Forgot to say: our Yule present cheques arrived from Ken's folks - I'm going to buy a birdtable with mine. The RSPB has a great section on birdtables, and sells a simple but elegant one (warning: the link to their shop works in IE but completely crashes Firefox!) for £36.99. I'm out with Kim to explore a new garden centre next week, so will check there first, but otherwise I think I'll order online. It will sit beautifully on the edge of the meadow where we can watch from the windows, and I've investigated ways and means of keeping the squirrel from getting at the food: I think I can make it work. There will still be feeders on the medlar (I've refilled the seed feeder and put up a fat ball and a peanut feeder today, as the tree was full of little birds this afternoon) - it's a perfect place for them.

I had a nice long lie-in. And an afternoon nap. And rare steak and chips and 'shrumps and Brussels sprouts and mixed veg for dinner. I feel almost human again (unfortunately).
But it's not been a bad day. Kai's got on well with his music project homework, with Ken helping, I got a goodly bit of research (and some shopping) done and ordered Night of the Demon for Ken for Yule (we've been looking out for it for ages - fantastic film), and tomorrow we're putting up the Yule decorations. I know, it's a bit early, but Kai wants to and I don't see why not.
There may be photos...

Interesting day...
The coach was half an hour late leaving Briz (not sure whether it was because the driver had to take his statutory break or because there was an accident on the motorway yesterday - we got both stories. Not sure how the accident yesterday would have affected a coach coming up from Plymouth today, though...) and the driver said he'd try to make up the time. Only we hit quite dense fog outside of Bristol - looked really pretty rolling down the hills, but couldn't get a pic as I was facing into the sun - and everyone had to slow down to 50. Could only see as far as the motorway verge each side, everything else was lost in the mist. So we were twenty minutes late arriving at Victoria - the London roads were dreadful. Luckily I'd left loads of time to get to the meeting - which was at Canary Wharf. No, there were no Cybermen. Nor pepperpots for that matter. There was, however, an awful lot of cold glass and stainless steel, all very grim and forbidding (our agent had described it as like being in a Blade Runner set: she's not far wrong). I imagine in the summer it would look pretty, but on a cold, sullenly-drizzling winter afternoon it was just hostile...
But I wasn't destined for one of the glass monoliths: I was told the meeting would take place in a red portacabin (left over from the development, apparently. I rather like that idea, akin to ruling the world from your garden shed...) [eyebrow] Poshest portacabins I've ever seen.
As for the meeting - hm. We'll see next week.
I'd bought a ticket to return at 5.30, but got back to Victoria Coach Station before 4, and luckily there was a spare seat on the 4 pm coach so I saved an hour and a half of waiting. However, what with the pair over the aisle watching Wall-E on a laptop and the person beside me playing games on a phone with an unbelievably bright screen (like having an ultraviolet spotlight hitting the corner of your eye) the only thing I could really do was close my eyes and turn Kood up a notch. Which is actually a very nice way to pass a journey when it's completely dark outside.
Tired now...

I has a L...
I know, the figures were supposed to be a Boxing Day present for under the tree, but I couldn't wait. (I'm having Bio Hunter (AYA! Kawajiri!!) instead.)
We are, however, extremely pissed off. Both our printers have ceased to function, they are defunct printers. Ken's I can understand - it's my old one and used to cause me problems - but I only bought mine about a year ago (I think) and it was NOT cheap. Bloody Hewlett Packard - I'll never buy anything from them again. Everything we've ever had from them has packed up just a little way past the warranty expiry (remember when the heatsink fell off the motherboard on my previous computer, because it was only held on with two and a half clips instead of the required four? That was HP.) And their customer service is dreadful. If it's out of warranty they don't want to know - even if it was their problem in the first place.
I think we'll have to try to get a new printer for Ken - a decent make this time, any recommendations? - and see if I can find someone or somewhere to repair mine. I don't want to just ditch it, it's a heavy, powerful machine.
As for the rest, it's been a day of tidying up bits and pieces. After dinner I have to prepare for tomorrow's meeting (shouldn't take more than an hour) and then will try for an early night. Not an exceptionally early start tomorrow - coach leaves at 9.15 am - but I'm tired.
Later!

Watch Joules spin round in circles...
But more like a DVD than a carousel. Actually did manage to get a fair bit done today, including the new Reflex Camera Club website finished and uploaded. And I have another dentist appointment next Friday (Dec 8th) which hopefully will put paid to this problem molar. At least, I damn well hope so - what with the abscess under that incisor last Yule and the horrendous bugs I had the two Yules prior, I'm determined not to be ill or in pain this year. (But I bought some more First Defence just in case, it really seems to work for me.)
I'm sure there was something else but I can't remember what it was...
Right - back to the rockface.

