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"Aha!" I hear you all cry, "An update at last!"

Well, yes. And yes, I'm going to stick my usual excuse in, which is "Busy, very busy." Also, I've developed a stinker of a head cold, which has left my sinuses filled with something not unakin to that white, fish-smelling glue that they give you to use in Primary school; the stuff that boys have endless fun making fake skin with in order to peel it off in front of some unsuspecting compatriot, usually female, always squeamish, just for fun. I'm in the happy position of having a new, full-time, salaried job. And as my day jobs all seem to go, this one has gone down the route of being hellishly busy. A deadline is looming at the end of the week and I'm having to work quite a lot of overtime to get the thing done, so once again there isn't much time for writing or editing. But that doesn't mean I'm not doing any.

I've edited the embarassingly explicit story and I'm quite happy with it. I'm probably going to give it another pass and maybe put some stuff in that I think is missing. I realised, thinking about it last night whilst trying to sleep, that although I know what's special about the main character, I've made a point of not saying it specifically in the story, wanting to let the story let the reader know in its own time. Unfortunately, I've found myself wondering if it's not a little too vague; there's a chance, I think, that people might come to completely the wrong conclusion and, if they do, that means they're not going to get the point of the story which largely... well, misses the point.

Yesterday, in a mini-splurge in Borders, I bought myself the Writer's Block (along with a couple of Python books, because writer I may be but geek I've always been; Python is my new favourite language), which I've wanted ever since I first saw it. My plan, once I've got some time, is to try and do a little work triggered by it each day, as a way of keeping my hand in the writing game and to keep my mind active. I might even post some of the stuff here for the sake of keeping you all amused when I haven't got anything better to say.

Of course, all this working and not writing (and, by extension, not posting) means that I've missed several key events during the last few days. England lost the ODI series to Sri Lanka, which I'd expected, and on the same day lost one of their greatest ever fast bowlers, Fiery Fred Trueman. Oh, and t'other England dropped out of the World Cup, though I couldn't really give two stuffs about that.

Lessee, what else did I want to comment on at the time? The anniversary of the London bombings is coming up; I'm waiting to see whether the new workplace will be any more affected than the old by it (I didn't write about it at the time because I was working there, but the Mob staff seemed disturbingly uncaring about the whole thing). If not I'll probably go into the town centre to observe the silence; it would mean more that way, somehow.

I spent this evening working with one eye on RealPlayer, which was showing NASA TV. I watched last year's launch of STS-114 and it sent chills up my spine. STS-121 was no different; I had goosebumps in places I didn't know geese could bump as Discovery roared into the sky. I'm going to have to go to the Cape some day, just to see a launch for myself (though they'll probably have retired the shuttles by the time I get there; maybe I'll go when they launch the next moonshot (pause for irony...). Oh, and PayPal cancelled my LibSyn subscription without asking me, so I'll have to set it up again if I decide to carry on podcasting. Thanks for that, PayPal people.

Anyroad. Back to work. As Fred would have said, I'll sithee.

You know that your hair is getting long when, for the first time in your life, you can chew it.

The Passage of Time So here's a photo instead. Observe, digest, ruminate, contemplate at your leisure.

It's a little odd, being someone who occupies only a very, very small corner of the internets, to find that people that I haven't had to go out and tell about this blog have actually taken the trouble to leave comments on it. One of them is my very good friend of about eight hundred years Paul Bell (hello Paul), and another (but not the only other) is Tom Burke, who writes to say:

Hi there, Just to let you know it was me who designed and built the grouse on the ball thingamy. Check out how I made it here http://www.white-wabbit.co.uk/White-Wabbit%20Front%20Page.html Glad you enjoyed it!

So thanks Tom, both for responding and for having built such a great little piece of whimsy. I shall drink a glass of Grouse in your honour tonight.

In other news, I have today rediscovered the simple pleasure that can be gleaned from reading a book in public. I don't mean to suggest that I'd entirely forgotten how delightful this could be, but when you're writing a book - or at least when I'm writing a book - the inclination to read the works of other people diminishes more than somewhat. For one thing this is due to the plain and simple fact that you don't have the time, but for another (at least in my case) it's because you're afraid of cribbing other people's good ideas, which just isn't cricket, and besides, you wouldn't feel as good at the end of it if it was all copied. Anyway, today, having the right to a free Caffe Nero Hazelnut Latte, and having time on my hands and money in my pocket, I sat in said outlet of all things caffienated and read Neil Gaiman's very wonderful Neverwhere.

If you've never read Neverwhere then you're an idiot, as was I until I sat down and started reading it today. I may even spend the money and go back and do the same thing tomorrow.

Here's an annoying thing to round off with - GMail Chat is only offered in the US English version of GMail, which is why it had disappeared from my panel of options. Now this is all well and understandable in many respects, but you'd think that they'd at least warn you about this when you changed from US to UK English. What I don't understand at all, however, is the fact that the Delete button, that ever useful feature that GMail lacked for oh so long, is similarly not available in UK English. Perhaps the good people at the Googleplex thing that we across the pond treat the word Delete differently than our American counterparts. You say tomayto and all that.

And now, back to work. I have a sex scene to finish, and I'm going to have to stop thinking about the fact that, were I to get it published, my Grandmother would want to read it. That kind of thing can seriously put you off, let me tell you.

Asda, just after half past eight on a Friday evening. The store is relatively quiet for this time of night; the masses who would normally be doing their after-work shopping are relaxing for Bank Holiday weekend.

The tannoy is playing The Wonder Stuff's "Size of a Cow." I sing along quietly as I wander down the bread aisle in search of that ever-elusive loaf of Warburton's brown.

I look up at the young woman standing in front of me. She's singing too. We both glance to the side - my left, her right - at the young man standing there, holding a ciabatta. He's mouthing the lyrics along with us.

"Damn, blast, look at my past, I'm ripping up my feet on the broken glass I said Oh wow, look at me now, I'm building up my problems to the size of a cow..."

We belt out the chorus, or at least we would if we weren't in a supermarket. We grin stupidly at each other for a second then carry on about our business, happy in the knowledge that we aren't alone in our memories of the early nineties.