Further ramblings of a self-made pauper

Blimey.

I only just woke up 10 minutes ago...

Need food...

Beddy-byes for Bryan shortly, I think. I had intended to go a bit earlier, but I have spent a large part of this evening flummoxed by technology and time passed to the extent that I didn't have dinner until close on eleven this evening, so I decided that maybe I'd wait a while before creeping under the duvet.

Webcams, see. Pain the arse. I don't even want to use it as a webcam; I want to use the inbuilt microphone to talk on Skype. It's done it before, but it refuses to work now. Admittedly I can't remember which of the jack sockets I used last time, but there's only four of the buggers and none seem to do the trick any more. Why it can't just send everything down the bloody USB port is beyond me.

Oh well.

As for the rest of today, well a bit of a wash out, thanks for asking. I slept badly last night on account of the cough - or rather I slept well but spasmodically, so when the alarm went off at 7.30 this morning, I woke up, yawned and then wondered why the radio had gone quiet. Well that would be because between switching the phone alarm off, the radio alarm coming on and me yawning, a time displacement that would have had Mulder wetting himself occurred. Between the start of the yawn and the end of it, a mere 75 minutes passed and suddenly I was late.

Late, I should add, for work, not as in the Late Bryan Lea. I realise that typing that out is a little redundant, but well, that bloke at the back - you know who I mean - well, he is a bit slow. I spent far too much of the day trying to find very simple words to explain a very complex thing to a very stupid person. It was very wearing.

Ironic, then, that I should be so awake now at the fag end of the day.

colonel_maxim and ruletwo are in Tallinn tonight. Capital of sunny Estonia. I have the Athenaeum Club to myself until Friday evening.

True to form, I have nothing planned to take advantage of this opportunity. I may have a G&T to see the night off.

That's it, folks.

I nearly slept through Euston this morning, which would have been embarrassing. Since I moved to the Athenaeum Club I have not missed a stop on the Tube through tiredness, but this morning was nearly the first. One Starbucks’ latte with an extras shot, and two standard coffees later, I still just want to go to sleep. To add to the fun, I left my glasses at home together with the various cold remedies I acquired yesterday (except for the Olbas inhaler).

It’s going to be a long day; I need to get to sleep earlier tonight.

The Monster is arsing around again, though I can’t bring myself to care and tonight, instead of watching the European Cup Final, which I should rather have liked to have seen (I missed last year’s classic wasting my time and money enduring the last Star Wars movie), I have committed to going to this ukulele orchestra thing found by colonel_maxim. I hope I can stay awake. I believe the aim is to meet himself and ellefurtle somewhere in Camden Town, an area with which I am notoriously unfamiliar and go to a pub. Tiredness, alcohol and a lack of area knowledge conspire to make me less than confident of my ability to arrive on time, pay attention or even stay awake. We shall see.

Oh well. Back to work: let’s see if I can think of a fourth way of saying the same thing to keep the Monster happy; another redraft. Oh joy.

Rarely have my eyes been this tired! I have worn my glasses for longer periods this afternoon than I have before at any point, and for the first time at all in the last fortnight.

I still can't get used to them, and I seem only to manage five minues on, ten minutes off. I should get to bed earlier, give them more rest.

We still have bizarre IT problems here; my PC won't let me in and I only have limited access from the one I'm using. The IT Helpdesk seem to have gone to ground and are nowhere to be found.

On the plus side, I have managed nearly a full edit of one of my earlier NWO sheets, simply by adding around five pages to it.

More coffee, that's the answer.

Urgh...

Where did last night go? [yawn].

I don’t know precisely what it is about mid February (or indeed, late February, given that there’s less than a week of it left already), but having got through the part of the year where the nights draw in and winter sets in, by this stage I just want to sleep all the time.

The nights are drawing out again, in a month the clocks will go forward for springtime, and the worst of winter has bundled off home to do whatever it is seasons do when it’s not their turn (take in a movie, catch up on the laundry, write few letters; that sort of thing). We haven’t quite got to the bit where spring is er, springing, but we’re not far off. The old sap should be rising, (fnur) rather than settling. But still, I want to curl up somewhere warm and just doze.

Next time around, I am going to bribe the karma pixies properly. I think I fancy coming back as a cat.

