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The clocks go back tonight, so it was a pleasant surprise to wake up to brilliant sunshine. I stood my clockwork radio on the windowsill and the sun was bright enough to keep it going on solar power until mid-afternoon.

It’s amazing how much more motivated you can feel when it’s sunny. I formatted my hard drive and reinstalled Windows XP. It’s not solved the scanner and camera problems, but it does mean I can now plug in USB devices without the whole thing hanging. The rest of the morning was spent sorting out domestics (not other peoples’ arguments - house jobs). I inaugurated the new iron. I’ve lived here three years now and am proud never to have owned one until now, but it does mean my ironing skills are a little underdeveloped. I kept on getting the buttons all mixed up and every time I went to press the one for extra steam I ended up squirting various pieces of furniture with the water nozzle.

Most of the afternoon was spent working on the Dorling Kindersley book. It’s coming along very nicely. All but two and a half short sections and the quiz pages are finished now, and I reckon I should be able to get them out of the way tomorrow afternoon, assuming I can find the information I need. They’re the most difficult sections, which is why I’ve left them to the end. I sent half of it off to the publisher on Thursday to check I was doing what she wanted, but I’ve not heard back. I’m taking that to be a “good thing”.

Bathed and then went out for dinner with Trevor, Jon and Paul. We went to the Italian opposite the bus station, which is rapidly becoming a regular (the Italian, not the bus station). The youth of Chelmsford was passing by on its way to Zeus, tipsy after indulging its early fascination with alcohol. We were a bit disappointed that the woman who usually serves us was away and seemed to have been replaced by an Estonian and another girl from somewhere south of the A13, but the food was excellent, in spite of the man at the next table who had been fused to a series of fat cigars.

We came back to mine for peppermint tea and fudge and allowed ourselves an extra hour of slack time on lieu of the clocks going back.

My free lottery ticket didn’t even come close to winning.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 27th, 2001 at 8:35 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.