September 2002

September 30th, 2002. Yet more from Paris

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We ended up standing around in the car park for ages.

After the wedding, all the English people jumped on a coach and headed for the suburbs, for the party. We drove past the place where Princess Diana's car crashed, on the fifth anniversary of it happening. We drove out through central Paris and got onto the motorway autoroute, via car-filled underpasses. As we crawled through the Saturday traffic I looked down at a car we were overtaking and saw, on the laps of the back-seat passengers, the wedding programme: "Catherine and Arnaud, 31st August 2002". It seemed like the whole of Paris was interested.

We drove out of the city across loops of the river, into the countryside and onto ordinary roads. Eventually, we arrived at the chateau holding the reception. We were left in the car park, and told to wait. "We have to wait until C&A get here so we can line up and all shake their hands. It's what the French do."

Over an hour later, we were still in the carpark, getting tetchier by the minute. Catherine's mother looked more and more tense. Eventually they arrived, and the whole shaking hands thing was abandoned in favour of food and drink. They'd made an effort to cater to English tastes; plates of Indian snacks which had been made by people who weren't entirely sure what Anglo-Indian food should taste like.

There had to be photos at the reception, of course. We were all trooped back into the carpark, keeping a firm grip on the champagne and samosas. After ten minutes of photo-taking with Catherine shouting out things like: "right, now, for this one I want everyone who was in my French class on Wednesdays in university second year," we noticed the best man and the photographer were both carrying folders, very thick folders. They listed every single photograph Catherine wanted taking, and named every person who should appear in each one. They were all carefully numbered; there was about a hundred of them. We decided we needed more champagne.

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September 30th, 2002. O frabjous day! Calloo! Callay!

"Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas --- only I don't exactly know what they are!"

- Lewis Carroll, Through The Looking Glass

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September 28th, 2002. Schooldays

My parents phoned today as usual, and told me about this. A girl I went to school with has been sent to prison for 30 months for heroin dealing.

She wasn't someone I knew at all, really, but it's still slightly surprising to hear something like that. The only clear memory I have of her is in a German class; she was showing off her slightly-septic pierced belly-button.

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September 27th, 2002. Nightlife

Later today I'm skiving off work and going over to Glasgow, because I got persuaded to go to National Pop League, at the Woodside Social Club. I've never been before, but apparently it's good enough that it has at least one regular who comes up from London every month specially.

I almost wasn't going to go, because I got extremely pissed off last night. Someone else from outside Glasgow had been trying to persuade me forages to go along. "It'll be great," they'd said, "neither of us have anywhere to stay so we can just stop in a café all night." Eventually, I said yes, and got all excited about it. Then, last night, they suddenly say: "Um, you can't come with me, because I'm going with someone who doesn't like you much; I've had this arranged for ages." As I said, I was extremely pissed off with this and I still am; this sort of childishness is something I hate having to deal with. But I'm going to go anyway.

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September 26th, 2002. Flashback

A few months ago I wrote this entry, with a link to Andrea's site, which explains how you can turn a pair of trousers into a skirt.

As I said at the time, I have a few pairs of unwearable trousers that I wanted to try it out on. This week, I've finally got round to it, and it seems to be going quite well. When it's done I might try and get a photo of the thing so you can see what it looks like.

Fortunately, the pair of trousers I've tried first seems to have enough good fabric to be able to fill all the holes in without too much sewing. I'm not sure what length to make it; ideally I'd like a nice long skirt, but I couldn't really get it below the knee because of the holes' positions, so I'm tempted to try make a cute shortish one instead. It's probably going to end up being roughly A-line.

If I had a sewing machine, of course, it would be simple. A seam that could be zipped along in 30 seconds takes me a good 45 minutes of inexperienced, wiggly hand-sewing. I've been doing it sat in front of the telly in the evening (just like my mum), and still haven't got very far yet.

When I was little, I read all my mother's handicrafts books - stuff like The Readers' Digest Book Of Things To Make And Do - and taught myself knitting and crochet and embroidery and tapestry and everything like that. Of course, now I've forgotten it all, and I never brought any knitting needles or anything with me when I moved away from home. Looking through the "needlecraft" section of Jenners for needles and thread, I saw all the knitting needles, wool and other sewing stuff, and felt all inspired to learn how to do it again. World of dodgy home-made clothes, here I come!