[growl] So my dental appointment finally arrives, I slog up to the dentist and have a really lovely repair job done on my broken tooth - so good it looked and felt like the old, real tooth! - and three hours later I bite down (gently, I was trying to be careful all through dinner) on a biscuit (a Tesco shortcake round, in fact, one of the softest, crumbliest bikkies you can get - not supposed to eat them but sometimes I give into temptation) - and the bloody thing broke again.
I think they'll have to do a proper repair, take out the old (massive, root-canal) filling, refill the tooth and build up the shell from the inside out. Not looking forward to that at all. Will ring them tomorrow and see what they say.
Other than that - well, I have a meeting in London on Friday. More later, but please keep fingers crossed.
Oh, and I'm now looking for an mp3 of Tusk. It was playing last night as everyone was taking their seats (Boosh fans will know why) and I remembered that I'd forgotten how much I liked it. In fact, with a little prodding from Lutra, I even remembered where I first heard it - in the bar of the Meadow Park Hotel (just off the Stirling Uni entrance). Ah, that brings back memories...
Overtired now and grumpy with it. Can't work - having an early night.

BOOSH!!

It started with perhaps my favourite Boosh track ever, Future Sailors, with Vince sailing in on a sparkly pirate ship from the left - and Howard rowing in in a dinghy from the right...
The show was brilliant. Completely new material from that on the live DVD, sketches and cameos from a lot of the major charas (and a live band, which was great, even if the volume was visceral - literally, I could feel my breastbone vibrating with the bass. Nowt quite like seeing the Hitcher do a live version of Eels with a live band behind him wearing the Piper Twin costumes), including Tony Harrison and the Crack Fox. And Howard's marvellous Environmental Apocalyptic Drama in the second half, with a couple of new charas (which we might be seeing more of in a putative fourth season. I rather hope so, they were great fun...) And near the end they beheaded the honey monster and Tony Harrison gave us a repeat performance of the end of the 3rd season ep Party (only there it was with Lester Corncrake's disembodied head). Extremely satisfying, and had everyone cheering.
We were absolutely forbidden, in English and Welsh, to take any photos or videos, so those you are seeing are figments of your imaginations. (There are a few more figments, but since they constitute spoilers I'm not posting them here. Maybe on a private page at some point.) Sorry about the quality: unlike others taking photos I turned off my flash and tried to be as inconspicuous as possible to avoid disturbing the people around me.
The only thing we brought back, other than memories, was a Tony Harrison keyring for Kai. Wouldn't have been my first choice but it was all they had, and even that was £7. The merchandise was expensive, £18 for a T-shirt, and £12 for a programme! (We didn't. The first half ended at three minutes to nine, so we knew we'd not make the ten o'clock train, and catching the eleven o'clock one we'd have to get a taxi, and Briz taxis are dear.)
It was worth it though, both the overall cost and the wait (nearly a year!) Wonderful early anniversary treat, we both really enjoyed it, and it was great to actually sit together and talk for a bit on the trains!
There is one last thing I should mention though, and that's unicorns. There were three 'incidents' of unicorns in the show. The first was Jean-Paul Jaquetti's new perfume Unicorn (I think - unicorn was definitely part of the name). Then in the second half there was mention of a golden unicorn alien - and then, during one of the new songs, the lightshow backdrop had neon pink winged unicorns flying across the stage. I was too flabbergasted to get a photo, unfortunately.
A coincidence, or a sign?

Ken's knackered, and I'm a bit tired myself. Will try for an earlyish night...

(How's this font size?)
As you can see, the orchid flower spikes are coming on a treat - and ->
that tiny little purple upward-pointing sprout might be another spike! (That's the phalaenopsis with the purple blooms that flowered... last year? Year before? What year is it today?) At any rate, I don't think it's a new root (those white things. They start off darker). That would be fantastic - three orchids flowering at the same time! Will take photos...
[bemused] Kai started accelerating a simple Trainz engine on a simple circular track about seven hours ago. At the moment it's reached 55,344 mph, and is steadily increasing. No, I've no idea why he's doing it - just 'cause it's there, I assume...
Back to the rockface. The new version of Survivors starts tonight: I liked the original, it'll be interesting to see how they treat it.

Well, I'm knackered, but the revised Haadri site is now up and viewable. There's even a little new information, mainly the page on CalCol (with some pretty sigils and a couple of examples of how the language works). I still have an awful lot to add, so will try to keep to some sort of routine, adding more every few days or so. I'll be starting with some of the worlds mentioned in Prime Contact (Plarith, Vyridion, Shaeda) and trying to fill in the gaps, little by little, in the Culture, Tech and Policy subsections.
From now on, Haadri updates will be on the Haadri blog, where they belong.
Is this text now too big? I really can't tell on my screen...

Experimenting with font sizes... Greenhouse all bedded down, Haadri site a stage closer to being ready to upload. Might even be able to do that later tonight...