Gad, I'm so far behind with this. After writing the last entry I went for a walk with the dog and found an interesting-looking pamphlet lying sodden on the grass. It turned out to be a programme for Raft Race Day, to be held the following day, Sunday. The programme printed on that glossy paper that sticks together when wet, so I couldn't read the vital bits. I went on down to the chandlery and they had nice dry copies.

Lo and behold, there was a whole page devoted to the Reaper. It's a 100-year-old Fife herring drifter, based at the Fishing Museum at Anstruther. I went and visited the next day and it's just great. I'll put up some photos later on. It was all set up by then and they'd raised one of the sails. A beautiful boat.

The raft race was a hoot. The entrants didn't make their own rafts (not like us resourceful kiwis -- though I suspect the Lifeboat Association, for which it was a fundraiser, didn't want any adverse publicity), they paddled big rubber inflatables. Most of the men were dressed as women, of course. Those excessively macho blokes will seize any chance they get to put on a frock and some makeup, and pinch other men's bums. There was a fair too, with stalls selling homemade cakes and secondhand books, and some fair rides. I got a tray of lobelias, nice dark blue ones. The weather's been so dreadful I haven't been able to plant them yet.

I managed to mow the back lawn at the last minute on Saturday night, the rain was spattering down as I roared through the final few feet. It was about six inches long in places, I'm not kidding. The weeds are totally rampant in the front garden -- the convolvulus is taking over the border under the wall! I must get onto it on Saturday.

So anyway on Monday I went to see the new Star Wars film -- what a load of rubbish! I thoroughly enjoyed it. Though I felt a lot of sympathy for a gang of little kids in the front row who squirmed around restlessly during the love scenes -- time for another rocket race! Blow something up! I hadn't realised Temuera Morrison was in it, that was a lovely surprise. And of course hilarious to hear that awful dialogue delivered "un Newzild".

Yesterday morning Colin and I went sailing, though not in his yacht. We'd intended to hire a Topaz each, they're small single-handers. But the tide was so low the end of the hard was out of the water so we couldn't launch them, and we had to take a Wanderer instead, they're bigger boats they keep on the pontoon. The forecast was for force 5-6 winds, which is quite strong. But in the event it was barely a three, just enough to scoot along on.

Then the storm broke. A proper thunderstorm, with jags of forked lightning slashing down into the sea. The air was filled with the smell of burning -- thankfully not us. It was very thrilling. The rain that went with it was less thrilling, because after a couple of heady squalls, it killed the wind.

We're going sailing again tomorrow morning. I'm quite the morning person since my week off, I haven't slept past 10am.

Nearly forgot -- today there was a new boat tied up in the little harbour, what appears to be an old fishing boat, the Reaper. It has lovely big red sails -- I'd love to see it on the water.

:: visit to oxford

Whew, what a whirlwind few days. It took only six hours to get down there on Monday, pretty good time. I stopped a couple of time for a stretch and a bite to eat.

Faye and I had a day out in the centre of the city on Tuesday. We went on a walking tour of the colleges and a whirl on the open-top bus (hilariously awful -- we couldn't understand anything the guide was saying, apart from his crap jokes), had lunch in a church cafe and took in the view from the tower.

Pictures:


The walking tour -- we only went into one college, Keble, one of the younger ones. It dates from the 19th century, the first to be built in brick. The guide was very good and the group wasn't too big.


The bus tour -- what's that you said?


View from the tower of St Mary the Virgin.


Detail on the church -- Oxford has some wonderful gargoyles, but you need a telephoto lens to get pictures of them.


Faye overcomes her fear of heights, but keeps a good grip on the railing.


Halfway up the spiral staircase a pigeon has chosen an unfortunate site for her nest.


One of the statues outside the Radcliffe Camera.

Wednesday was Faye's main day off, so we went to Blenheim Palace first, very interesting monster stately home. I especially liked the story of Consuelo Vanderbilt, the American heiress whose mother was determined to marry her off to an English dook. She interviewed several, but plumped for the Dook of Marlboro, who was on the bones of his arse but had Blenheim Palace and a whole bunch of titles. Consuelo, age 19, was horrified and balked, so Mommy Dearest locked her in her room for five days on bread and water till she gave in. The Dook was only 5'4", Consuelo was 6'1". She gave him "an heir and a spare" before divorcing him. He went on to marry someone called Gladys, who communed with spirits and eventually went mad.

Blenheim's other delights include a cafe (lunch), a miniature steam train that takes you to the butterfly house and herb gardens, and lovely walks in the aboretum, around the lake and in the formal gardens. Whew.


From Blenheim's butterfly house. Photography was banned inside the palace, sadly, and my photos of the outside aren't marvellous. See here for info and galleries. It was impressive but OTT -- at least I learned that when I gild the ceilings 24 carat gold ages better than 18 carat.

After Blenheim we wended our way randomly through the Cotswolds, marvelling at the beautiful little villages -- the houses are all built of the local golden yellow stone, with slate roofs, and most are dripping with wisteria. We had dinner at the Trout, a nice ye olde pub on the Thames (oops, sorry, the Isis, as they call it in Oxford) complete with peacocks. We had trout -- delicious.

Thursday I went into Oxford for a solo visit, tromped around the Ashmoleon museum and did some shopping. In the afternoon I gave Faye some computer lessons and we got her hooked up to the internet.

Friday we went on a pilgrimage to Tolkien's grave (just down the road from Faye) and a walk in the local park. It has an aviary that has rabbits and guinea pigs rushing around in all the cages. Bertie would have loved that -- a little Jack Russell had to be dragged away, he couldn't believe his eyes! Lemme in! Then we had lunch at a local garden centre before I headed off at 1pm.


The Tolkien grave. Fans have left little tokens of their regard -- pixie and fairy necklaces, a couple of rings, some notes (bleached by the rain) and a tiny Australian flag.

The trip back was dreadful, I didn't get home until nearly midnight. The Midlands was just one big traffic jam -- stopstartstopstart for hundreds of miles! Crawling along at 20mph. Then up through the hills by the Lakes District it was hosing down with rain so heavy the wipers nearly didn't cope, ditto the Borders. I took a wrong turn near Glasgow & ended up in Stirling! Look it up on the map! Finally I got to Dunfermline and phoned for directions to the friends' place where Bertie was staying -- had to phone twice because I got lost again. I was exhausted. Bertie was quite pleased to see me but I think he's really missing his new "owners" now, he's been quite mopey.

PhotoDude's Web Log: Brain Dump & Pixel Pile

I've probably said this before, but PhotoDude is one interesting fellow.

On my home computer my "favourites" folder is practically empty; I don't surf much at home, and I keep doing things like reinstalling Windows, changing browsers and even buying new computers -- stuff like favourites gets lost.

This is where the blogspot comes in handy, as a kind of portable favourites folder. Which is mad, because weblogs (blogs for short) were originally devised by people who wanted to share their internet finds with an audience. Whereas I started keeping mine as a kind of diary thingie.

I do have a separate blog for links, but it seemed silly to keep two when one would do, so I don't post there any more. I should merge them, but I don't know how.

Today's news: there is none. Walked the dog twice, did some washing, watched ER, came to work.

Meanwhile, the trip to Oxford is suddenly looming large -- I'm looking forward to it, but there's a lot to organise before I head off. I don't even know how to get there. I'm told it will take about seven to eight hours, which seems an awful lot. I hope the car holds out.

As I speak, other family members are gathering in Wellington for the Great 80th Birthday Bash. Lucky buggers! It sounds like a great weekend. Here's me whining about organising a simple trip south -- the birthday organisation is nothing short of awesome. I'll say no more, because some of it's SECRET.

Underground Photoshop Tennis

This is just fab; I love tinkering with Photoshop but these guys take it to another level.

Welcome to eHow.com How things get done

This is bound to come in handy one day. Everything from "How to Clean Blood from Carpet" to "Getting Started in Rocketry". Less useful: "Make a Faux Stained-Glass Sun Catcher" or "Refuse a Dance at a Formal Ball". Still, you never know ...

Later: Aiee! This site really is something else. You have to register, but it's free and it's worthwhile. Here's a taster from the Relationship section:

How to Pick Up a Sailor
If a mate in uniform is who you seek, go where the sailors go....

Steps:
1. Visit port towns or cities with large, rotating sailor populations.
2. Frequent bar and restaurant establishments in the vicinity of docking areas.
3. Visit areas that hold Fleet Week celebrations or similar U.S. Navy-based military events.
4. Keep apprised of current world affairs and the U.S. military's involvement in those affairs.
5. Learn key sailing terms and become well-versed in navy terminology.
6. Get a clerical job in the US Navy so that you will have access to ship schedules and personnel records. But don't be a stalker; the Pentagon might be watching.

Avast me hearties! Arrr harrr! Heh, in my home town the boatie girls just stood on the wharf in short skirts; I don't think they kept apprised of current world affairs and I doubt the sailors were bothered.

The subject of today's lecture is Nostalgia.

I was set off by a radio programme; some worthy gent banging on about the lovely spot he lived in and how the developers were going to ruin it by gasp, building houses.

Listening to him go on about how he'd have to find somewhere else to live or else perhaps kill himself, I could feel my blood pressure rising. At what point does this man want history to stop? Right now, that's where. "This is as close to paradise as it gets," he intoned.

Most people would prefer an earlier date to call a halt at -- without, of course losing any of their own creature comforts. They want their village to look, say, mid-17th century, pre-Industrial Revolution, but they still want a TV, stereo, washer-drier, dishwasher, fridge-freezer. Bury the power lines and put the satellite dish under the roof tiles. And erect the mobile phone masts over near that ghastly council estate, thank you very much.

