After a delicious roast-beef Christmas dinner at about 2pm, presents were opened. Highlights included giving my parents a gorgeous carved olivewood bowl I found in a Weihnachtsmarkt in Berlin; and, on the receiving side, a set of pieces by Richard Rodney Bennett called “Partridge Pie” (which I have tried; they are really rather charming), Bill [...]

I don’t sing in the shower but this morning, for some reason, a few songs came to mind as possible candidates for rewrites: Alan Titchmarch joins the Bee Gees for “You should be gardening”: I plant my bulbs at midnight, Water them at dawn. My sunflowers will grow higher, I’ve got the neatest lawn. What [...]

My parents invited friends for drinks. It was a nice evening but a little tiring having to talk to people all the time. (Hence going to bed before midnight.) Got a game of Zèrtz in with a son of one of the families attending—on his first game he got within one marble of beating me! [...]

…a party was held in Herne Hill, and it was joyous! Having had to show my face at an aunt’s birthday party yesterday afternoon (because pretty much all the family was there), I managed to get to the Midwinter party just before 9pm. I was given some mulled wine (yum!) and I went out into [...]

Diploma exam happened. Definitely the worst music exam I’ve ever had. It wasn’t a total disaster, but was pretty disappointing. I now have 2–3 months to wait to find out if I passed. Not sure if I’ll retake if I failed. I have written 16 Christmas cards so far this weekend. It seems like I’ve [...]

Thanks for all the hugs and messages of concern, both here and on Facebook. As I said before, I am fine, and not as shocked by it as many other people seem to be! The social committee at work has arranged another theatre trip. This one is to see Little Shop of Horrors at the [...]

I was writing a post to explain about how I got mugged this evening, then hit some weird key combination that took my browser back to the home page, and lost what I’d been writing. Anyway, I got mugged by two guys at about a quarter past midnight, whilst I was on my way home [...]

First things first: followup to last time. New team at work is going reasonably well. However, I’ve been having to learn the data model used in the scripting layer of this PIM package largely by trial and error. Mostly error. The documentation is, at best, incomplete, and in many cases simply wrong. The conducting course [...]

A mixed post this evening. First of all, I have finally joined a new team at work. I’ll be working on the new Product Information Management (PIM) tool that John Lewis is going to be using to replace some fairly old in-house-written screens and things, and will introduce totally new functionality as well. It’s a [...]

I am wearing contact lenses. This will be a short post as it’s hard to focus – I have a slight astigmatism which means that these lenses can’t correct fully. Also I think perhaps I may have put one in inside out… would it feel weird, or just look blurry? Though it’s my left eye, [...]