Put my booking in for this year's Maelstrom.

Soon my bad cantonese accent rides again.

an inch of fine white flufy powder that has turned the roads of edgware into slick rinks of black ice. Not a problem since we live about 1/4 of a mile from the A41 and can easily get down the gentle slope towards the main road.

Or, as it is today, the treacherous ice slide of doom into the fast flowing traffic that cares not at all that there's no way you'll be able to stop once you crest the top of the hill.

So I tried going another way. No dice, in a rear wheel drive car I couldn't make any progress up even the slightest of gradients without starting to drift sideways, dangerously so at one point.

End result is the car parked in a side road and me walking to the tube station. Not too cold, but very very slippery. I may be making crampons this evening.

Drive up to Stabcon, utterly uneventful

Stabcon Good fun with good chums, good food, Good drink and Hot Fairy on cat action*

Drive back, entirely uneventful.

Carry on.


*You had to be there

It's 280 miles to Manchester,
We've a full tank of gas, half a case of relentless, it's dark and we're wearing wooly jumpers.

Ah, Gentle Reader.
Do come in and warm yourself, 'tis extra toasty today to keep the cold out of our aged bones. A fact of which I feel I can be justifiably proud considering that when Best Beloved crawled shivering out of bed into the pre-dawn chill the frozen pipes permitted not the tiniest dribble of hot water. Something clearly needed to be done.

A little thinking, a little tracing of pipes from A to B and the judicious use of a hair dryer got everything moving again and allowed the morning to proceed as planned. Water ranging between teeth clenchingly cold and scalding hot was once again ours.

To whit, Best Beloved gets a text message saying her place of work is closed and returns gratefully to bed, and I am forced to drag my weary body out into the biting winds, braving ice slick roads and dodging pedestrians so heavily bundled in layers of insulation that they are virtually blind.

Successly parking near the station, nipping in to the shops to grab a bag of dishwasher salt just in case my tyres freeze to the tarmac, all these things lead me to consider that today is a day of victory.

Alas even the most victorious day cannot prevent some kinds of special fail.
I have left my phone at home.
Oops.

Especially if you're a pussycat...

The humans are all sitting very still, barely able to move after a huge feast that smelled really excellent, there's tuna in the catfood bowls* and there are all manner of bits of crumpled paper to play with.

But all this pales, pales into insignificance Gentle Reader, when one considers the highlight of Christmas.
It's not the food, though that's excellent, it's not the multitude of cardboard boxes from which one pussycat can pounce unexpectedly on the other, it's not even the tinsel that's been leapt on so extensively that we've had to tap it up out of pussycat reach.

Oh no Gentle Reader, these things are good, but what care pussycats for tawdry baubles when one of the humans has a wind up aeroplane that can be clawwed out of the air and definiatively killed.

Life is sweet. (meow)


*_{Even Pussycats need Christams dinner}

Gentle Reader, please come in and sit down.
Anywhere will do. Pick a chair and unceremoniously flop into it with every evidence of relaxing satisfaction.
That's what I've been doing today.

Why ?
Well, 'tis a medium to longish story and might take a few paragraphs to tell, at least one of them will be unjustifed ranting.*

It begins last thursday night. I was spending a comfortable evening curled up on a sofa with lursa_esk talking nonsesne and entirely failing to watch the tail end of Wall-E** Best Beloved was coming home and saw, as she had seen before, a chap sleeping rough outside the library in Edgware high street. Or more accurately not sleeping rough, stamping his feet and flapping his arms in an attempt to keep warm in the as the snow fell around him.
The dear girl hesitated not a jot in offering the chap our spare room for the night, given the choice between that and possibly freezing to death he agreed.
No worries, kindness to strangers, general spirit of christmassy goodness, damn fine plan.

Alas it then began to fall apart around the edges.
The fellow spoke no English, at all. Only understanding "hello" because it's the same in Romanian. Worse, he seemed to consider that the repetition of a Romanian word with increasing expressions of incredulity at our incomprehension would actually have some effect. Dodgy machine translators didn't help, especially when compounded by the way that Romanian pronunciation bears even less relation to spelling than does English.

A smattering of Google Fu got me the number for the Shelter helpline, a little perseverance with the phone and I was speaking to a very helpful chap called Matthew who arranged a Romanian interpreter and spoke to the fellow about getting him a more stable place to live. At which point the incredulous expression came out again and even listening in English we could tell that the poor chap on the end of the phone was getting short shrift. Apparently he had no desire to move into a hostel, safe house, shelter, or any such thing and how dare anyone suggest it!
He was going to Paris as soon as he could find his way to Kings Cross, St. Pancras international.

Once Matthew the Shelter chap had explained this to me in slightly baffled English we began to get somewhere. We still had no idea of the fellow's name, since every time we asked we got a different reply, possibly variations on "huh ? What kind of stupid question is that ?" in Romanian, I have no idea.
However we had the glimmerings of a plan.