It's all down to taste, snobbery, a kind of middle-class fascism and my pet hate -- nostalgia. They yearn for "simpler times", these people, before the hedgerows were all ripped up, before the mucky moral dilemmas posed by genetic engineering, before traffic jams and mass tourism. They may trick it out as a concern for the environment, like the man on the radio programme, but it's not.

Is he living in a wattle-and-daub hut with no running water? I doubt it. Leaving aside the fact that the meadowed landscape he so admires was once thickly wooded. Charcoal burners laid waste to Britain's forests hundreds of years ago. What he objects to is people, people who won't share his "good taste", his appreciation of the beautiful landscape. He fears progress in his face. He wants a fridge, but he doesn't want to see the ugliness that produced the fridge.

I've seen this kind of poison working elsewhere too. Like in Zanzibar -- I spent a week there once in an idyllic spot, a guesthouse in a tiny village on a beach. No electricity, one standpipe providing all the water. A group of us tourists were invited to dinner by a local shopkeeper, who told us how they hoped to get a power supply soon.

One of my fellow tourists was most upset. "It will all be spoilt," she wailed later. For whom, exactly? She was going to go back to her flat in Frankfurt or Paris or wherever, with all mod cons; she wasn't going to have to cook her dinner over an open fire by the light of a hurricane lamp, walking half a mile to fetch water. She wanted the villagers to stay the way they were so that in a couple of years' time she could come back for another week of "paradise".

Nostalgia poisons architecture too, especially domestic architecture. The new houses being built up the road from me could date from the 1950s, or even earlier. Here it is 2002, but there's not a solar panel in sight. (The main thing that shows they're modern is that the sections are so small.) Stop history, we want to get off! cry the British. Maybe the failure of tower block living put them off Brave New World experimentation, I don't know. But I do miss the quirkiness of New Zealand homes -- you can tell when they were built so clearly, from the colonial weatherboard to goofy 70s and 80s round windows and taradiddles.

There are modern homes here, but they're rare and very daring. Modernity is mainly reserved for public and commercial buildings. Even there there's a lot of nostalgia-driven timidity. Prince Charles is at the forefront, tut-tutting at anything dramatically new. I bet he'd love to turn the clock back a few hundred years!

It is the nostalgic attempt to recreate the past and the dismissal of the achievements of the 20th century - apparent at Poundbury and in the prince's speeches - that has earned him enemies. Among them the architect Piers Gough, who says Poundbury would have been an interesting experiment in 1802 - but not 2002. 'He doesn't seem to be interested in culture,' Gough says. 'He doesn't seem to be interested in the world going forward. He wants it to go backward.' -- From Architecture Week

I'm in a loser state of mind -- first I lose the dog; then today, the car. Or rather, I lost the street where I parked it while I had my hair done. I went to a church book sale across the road from the salon, that was my big mistake. I got disoriented and ended up wandering the streets for over half an hour, in the rain. So much for Sandy's careful blow-drying, it was all rat-tails.

The book sale was a good one -- I got a 1945 edition of Wind in the Willows for 20p, very austere little thing with no illustrations but plenty of conversation; a guide to ballroom dancing from the 50s, I bought it for the diagrams of dancing feet, 40p; and something I can never resist, an 50s recipe book full of photos of radioactive food. Sensible buys were Cold Mountain (haven't read the book or seen the movie) and The Tulip, a history of the Dutch bulb mania. I resisted The Complete Home Doctor, which I only wanted for an X-ray of "torso with toy bicycle impacted in thorax".

Three days off and I'm exhausted. Saturday the weather was great, sunny and warm, so I did a spot of gardening, lots of walking and saw The Warrior -- what a great film. Sunday I went sailing and it was fantastic, just a nice amount of wind. The first sail of the season is always a bit nerve-wracking, because I'm sure I've forgotten how to do it. But it's like riding a bike, it all comes back and it's bliss. Sailing's funny though, because it seems sooooo easy ... but you don't realise how much work you're doing until later on -- ow! aching muscles!

Today I had a loafsome morning and then took Bertie on a nice long walk, to Kirkliston. I don't know how far it is, but it takes about an hour and a half, mainly along the route of an old railway line. Just as you come into Kirkliston the track goes under a bridge, which carries a road into the village. That's where Bertie disappeared. Vanished! I followed him up the path to the road, yelling at him because he's not supposed to go off the track. No sign of him. Standing on the bridge was a chap with a dog, who had been on the path ahead of us. He pointed up another road. But he had a speech disorder -- maybe he'd had a stroke? -- and I couldn't understand what he was saying. "White dog" and "farm" was about it. But he was pointing very insistently up the road.

I set off up the road in the direction he was pointing, calling and whistling, but there was no sign of Bertie. I came back down the road and walked along the track a bit. Went back up the road, back down to the track. Checked the streets of the village. Went back up the road, back down the track. He had vanished. What to do? His collar has a tag with my phone number on it, so I thought it would be best to go home and see if someone had phoned. I caught a bus back, and sure enough, there was a phone message.

"This is Mrs Unintelligible from 5 Unintelligible Unintelligble and I have your white greyhound here. I've called the police and they're sending someone round, but then I saw your number on his collar so... oh, and my phone number is 333 unintelligible."

Argh!

I couldn't phone 1471 because Andrew had phoned after Mrs Unintelligible, so his number was the last called. I listened to the message a dozen times. I scoured the phone book for names that sounded likely that matched a 333 number but no luck. I phoned the police, but they didn't have a record of Bertie being reported found. On a map I found an street in Kirkliston that could concievably be Unintelligible Unintelligible, so I drove there. I asked at the Post Office and the Kirkliston vet. No joy. I went home again. The police had suggested phoning the cat and dog home and also checking the local police station. Cat and dog home didn't have him. I plodded down to the police station but they didn't have him and didn't have a record of him being reported found.

I went home again and hurrah, Mrs Unintelligible had phoned again, so this time 1471 worked and she was able to give me directions to her house, which is in a converted farm steading, further up the very road the man had been pointing at. Bertie was curled up on a blanket on his rescuer's front doorstep, looking very woebegone. She said he had been very timid at first, but wouldn't leave her door -- especially after she gave him some biscuits! She has a dog too, but like Bertie he's not neutered, so she kept B outside because she wasn't sure how they'd get on.

When I got home I had to phone the police and report him home safe, then go to the police station and tell them he was ok. Tomorrow I'll phone the cat and dog home and let them know -- everyone has his details! In the course of all my to-ing and fro-ing I'd bumped into both my next-door neighbours, so they knew the whole story too. Rosemary even offered to come and listen to the phone message, see if she could understand the accent better -- but by then he was home again. He's been following me around the house like a clicking shadow, so maybe he thinks I abandoned him.

Andrew had phoned to check when I was going up to the farm again -- and it's official, we're going up at the beginning of June for a few days. I'll see if I can take some more time off. There won't be a lot of farm work, so we'll be able to go for some good walks.

Right now I'm going to have a long bath -- I'm aching all over! Have to get up early tomorrow too, I'm going to have my hair done.

Hmm, I tried to post an entry yesterday but it didn't work. Seems to be ok tonight though. Not much to report, it's been another quiet week at Salty Towers. I'm now officially on a waiting list for the fibroids thingie, looks as if it will be September before I go in. The hold-up is partly because of a shortage of beds in gynaecology; partly because Dr Gillespie and his colleague will be on holiday for most of July and August, and in meetings for most of June; and that there are three other women ahead of me on the list. In the meantime I'm going to go back to the herbalist for some of her magic potion.

I'm going sailing soon, first time this season. I'd loaned Colin my wetsuit for a course he was doing and he returned it last week. Most embarrassing -- I thought he was going to drop it in in the afternoon, on his way to work, but he showed up at midday, with his girlfriend in tow. I was still in my nightie, having a long leisurely breakfast in the sun. Caught slacking! Jenny was there to meet Bertie, who's going to be staying with them while I'm in Oxford. "Gosh, isn't he big," she said nervously. I reassured her that he only looks big indoors. Yes, I'm sure that's reassuring.

So anyway sailing, tomorrow or Monday. I mowed the front lawn today to make more time at the weekend for leisure pursuits, but mowing the back lawn seemed a step too far. I really am extremely lazy. I'm going to go and see The Warrior at some point too, just my kind of movie "shimmering beauty" and "old-fashioned storytelling gusto".

The "virus" problem is solved: it was a combination of the ISP's servers going down and my thinking that meant my password had been stolen again and changing it, and my home email program, Eudora, being unable to cope and giving me weirdo error messages. Why can't it just say "wrong password" rather than "Shhhh! Don't tell anyone." It sounded like virus talk to me.

The mad thing was that the first emails I got after sorting all this out were infected with the Klez virus. Norton grabbed them and stuffed them away before they could do any harm, but still!

Today I went to a funeral. One of my dogwalking acquaintances, Sandy, died suddenly last week. One of my neighbours (who also has dogs) called in this morning and offered me a lift there and back, which was nice. There was a good turnout -- Sandy didn't have much in the way of family, but he had loads of friends. I think the dogs should have been there too though ...

Crematorium funerals are quite odd. They try very hard to be as solemn and respectful as possible, but you can hear the clock ticking. We had to wait outside until the previous funeral ended and when we filed out there was another group of mourners gathering. The minister gave a nice little sermon, but it's kind of "funeral lite" -- a hymn, a couple of prayers, a homily and Bible reading and off you go. After the service we drove back and Lisa told me about how her husband died on the third day of their "holiday of a lifetime" in the Far East. They'd been married 38 years, very sad story.

