Today is a very special day indeed. Not only does it happen to be the birthday of my favouritest person Babel, but it marks the day on which he officially ceases to be A Young Person and has instead become a Grown-Up Oh yes, Babel has now reached the ripe old age of Read the rest of this entry »

I would write this post in German, except that I feel a little bit rusty at the moment. I have admittedly been getting a bit of practice in this week, but I still find it shocking how much of a language it is possible to forget once you don’t use it for a period of months. I know that all my German knowledge has not seeped out of my brain, that it is in fact just resting in a dark recess somewhere, but it is requiring conscious effort to pull it back out to the front again. So many words are getting stuck on the tip of my tongue

Munich is probably the most expensive city in Germany but also the most beautiful and exciting, and I am determined to drag Babel there one day soon, although preferably in the summer. I am going there with my family tomorrow for a mad Christmas market visit, and am very excited A full blog report on exactly how much delicious German food I managed to cram into one weekend will follow at some point next week, but not Monday because I’m seeing Babel for his birthday. Read the rest of this entry »

I have just logged into my blog and been instructed that I need to upgrade my Wordpress to version 2.7. I don’t know what anyone else thinks, but it feels to me that for the past few weeks, every time I’ve logged into Wordpress to make a post, I’ve been asked to upgrade. I’ve literally only just upgraded to Wordpress 2.6.5, which as far as I could see had no discernible (or discernable??) advantages over Wordpress 2.6. Sometimes I wonder whether I ought to go to the trouble of upgrading at all, but then Babel has installed a nifty little plugin which does most of the work for me, and people who know about computers have given me the impression that these upgrades are more important than I will ever understand. Having had all those issues with 3ix, I don’t want to slack off on upgrades and leave myself open to some other sort of security problems down the line. Read the rest of this entry »

I apologise for the distinct lack of blogging over the course of the past week, and resolve to do better going forward After my rather wonderful birthday, I proceeded to have a rather miserable week in which I succumbed to a slight cold and had to get up at the godforsaken hour of five in the morning to commute to London. I was booked to a small audit in London, of a computer software business my firm had never dealt with before, and so there was some uncertainty over how long the job was going to take. For this reason the manager decided it was going to be too risky for me to book hotel accommodation, which I then might have to cancel at a later date and incur charges for, and thus I merrily agreed to commute. Commuting to London is something which sounds like a perfectly reasonable idea on paper, but when it gets to 5am, it’s cold and dark outside and your breathing resembles that of Darth Vader, it’s the sort of thing you wish you hadn’t volunteered for Read the rest of this entry »

A year ago yesterday, Babel presented me with this website I must say that it was one of the biggest surprises of my life, and it’s taken me most of the year to get over it! Yesterday was once again my birthday, and so my website is a year old and I am a rather shocking quarter of a century Read the rest of this entry »

Babel explained this to me on Monday evening, and it was so helpful that I thought I’d paste it here so that I stood more chance of remembering it. I’m already doing woefully badly at remembering the difference between fewer and less, you and me v. you and I, but I am trying… Read the rest of this entry »

I have just accidentally swallowed a tic-tac. That was not the opening sentence I was intending to write, but literally just as I was on the verge of starting typing, I mismanaged putting a tic-tac in my mouth and narrowly avoided choking I can now no longer remember what my incredibly witting opening sentence was going to be Read the rest of this entry »

My week down south was about as enjoyable as I had been expecting. By the end of Friday, my colleague and I agreed that if we had a choice between voluntary euthanasia and life in Wantage, we would choose euthanasia. And I don’t even agree with voluntary euthanasia. Well, not really.

To be fair, the hotel was alright this time. I could pick fault with it, on the grounds that the milk in my room had gone off, the water came out of the cold tap warm, and it wasn’t obvious how to get water into the bath, but such sins can be forgiven when a place has free wireless The attached restaurant was Italian, which should have been really good, but unfortunately it was too posh to serve pizza, and when I ordered lasagne it came complete with peas Read the rest of this entry »

This morning I have had to get up at 5.30 to go to Wantage, and so I am depressed Forget the fact that Babel routinely gets up at this time to go to work; he’s not human so he doesn’t count Getting up at this time of the morning makes me feel ill, and going to Wantage makes me feel that life is devoid of all possible hope and purpose. Forget sending people to Coventry, Coventry actually has quite a lot going for it when you compare it objectively to Wantage. Honestly, that place is a godforsaken hole. Read the rest of this entry »

Damon just tagged me in this meme. I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to adhere to all the rules, because I can’t think of six people I can reasonably tag, but I shall do my best at answering the questions myself I actually found this rather difficult and struggled to think of any answers at all I could give which Babel wouldn’t already know about me, so I’ve had to settle instead for things which Damon (probably!) doesn’t already know. Read the rest of this entry »