[incidentally, no sooner did I post this than I started getting spam for a "Portable Hand-held Sewing Machine". Grrr. It's probably just coincidence, but if any spammers are reading I'd like to point out that I am never, ever going to buy anything from you, ever.]

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September 25th, 2002. Look to the heavens

Round my way at the moment there's lots of posters up advertising The Beginning Stages of the Polyphonic Spree, the new album from the similarly-named crowd of Texans. I've never heard their music myself, but they look like the in-house choir of some 70s cult, with 10 singers and 13 musicians all wearing long white robes.

Anyway, the posters show the album cover art, which has them all standing around in their white robes and 70s hair, looking at the camera. All standing looking at the camera but for one woman right in the centre, who is sat down and looking up at the sky.

I kept looking at this, and I think it makes it a lovely image. Your eye is drawn in to the scene and you wonder what she's thinking about. She's the one you notice, never mind about all the others looking straight at you. She's the one who draws you in and makes you want to buy the album.

I don't know if I *will* buy it, though.

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September 24th, 2002. Breaking news

Ages ago, I wrote this entry about Radio 4 SOS Messages, and whether or not they are ever broadcast any more now we all have mobile phones.

Well, someone called smokeyjohnson has kindly commented to let me know that one was sent this evening. So, they *are* still being sent. Thank you.

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September 24th, 2002. "I'd like to order a Goddess, please"

Today's Meme Of The Week is Belief-O-Matic (which lots of people, such as Peter, have mentioned; I originally got the link from a Sinister chap called Will Porter). It's an online quiz thing, but without the annoying button to put on your blog afterwards. It tells you what religion you are, or what religion it thinks you ought to be.

The problem is, though, that everyone I know who's tried this - except me - gets the same result. They're all Unitarian Universalists, with Liberal Quaker somewhere near the top too. All of them. Is this just my friends, or is everyone in the world a secret Unitarian at heart?

I'm not, though. I'm a neo-pagan. I've already written: "Friday: go buy a sacred circle and an athame" in the diary.

(seriously, though, I wasn't surprised it told me that. I've been wondering whether I should hint at The Boss that he should get his pagan friends to indoctrinate me)

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September 21st, 2002. Voice Of The People

So, the other evening, I was at home cooking roast potatoes and feeling so tired I wished I could curl up on the sofa instead. There was a knock on the door.

"I'm looking for Caitlin and her mad ex-flatmate," said the fifties-aged man standing there. Well, not exactly, but that was what he meant.

"Um ... why?" I replied, feeling woozy and hoping that this wasn't yet another bill the said madwoman had forgotten to pay.

"I'm here on behalf of [someone whose name I can't remember], your Scottish National Party candidate in the forthcoming election," he answered, "and I was wondering if you'll be supporting him."

"What election?" I said, because I'm sure I'd have noticed people campaigning if there was one. The next elections are in May, and that's a long long time away, so it can't be that.

"The Scottish parliamentary elections in May," he replied.

"WHAT!" I wanted to say, "THAT'S EIGHT MONTHS AWAY! You'll be lucky if I actually make a decision about who I vote for, instead of just randomly picking anyone who isn't a Tory." I didn't, of course; I just mumbled something about cooking my dinner, and he went away. His man won't win, anyway; they usually scrape into third place just ahead of the Tories and Greens (we're currently the only region with any hope of returning Green members, apparently). He might make a regional list seat if his party like him; but if they like him they wouldn't have put him up in this area anyway.

If he does get in, I'll have to ask Kristin to make his working life a misery. Or I would if I could remember his name.

In other news, this week I won £50 on the Premium Bonds again! Woo! So, I'm off shopping today.

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September 20th, 2002. Cold pizza ... mmmmm

It's good to see that the BBC still finds time to publish news reports on important scientific experiments about vital aspects of daily life.

(yes, I realise that this "news report" was actually published over two years ago. I'm slow.)

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September 19th, 2002. Victoriana

Walking to work - market research interview - chatting with The Boss - lunchtime - another power cut

Does anyone regularly read books that have this sort of thing at the start of each chapter? A wee italic paragraph with a few phrases describing what is going to happen? I always think it seems awfully Victorian, but I'm sure recently I read a more modern book that did the same thing.