Bertie had quite a traumatic walk -- a couple of little kids came scrambling up a bank with their mother, right under his nose, and he went mental, leaping around like a lunatic barking as if they were ... I don't know, monsters. Once I'd reassured them the children weren't too frightened -- "Give him a biscuit!" one suggested. The mother had a cap-gun and "shot" at him, which went down well! I managed to drive Bertie away from them in the end and get him on a lead. Then we met a whole class of children on the street and he backed out into a busy road in a big panic -- argh!

Early cut tonight, they're working on the presses again. Phew.

I've been having problems with my email -- I thought it was a virus, but it turns out it may be a problem with my ISP's servers, because I just phoned the support line and they're in a big flap. So ... email to bjagnew@hotmail.com in the meantime. Sigh.

I've just come back from seeing the radiologist who'll be doing the embolisation and it was very interesting. He had all the MRI scan pictures up, wow! My poor old innards. He's not sure when it will be done, says it may be early June or September. July and August are out because he and his colleague are on holiday and May is out because of various meetings. The radiologists don't have much of a waiting list, the main hitch is gynaecology beds. The radiology department doesn't move to the new hospital until next year, so the procedure will be done at the old hospital, then they'll whizz me out to the new one for a few days.

I took photos of the scans, ta da!


These ones are in cross-section, the round black blobs are the fibroids. There are loads of them, all the way through my uterus. Ewwww!


And here's the side-on view. The dark shape in this one is my poor bladder, squashed down on by the big bag o' fibroids. Double ewwww!

The radiologist wasn't fazed at all by my interest -- doctors have changed so much! He wasn't patronising in the least. The big revelation was his use of the phrase "chicken soup" in relation to the discharge I might experience. Guess what I won't be eating again in a hurry...

Stop cheering up! It's not good for you!

By WILLIAM L. HOLMES
Associated Press Writer
RALEIGH, North Carolina (AP) – Mildly depressed older women tend to live longer than those who are not depressed at all, a surprising new study suggests.
The findings are contrary to most other studies on the link between depression and mortality. Those studies have generally shown that depression increases the likelihood of death within a certain time period.
“This is totally counterintuitive to what you expect to see,” said Dan G. Blazer, a Duke University professor of psychiatry and behavioral science. “We know that depression in younger populations is very clearly associated with mortality. It’s not so clear in older populations.”
The results might support the theory that mild depression is a survival mechanism, he said.
The Duke study, to be published in the May-June issue of the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, is the first known examination of mild depression and death, Blazer said. Other studies looked only at people with severe depression.
The Duke study was based on a group that started with 2,401 women and 1,269 men, all older than 65. They were interviewed about their health at roughly three-year intervals from 1986 to 1997 and were separated into three categories – depressed, mildly depressed and not depressed – based on their answers to a 20-question test.
Blazer said 10.5 per cent of the women were considered mildly depressed.
The women with mild depression were, on average, 60 percent less likely than other women to die during any three-year period, Blazer said. Researchers took into account age, chronic illness and other factors in calculating the mortality rate.
The researchers found that depression had no influence on the mortality of men.
“We don’t want to make too much out of this except that it’s a very interesting finding,” Blazer said.
Blazer said the study may support a theory advanced by University of Michigan psychiatrist Randolph M. Nesse that says mild depression may allow people to cope more easily with their problems and remove themselves from dangerous or harmful situations.
According to Nesse humans may need “low mood” or mild depression to deal with failure and disappointment. “People who don’t have it waste their whole lives trying to do things they won’t ever do,” he said.
A psychiatrist not involved in Blazer’s work, Dr. Richard Schulz of the University of Pittsburgh, questioned the findings, noting that previous research has shown that both mild depression and severe depression lead to increased mortality.

That reminds me of something else I read recently, that high self-esteem can be more of a social problem than low self-esteem, because ... well I forget now. I think it was that highly self-confident teenagers are more likely to go joy-riding than self-pitying pimply nerds. That kind of thing.

But the study itself is a bit depressing, isn't it? People who aren't depressed "waste their whole lives trying to do things they won’t ever do,” says Mr Nesse. But how wonderful if you succeed against all the odds! And people do, don't they? Whatever happened to "nothing venture, nothing gain"? Blimey -- imagine living in a world of mildly depressed old ladies...

Forgot to mention, I haven't managed to get the wee "movies" I can take on my camera to play on the television. I'm not sure why it's not working, it should according to the instruction booklet. I'll keep trying.

Despite a slow start and some rain, I've managed to get a lot done today. Weeded the front garden, mowed the back lawn and painted the retaining wall. I decided against using the antifungal wash -- reading the label it sounded so ghastly and lethal I thought I'd rather live with a bit of moss and slime than risk slaughtering the wildlife -- or Bertie.

So it's very smart, but probably only for five minutes. Here are the before and after shots:



Out the front things are looking pretty good. The daphne (below) is looking slightly healthier after its dousing with copper sulphate, though it might need another go.



The hosta isn't dead after all -- in fact it's coming up very vigorously, like a rhubarb, in fat buds. It's hidden by the bluebells at the moment. The himalayan poppy is also coming along very strongly.

Here are another couple of photos, while I'm at it: one of some blossom and one of the road bridge.

I keep meaning to post more pictures here and then forgetting. I made some more movies today (hah! movies! they are 30 second clips) and I'm going to experiment with the AV plugs that came with the camera. I think this means I can watch the movies on TV, because my new TV has AV sockets on the front.

The big question is, can I then record the result on a video tape? Brace yourselves for Bertie, an experimental film made according to the Dogme (hah! Dogme! woof!) rules: shooting on location (no imported props or sets); sound and image produced together; a handheld camera; natural light; no optical work or filters; no superficial action (murders, weapons); no temporal or geographic alienation; no genre films; no signature.

Sadly mine will have no plot, either -- or a very doggy one: eat! drink! run! sleep! eat again!

Woooo!

The universe is about 13 billion years old, slightly younger than previously believed, according to a study that measured the cooling of the embers in ancient dying stars.

But a lot older than Edwin Hubble thought it was, apparently. Back in 1928 he put it at two billion years old, give or take a few million.

In other news, this story has my dander up. Sounds all very well on the face of it, but then you get into the fine print.

The American church leaders said they would recommend a special process to defrock any priest who has become “notorious and is guilty of the serial, predatory sexual abuse of minors.” In cases that are “not notorious” they would leave it up to the local bishop to decide if such a priest is a threat to children and should be defrocked.

Oh, and apparently “a link between celibacy and paedophilia cannot be scientifically maintained”. Eh? Elsewhere, the good cardinals say “attention was drawn to the fact that almost all cases involved adolescents and therefore were not cases of true paedophilia”.

So let's see -- they'll think about defrocking a priest if he molests lots of really young kids and everyone knows about it. If not many people know about it, then the bishop will decide.

Here's my suggestion: call the police, put the alleged molester on trial and let the court judge the evidence. That should make it nice and easy to decide who should be defrocked.

Shop shop shop shop shop shop..... drop.

I had a megashoppng session. Bought a new TV -- a cheap and cheerful little Goodman portable. Bought some headphones so I can watch TV late at night without bothering the neighbours. Bought a new keyboard and speakers for Faye's computer. Bought dog food. Bought paint for the doorsteps, front and back, for the retaining wall at the back, for the back door, plus sandpaper and brushes.

Staggered home, set up new TV, walked dog. Now I'm dropping into a hot bath. Whew.

The new TV is great -- I didn't realise how awful the old one was.

One thing I didn't get that's on my list is a new monitor. I'm still fighting the temptation of a TFT monitor, one of the skinny flat ones. They're quite a bit more expensive than the regular ones, but don't take up nearly as much space. Can't decide.

Cathy emailed me an age calculator -- sadly it didn't work, but I was intrigued so I scouted round on the internet and found this one.

It is truly freaky watching your life whizz by in milliseconds.

Whew! Busy or something. The gas man came today and drilled a big hole in the livingroom wall. It's about the same size as the airbricks in the other rooms but it's down near the floor. It has a grille on it but outside there's just a hood thing, so I should be able to stuff a towel or similar in it to stop the flow of freezing air across the livingroom floor.

This is as close to crazy as it gets -- I pay them £200 to make my home safe from noxious fumes, then I fix it so it doesn't work. But really, it can't be energy-efficient to have bloody great holes in your walls. It's medieval.

My television's starting to go on the fritz -- the sound and colour go very high or very low without input from me, and the remote only works if you're standing right next to the set. I'll shop for a cheapo replacement on Saturday. I've had this one for years, nearly ten years I think, and it was second hand to start with. I want a portable set with Teletext, a SCART socket and a headphone socket. Should be able to get one for £100 or so. (Yes -- Currys and Dixons both have a Sanyo for £110 with all that.)

My trip to Oxford next month is firming up. Colin is OK to look after Bertie -- I have to leave him behind because a) he can't stay at Mrs Kahn's and b) there won't be any room in the car for him and his luggage. I'd wanted Colin and Jenny to have a practice run at hosting Bertie before I go into hospital anyway, so it works out well.

Speaking of hospital, there's still no word on when I'm going in. I'm supposed to meet the radiologist first, but I haven't heard from him either. They have moved out to the new hospital already, so maybe they're still getting themselves sorted out. I'm quite glad they've moved -- there's been an outbreak of the "superbug" at the old infirmary, all the cardio patients got it and one died. Brrrr.

I added a picture to The Mirror Project. It's a fun thing to do -- I have a couple of others to submit, also of reflections in water, I just haven't gotten around to sending them in.

