Groundhog Day

So, I'm travelling on the tube, returning from visiting Mac in hospital. It's late night, I'm alone and I'm on unfamiliar territory. I'm feeling uneasy, to say the least.

I have two changes to make, but the route is clear in my head. All I need to concern myself with is potential muggers, rapists and weirdos.

I make it to Baker Street, no problem. I now require a train, any train, going right (a.k.a. Eastbound) to King's Cross.

West is left, East is right, I chant to myself as I follow the signs.

I find the Metropolitan line, with the Westbound platform clearly labelled. There's no sign on the opposite side, but there's a train about to leave - no time to check - I'm sure it's fine.

I find a seat opposite an impossibly big-boned man eating a bag of crisps. Perfect! He'll be too interested in the crisps to bother me.

My next stop should be Great Portland Street. It's a long time coming. I wait patiently, trying to ignore the crisp man and his incongruous bag of sports equipment.

Ten minutes later and the station approaches and it's...Finchley Road. Arse.

I leave calmly. I cross over to the other platform. There's nothing to see here people - this happens all the time.

Luckily, my Eastbound train is soon here. Ten minutes later and I'm back with my old friend Baker Street.

Everybody gets off. Except moi. Still, I haven't been mugged, raped or weirdoed yet - that's the main thing.

More people get on. We wait. I look mean and scary and unapproachable. Eventually we depart - I'm finally on my way home.

Ten minutes later we pull into the station. I look out of the window and it's...FINCHLEY ROAD. Aaaarrrggghhh!

I am seriously freaked out. For a few seconds I actually believe that I'm trapped in a time warp / horror film / bad dream.

I snap out of it just in time to get off the train, and make my way glumly across to the other platform.

Ten minutes later I am back at Baker Street. This time I ensure that the train doesn't terminate and turn back. King's Cross, when it finally looms, has never looked so good.

• Total journey time: 1.5 hours.
• Distance travelled: approximately 5 miles.

The Waiting Game Sucks

Mac’s operation has been postponed, as he is too ill for surgery. He’s been admitted anyway, so that he can get some proper care and hard core drugs. He also has his own wheelchair which is a bonus. I must take in a grubby vest and jogging bottoms for him to complete the Andy from Little Britain effect.

In other news, I earned £342 for doing no work, which was nice.

Consider The Fact

Technical difficulties yesterday meant large portions of time hanging around waiting for natty little downloads to do their thing. On the plus side, this gave me chance to start reading one of my new books, A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.

I didn’t get too far with it, as it’s definitely a take your time to think about it sort of book, but I think I’m going to enjoy mulling it over.

I did like this little snippet from the introduction:

“Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth’s mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stuck fast, untimely wounded or otherwise deflected from its life’s quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result – eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly – in you.”

Go on, admit it – you feel pretty special now, don’t you?

Put Me Through to I.T. Please

Evil spirits lurk within my computer. I have been trying to exorcise them, but with little effect. Where’s the Pope when you need him?

I caught one of those little Trojan fellows trying to sneak in on Monday. I thought I had put him into solitary confinement with only the most basic of provisions before he faced the firing squad a short time later.

Alas, I fear he has left behind his putrid aura, floating around my hard drive like a foul stench.

UPDATE:
What a way to while away the hours. I have downloaded and run Giant, Ad-Aware and Ewido, but I think it was CWShredder that finally saved the day.

As far as I can make out I had been hijacked, although the experience was a lot less Hollywood that it sounds.

As a result of my (albeit unplanned) IT research I have also been compelled to install Mozilla Firefox. I don’t know whether it’s Firefox or all the junk that’s now been stripped from my machine, but I am on FIRE!

I’d better dash, before a real IT person comes along and blows my cover.

More Pressing Matters

Well, it seems that the bellydancing class was a short lived phenomenon. *snivel*

Mac has taken a turn for the worse, so I can hardly be off having fun while he writhes in agony by himself.

After almost 4 months of waiting for diagnosis via the NHS, desperation has finally forced us to go private. He’s being rushed in for major open surgery on his kidney on Friday – that’s just a week since his first private appointment.

We are so lucky to be in a position to take this option; the alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.

I think I’ll bury my head in the sand about the actual surgery for a while yet though.

As for the bellydancing, it's merely been postponed...

*la la la shimmie shimmie jingle jangle*

Bellydancing

I have made enquiries about joining a class tomorrow evening, and I’m feeling rather pleased with myself.

Enough of the paperwork and the DIY and the ill husbands (well, one ill husband to be precise, but that’s more than enough). Bellydancing is the way forward. It’s the only obvious choice.

If all goes well I shall be shaking my thang, exotic lady style, and dancing away all that ails me.

(Please let there be a place left in the class…)

Bean Counting

In my former life (the one I lived before I gave up a respectable and well paid career to become an unsuccessful entrepreneur) I worked as an auditor. I could instil the fear of God into company directors and ledger clerks alike; armed with a calculator and a spreadsheet I could eradicate errors and change the course of company profits forever…Moohaahaahaaaa!

At the time I never understood how people could be so useless at keeping accounting records. It’s just numbers people! Do it right and do it on time – how hard can it be?

I have since been enlightened.

The reason they weren’t so interested in correctly recording their profit is that they were more concerned with actually making profit.

I have learnt this lesson the hard way. (Is there any other way?) Somehow I have made it to the end of the tax year with no orderly accounting records in sight. Far from it.

The dishevelled pile of papers that balances precariously on my desk now has to be fashioned into some sort of Inland Revenue friendly format.

Woe is me.