One book that I'm not thinking of, but which does something similar, is The Name Of The Rose (by Umberto Eco), where each chapter heading has a line like: "CHAPTER XXVIII, in which Adso of Melk finds another body, and William of Baskerville confuses the reader with long words and the history of medieval heretics. The author more-or-less admitted to doing this deliberately to give it a period feel.

Anyway, what I really mean isn't that sort of full sentence, but those selected phrases which offer tantalising glimpses of the delights contained within each chapter. They irritate me. If they were full spoilers they would be very annoying, but they're just misleading little hints. They can make a few small events seem like they are all vital, pivotal points.

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September 18th, 2002. Turning Japanese

Another day of power cuts. This morning we had a big meeting of builders, electricians, plumbers and heating engineers, so they could all blame each other and argue about how to rebuild the place without the power going off every seven minutes.

Something made me shudder today when shopping for my lunch. Passing the fishmongers', I saw octopuses in the window. Upturned, with tentacles stretched out, suckers upwards. Shiny white things like soft china. I wrinkled my nose although I couldn't smell anything.

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September 17th, 2002. Technical hitch

The hosting company appears to be having a wee problem at the moment, so don't be surprised if things look a little unusual, or a few links are borken. Hopefully they'll get on top of it before long.

Update: it seems to be working again, touch wood and fingers crossed. *Hopefully* I remembered to put everything back properly the way it was, too, so nothing should be broken now.

Not only that, but all the computers at work seem to be breaking down too. The builders in the next room keep knocking the power cables and tripping the breakers for the whole building; The Boss is not very happy at all, and the computers don't like having their electricity suddenly taken away either.

Update: the builders have wandered off home (it's 4pm), so there's a bit less danger of the power going off again. Unless someone gently nudges a wire, or something.

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September 16th, 2002. Style Points

I was reading the fashion pages of The Guardian on Saturday, and started to spot a pattern. This, apparently, is the list of things that are going to be in style This Season:

• Velvet. Check. What did I buy to wear at the wedding? A velvet jacket.
• The "loved-and-worn" look (or something like that). Check. I seem to buy all my clothes second-hand at the moment, and all the ones I bought new are getting rather old.
• Corduroy. Check. Definitely. Almost all my wearable trousers, in fact.

AARGH! MY WARDROBE IS ACCIDENTALLY FASHIONABLE!

At first I was mildly pleased, but then I realised that in six months' time - when I'll be exactly the same, I expect - I'll look like one of those fashion victims who always lags a few months behind the latest thing. And that's so not a good look.

Maybe, at Christmas, I should just raid my mum's wardrobe and go all non-ironic 70s retro. Or, on the other hand, I could do what I normally do and just wear what I feel like regardless of whether or not it's the style du jour. I only read the fashion pages for amusement, really.

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September 16th, 2002. Air Ambulance

On my way home, I stopped in the Meadows to watch a helicopter. It must have been a training exercise rather than the normal rushing-organs-to-the-hospital events that I used to watch from the library windows, when I worked overlooking the helicopter-landing part of the Meadows. The crew weren't hurrying; they ambled round the place fiddling with stretchers and folding orange blankets, with children standing round about and trying to get turns pretending to be a casualty. Eventually, they were shooed away, the crew climbed inside, secured all the doors, and flew up and off over the trees.

The trees in the Meadows are all numbered; each has a little green plaque nailed to it rather painfully. Deep in the bowels of the City Chambers there must be a big list enumerating them all. "106: alder. 107: oak. 108: ash. 109: oak again. 110: another bloody oak." I should keep looking at the Evening News jobs page to see if they ever advertise Tree Enumerator positions.

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September 16th, 2002. Is this what Friends Reunited should be for?

Had an awful school nightmare last night. I'm in my mid-twenties now; I shouldn't be getting them any more. Maybe my baking had psychoactive quantities of cinnamon in it, because I had bizarre dreams all night.

School nightmares are, to my mind, the worst sort. They usually involve me being in a fight with someone who bullied or taunted me; either I try to hit them and can only move very very slowly, or I can punch or kick them over and over again but nothing causes them any pain - they just look at me and laugh.

I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea here. I'd never even think about attacking people like that in real life. If I ever came across any of these people in real life, I'd just say nothing and cross the street. But this is what happens in my nightmares, until I wake up shaking and sweating. It scares me that I dream this sort of stuff.

