having picked them up early for their weekend visit).

The end of August already! Where has this year gone? Already two-thirds done; kids going back to school next week so the roads will be a nightmare again every morning; Universities starting in another month so my eldest will be tantalisingly close to us when she starts the next chapter of her life; and for us...the long slog to Christmas with no more public holidays to look forward to. I know I'm not alone in thinking that the UK needs another Bank Holiday between August and December 25th. Whether it's Halloween (frowned on by some commentators as being "unChristian" but actually a very old holiday), Guy Fawkes' Night (frowned on by others as being to anarchic - I mean why would you celebrate someone trying to blow up Parliament? Err...how long have you got?), or some other convenient and meaningful date around the end of October/beginning of November, it would break up that gloomy autumn period a bit.

End of August also means that it's a year since I finished the first draft of my novel and the first rewrite has not been progressing much of late. I have a friend reading the entire thing to give me a fresh perspective on it and as of two weeks ago he was about halfway through and says he's made copious notes, so that might spur some activity, but I can't rely on that. Gotta re-evaluate the time I spend on other things and get back to it. At this rate I'll be retired before I can knock it into a fit state to approach a publisher!

I finally had chance to pick up Nikki's new PC from PC World. I was relieved, after what their call centre had said, to find the offer was still on. And still £40 below either the Internet price or the price the call centre had reserved it at. So I ignored the copy of the email in my pocket which contained the reserve ID number and played along as an innocent buyer. Well, not that innocent. For instance I spotted the fact that the sales girl "forgot" to take the extra £40 off the sale price until I queried it, and also that she "forgot" to take off the cost of the first month's "Tech Guy support" contract that I'd said I didn't want. You've got to watch these people. They're bonused on the extras they sell you (and the "mistakes" they make that result in extra revenue, presumably).

We left the store with the PC; monitor; USB wireless dongle so we can connect to our home network ("have you got a wireless router at home, sir?" Duh! Of course I have. Made me wonder though how many people are stupid enough to buy a wireless-enabled PC and expect it to work when they don't have a wireless router. I guess there are some, or the shop people wouldn't ask the question); a nice new *wireless* multi-function printer and a set of flat-panel speakers. Woohoo! New toys! Looking forward to setting this lot up!

I thought it was all over for these Friday Fives, but then they started up again. As Di said, maybe the author was away.

1. At the end of today, do you think you'll feel spent or refreshed?
How can you feel refreshed at the end of a day? I don't think I *ever* do. No, it'll be spent for me sadly.

2. Do you like back rubs?
Love them. A really good one can send me to sleep in no time, which is kind of a shame cos then I miss half of it!

3. When did you last mislead someone?
In a personal context not for many years, but my Facebook "purity" score is only 47% so you can infer that I have done so at some stage. Professionally there are often occasions when it's not possible to tell the whole truth so I guess you could call that misleading. All in all not very satisfactory really. I've learned my lesson now though :)

4. What color are your eyes?
Blue. Deep blue. In fact they're such a deep blue that back in secondary school when we divided the class up by eye colourthe teacher insisted I stand in a category all on my own.

5. Friday fill-in:
Lastly, let me know ___.
__if I can help you with anything.