Long day at work today -- 11am start and I'm still here at 9:30pm. I'll go home soon, just waiting for our Jerusalem correspondent to file some copy.

I absolutely must have this drug.

This is my favourite quote from the article: "It is possible it could become a drug of abuse because it would enhance the performance of athletes," he said. No! You really think so?

This site has a link to what it calls "a hugely inappropriate animated tribute to the Queen Mother".

I think it's sort of sweet, in a South Park way.

The weather continues to be glorious and I continue to spend most of my time off outdoors rather than writing to my family. Sorry about that. Today I washed the car -- after walking the dog in a solemn manner befitting the solemnity of the solemn event I was missing on the telly. The lull that fell over the land was quite noticeable, as was the feverish buzz of activity once the funeral was over.

Tesco was shut from 10.30am to 1pm! So was Marks & Spencer! Amazing! The local co-op supermarket Scottishly made do with a two-minute silence.

The gas man visited this morning to fix something I think is called the flue annulus. The previous gas man had quoted me for that work and for drilling a hole through my wall because the window vents are substandard (even after I nagged and nagged at the window firm to make sure the ventilation was up to scratch); but he said I didn't need to get the vent done, it was the flue work that made my gas fire AT RISK (as the yellow sign said that he left attached to it).

But (sigh) today's gas man said no, there's a regulation to say that you can get the ventilation put right without having the flue done, but not the other way round. The bill will be £200 rather than £67.

I gave in -- ok, just drill a bloody hole in the wall, I don't care. I'll care more next Thursday when they do the work, and even more than that when I get the bill. Joys of home ownership.

Saturday I spent at a wonderful spot north of St Andrews, Tentsmuir, which several people had recommended. It's fantastic. The forest borders the beach, making it perfect for walking Bertie. He enjoys running on the sand for about half an hour, then he's sick of it. At Tentsmuir we walked along the edge of the forest, so he was in amongst the trees hunting rabbits, and I was in the dunes enjoying the sunshine and the sight and sound of surf.

I took loads of photos, will post some soon. I have to do some work now, spot you later.

I love this story. How many chihuahuas is your child worth?

[Sadly the story's vanished off the Washington Post's archives -- a woman had tried to swap her baby for a chihuahua. The dog-owner only dobbed her in after she upped the price to two chihuahuas. Or something.]

Back at work, sigh. It's not so bad, I guess. The printing presses threw a wobbly and our deadlines were brought forward, which made for a last-minute frenzy; on the positive side I get to go home early -- and the early deadlines are in force all week.

The news is mainly depressing -- the Middle East situation just about reduces me to tears. I went through a strongly pro-Zionist phase as a teenager, after reading Exodus but gradually changed my views and now I'm more sympathetic towards the Palestinians. As sympathetic as you can be to people willing to blow themselves up in cafes crowded with families. I just don't think the Israelis' increasing aggression is going to do anyone any favours. They're reaping what they sowed.

Back in my mundane world, yesterday I dragged myself off to the shops to get some new clothes. It's an ordeal! I did very well though, I got two pairs of trousers (black), two blouses (one red, one pinkish stripes) and three t-shirts. Favourite purchase is probably a red long-sleeved t-shirt. The blouses are both the same style: short, fitted, with three-quarter length sleeves. This is a real departure for me. I'm paranoid about the size of my bum, so it's risking severe trauma to wear anything bum-revealing.

The paranoia's not entirely unfounded. I was in the changing rooms at the swimming baths in Edinburgh once when a little boy said in a piercing voice: "Mummy, come and look, there's a lady with a really, really big bottom!" And then last year I was strolling down the esplanade wearing comfy loose trousers and a short t-shirt a bloke behind me said: "There's a big arse arse arse."

So I'm trying to re-educate myself to accept my body and not feel bad about the harsh things ignorant people say, and not to cover up the bits I don't like. The blouses are cute. OK, I'm not wearing one of them today, I'm wearing a loose white linen shirt, but I WILL wear them.

I got a great book as a reward for getting through the gruelling task of clothes-buying (hey, it's hot in those changing cubicles!) -- The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson. He's one of my favourite SF writers, but most of his books are grounded in the here and now, even his series on the colonisation of Mars. My favourite of his is Antarctica -- even if you don't like science fiction you might enjoy this.

Time to go home!

YESSSSS!!!!!!

No, not because the Queen Mother is dead, bless her, but because I've finally got my printer working (touch wood). The computer shop didn't find anything wrong with the USB, and after a lot of tooth-grinding and uninstalling and reinstalling, I've managed to fix it myself. Just printed out a humungous picture very briskly. Whew.

The good thing about all the hassle was that in desperation at being offline for so long, I dug out my old computer and booted it up. And had a brainwave -- maybe Faye would like this! She's been talking about getting a laptop. So I phoned her today and she's thrilled. I was going to get a new monitor anyway, so that's just a mouse and keyboard to add and we're away. So the plan is to go down to Oxford in May, set the computer up for her and give her a crash course.

I've had an extremely lazy and enjoyable week off, didn't go away in the end but stayed in my favourite place -- home. The weather has been great, so I've been for lots of long walks. Also got the boiler serviced -- it needs some work on the flue, so the man left a DANGER AT RISK notice on it. Also had the car's handbrake fixed. Bertie ended up in the footwell a couple of times today due to the now excellent braking.

What else? Nothing! Hah! Lovely.

OK I'm just going to unplug my computer and take it into the shop, and since I'm on holiday this week that's probably it from me for a few days at least.

Ta ta!

Slow start to the week's activities, mainly due to having been suckered in to watching some of the Oscars last night. How weird is it? First there's the compere, Whoopi Goldberg, then there's another compere or two to give away each prize, plus extra comperes thrown in to announce little bits of film. Then, for no reason I can think of, there are Donald Sutherland and Glen Close bursting in to announce the ad breaks (on a great big olde-worlde microphonic apparatus), and bizarrely, they seem to be also acting as security guards for the statuettes, which are stacked on racks behind them.

Of course since the show is on BBC2, which doesn't have commercials, they have to fill in the ad break time, so there's a studio with Jonathan Ross and assorted celebs droning on.

So anyway, I got up late, walked the dog, then got on to my phone calls. The Window Advisory Service is deep in dealings with Roxburghe Windows' insurance company to see who's going to deal with outstanding customer complaints. Oh. Dear. The woman I spoke to couldn't give me a time frame but asked politely for my patience. Hmm.

The computer firm are blaming a) the printer and/or b) Windoze for my printing problems. I'm to take the computer in to the shop so they can hook it up to a printer there and check it out. I've backed up in case they decide to wipe the hard drive -- that does seem to be their solution to most things.

Then I mixed up some fungicide and went round spraying things with it.

Then I was hungry, so I had an early dinner (grilled salmon steak, mash, carrots and cabbage, delish). Then my boss phoned and said not to bother coming in next Sunday, he'll take Wednesday off instead and work Sunday for me. Hurrah! Even more days off. That's me off right through to next Monday now.

Right now I'm going to have a shower then check out movie times. I might see The Royal Tenenbaums, or either In The Bedroom or The Son's Room. I would have definitely gone to In The Bedroom, except that I watched some live streaming video of the Oscar Red Carpet at work last night, and Sissy Spacek's nose made me feel sick. You can see up her nostrils from the front, you know? It's a bit Michael Jackson. Ewww.


Judge for yourself

I might go to Bridge of Orchy and stay here, or I might go to Rannoch Station and stay here. Both come with personal recommendations and both take dogs.

I usually stay in B&Bs rather than hotels because they're usually friendlier, but these don't sound too bad. And someone also suggested doing a walk I've wanted to do for a while, Corrour to Rannoch Station. You get the train to Corrour, just one stop, and walk back. Previously I've stayed at the Corrour station bunkhouse or at the youth hostel at Loch Ossian, and the one time I planned to do the walk to Rannoch Station the snow was so deep I couldn't see the path & decided not to risk it.

Bridge of Orchy is on the West Highland Way, so there is plenty of good walking there too.

If there are no sheep, Bertie can roam off the lead. He ignores any animals bigger than himself, such as cattle and deer. Corrour is a shooting estate, so it's all deer and ponies. Not sure about Bridge of Orchy.

Undiscovered Scotland

I'm thinking of going away this week, just for a few days, and someone drew this site to my attention. It's "a combination of business directory, accommodation listing and visitor guide. It includes a comprehensive range of links and a large and growing collection of in-depth and illustrated feature pages about places to go and things to do, and mountains to climb".

Great photos too.

Lunch yesterday at Tapas Ole, yum yum. Last month I had grilled sardines at Fishers in Leith; they were sour, bony, dry things, covered in crumbly oatmeal. At Tapas Ole they came fizzing and sizzling on a griddle, moist and tasty. Everything was superb, from the squid rings to the omelet to the meatballs. Triple yum. Afterwards we all went back to John's for coffee -- he and Penny live just along from the restaurant -- and it was after 4pm when I got home.

I made a mess of the rotas again, gah, I can't believe it. It's like a recurring nightmare. But the good side is that I've got next week off -- I made the mistake by copying over an old rota without changing the week off I had that month. I may go away or I may stay at home, I'll see how I feel. It will be a week of sponteneity interspersed with catching up on chores.

Like I have to hassle the Window Advisory Group again about the french doors. The seal has come out on one of the doors, an ongoing problem the company that installed them was meant to be fixing. I phoned them yet again the week before last to discover they've been taken over by another firm. The Window Advisory Group is "getting back" to me on what happens with the guarantee. Grrr. Oh, and I have to get a new wing mirror for my car - the passenger side one was broken off at the weekend. And then there's the garden. And I could do with some new summer clothes. And I really should get in touch with Kate, and Sandy, and phone Fiona in London ...