Is cinnamon psychoactive at all, or did I just make that up? I know nutmeg is; maybe it was that I was thinking of.

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September 15th, 2002. French Wedding

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Catherine always had a certain air about her, when we were teenagers. She was the one who was always very middle-class, and always bossing round other people's social lives, trying to buy me a new wardrobe (which i never wore) and getting us to hold "dinner parties". She was always rather ... regal ... about it all.

So when she entered the church, and the organist started playing The Arrival Of The Queen Of Sheba, I had a complete fit of the giggles. I whispered to Tidswell, who was sat next to me: "do you know what this is?" I told her, and she was in giggles too.

We'd been bad enough earlier, speculating as to whether any teenage boyfriends would appear on the church's balcony in the best Dustin Hoffman style. We worried that the wedding cameraman would spot us giggling or yawning and zoom in; he was hiding in the pulpit, occasionally popping his camera over the parapet like a submarine periscope.

The wedding was entirely bilingual. Everything got said twice, from the vows to the sermon. This made it three times as boring as normal; not only did you have to listen to everything twice, but one of the times you couldn't really understand it either. I nearly fell asleep in the sermon, but I *had* been up since 4am. The priest - an American woman - was telling everybody about the three most important things in a marriage; respect, relationship and religion. I can agree with the first two, but I didn't really want to have to listen to the third argument.

The church was all very big and impressive, but it had some awfully gloomy black-and-yellow stained glass. Being The American Church In Paris, it also had lots of tourists, some of whom gatecrashed the wedding service. Maybe the lurking cameraman - when the service was going on he left the pulpit and roamed the side aisles spotting people who weren't following the orders to sing the English and French verses of the hymns - maybe he got the tourists on film, and when Catherine comes to watch the video she'll just look and say: "who on earth are *those* people?"

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September 15th, 2002. Just Like Sunday School

I tried some baking this afternoon. A fruit loaf, with lots of cinnamon and orange juice in it. Whether it tastes good or not is incidental, because it has already made the flat smell lovely. The recipe involved mixing together milk, eggs and orange juice, so I was kind of expecting to end up with just a big curdled mess; but I did it carefully bit-by-bit and it seemed to work out.

Last night was a trip to Glasgow to see Homescience play, along with The Chemistry Experiment (from Nottingham) and The Butterflies of Love (American, and taken to long, drawling speeches between their songs). Homescience and Butterflies are doing another gig tonight, in Edinburgh, but I'm too lazy to go along on my own. The Glasgow gig was in a church hall, with all the lights out and nothing but a few tea lights on each table. As church halls don't have bars, everybody was directed to the nearest off-licence and came back with cheap alcopops and bottles of Stella.

Incidentally, thanks to Anna in Moscow and Dave in London for linking to this place. And hello to anyone who is reading this by clicking on their links, of course.

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September 13th, 2002. Don't break that mirror

I accidentally walked under two ladders today. It's Friday the Thirteenth, and I walked under two ladders. It's a good thing I'm not supersitious.

Well, apart from not saying the p-i-g word. And not splitting the pole. And always opening tins of food and packets of crisps the right way up (although I'm not sure why opening them upside-down is unlucky). Nothing bad has happened yet today, touch wood. (and apart from saying "touch wood" and finding wood to tap). I'm a little nervous about posting this because there's still an hour or two of today left for things to go horribly wrong in.

This week's additions to the Recipe Tree page are a selection of vegetarian dishes with a south-western USA flavour. It's nothing to do with me what recipes get picked, you know.

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September 12th, 2002. Transformation?

Something at work is intriguing me. The boss's girlfriend looking at fetish websites was amusing enough, but this is genuinely intriguing.

There's someone I've heard of through a mailing list - let's call her X. I know - from her former email signature - that about a year ago, she worked here. I've looked at her website, but there really isn't much about her on it beyond her CV and hobbies.

Part of my job involves looking after and rewriting small software that X wrote when she worked here. None of it is credited, but occasionally I'll be discussing a particular routine with the boss and he'll say "Yes, X wrote that;" and before long I learned how to spot her programming style.

The intriguing thing, though, is that he doesn't actually say "X" when she's mentioned. He says: "Y-cum-X." That's always what she's referred to as. Y-cum-X, where Y is a radically different name.