I sat him down infront of the tube map and pointed at Egware whilst hovering a notepad window with the Romainan word for "HERE" writ large, and with the feeling of a conjourer producing a particularly fine rabbit from the smallest of top hats carefully traced the line down to Kings Cross.
This was met by a stream of rapid fire Romanian from which I managed to glean that the map was all very well, but how the hell does one GET to kings bloody cross.
The chap had been sleeping on a bench 200 yards from Edgware tube and had not the slightest clue that it was a station.
"Underground" doesn't translate, Tube doesn't translate, "Metro" fortunately does and the plan continued.

So bright and shiny the next morning we get out of bed and pile down to the tube station. I hand the chap a travelcard and he looks utterly perplexed at the very concept just taking a train to what he seems to regard as some kind of holy place. The shrine of St. Pancras, patron saint of eurostars.

Someone hadn't been saying their prayers, had they...
No running Eurostar trains, ticket office and all information posts closed, harrased Eurostar employees everywhere giving the same "Sorry everyone but you're fucked " talk in French, English, German, Spanish, Polish, Turkish and Greek. But not Romanian.
So head home, Unnamed fellow still in tow and try to work out plan B.

Best Beloved has, by a stroke of excellent luck, discovered that some people at number 57 are themselves Romanian, so we might be able to get a slightly better idea of what the hell is going on with this lad's head. Not least was the question of whether he actually had a ticket for the eurostar, or even the money to pay for one.
Three simple questions later and we discover that the chap's name is Mikka, that he has about £150 in his pocket, £100 of which is earmarked for a train ticket to Paris, the reason he doesn't want to stay in a shelter is that shelters cost money, and that he's seriously got no idea where he is or how to use any form of public transport without someone holding his hand.

Eurostar tickets at this time of year start at £140 for the laughable unavailable, and £179 for those you can actually buy. Game over on that plan.

Our neighbour volunteers the information that a bus service to Romania itself leaves from nearby Kingsbury every couple of days, and that we can get information about it from a certain shop near Kingsbury tube.
A brief trip out there, discover that indeed there are busses running from Englad to Romania, that they are well within Mikka's budget, and that they've already left for this week. Two hours earlier.
Bugger.

Plan C. Bus to Paris, leaves from Victoria coach station, earliest available ticket this morning since the Eurostar failure has jammed all other ways off this shamble of an island with people desperately trying to get home for Christmas.

So for another two nights we had the chap staying in our spare room. Sleeping fully dressed, vegged out infront of a television he had no idea how to control and no desire to learn. Eating nothing, but drinking pint after pint of hot chocolate and occasionaly getting upset when we'd run out of milk again.

During this time my cold was getting worse and it was greatly to my releif Best Beloved agreed to take Mikka to Victoria this morning at Far Too Early O'clock and put him on the bus.

As of a few minutes ago she came back on her own. either the Mikka is on his way to Paris, or she's given in to some of my less charitable urges and shoved him down a storm drain.



*Not sure which one
**Do take the opportunity to watch it, look through the kiddy layer, we are working on many levels here.

But this made me giggle even more than lursa_esk with a kitten on her head.*



*Not much more mind...

Gentle Reader.
I salute you oncemore, please excuse my not rising to greet you. I assure that I hold you in the highest regard and my recumbent position is born of necessity rather than indolence.*

I have, as you may know recently recovered from an unpleasantly life threatening respiratory illness, alas it seems that my trials and tribulations are not yet over.
For the last few days I have been noticing a certain soreness in one foot, a tendency to limp and a distinct discomfort in climbing stairs.
Today, having a little leeway from my usual endless toil, I spend a number of hours reading a book at the local hospital. An experience somwhat marred by the presence of at least one child who seemed to be experimenting with tones of voice approaching the untrasonic and at least one parent who's entire disciplinary structure appeared to consist of the occasional muttered imprecation along the lines of "Fukkinell. Can't you fukkin beeyave wen I goze fer a fag ?" and then abandoning the child to its own devices whilst she smoked another...

Fortunately, after a mere three hours a quite businesslike and serenely competant nurse diagnosed my poor sore foot with Plantar Fasciitis, an inflamation of the tendons in the sole of the foot.

Ibuprofen is oncemore my friend, and walking long distances my enemy.


*Contains at least 85% of truth

Gentle Reader, please do come in.
Please, take a seat, and avail yourself of the brandy whilst any still remains, I rather fear I have made rather better use of the decanter than is my usual wont.

Today has not been a good day.
I might even go so far as to say that today has been a rather trying and in some respects upsetting day. In all honesty however it has been upsetting only in that I have had to be extremely firm with a chap who I should probably have been extremely firm with some weeks, perhaps even months ago.