I'm going to be busy.

I live in such a friendly town, it astonishes me. Like today, I set out with the dog and first of all we meet the MS lady's son and her three dogs (multiple schlerosis, not Microsoft). Tigger barks and huffs and carries on like Margaret Thatcher, but otherwise they all get on famously.

After a play session Bertie and I head off to the marina. En route the bridge maintenance crew pass in their truck and toot and all wave. This tooting and waving thing is because I walk past them sitting under the bridge in their truck nearly every day. The older bloke who always sits in the middle has a shih tzu. One day they were all asleep in the cab, they looked so sweet I nearly took a photo. (I didn't because the engine was running and I thought, what if they're all dead?)

So we walk along the road and the bridge maintenance crew come back along, having done a circuit through the marina, and toot and all wave again. Then we're on the path up to the water treatment plant and Bertie goes on alert and disappears. It's my next door neighbour down by the water with Marble and Lazlo, the gun dogs from the house at the end of the street. Big hysterical bum-sniffing session ensues (the dogs, ha ha very funny). As Frances and I are yoo-hooing, who should drive up but Bridie with her Butch, more waving and tooting.

So I walk round the path and meet up with Frances at the jetty and we walk on together. By the marina office we meet Susy the Yorkie being carried by her owner, who lives in the sheltered housing. Back out on the road, the bridge maintenance crew go past yet again, toot toot, wave wave. I'd love to have their job, what a life they have. You never see them actually doing anything.

Then just as Frances peels off to take the dogs home, her neighbour on the other side, owner of the elderly cats, drives up.

Part of the reason I got a dog was the social aspect, and good grief, it really works. The British love dogs and if you've got a dog, everyone talks to you. Even people who don't have dogs talk to you. I think it's partly because it's something to talk about, but also it helps people recognise you.

Like the checkout woman who served me in the supermarket yesterday: "Is your dog all right?" she inquired. "Errr, yes..." Then the penny dropped. Her dog, Wallace, a frisky young Staffordshire, had tried to hump Bertie the day before. "I was soooo embarrassed!" she trilled, going bright red at the memory. This was the day after the Audrey Hepburn dress-up session. Coincidence? I wonder.

Bertie's been living at my house for a whole year today. Happy anniversary, Bertie!


Why the long face? (That's my favourite Bertie joke. He doesn't get it.)

Since I'm busy Photoshopping, I'll give you the "shipwreck" pictures. They're pretty convincing, I think.


OK so here's what we saw.


And here's a closeup of the "ship" that has "run aground". I can't find a normal pic of the same scene, but I can tell you that in calm weather that jetty isn't black, it's sort of beige. It doesn't look anything like a ship.

Once again, blame Pinky.

To quote her email: "I hope he didn't hate dressing up too much." Well the answer is that he hates dressing up just as much as the cat did when we were kids. Pinky probably doesn't remember forcing it into a doll's nightie and pushing it around in the pram, but I do. The things pets do for food!


"Houndstooth? Is that supposed to be funny?"

"These glasses don't fit right. I am so never working with you again."

"Ow! Get your hands off me! I'm calling my agent!"

Stylist's confession: I Photoshopped out my hand in the picture posted yesterday.

This is Pinky's fault.

She's bought a red sports car, you see, a convertible, and she's invited Bertie over for a spin. "He'll have to wear a styley head scarf and sunnies though", she said.

Got up early this morning and drove Faye to the railway station. Last time she visited I ran late and as a result she missed her train. This time we got there over half an hour early, so we had time for a coffee. I don't think she's had a restful journey ... as she was putting away her luggage and saying goodbye, a dozen schoolgirls were climbing on, some wearing plastic policemen's helmets. Oh dear.

After that I spent an hour noodling around in Homebase. I bought a very dangerous-looking item, a Stanley knife with a saw attachment. It's to use as a pruning saw -- Faye gave me a lesson in rose pruning while she was here. After I got home I put it to good use, clearing a lot of dead wood from the big rose bush at the front. I also got some oriental poppies, some hyacinths in a pot (marked down), a new toilet seat and a new cistern handle. The old seat didn't fit properly. The new one does! And the old cistern handle was leaking. The new one doesn't! Very satisfying. The new seat is also black, swish.

We had a very busy few days before Faye left, though I ran out of steam in the end. Visited the Deep Sea World aquarium, Butterfly World, a big garden centre and Arthur's Seat. I thought about going up to the Highland Wildlife Park but decided against it, it was a bit far. Faye went to the zoo last week, but didn't see wolves. They have wolves at the wildlife park.

Tate -- the Tate Gallery's wonderful website.

Browse, browse, browse ... it's very quiet at work tonight. We always think nervously about the Queen Mother at times like this, too scared to go home early, just in case.

It's nice to have pretty pictures to look at in the meantime. Like this one by Blake:


(Later: hmmm... it seems to have disappeared...)

Disappointingly I couldn't view anything by Patrick Heron, one of my top favourite artists, because it's all copyright to his estate (he died in 1999).

Browse, browse, browse...

Here we are! Serigraph.

Or even better, Rumbold Vertical Four: Green in Green with Blue and Red: September 1970


The article that last picture is illustrating is worth a look, Letter from London, on artnet.com.

I love the internet.

It's stopped being gorgeous, but at least I got a little weeding done. There's a new weed invading the front garden -- there were only a couple of them last year, they sort of crept in the front gate. But this year there are a lot more. I don't know what they are -- low, flat rosettes of green leaves that spread out on runners. They have shallow roots and thin, easily-broken red stems. The bindweed isn't as bad this year, though. I'm going to fill the beds with rockery-type plants that will spread out. The beds are looking really feeble.

The bluebells are coming up patchily, because last winter I didn't realise what they were and grubbed a lot of the bulbs out. Tsk. They'll spread back again, I guess. Or I could dig them all out and replant them out the back, by the back fence. They'd look nice along there. Then I could fill the main front bed with lavender and hostas. Or something. (My one hosta is dead, I think.)

A couple of weeks ago I hacked back the dog-rose hedge at the front and it's coming away nicely. It was really scraggy. Next year I might cut it back even further, and dump some compost round the roots. The lovely red climbing rose at the front is also doing well. The hydrangeas I dug up and transplanted last year are all racing away, and the cut-price rock rose is thriving too. And of course there's garlic everywhere. So it's not all a disaster.

Tomorrow Faye and I will go round a couple of garden centres -- the beds at the front look really dry and thin, so I'll get some bags of compost to put on them, plus some plants. Then we'll go to the movies, maybe Lord of the Rings again, hee hee.

I didn't do any gardening today, it was too freezing and windy. Instead I walked the dog for a couple of hours, then fixed some links on my website and did a virus scan. A layzee day.

Gorgeous spring day, sunny and almost cloudless, but nicely fresh and crispy. I didn't do a lot, though there was plenty I could have been doing, like weeding the garden. The front especially needs a good going over.

Whew, back at work for a bit of a rest.

Faye arrived without any mishap. Bertie was quite startled to see her; just as well we were at the railway station! What a coincidence! Etc. Poor dog, his life is one big surprise after another.

The weekend in brief:

Saturday: Drive up around the Fife coast to St Andrews, one of my favourite day trips. We stopped off in Elie for lunch at a nice cafe, had a brief walk, hurried back to the car to avoid hypothermia. It was blowy and freezing, snow on the hills. Stopped again in Crail; this time we were caught in a hailstorm just before we reached the car. St Andrews we went for a longer walk on the beach, a fantastic stretch of sand right by the golf course. Bertie was thrilled. That night we watched a video I bought last week, Asoka. No kissing please, we're Indian! Also weirdly non-violent violence.

Sunday: Raining, so we decided to visit that famous Scottish landmark, Ikea. En route we passed the Ingliston Sunday market so on a whim went in for a look. It was almost empty of stalls. I had just bought a 6in adjustable spanner for £1.75 when we found out why -- it suddenly started hailing ferociously, with thunder, lightning and strong winds. "This is the third time I've cleared everything away," said the stallholder gloomily. At one point a big rubbish bin was blown over and rolled across the vast empty swathe of tarmac -- right into Faye! Ikea was much more civilised. I didn't buy much, but got a nice utensil holder for the kitchen. Went back home via Peebles and Pennicuik.

Monday: Another outing, this time to Culross, across the firth. First we did something insane. While giving Bertie a pre-excursion walk, we both saw what looked like a shipwreck. It was blowing a gale, so it seemed conceivable that a ship had run aground across at North Queensferry. I took photos with my little camera and I tried to take some with the big one but the batteries had gone flat. We got in the car and drove across the bridge, parked by the harbour and went looking for the shipwreck. There was no shipwreck. We walked to every possible vantage point and it had gone. Thus was born the legend of the ghost ship; we even saw the crew, Chinese or possibly Filipino, walking single file along the road, hauling all their worldly goods in wheeled suitcases. Bertie was scared of them -- dogs can sense the presence of the supernatural. After that we headed on upriver to Culross, where we staggered around buffeted by the wind seeing the sights, and had lunch. Then on across the Kincardine bridge and back round to Blackness, to walk Bertie, and home via the New Hopetoun garden centre for a browse. Faye bought some gardening gloves. In the evening she treated me to a wonderful meal at Sweet Melinda's, a great little restaurant in Marchmont.

That's all for now. Duty calls...

Nothing much to report. Faye arrives tomorrow for a 10-day visit, so today I did a bit of housework -- the floors downstairs get so filthy (muddy paw-prints and drool, mainly) that I sometimes give up on them when the weather's bad -- pointless to spend an hour cleaning them when they get dirty again straight away. And I'm certainly not going to do it every day! I did my ironing too, another job I put off until it's worth doing.