Just by my desk is a stack of filing boxes with old, out-of-date company accounts and personnel records, and in one are personnel files for both X and Y. Two files. But they're always just one person when they're mentioned. Now, X's website does apparently show her wedding photos. I've not looked in detail, so they might not actually be hers. But even if this was a married couple, would the boss really refer to them as if they were one person with two names all the time? And two different people wouldn't have one common programming style, right down to the mis-spellings.

It's really intriguing me, but I have no way of bringing this up with the boss that I can think of. "So, Y-cum-X - was this some kind of jobshare thing, then? Or one person who had a complete identity change?" I need to find some way to ask him subtlely.

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September 11th, 2002. Face for an eye, mouth for a tooth

I had been planning to follow Peter's fine example and not post anything today, deliberately. Last night, though, an old friend phoned me, so I decided there was one thing I was going to say.

Her husband, you see, is in the Navy. Recently, he was told: "We're sailing for the Persian Gulf tomorrow. We won't be home until March." There is going to be a war; the invasion date is already set. The things the politicians are saying in public are completely irrelevant.

Two months today, I'm going to sit down and think about everyone killed by war or terrorism, whatever country they live in. All victims matter equally; it doesn't matter if they're our friends, our enemies, or the enemies of our friends.

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September 10th, 2002. Yet Another Holiday Story

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At first, France scared me. I was terrified when we got there, because I was surrounded by a country I didn't understand. I thought I was about to get run over every time we crossed the street, and had no idea how I was going to manage to get food or do anything.

I suggested we should go to the church right away, because I wanted to spend as little time as possible in the middle of the city crowds. W had already bought a pile of metro tickets, and we disappeared underground.

Again, all you cosmopolitan readers are probably used to the little details of foreign travel. I'm not, though. The metro was packed, and every train had a busking accordion-player on it. None of them were very good; one of them seemed only to be able to play the music from Tetris. The doors on the metro are impressive; they are opened with little chrome knobs. Flicking the knob up unhooks something and makes the door suddenly sprint open. I'd been warned by John that sometimes on crowded trains the local travellers hold the doors shut and stop anyone else getting on; but I didn't have to fight to get on or off.

We sat around in a little street-corner café for a while before going to the church. W handled all the ordering and waiter-chat; there was no way I was going to try it. When I'm scared and nervous and convinced bad things will happen, I get in a mood where I just panic, refuse to believe that anything good will happen at all, and just want to stay away and get out. The café was opposite a small hospital, and as we sat sipping our French coffee (W and J) and British tea (me), we watched estate-car ambulances wheeling old women in and out on stretchers.

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September 9th, 2002. Public service announcement

The people who have been arriving here by searching for "The Boy Cartographer" might like to know that they are playing a gig in Glasgow on Friday, along with The Hector Collectors, at the monthly Winchester Club, which is held at the Woodside Social Club just off Great Western Road.

Personally, I prefer the sound of the Winchester Club Special Edition, the following night at Hyndland Church Hall, because Homescience will be playing, along with The Butterflies Of Love.

Advertisment over. We now return to your normal wibbling.

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September 9th, 2002. Internationality

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"Sod this," said John, "I'm getting up." It was ten to four in the morning; we were both awake although the alarm wasn't due for fifteen minutes. He was in the bed and I was on the floor, of a small studenty bedsit in Romford.

Travelling always gets me emotional. I've said that already, though. We walked to his station for the 5am train, me repeating: "What have I forgotten? What have I forgotten?" We had it all timed out: the 5am train should *just* get us to Liverpool Street for the first Circle Line Clockwise; the first Circle Line Clockwise should connect with the first Northern Line Southbound, and then we'd be at the international terminal with plenty of time to check in.

I was right at the front of the Eurostar train; and they are very very long. My seat was right above Westminster Bridge Road, where I'd been for the karaoke the previous night. John, of course, was right at the other end of the train.