To cut a long story, and one distressingly full of the kind of meetings characterised by the phrase "does anyone have any idea what else we can do ?", I am one coder down from a full team. Depending on whether or the chap comes to his senses and accepts a transfer to a different project we may be looking for another coder.

Must have good knowledge of C++, familiarity with AI concepts and methods and be able to demonstrate a firm grip on reality. Depressives and paranoids need not apply.

In Other News, Kittens chase laser pointers. Oh yes, they do.

How ironic is it to post a journal entry to clearly say that you cannot think of a damn thing to say.

But Silence communicates nothing.
If I keep silent you cannot tell whether I mean yes or no, black or white, with sugar or without.

Sometimes a solid answer is not available, "I don't know" still works.
It says that I heard the question and that you may wait for an answer.

I cannot even say for certain why I'm writing this. It seems necessary.

Gentle Reader I have a sore finger, not quite blistered but it's working on it.
So, I'm going to put the bass down and walk away slowly...

For a while at least.

Gentle Reader, this weekend had a plan, a plan which didn't work out for some very sensible reasons.
It's a shame, but I'm calm about it. Some things take time to get right.

But it does not do to sit around wishing for the future to arrive faster. So, I've been a little busy.
My guitar teacher was pleasantly surprised that I was able to make a decent showing in a run through of a beginner's exam.* Alas unless I rebreak my wrists and get the joint in my left index finger repaired I may remain a beginner for some years.
The fishtank has never looked cleaner, and two new fish are exploring with every sense of deep fishy satsifaction.
I've watched a bad film**, throroghly enjoyed it, and noodled around for some time trying to get the bassline to the theme tune right. The intro is easy, but the rest is hidden behind some idiot playing the guitar and some singing chap getting in the way. Bah.
So if anyone has a clue where I can find the bassline to "The little things" by Danny Elfman*** written down so I don't have to do something pointlessly clever like build a notch filter to plug into a chromatic tuner and then scribble the results down with a pencil I'd be much obliged.

Such things must wait for another day. One sore finger and a certain pair of pussycats meeping gently because I'm not either feeding them or fussing their ears right at this second.
Either that or they are trying to tell me that midnight is a good time for humans to sleep and let the cats prowl without let or hinderance.

They may well be right.
Sweet dreams all.



*80/100 is a hubris inducing mark at this stage, even for grade One.
**"Wanted", Excellent, trashy, Angelina Jolie looking gorgeous as usual.
***Yes, it was he. I was surprised too

Gentle Reader, you're back. Or perhaps I am, some days it's hard to tell.

Drag up the remaisn of a chair and hurl yourself unceremoniously into it, I'll go grab a bottle of port and a little cheese. Sod the biscuits, let's do this properly.

I am, for no easily explainable reason, exhausted. Not from excessive physical activity, nor from lack of sleep, nor even from anything the doctors can trace as a lurgy. I'm just plain tired.
Were I a squirrel I'd be getting set for hibernation. Watching the days grow shorter and the nights grow longer before curling up someplace warm with someone extra snugglesome and setting the arlam clock for half past april.

It's a tempting plan, anyone care to join me ?

See what your brotehrs and sisters are up to, shocking...

http://www.wireless.is/projects/crows/

The official site
http://www.profounddecisions.co.uk/

Rule7 forums
http://forums.rule7.co.uk/

The "rule 7" Forum for maelstrom
http://forums.rule7.co.uk/Forum37-1.aspx

Take a peek, see what you can see.

Today is a day of contradictions. A day which swings from one end of the pendulum to the other at a frequency which should by all common sense lead to an overall sense of an average day.
Alas common sense appears to have been on holiday since late summer* resulting in a day which is both hectic and tedious at the same time.
I have a great desire to be elsewhere, to be curled up on a sofa with someone snugglesome and lovely** watching a daft film and letting our hearts beat closer.

Later I shall be heading towards the frozen north where smescrater and malteser will welcome me with open arms, an open door, and an open bottle.
At that point life will be sweet.

Until that time, I shall be asleep at my desk. Talking, Typing, doing things, but asleep nonetheless.


*I'm suspecting a "too good to pass up" deal for a small villa on one of the lesser known greek islands
**You know who you are

Lookit me Ma, I'ma typin'...
Which means I've actually crawled out of bed to play with my toys.

I'm still sweating like some kind of mutant sweating machine and my breathing feels, well, "fragile" is the best word I can think of to describe the way I have to be careful with every breath so as not to trigger a crippling coughing fit. But I am up and about to some extent.

Many thanks for all the good wishes you've sent in my direction. I'll do my best to put them to good use and get myself running properly again.

Clarithromycin is a Horrible drug. A very effective antibiotic, but its side effects are vile and unpleasant. Blinding headaches, auditory and visual hallucinations, the rather understated "aterations in taste or smell" which really go well with the nausea and vomiting by making everything smell rancid and taste of copper except fresh water which tastes almost undrinkably sweet.

Mango juice however. Lully...