So the house is sort of clean-ish, though not exactly sparkling, and there are fresh flowers too. I'm going to the supermarket now (love 24-hour shopping) for bread and milk and veg. All ready for a warm welcome...


Bertie will be so thrilled. He loves Faye.

The de-cluttering project is coming along nicely. At the moment I'm sorting out my photo-mountain. Thank goodness I have a digital camera now. Monday night I spent filing negatives and sorting through packets of pictures (while watching TV). I had had a lot of the negatives sitting in a heavy cardboard box. Unfortunately the box was on the floor next to the radiator that leaked a few months ago. A lot of the negs are ruined -- they were from old-format cameras (a Box Brownie and one with a folding bellows lens) and wouldn't fit in the 35mm storage sheets I have, and now they're all stuck together from being wet. Almost all the 35mm ones are ok.

I found some cheap albums in an op shop and have almost filled them already. I need three or four more, at least! I know an answer would be to scan them in to the computer, but I honestly can't be arsed. And anyway there's something nice about flipping through a photo album, isn't there? I haven't even started going through the huge box of photos, just did the ones that were still in packets.

Since I got the digital camera I've taken over 1,300 photos -- I haven't kept them all, sometimes I take ten photos and delete them all. But that's the real joy of a digital camera, you can snap away merrily and see the results straight away. No waiting to finish the roll and get it developed to see if the pictures are worth keeping. And you don't have to worry about the cost of developing your crap random pictures.

The computer course is drawing near an end. It's become even more frustrating since we got to the stuff I really want to learn about. The tutor doesn't differentiate between useful information and useless information -- in fact sometimes he gives more time and attention to the latter. Like today, he showed us some code that only works on one browser anyway and had us spend five minutes typing in the example (to "confirm" his notes), blithely saying, "I can't imagine any circumstances you'd want to use that in." Then he skimmed over the next section, which was code you'd want to use quite often.

Another thing that had my jaw dropping was when he referred to something I'd seen in the books I have on CSS and hadn't understood. "I don't understand this terminology, you'll see it in some of the books but I don't really know what it means, so I don't teach it."

Still, his manuals are quite clear, and what I've learned is a good basis for going on to work from the books. I think next week may be the last class ... yes, I just counted up and it is. He's not going to work for the university next year, says they won't pay him enough, but he'll be running classes himself, on Javascript and using databases. Um, I don't think so.

Bertie went to the vet yesterday, he's got conjunctivitis again. He loves the vet, she gives him biscuits. He may have forgotten all the bandages and needles and the dreaded giant plastic hood, but he sure remembers those biscuits.

So last night, thrilled with my newly-fixed computer and having installed the Eudora email program, I downloaded the picture of Pop kindly sent by Trevor and printed it out. Lovely! Now I'll just print out these other two family pix for the nice three-pic frame Anthea gave me ...

AAAAAAAAARGGGGGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Back to the drawing board.

I fixed my computer! Everything works now except Outlook Express, the email program, so I'll just go back to using Eudora. Hey ho. I'm so pleased I managed to fix everything else though, it's great being back on the net. And I did it without having to phone the shop and grovel to know-it-all 16-year-olds. Phew.

Drama at work: there's been a fire at the printing plant. We're still waiting to hear whether they can print a paper, and if so, what size it will be. It was all just about ready to go when the fire broke out, so basically we'll have to dump half the stories. All that work, for nothing!

I checked the tide tables last night and yesterday's tide was pretty high, 6.1ft over chart datum. This afternoon's was predicted to be even higher, 6.2ft. It certainly looked high as I left town just before 4pm, and it wasn't due to peak until nearly half past.

Faye phoned tonight, she's coming up on the 8th, staying for 10 days, hurrah. She's such a great guest, and Bertie absolutely adores her.

UKHO EasyTide Tidal Prediction

Tide tables ... I've been trying to find out how high the tide was this afternoon, because I forgot to look it up in the tide table before I left home. But this site just does predictions; useful enough but not what I wanted to know.

The thing was, the tide was the highest I've seen it. The tides do normally vary with the moon phase -- neaps (small range, after half moon) and springs (large range, after full and new moon) -- and the effect was probably exaggerated by a swell, but the waves were slopping up over the harbour wall, in the little old harbour this is, I didn't go to the marina today.

It's been raining (and snowing) a lot lately and as I've said before, everywhere I go walking is a marsh. The groundwater seems to be high and maybe that affects the level of the river -- add that to a spring tide and whoops! wet feet!

Happily I'm just far enough back from the shore for it not to matter. People right on the water might be a tad nervous ...

My computer is still broken. I tinkered for an hour or so, managed to screw up a couple of other things, nothing important. It's all to do with drivers. Very annoying little files. A couple of vaguely identified bits of hardware reckon they need a driver but they're so vaguely identified I can't work out where the driver might be. One is PCI Communication Device and the other is PCI Mass Storage Device.

The most irritating part is that the plug-and-play program doesn't tell you what the driver is called. It knows it if it sees it, it's just not letting on. So what I've been having to do is go through all the CDs that might possibly be relevant -- for the motherboard, the Sparq drive, the sound card, blah blah blah -- looking for folders that may have drivers in them and being told "No, the driver's not in there, try again."

On Friday I'll have time to call the computer shop for some help. Tomorrow I've got a trip to the dentist for one filling to be repaired. I love my dentist, Callum, he's cured me of my fear of dentists. I have terrible teeth, mainly because I didn't look after them but also because I was alway too scared (and too skint) to get them fixed. They were full of fillings and a total mess until one time when I was on the dole in London I got the worst ones capped, in gold, for nothing. Now I'm more careful and most of the work Callum does is repairs or replacement crowns.

English Teeth, English Teeth!
Shining in the sun
A part of British heritage
Aye, each and every one.

English Teeth, Happy Teeth!
Always having fun
Champing down on bits of fish
And sausages half done.

English Teeth, HEROES' Teeth!
Here them click! and clack!
Let's sing a song of praise to them -
Three Cheers for the Brown Grey and Black.

-- Spike Milligan (RIP, sadly missed already)

It's not just English teeth, kiwi teeth can be just as bad. I blame dental nurses -- there was a dental clinic (aka murder house) attached to most schools, staffed by a kindly young woman in a starched white outfit and a red cardie. When I first started going she had a foot-powered drill ... very slow, excruciatingly painful. Later she had a whizzy electric drill, but there were still no painkillers. Big thrills were being allowed to mix up your own filling with a little glass pestle and mortar, and being given a cottonwool fairy for being "good", ie not kicking her.

These dental nurses drilled everything in sight, everyone had fillings.

Ooop, time to go home. More later.

How weird is this? I was checking who'd been looking at my website & it was mainly nhst.no (Anthea in Oslo), net.nz and co.nz (friends & family) and scotsman.com (me). But this caught my eye:

Domain Name SCREENCAPTURE2. (Unknown)
IP Address 202.108.221.# (APNIC - Pacific Rim)
Language Setting English
Operating System Microsoft WinNT
Browser Internet Explorer 6.0
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screencapture2 isn't a valid URL, and the IP address doesn't seem to be valid either. Spooky.

W3Schools Online Web Tutorials

"Inside W3Schools you will find a large number of free Web building tutorials, from basic HTML and XHTML tutorials, to advanced XML, XSL and WAP tutorials."

I broke my computer. When I told my boss about it he asked if I'd broken it "physically or mentally". "Mentally," I said. "I broke its spirit."

A while back I mentioned that I might have to reinstall Windows, because I've been having a lot of annoying little problems, the main one being that the printer doesn't work properly.

Well on Saturday I reinstalled Windows and now the printer works, but the modem doesn't. And my email program didn't reinstall properly either.

I hate Bill Gates.

On the bright side I had a decluttering fit during which I found the receipt/guarantee for the computer, so if my tinkerings fail to put things right I can always phone the shop for help. They've been pretty good in the past. Their solution though is just to wipe the whole hard drive and start from scratch.

My weekend was magically extended on Sunday when I arrived in at work to find Colin already logged in and doing my job. I made a mistake with the rota -- I had to do them all again after the IT dept accidentally wiped them -- and had given myself a holiday this week (in reality it was last month). So I let Colin carry on while I headed for the cinema to see Iris. Excellent film. Judi Dench is wonderful -- you can feel the fear as the slide starts. The most frightening scene for me was when she slips out the front door without her husband noticing and ends up wandering around the streets in the rain. People just go bustling past the "mad old lady", no-one realising who she is -- her life, her talent, her intellect mean nothing. She's rescued by an old friend; and of course her books and Bayley's record her worth in the end. So I found it an uplifting film in the end, rather than depressing.

Yesterday I had my hair done, got the roots touched up and a cut. The dye is stressing my hair out a bit so I had a hot-oil treatment too. But even then as Sandy, the stylist, combed it I pointed out that it's so fine and puny that it sticks straight out even when it's wet. He promptly combed it straight out on each side and stood there giggling -- I looked like Pippi Longstocking.

I saw another good film last night, Ocean's Eleven. George Clooney, mmmmm, he's so peachy. The cinema was in a new shopping centre near Leith, and I arrived early so I could do some shoe shopping. I bought two pairs! My favourite pair are comfy, nice and wide for my broad feet, with low-cut backs that don't rub on my poor afflicted achilles tendons. I'd like to wear girlier shoes, but they make my feet hurt -- sometimes bad shoes can make my whole body hurt, especially my ankles and knees. So comfort comes first. The other pair were trainers to replace my old worn-out ones. Also very comfy, good strong support.

