It was all going so well until I got to Liverpool Street and the Central Line was closed, forcing everyone out into the streets and in the way of the buses. It took another hour to get to the office. Fortunately, we postponed our Monday editorial meeting until tomorrow in the light of the almost-finished-the-issue situation, so we should end up being able to concentrate on it better with the pages off our minds.

The cable people made the mistake of sending me a press release about their apparently wonderful broadband service, to which I sent a reply explaining that I would love to sample the new front end, as they suggest, but that it’s a bit difficult to do that when your cable modem is asthmatic at the best and completely inoperable some of the time. I told them about the far super service I get logging into Freeserve with a regular dial-up modem.

I finished ‘I am an Oil Tanker’ on the way home. Not a bad book, but a bit of a disappointment, as it seems to be more about how to steal stationery and toiletries from hotel rooms than it does about radio, and as everyone knows how to steal from hotels it was nothing new.

Fortunately my ticket got stuck in the barrier coming out of the station, which reminded me it needed renewing, so I queued up behind four other people at the only window dishing out season tickets. Two other windows were open, but they would not sell them, so the staff just sat there looking vacant.

Forty minutes later, I got to the front of the queue, having listened to the patronising man at the counter explain to a French woman who was getting practically nothing back on a refund “Well, that just goes to prove what exceptional value a season ticket is.” He clearly has never had to pay the “exceptional value” prices.

He told me not to buy a quarterly, and said it would be cheaper to buy a ticket just until Christmas and then renew it in the New Year. It was only in the car on the way home that I twigged that of course the prices will be going up at the beginning of January so it would not be cheaper at all. I called the customer helpline when I got home and asked them whether it was cheaper to buy three months up front or split it around Christmas. They said they didn’t know, but that on no account should I buy all the way up to Christmas - if I just went for a monthly I could have a discount.

I put down the receiver without bothering to explain that the womain in front of me had asked for just a month and they had tried to get her to buy up to Christmas. What little faith I had in that company has now completely disappeared.

The fireworks are exceptionally loud tonight.

Now that I’ve got my scanner and camera both working under Windows XP I reinstalled Linux on my second PC, this time opting for Redhat instead of SuSE. It was remarkably easy and only took 17 minutes, which was an improvement over Windows’ 1-hour plus. It also recognised and configured my graphics card, which Windows 2000 never managed. I am very impressed.

Now I just have to work out how to use it.

1. Wireless Woes
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2. Election day
   Three hour show tonight (7pm - 10pm) to mark the election, which reminded me to perform my civic duty before leaving for work. Wandered over...
   
   
3. The Trains
   Ticket prices, as they always do, went up on the first day back at work, and there have been headlines every day since about how...