I do enjoy this time of year when the days are getting longer, the world is getting greener and we have three bank holidays in quick succession. This weekend is another three-dayer, so next week will be the third four-day week in the last month.

So, with plenty of time to sit and think about things, I got stuck into the book writing again this afternoon and put down another 4,500ish, taking the total up to a rather satisfying 65,100 words. I don’t forsee any problems getting to my 70,000 word target by the third week in May. Perhaps I should up it by another 10,000.

Things are starting to get slightly more complicated now, though, with bits of the story relying on things I realise I’ve not quite fully explained elsewhere, so there’s a great temptation to wander off and fix them rather than just ploughing on. I’m sticking with my original philosophy, though, that it’s best to steam on to the end then fix things in the first edit in the hope it’ll keep me motivated.

I have rather neglected it this last week. I don’t know where the time has gone. Perhaps it was the lousy travelling, but I barely seem to have spent any time at home. Last night felt like the first night off in days, so unwound after a fairly humdrum day in front of Die Another Day. Second time I’ve seen it, and although they’ve obviously done some work on the DVD version to patch up that dodgy Icelandic surfing scene it still really shouldn’t be there. Was glad to see that the inlay sleeve is reversable, though, with the back matching the rest of the DVD special edition collection. Was fairly narked that it was sore thumbish until I found that.

Actually, I say humdrum, but I did win a printer-cum-scanner multi-function thing, and have been put down for meetings in Venice week after next so I guess it did have some excitement.

Yesterday’s local election result was a bit of a none-event, really. I voted for the only party to put anything through my door to tell me what they were up to. Fortunately it coincided with where I was going to put my cross on the paper anyway.

No wonder there is so much voter apathy if even those after the elected jobs can’t be bothered to make the effort.

In the event, none of the three candidates I voted for got in, and the council changes from one with no overall control to a Conservative administration. Considering Chelmsford has flip-flopped between Conservative and Liberal with the occasional period of no overall control for the last 30 years, that’s not entirely surprising. (source: BBC).

Looking through the results for the county as a whole, it’s interesting to see the range of the smaller parties and independent candidates, with campaigns under a whole range of parochial banners: Hawkwell Residents candidate, Holland-on-Sea Residents’ Association, the Community Representatives Party, and the Halstead Resident’s Association which won 5 seats. There are also topical issues, like the Socialist Alliance Against The War. I’m not entirely sure how the mainstream Conservative Party (Thatcher et al) differs from the Official Conservative Party.

Overall, though, they made little difference to the political landscape. Essex is split into 14 local districts, of which 13 were holding elections. In those, there were 53 elected representatives who had no affiliation to any of the three main parties (Conservative, Labour or Lib Dem). Today, with the results declared, there are 56. Perhaps not all of the 53 previously employed in public service were returned to office, but either way the net gain was very small.

I see that there was a Ruth Rawlinson standing in Clavering. Had I lived there, I dare say I’d be tempted to give her my vote. I wonder if we’re related.

The Times provides an interesting twist on a posting I made lask week relating to the BBC’s impartiality when covering the Iraq war. BBC Director General Greg Dyke had insisted, in a speech made at Goldsmiths’ College, that when reporting from Baghdad Rageh Omaar was in no way influenced by the Iraqi regime and, from what he said, it would appear that the correspondent often had the upper hand:

…the ineffectiveness of the minders was illustrated when Rageh’s minder asked Rageh if he could take the following day off so he could spend it with his family.

I don’t doubt that’s true, but did he really need to write such creepy notes to the Iraqi Ministry of Information?

After one trip he wrote that the high point had been a dinner with Mr al-Taie: “After promising and promising to have dinner with you for such a long time

What happened to the May Day riots? In years gone by London was a war zone, with the shops all boarded up and the police helicopters flying around and around our building like angels of doom.

Last year, though, they hemmed in the protesters outside Nike Town, in the middle of Oxford Circus and kept them there for eight long, boring hours. From the Camvista image of Trafalgar Square it looks like they’re doing the same this year. You can see a ring of yellow-suited policemen keeping the crowd in one place. They’re probably all tourists, anyway.

The BBC London site has a whole array of cameras covering pretty much everywhere in the centre of the city, but they’re all showing the same thing… an error message.

Anyhow, in the unlikely event the protestors should turn nasty (or even turn up) I popped out for a brief lunch then spent the rest of the lunch hour building an online quiz. See if you can differentiate one drink from another in the great Stink Drink Challenge.