I think I'll go back to Ocean Terminal -- I don't care for shopping centres usually, but it's nice and quiet. "Unsuccessful" I think they call it.

I went to Ocean's Eleven with Fiona, who I used to work with, and afterwards we had dinner at a fish restaurant in Leith. The mussels were wonderful and so was the wine, but the grilled sardines were a bit dry, having been scorched.

And then home to walk the dog -- who is on short walks at the moment due to what I think (hope) is just a sprain. Luckily the weather's been terrible, wet and cold, so bad that he hasn't wanted to go out some days. Every place we go regularly is a sea of mud, but I'm managing to keep the house reasonably clean with a rigorous programme of paw-wiping. I feel very sorry for the owners of spaniels and similar.

I managed to get to bed early last night so wasn't too shattered by the early start for the html course this morning. We're doing some really interesting stuff at the moment, and if I'm too tired I don't take it in. I've got the dentist on Thursday morning (repair to an old filling) so that'll be an early start too.

Good news! I have been randomised for embolisation. Or womblisation as Andrew waggishly calls it.

This is the research study I volunteered for -- I'm going to be a guinea pig for the new technique. I'm thrilled, because the alternative was hysterectomy, which I wasn't keen on at all. For the last few years I've been trying a variety of other things -- herbal tonics, special diets, craniosacral therapy -- but nothing worked (though the herbs did help a bit, and I'm going back to the herbalist for another course).

With embolisation they thread a catheter via the groin up into the arteries supplying blood to the fibroids, then inject some material, polystyrene or similar, that blocks the blood flow. The fibroids just shrivel up and die, all in the space of a couple of weeks. The procedure's carried out by a radiologist, and I get to meet him in a few weeks for a chat and to sign away my right to sue if it all goes horribly wrong. After that I wait. And wait. And wait. The waiting list isn't too bad, actually, only three to four months.

It's great news, such a relief to know I'm not going under the knife. The mortality rate is much lower for embolisation for a start, only two deaths in 1,200 procedures in Europe and none in 4,000 US cases. They're really careful about infection: before the op they take a swab and if anything at all grows they give you antibiotics and don't operate until you're all clear. So I feel really confident. Plus, by the time I go in the department will be in the new hospital.

In other news: Anthea and her cat have found a new home. Errrr ... that's it. Actually lots going on, but nothing worth reporting!

Tuesdays are gruesome. Up at sparrow-fart, not even time for coffee this morning (yes, I know it says Wednesday up there) before walking the dog, then off to varsity for the course. It's finally getting interesting though, so it's worth it. The tutor still spends far too much time getting us to practise stuff he tells us won't work; I'd rather we learnt more about the stuff that does.

After that I was shattered. I'd intended to go to bed early yesterday but Anthea phoned after midnight (flat-hunting woes in Oslo); not that I was in bed, I was watching a video, Dancing in the Dark. So in the end I got about five hours' sleep. I thought when you got older you needed less sleep! I seem to need more. Five hours should be plenty.

So this afternon I thought I'd have a nap for a couple of hours -- hah! I woke at 4pm, what a waste of a day. Luckily I had it off, having worked Sunday. It was pissing down with rain anyway, so I didn't miss much.

Crocuses out everywhere! So I need to start working in the garden, weeding and so forth. DId some pruning and tidying last weekend, and also planted a gooseberry bush Chad gave me, a cutting from one of his. Garlic is springing up all over the place. I planted it a bit late so I don't know how it will do this year. I also planted the weird-looking flowers some of the bulbs grew last year -- I'd just flung them down and they'd started sprouting on their own.

Mudcat -- song lyrics

I was singing in the car on the way home last night and discovered my voice has gone rusty from disuse! Cracked and croaking. It had improved a bit by the time I got home, but I want to keep in practice.

So this site was a great find ... it's mainly traditional folk songs, but there are a few show tunes too and foreign oddities.

AFGHANISTAN (MOSCOW NIGHTS2)
(Frank Hayes, Kathy Sobanski)

Moscow nights are cold, but they're crisp and clear
Let's go South for winter this year
To Afghanistan, it's such a lovely land
And the people are Russian as can be.
In Afghanistan, right next to Pakistan,
With it's warm water port upon the Sea.

Exciting things are happening there every day,
And each night a fireworks display
In Afghanistan, it's such a lovely land
And it's warmer by far than Moscovy
In Afghanistan, or maybe old Iran
Where the oil fields are wonderful to see.

Exotic sights to see in each quaint old town--
--those that were not burned to the ground
In Afghanistan, it's such a lovely land
And the natives are friendly as they can be
In Afghanistan, it should be Russian land,
Just a small part of Brezhnev's legacy.

No clue as to what the tune should be!

A clue to Bertie's home...

This links to a story about dog racing that contains the following paragraph:

"Martin Griffin of Caherea, whose Bogus Ben ran a career best of 29.43 at Galway recently, was involved in the tenth race, this time with Hurry Ben from the same litter -- Hencliff Ben-Clare Abbey. However, he had to be satisfied with a runner-up spot on this occasion when the race went to the 29.90 winner, Travel on Susie, the 2/1 favourite."

Clare Abbey is Bertie's mother! So he's probably from Caherea, wherever that is. Oh, uh, County Clare, over on Ireland's west coast, south of Galway. It's the hometown of Noel Hill, "unanimously hailed as the greatest concertina player of our era".

"Legend has it that there was a concertina in every other home".

How interesting.

Other links show Mr Griffin has more Bens on the go: Bog Ben, Bogue Ben, No Hurry Ben. And just for something completely different, Nebraska.

Drama next door: I met F on my way home from walkies; she was en route to work. Then I met her husband, B, hurrying off. When I left the house ten minutes later to go to work myself, she was outside, trying to pry open her kitchen window!

"My husband, grrrrrrr, I'll kill him!"

It seems that none of them have a key, they've lost them all. So someone always has to be home. But B, though he knew his oldest son, M, was on his way home, had left the house empty and shut the door behind him, knowing full well that that meant the entire family was locked out -- including himself! M had duly arrived home, and had fetched F from her work to help him break in. An upstairs window at the back was open, but M would have to wait for his younger brother to get home, because he's the only one who can get in the window.

I don't feel so bad about locking myself out now.

(This isn't me!)

The MRI scan was pretty interesting -- man, those tubes are small though! It must be a nightmare for anyone with claustrophobia. There was barely enough room for me to lie with my arms by my sides, and my nose seemed to be an inch from the top.

I was strapped to the table with special pads around my pelvis (the area being scanned) and then the table slid inside the tube. I was given earphones too -- tried to reject them since Frank Sinatra was warbling loudly through them but they made me keep them on for hearing protection. It does make quite a racket, but I still think Ol' Blue Eyes just added to any potential risk.

They did two one-minute scans first, then three four-minute scans. After that I was whirred back out so the nurse could inject me with dye. That was tricky, as ever -- my veins collapse as soon as the needle goes in. She ended up injecting the stuff into the back of my hand. Then back inside the tube for another four-minute scan and a one-minute one.

All over in 45 minutes from go to whoa. Very pleasant having the rest of the evening off.

I went to the supermarket and there was a huge display of Easter eggs. Sigh. I should stop getting irritated by this, but really -- Easter's not until the end of March! Who buys their eggs now?

Hex headquarters
Why a hexadecimal clock is better ...

The main DIY project is complete! It looks wonderful. It was incredibly hard work, what with the wallpaper steaming and all, but the result is great -- it was the worst room in the house, so it's wonderful to have it looking so good.

Here are some in-progress shots.




The wardrobe doors are in something called Mellow Sage, in a satin finish. The walls are left-over paint from the hall - went on quite well considering it's been sitting in the shed for about a year. I went mad and bought some new gloss white; there was a litre or so left over, but gloss tends not to keep as well as emulsion.



The chest of drawers is dark blue and so is the bedspread.

I think the email problem is solved. Can't be sure, but it seems like someone somehow got hold of my password. Which is kind of scary....

DIY update
Gruesome getting the wallpaper off, but worth the effort. I got a steamer yesterday, which has turned out to be a good buy. The wallpaper is heavy, embossed stuff, stuck on very firmly. Two different patterns too, an interesting look! Not. My worst fear was that the walls would be in bad shape, but in fact they're ok, apart from a coating of stinking nicotine. I won't need to use lining paper.



Poor Bertie is hating the whole business. He doggedly went to sleep in the corner where his duvet usually is, and only finally left when the steamer had transformed the room into a sauna.


Meanwhile outside a gale was raging. The bridge was closed to traffic -- watching it from the window I could see it heaving up and down by a terrifying amount. In the afternoon I took Bertie down to the marina to get a closer look at the river. Wild! The air was full of spray, and even though the bridge was closed it was making more noise than when it's full of cars.



A tree had come down by the waste water treatment plant and smashed part of a wall. They'd already sawn the tree up by the time we got there. A man was killed by a falling tree in Dunkeld; in the morning we walked down the railway track that runs between trees. Sheltered yes, but dangerous - the trees were whipping around and groaning.


We went out on to the jetty to check on Colin's boat. The wind out there was like a hand pushing firmly against you. Bertie, being a high-sided animal, had trouble staying upright when he was broadside to the wind.



I talked to Colin later on; he lives in Dunfermline and had to detour via Kincardine to get to work, probably an extra 30 miles on his journey. He said he phoned the bridge control and they told him the wind there was gusting up to 99mph! On the TV they said it was 99mph at the Tay bridge, and 85mph at Edinburgh, so I'm not sure if it was so strong here. Could have been -- the river really was wild.