When I was little - I've probably said this before too - we'd always go on camping holidays to Kent or Sussex, then get the trains for day trips to London. I recognised all the places we passed through on the train, from my childhood holidays: Orpington, Sevenoaks, Tonbridge, Ashford. I tried to spot the names of all the small wayside stations, so I would know just where we were and how soon we would get to France. When we passed through Sandling Tunnel and split off from the line to Dover I started to get excited, and as we rushed past the shuttle terminal and the freight yards I tried not to look like a soppy idiot. Most of the other people in the carriage had got on at Ashford, were going to Lille, and looked like typical Kentish families with lots of tracksuits, tans, and gold jewellery. They occupied themselves by reading the Daily Mail; I occupied myself by looking at the tunnel walls and thinking "Wow! All that water!"

The first *really* surprising moment was after we were nipping through northern France, and crossed over a motorway an autoroute. Everything was mirror-imaged, with the traffic zooming away on the right-hand side and an exit sign pointing off to the right; I felt startled and unsettled.

You can tell I've never travelled much. I'm sure all of you lot are incredibly cosmopolitan people who are used to travelling from country to country and continent to continent, and are used to getting used to looking left instead of right, and don't see all the different little details as being significant. I've never travelled much, though, and all of these little things are an experiance. French power pylons, for example. Some are painted red and white, and most are shaped like broad-shouldered Frenchmen carrying electricity over the country. They are shaped rather like prehistoric Cretan figurines.

The last time I visited France I was 15. We stayed in a decrepit seaside resort called Berck (it became semi-famous a few years later as the place where That Paralyzed Chap wrote The Butterfly And The Diving-Bell) and toured some of the many, many British graveyards in the Somme valley. The railway passes across the Somme battlefield now, and I saw a couple of war cemetaries from the train.

If this entry is disjointed, it's because I can't see how to put all these little things I was thinking of into some sort of context. My trip is a huge collection of little thoughts.

next part »

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September 8th, 2002. Nightmare (not quite)

Really weird scary dream last night, about a bizarre Slime Monster thing which lived in a swimming pool and had a grand plot to take over the world, using airline pilots all wearing penguin suits. I have absolutely no idea how.

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September 7th, 2002. Miaow

The Cat has taken, for some reason, to sleeping in the bathroom sink. I like to imagine that he has reasoned it through: the bath is for person-sized creatures to lie down, wash themselves and have a snooze; the sink is just the right size for cats to do the same, so that's what it must be there for.

He *is* a cat though, so I'm probably being a bit optimistic about his powers of logical thought. More likely, it just seemed like a comfy place to curl up.

I'm not going to turn the taps on. That would be cruel.

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September 6th, 2002. You know you're definitely back in Scotland...

... when you see a sign on a wall saying: "WET PAINT. Watch yersel"

Embra Nights is a rather good blog in a soap-operatic kind of way. If it's that well-written, I don't care whether the contents are true or not. The writer admits that it's not 100% factual, and it does look like it has a bit too much plot to be real life.

It's still good, though.

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September 5th, 2002. London (part two)

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We went to a pub quiz in Highgate in the hope of some celebrity-stalking action that never happened. Me, Liz, Mark, Ken, Marianna (who apparently reads this sometimes. Hi Marianna!) and Bill and Shannon, the token Americans.

"You can't have seven on your team," said the Pub Quiz Lady. "Six I might allow, but not seven. You'll have to split up." So, it was just three of us: me, Mark and Shannon. Despite this ... well ...

The PQL was reading out the answers at the end, and, about halfway through, Mark said: "I don't think we've got any wrong yet, have we?" I thought about it, and we hadn't. She read some more answers, and we still didn't get them wrong. By the end, we were wide-eyed. She announced us the winners, with a perfect score, even though we knew it wasn't really true and we'd actually got the last question wrong. But even so - free drink!

Of course, by then it was nearly closing time, and as I live four hundred miles away I won't get the chance to drink any of it myself. But it was theoretical free drink, which is nearly as good.

The next night was probably just as exciting, but I missed most of it. We went out to a karaoke night at a pub near Waterloo - the same people as before, plus Stevie and Mandee. Naturally, I didn't sing anything, but I was very impressed by Marianna's Salt'n'Pepa stylings, and Liz and Mark's Don't Leave Me This Way duet. Sadly, I had to leave at half-nine to get to a bedsit in Romford, before getting up at 4am the next day. Because the next day, I was going to France! Woohoo!

next part »

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September 5th, 2002. Get me a ticket to Outer Mongolia!

Summer must have ended. Up until yesterday it was hot constantly, but today it's cold and windy and rain is blowing against the office windows.