Thanks to work I missed the opportunity to go and watch the new Barry Otter movie half price in the West End. I haven't been to the movies for a few months and whilst I'm not the greatest fan of the Childe Wizarde a little escapist fantasy wouldn't have gone amiss.

Just another reason to despise THAT WOMAN. Roll on the next cabinet reshuffle, I say.

As it was, I left the office at 7.30 and got back to Whetstone a little less than an hour later. One helping of fish and chips later, I collapsed in front of the telly to watch Rome, now I have an hour to burn before LOST on E4.

I'm still tired - this despite oversleeping this morning by an hour. The alarm on my phone went off, and then the alarm radio. I recall wondering why the radio had gone quiet, but it does that sometimes so I wasn't unduly worried. I looked at the clock, and it must have been almost exactly an hour after I'd looked last time. I noticed the minute hand but the hour hand didn't register, so I pootled around for a while before something in the back of my head said 'Hold on a minute...'

Didn't know I could shift as fast as I did when the penny belatedly dropped. Cripes.

Still, the Tube was nice and quiet and I managed to get into the office only 40 minutes late...

Note to self, however. When someone at work tells you that the southbound interchange at Warren Street is better than that at Euston don't listen to them. It's rubbish.

It's a bit whiffy outside tonight. It must be the last of the smoke plume from Hemel Hempstead, which reportedly has been hanging over the city since Sunday, but which I have yet to notice.

That is all.

It's my own stupid fault. I should have gone to bed much earlier last night, but I was determined to get a first draft character sheet done and emailed off.

Of course, once that was done, which was quite late enough, thank you, I should maybe have gone to bed then and there instead of recording and transferring a couple of CDs to my Walkman.

My eyes feel red from the inside. I dread to think what they look like from the outside. In the meantime I just yawned so hard that I almost dislocated my jaw. If my eyes water like that again, I can see myself shorting out the keyboard.

Home early tonight, me thinks.

The Lea mood is much improved; lulled to an impromtu kip, slumped on the bed to the sounds of Lennon on the hi-fi has restored my customary good nature. That and kicking the servants.

I have just watched the latest offering of Lost on E4, which is precisely 1 week ahead of Channel 4, so I shan't say anything specific to ruin it for those of you without digital telly (and anyone on t'other side of The Pond who is interested will have seen it months ago anyway), but it is getting rather odd even by its own standards. Tonight we got Michael and Walt's back story. Passing strange in places, and Walt's comic book seems to have been more important than we previously realised.

On to other matters: I have picked up a copy of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Suzanna Clarke. Wandering around Books Etc this evening before coming back to the Athenaeum Club, I noticed that it has been released in a three-volume edition in a slip case. Very handsome, and priced at £12.99. Even better, however, was the same story in a single volume (a mere 1,006 pages)with a cover price of £7.99. Better still, the latter was being sold at half price. Hmm... £3.98 or £12.99? That took less time to decide than it did to type.

I really don't know that much about the background to the story, other than the adverts that appeared around various Tube stations over the summer, but it is some months - or in fact some years now, since I read a fantasy meisterwerk, so I am looking forward to it. The prose of the first 20 or so pages apes a pleasantly Victorian ornate style, but without the stodgy blandness of so many of the so-called "greats".

I have probably mentioned before that there are very few of the 19th century classics I actually like; they are literature to build an Empire to, which is precisely what happened. No telly, no radio, few organised sports, little entertainment for the common bloke, beyond addling his brains on beer and gin. No wonder we ended up ruling a third of the planet. There was bugger all else to do for entertainment.

And yet it wasn't always that way: read Walter Scott, or even Richardson's Pamela, epics literature from the 18th century and it proves that it wasn't always the way with classic English Literature that it could only be enjoyed by people with broom handles up their arse, and collars starched up to their ears. The 19th century has much to answer for.

Anyway, as I type it is nearly half past the Pumpkin hour, so I shall love you and leave you, one and all. I'm off for a shower and then some proper kip (provided the early evening nap didn't ruin it for me, on which occurrence I shall probably be back here whinging about something inconsequential.

It's a hobby.

By crackey but it's busy at work, right now. Not that it's unexpected; that time of year, see.

Few pints after work with pax_draconis and invisible_al, then back to slump in front of telly. I'm getting old, kids, old. Creaky, bone weary am I.

And now to bed, for it is nigh on Pumpkin plus 45.