After such a late night it was no surprise to first become aware of anything at eleven. I flopped around for a bit until I could be motivated to get out the Hands On proofs and read them under the duvet with a cup of tea. By the time I’d got to the half way mark the tea was drunk and I dragged myself out of bed, feeling very decadent.
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A full day of grey skies and drizzle. Moulsham Street was turning on its Christmas lights this evening and I had been tempted to go until I saw what it was like outside, so went to Sainsbury’s instead. It seems to have gone into Christmas hyperdrive already, even down to the level of Christmas spice scented toilet cleaner in festive red bottles.

I bought the bits to make a cheesecake to take around to Trevor and Jon’s, then came home to make it. So much for the ten-minute preparation time. Clearly whoever wrote the recipe card was working within some kind of time warp.
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It’s ages since I’ve been to the Docklands, so it was quite exciting travelling in this morning. It’s changed loads since I was last there, and I was surprised to see how much building there is still going on there. I was a bit disappointed that the two new buildings next to Canary Wharf, Citigroup and the HSBC World HQ, were much smaller than they looked from the train.

I got a bit lost in the shopping centre below Canary Wharf switching from the Jubilee Line to the DLR, and got to Telecity about five minutes late. Security was nothing like I’d imagined. Not for what is effectively the hub of the UK’s Internet, and something that handles 50% of the global Internet traffic.

I’d pictured this big hi-tech building covered in mirror glass with a smart, sparse reception and acres of rack-mounted servers. Some of that was true, but the reception was poky and rather ugly, and the security was lax to say the least. I had a bag full of recording equipment for my interview with Andre, the technical head-bod of LINX but nobody asked to look inside. They gave me a swipe card personalised with my details but never really explained what to do with it, and they had run out of holders for the ID badge that “must be worn at all times”, so they folded it up instead so I could put it in my pocket.

PR Mike, and Technical Andre came down in the lift to meet me, and took me up to the first floor. We walked through the racks of routers and switches to a small warm room to one side that Andre unlocked with a key. In here were more server cabinets, most of which were only half full. It was a little disappointing, really. Not much bigger than my lounge.

They showed me the routers that handle moving the BBC’s live media around the world, and then we sat down by the blast-proof windows so I could do the interview, throughout which I kept on getting all of the various companies, companies and carriers mixed up.

I listened back to some of it on the delayed tube in to the office and you can hear a lot of cooling fans humming in the background, but it’s pretty clear. I asked PR Mike if they had any pictures I could use for the magazine when I write it up, and he promised me one of Andre fiddling with his server cabinets.

Packing was in full flow when I got to the office, but we broke for lunch, after which we tackled the cupboard full of unclaimed review kit. Two years’ worth of the stuff, racked up on shelves reaching from the floor almost to the ceiling looked like it was going to take ages to empty, so we formed a crocodile and passed it down the line into crates and got the bulk of it done in an hour.

We still didn’t manage to hit the four o’clock deadline, though, and we were still boxing things up as the systems guys worked their way down the office ripping out plugs and network connections. I’m not at all sad that we’re leaving. Where we’ll be on the first floor we should at least see some passing traffic, so we won’t feel as cut off from the world, and being above the ground level opening our blinds won’t be a security risk, so we should get some light into the place, which will be cheery.

I got away at half four and took advantage of the early evening to take a bus back to Liverpool Street rather than a tube. I was surprised how quick it was, so popped home to pick up my kit and head out to the gym, which was packed. It’s Children in Need, so the male members of staff were having their chests waxed (presumably to raise money) and the place was crawling with kids. They’ve also roped off yet another set of parking spaces - this time to be painted up for parents with children. Pretty soon there will be more special spaces that regular ones.

Tesco’d on the way home for swede to steam.

Taking my life in my hands, I tried voice over IP on the breakfast show this morning. I think it went OK. Everyone pronounced - their - words - very - care-full-y to make sure we could hear each other properly, and apart from a slight echo I think we got away with it, proving that making phone calls through the Internet rather than a phone really does work. I got up half an hour early to make sure all my volume levels were right and I wasn’t getting any feedback and now I’m exhausted.
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Getting up for the gym this morning was a very unpleasant experience. There was ice on my car for the first time this year. I drove across the flood plain dying for the engine to heat up enough to give me some warm air, but it took almost all the way into town to really get going. Fortunately, when I’d finished and got to the station, the train came within a minute of me arriving, and we raced along to London in the warm.

I had a very embarassing experience when it came to pay in Vital Ingredient at lunchtime and discovered I had precisely

Somehow, and I’m not entirely certain how, I ended up on the 7.32 train this morning, and was in an empty office before half eight. Very eerie. CNN was chattering away to itself in reception with nobody watching. It was a good half hour before anyone else started to arrive, so I ploughed through a big pile of emails and post, which included a nice little bottle of Absolut vodka and a shot glass.
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I have been very productive today. I woke up just before the alarm went off, and was out food shopping before nine. Spent the morning working on book-type things, and broke to edit a group test at lunchtime, which was due on the server today.
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Was woken up by the alarm on my phone and lay around for a bit until I could hear someone else getting up. It was very strange; I was sleeping in Sal’s old room and she was sleeping in mine. I got up and showered, and by the time I’d got downstairs and watched half an episode of a particularly tasteless Changing Room pretty much everyone was downstairs and ready for breakfast.

As we ate, we discussed what I should do with my blue bathroom cabinet, which is now completely the wrong colour for the bathroom. I was all for going to Halfords to get some white spray paint, but in the end was convinced to paint it with a brush and what I had left of the paint I’d used for the walls.

I changed back into my old painty jeans and covered the garage floor in newspaper, then set about painting it. I used very little paint so that it would have a brushy, smeary look. I’m quite happy with it, but I think it’s perhaps still a bit blue. The bathroom looks very relaxing now that it’s all finished, though. A success, I think.

Unfortunately the tiles are now far more obvious, and as they are a kind of greenish brown they look rather tasteless, but unless I retile the whole room, and change the bath, sink and toilet I’m suck with them.

Went into Chelmsford with Sal and Dan and mooched around the shops for an hour before lunch. I came home with just a book of stamps and a car manual dad’s asked me to post off to him in France, so it wasn’t a particularly successful trip. I can’t be doing with thinking about Christmas yet. It’s still seven weeks away but the shops are full of trees, and the tacky ‘welcome to 200x’ sign is already up at the end of Oxford Street (London, not Chelmsford). Surely it’s time they put that thing into retirement. Or burnt it.

I’ve had a very busy and manly day, doing DIY things all around the flat. I started out by touching up the bathroom. It seems to have dried very evenly, but when I pulled off the masking tapes I found some little edges of blue paint that had been hiding themselves yesterday. I got rid of them while I munched my toast and drank the first of about a dozen cups of tea. I now know exactly why builders and decorators drink so much of the stuff.

That job done, I washed the paint brushes and set about replacing the draft excluders on all of my windows. I cut away the old stuff, which was now decidedly flat and lifeless having been trapped between a window and a frame for three years and sanded away the residue. It was all going very well until I opened one of the lounge windows and found a nest of the one creature I hate above all others.
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The shower is now officially off-limits until Sunday morning when hopefully the newly painted bathroom walls and ceiling should be dry. I’ll have to shower at the gym until then. I’d guessed that getting rid of dark blue paint by painting over it with white wasn’t going to be easy, but it’s taken a whole day to do it and I’m sure when I see it again in natural light tomorrow morning I’m going to spot some patches where it’s a bit too thin to get rid of it completely.
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