Tomorrow I've got the course, then I'll paint the bedroom. I washed the walls with sugar soap tonight, and I'll rinse that off before bed, so it'll be ready to go tomorrow. No idea what colour. I'll probably just do it in Putty, same as the hallway.

Step By Step - Reinstalling Windows

Noooooooooooo.........

But yes, I may need this during my week off.

Pre-Date Confidence Builder

We don't have sound cards on our work computers (just as well), so I have no idea what this man is saying. But he looks as if he's saying something hilarious.

I'm still having email trouble -- sometimes an email arrives only to disappear later on. It's very annoying. I apologise to anyone whose email has gone awol.

Bertie had a prang today: blasted up a bank in pursuit of a squirrel and raked a big patch of hair off on some rusted fence wire. The skin was grazed in a couple of places and it's come up in a big purple bruise but apart from a bit of stiffness he seems ok. He screamed like a baby, so it must have hurt. I called him over and inspected the damage, chatting away to him as I do. "Poor dog! Does that hurt? Ooooh, what a close shave. Hmmm... you won't need the vet I don't think..." etc etc.

Looked up, and there was a row of railway workers in their orange overalls, looking on with smirking interest.

A friend has very kindly offered to have me put to sleep if Bertie ever starts talking back (and then she's going to join the circus and make a fortune from him).

PROJECT GUTENBERG -- Free Books On-Line

This is a wonderful place to rediscover old favourites. Hundreds, maybe thousands of out-of-copyright books have been transformed into text files that you can download free.

All the classics are there, plus some surprisingly modern things, like TS Elliot's poetry.

More techie problems ... I haven't had any email for three days. It's annoying, because I know at least one email is missing -- a little pop-up message announced the arrival of a letter from Pinky, but when I checked the inbox, it wasn't there. Gone for good, it seems. An email arrived today (just junk), the first one since Thursday.

Hi-tech is fab until it breaks down.

I'm supposed to be sweeping and vaccuuming, better get cracking. It's been raining a lot, so the floors of the house look like a continuation of the outdoors.

Grumble. My printer has been playing up for ages & I haven't done anything much about it besides fiddle around uninstalling and reinstalling and plugging it in in a different place etc etc. Finally I've decided the USB port is at fault, and I was going to phone the computer shop and get them to replace it.

But I can't find the receipt for the computer. All I can find is a job sheet for the last time I took it in, in August. I've spent an hour going through absolutely everything -- finding some other stuff I'd lost along the way, of course! But not the receipt.

Bah.

I'm going to be a guinea pig! I've applied to sign up for a research trial of this new technique for dealing with fibroids that I read about on the internet.

I went to see the gynaecologist at the hospital yesterday and showed him the stuff I printed off the website and he was most impressed. "It's always great when a patient can read up about the various treatments and make an informed decision," he said. This is so different from the way doctors used to be -- they would be angry if you let slip you'd read a newspaper article about your condition.

This doctor was also terribly excited, because they've been running this trial for ages but have had trouble getting women to join it. I'm the first patient in the Edinburgh area to want to sign up (the trial's also running in Aberdeen and Glasgow). He fetched the research sister to talk to me about it -- it's quite complicated.

First of all (next week), I have to have a battery of tests and an MRI scan to see if I'm suitable. Once the results are in (a month), they "randomise" me because it's a comparative trial; they "flip a coin" to see if I'll have the new treatment or a hysterectomy. Not quite random results, it's skewed 66:33 in favour of embolisation. Then either way, it's at least a four-month wait for surgery.

So in June/July I'll either be having major surgery with a two-month recovery time, or a procedure under local anaesthetic that will hurt like blazes for two days but be all better in two weeks. And I won't know for five weeks which it is.

Today I came over all public-spirited and spent half an hour picking broken glass of one of the walkways I frequent. I noticed it yesterday, and ticked off one dog-walker who was busy kicking it into the leaf-mold at the side of the path. At least you can see it when it's laying on the tarmac. Anyway today I filled most of a supermarket carrier bag with shattered bottles -- some of the bits covered in dog poo, yechh. There's still more further along -- maybe tomorrow.

Took this today - one of the things I like about winter!

EditPlus Text Editor, HTML Editor, Programmers Editor for Windows

Sounds good - a replacement for Notepad for HTML hand-coding freaks. Which is probably what I'm about to become.

The Smirking Chimp

This takes a while to load, but it's worth the wait, especially if you hate the Smirking Chimp, aka George W Bush.

Oh, I had a serious look at the shed doors yesterday and I don't think they're worth saving. New doors are reasonably cheap, but then you have to paint them and fit locks, plus the jams will need replacing. Hmm.

Fixed the links, heh.

The first episode of the course was a little disappointing in that it was just going over old ground to make sure we were all up to speed. It was good, however, in that I learned a few things I didn't know. We spent a bizarrely long time looking at HTML tags that are non-standard and/or proprietorial, and which we were solemnly warned not to use. Uh huh.

The course tutor is the former head of the computer department, a lively fellow who scorns the use of editors -- we're doing all our work on Wordpad, the little text-editing program that comes with Windows. Good practice, but embarrassing; with the HTML editors you just punch the buttons with the purdy pictures on them and the program does all the coding, so I was struggling to remember what to put where. (To see what HTML code looks like, click on the View menu up the top there, and choose Source. You'll get a separate window with the code of this page in it. Kewl!)

Getting up early was traumatic, I had to set the alarm for 7:30am! To complicate matters, Bertie somehow got the impression that I needed to be up much earlier than that, and barked loudly in my ear to tell me it was ... uhhh, I don't know, it was still dark, 6am? Once again, though, I'm amazed at how much you can squeeze into a day when you get up early. Astonishing.

Yesterday, I took Bertie to Arthur's Seat for a looooong ramble, plus did a bit of shopping. When I got home I realised I'd forgotten the main item I'd gone into town for in the first place -- a spare battery for the wonderful camera -- so off I went. While in town I went to my favourite bookshop, which has fallen on hard times and is for sale. It's a tragedy! I used to live just around the corner from the South Bridge branch, the main one. It has three stories crammed full of books. It's an academic bookseller, so it has an incredible range of stuff, plus classical music CDs, plus there's a good stationery department. And it's open until 10pm weeknights. Sigh. They're hoping for a sympathetic buyer rather than an asset-stripper.

I stopped by the Cameo cinema on my way home, thinking I might see Mulholland Drive, but it was two hours to the next showing. I could have seen Apocalypse Now Redux, but I didn't feel up to it. So I went home instead.

My car's dirty again. I hate housework.

I still didn't fix the links. Never mind, I'll get there eventually. Tomorrow maybe. Hmmm, better be tomorrow because I start the advanced HTML course on Tuesday and I'd look pretty stupid doing a course like that and having broken links on my website.

A productive weekend otherwise -- Anthea's kitchen looks fab with its new coat of paint, and today I washed my car. By hand, with a bucket and sponge. All the roller-brush carwashes in town were broken! Dang. But it was worth the effort, it's gleaming. Vacuumed the inside as well, it was filthy. I'm not exaggerating -- there was enough of Bertie's hair in there to construct a new dog (ok, slight exaggeration), not to mention Bonio crumbs, mud and dead leaves. And of course all the windows were covered in snot and dribble. No, not mine.

I've organised a week off later in the month, and am trying to decide what projects to attack. Inspired by Anthea's kitchen, I've been thinking interior decor. But I may tackle the shed doors too.


There are two doors, as you can see. The one on the biggest shed, on the left, isn't too bad, in that it actually works. But the wood is rotted and the paint hanging off in sheets. The window is broken, so it's damp inside. I might patch the glass rather than attempt reglazing -- it's wire-reinforced glass in a metal frame. Any advice welcome, John!

The other shed, the former coalshed, is more tricky because the door frame has pulled loose from the shed. The brickwork where the hinge bolts on is broken and has been badly repaired. The door itself is also rotted and peeling, but it's the frame that most needs doing because it makes opening and shutting the door almost impossible. This shed doesn't have a window, so at least it's dry in there.

I don't know whether to replace both doors or to try and repair them. They are solid doors (apart from the bits that are rotten!), with nice old-fashioned knobs, so I'd like to keep them if poss. I may be able to patch in new bits of clean wood at the bottom, which is where most of the damage is. There's a ceiling light in the main shed that I may try and repair too.

If this sounds difficult, the redecoration project is nearly as bad -- it involves stripping off badly-hung textured wallpaper and filling any holes/cracks in the plaster, then hanging lining paper and painting it. Big, big job.

Minor projects also in the queue: mending loose tiles in the bathroom and putting sealant along the edge of the new kitchen tiles.

I didn't fix those links, sorry. It's been one of those weeks. I did some ironing today, that was about it, apart from dog-walking of course, and obsessive picture-taking.

I couldn't sleep last night due to severe work-related stress. My mind was just fizzing too much. So at 5:30pm I got up and had a hot chocolate, read for a while and eventually got off to sleep.

When I came in to work today, the first thing my boss said was: "I'm really tired, I was so stressed out I didn't sleep well last night."
"Nor did I, in fact I got up at 5:30 and had a hot chocolate."
"You should have phoned me," piped up another colleague, "I was awake at 5:30 as well, and I got up and had a hot drink."
"I couldn't sleep either," said someone else.
"Me too!"

It was all stress-related. It is not a happy ship.

I got up reasonably early though, because it's not fair on poor Bertie to have to wait around endlessly before his morning constitutional. He's adjusted pretty well to my slovenly ways, but he does like me to get up by 10:30. He wakes me if I'm still asleep, then goes back to sleep himself while I tutu around having breakfast and reading the paper.