Today's Top News Item: English explorers in the jungles of Indonesia have found evidence for the existance of a Sumatran species of yeti; a few hairs from an "unknown primate species". Their next project is to go off in search of the Mongolian Death Worm, which can kill with a single glance. At least, that's what the Mongolians say.

Next section of What I Did On My Holidays will come later, when I remember what I did.

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September 4th, 2002. London (part one)

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Travelling always gets me emotional. The voice of the announcer at Doncaster station, for example, makes me think I could be back with my family. Another thing is: feeling the train slow down through tunnels and pull into King's Cross; getting off the train and looking around at the grand roof and honey-coloured brickwork; walking down into the Underground, past the fire memorial plaque and onto the escalators.

I stayed with Liz for a couple of days at first. Liz lives in a lovely terraced house in North London, in what I kept thinking of as Archel Street. She is also very good at cooking, writing, art and photography, and knows all about everything but doesn't show off about it. In short, she's great, and she has a very comfy spare bed.

London for me was always childhood, going on the Tube and visiting museums. Every year when I was little my parents would take me camping in Kent or Sussex, and we'd get the train into London and visit interesting places. So I went to the Science Museum, because I'm still a big geek.

The Science Museum management, however, are bastards. I went in the door. I saw two things. First, a post office. Second, a very big ticket desk with a long list of prices on the wall behind. Hmmm. I was *sure* it was free entry again now. Positive. I carefully scanned the price lists. Lots of combination prices for various exhibitions. Lots of season passes. Nothing, though, that mentioned a price for basic entry - but, on the other hand, nothing that said "Admission Free" anywhere. No way to get in other than via the ticket desk or a wee gate that said "pre-booked tickets".

So, I did the only thing I could do in the circumstances. I nipped into the museum shop, popped through a door at the back with a No Entry sign on it, and found myself next to a beam engine and some model cars. I tried to look nonchalent for a bit, in case anybody had spotted me, and in case I was supposed to pay. Which, as it happens, you don't, although they seem to be trying very hard to prevent you noticing once you get there.

It's changed a lot from when i was little. A lot of the models of things with buttons to push and handles to turn seem to have gone, and there look to be lots of displays with funky lighting and video effects. I was quite pleased to find a stairwell which still had original 1961 decor - green marble-chip flooring and modernist banisters. The Shipping gallery, too, looked unchanged since the museum opened.

Being a geek (see above), I was very impressed by the Pilot ACE, a primitive valve-powered British computer whose console looked like something out of a 1950s phone exchange, with lots of toggle switches, bulbs and a phone dial off to one side. I also stared for some time at a case full of Klein bottles; glass pipes twisted in various complex ways so that they have only one surface (rather than two) and no inside or outside. Lots of glittering surfaces and brain-melting topology.

The next day, back at Liz's, I idly picked up one of her library books and read it. Amaryllis Night And Day by Russell Hoban, about some people who seem to be able to get in and out of each other's dreams. And one of the things that is central to the book - one of the things vital to its theme - is the Science Museum's Klein bottle display. The book's narrator even, at one point, goes to visit the real-life glassblower who made them all, to discuss the exhibit. It was all one of those coincidences that makes you think that maybe the book could come true.

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September 4th, 2002. Recovery time

Clearly, I still hadn't recovered from the weekend. I sat down at my desk after lunch yesterday, and faded. Just enough energy left to explain to the boss why our server kept crashing, why I was crashing, and to drag myself to the comfy chair in the kitchen. I slept for a couple of hours, then went home.

To be fair, it has been extremely hot in the office lately; that was why the computers were dying. I had all the windows wide open, but the air was completely still. Because of the building works, The Boss has taped a complicated arrangement of polythene over the office door to keep the dust out, so the room heats up like a greenhouse. Not good for computers or their minions.

Incidentally, the Recipe Tree entries that were posted whilst I was away have now been added to the archive.

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September 3rd, 2002. If it's Tuesday, this must be Edinburgh

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I'm back!

I had a really good time in both London and Paris, and met lots of people who I'd not seen for months, lots who I'd not seen for years, and lots who I'd never met before. Now I'm back at work, but still recovering from a general lack of sleep over the weekend. I'll tell you all about it over the next few days, naturellement.

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