A day of photos on Friday. The first two copies of the new issue of the magazine arrived in the office. The design looks fantastic. It’s clean, bright and sharp. My picture, though, I’m not so happy with. Now that I can see it on the page, in full quality, rather than just as a low-resolution preview on the screen, I’m fairly convinced it’s the wrong one. I shall have to talk nicely to art and get it swapped out before I write next month’s column.

Spent the whole of the afternoon in the studio with S and K taking more photos. K was being an admirable hand model; S was helping position the lights exceptionally close to my face. I’m sure I have a tanned left cheek now. Being several thousand watts each they are unbelievably hot and towards the end of the session the camera was starting to get decidedly unhappy about the temperature. Even the props we were using - made of sturdy plastic - we starting to flex and droop.

Was glad when it was over and I could retreat to the comparative cool of the outside world and ride home on the bus - the tube, had it been running, would have been far too hot.

Ate late, watched trash and fell into bed around one; fairly reasonable, but not ideal with a vet visit scheduled for Saturday morning.

Anyhow, I made it on time, stopping off at mum’s on the way to pick up both her and the cat. The vet did the usual poking and prodding (of the cat) and a jab and a pill, then released us with a bill and a punctured moggy, to return home and eat breakfast.

I faffed around at mum’s for a while. We drank a lot of tea, and sat in the conservatory for long enough for my car to get blocked onto the driveway with the arrival of the TV repair man. He spent half an hour trying to shift the thing around the room in search of some mythical serial number he insisted would be on the back of the box and most certainly not on the instruction manual.

In the process he managed to break the stand.

As it turned out, the number was on the manual after all. He said that was most irregular. I’m inclined to disagree.

Waited for him to leave then after another cup of tea came home to compute. Installed OpenOffice under OSX, which was a scary experience. Lots of threatening looking instruction messages.

Was distinctly unimpressed by the result. It looks identical to the Linux version, of course, running under an X11 emulator, which I guess is kind of the point, but even so it would be nice if it took advantage of some of the OSX niceties. Put it safely to one side and switched back to AppleWorks once it was complete, for looking at later on, then got on with Kevin’s web site. Fairly pleased with the results by the end of the day. Logged off with a sense of satisfaction, then mooched around to see Trevor, Jon, Boris and Miss Ginny for a last dinner before they head off on their respective holidays.

A very lazy evening; we sat around until 2h chatting and drinking and munching on mints, all the while my feet getting more and more twitchy from the drink. Little did the cats know that as I sit here typing this from the warmth of my duvet, they’d be shivering in a cattery in Boreham while Trevor and Jon jet off towards the Equator.

So, to bed a while after that - I forget the time - and a predictably late start this morning. In fact, only out of bed in time to catch the Politics Show on BBC1 doing a hatchet job on Newscastle, so I’m guessing it can’t have been far off time for lunch. It was raining, anyway, I know that, so sat indoors all cosy and warm as the drops splattered against the window, and worked on some designs.

Listened to Wes Butters, the unlikely new saviour of Radio 1, churn out his first chart show. He did well. Chatty, relaxed and kind of what you’d get if you cross-bred Scott Mills and Steve Penk. Very much in the Radio 1 style. The show itself, though, with live music and a terrible plodding half hour album chart at the beginning, had lost much of its life and vitality, which is a shame. It could see the independent alternative pull even further forward, regardless of the fact the commercial countdown has little to do with what’s being bought in the shops.

Then again, the credibility of the ‘official’ BBC alternative is equally flimsy. Being based on units shifted it doesn’t take into account the fact that a CD priced up at 99p will sell millions while a regular

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