Yo ho ho!

Well I can’t really think of anything interesting to tell you about tonight, but I’ve become far too inclined to use that as an excuse to go to bed early with a good book instead of subjecting you to a load of pointless rambling, and I know how empty and pointless that renders your lives, so tonight I’m going to do my best to squeeze something out.

I went to a meeting today. Me, a meeting! I hardly ever go to meetings! I had to get up early and wear smart shoes and everything! Of course I’d better not say too much about what actually happened for fear of breaching client confidentiality and waking up with a horse’s head on my pillow, but if you imagine me sitting at a table with some other people and a flipchart at the end, you’ll get the general idea.

Oh dear, now I’ve started procrastinating. I think I’m forced to conclude that I have nothing to say, and that the preceding feeble paragraphs represent the only motes of coherent thought that can be wrung from my brain at present. Given the well known immensity of my brain this information no doubt comes as a great surprise to you, but it does appear to be the case, so I’m going to give up on this and go to bed early with a good book.

I’ve just returned from Lancashire and it’s getting late - work tomorrow, dontcherknow - so if you want an in depth report of the meet you’ll have to go and read another blog. I shall satisfy myself with stating that it was splendid fun as they so always are, despite a poor showing of Clevertrouserses which I trust will be remedied at next year’s meet. Last year I spent all day sat in the corner with Jess, and was determined to circulate a bit more this time round - I don’t think I was terribly successful, but I did at least acknowledge the existence of other people, which was a considerable improvement. Had I not seen photographic evidence to the contrary, I would have sworn blind that last time she and I were the only people in the pub.

Anyway, here’s a little game I want you all to play in the comments, or on your own blogs if you prefer to do business that way. How high can you count in film titles, using only ones you’ve seen? Cardinal (i.e. three) and ordinal (i.e. third) numbers are both allowed, but numbers denoting the film’s position in a series don’t count, so you can’t start with Star Wars parts I to VI. I did rather badly - I thought I was going to get all the way up to thirteen, but I couldn’t come up with anything for eight and ten.

One Fine Day
Second Hand Lions
Three Amigos
Four Weddings and a Funeral
The Fifth Element
The 6th Day
The Seven Year Itch

That’s pretty feeble, really - I’m sure you can do better than me. In fact that’s even easier than it looks, because just now when I was getting together all the links for them I discovered that the Second Hand in Secondhand Lions is actually one word, so that doesn’t really count. I’ve spent ages trying to find an alternative, but failed, so really I’ve managed to get all the way up to one.

Now I’m going to go and reply to some emails and go to bed. Good night.

Just a quickie to remind you of the details - it’s TODAY at The Pelican in Addlestone, ie here, and there will be much merriment and it will generally be a super fun day. Jess and I will be arriving at 11ish and no doubt others will too. So come one, come all. Except not really all because you wouldn’t all fit in the pub. Come some, then.

Do you know how hard I’ve been working for the last three days? Well I’ll tell you. Imagine someone working really really really really hard. It’s slightly less hard than that.

But only slightly less, for I’ve endeavoured to cram a week’s work and the filling in of my tax return into a mere three days to allow for more time with my lovely Jess, and it seems to have worked! So now I’m fairly exhausted, but it’s the weekend! Hooray!

I know that all you people reading this whilst sitting in an office, bored out of your mind - due to the fact that you’re sitting in an office, not because you’re reading this, obviously - will find great consolation in the fact that I’m off having fun. I like to help wherever I can.

So today I went for my daily walk across the fields, as I do (almost) every day - in contrast to when I used to go for daily bike rides, which happened about once every three months - and when I got home I leapt onto the scales to see how many stones I’d shed in the process. I was pleased to see that I’d lost another pound, being down to a slender 13 stone 1, but I didn’t update the lardometer because the official weigh-in is at 6 o’clock every evening, which wasn’t for several hours.

Except I was unavailable for weighing at 6 o’clock, so I stepped back onto the scales at about quarter to seven, and I was now up to a massive 13 stone 4! I’m using the fact that I missed the official time as an excuse to leave the lardometer unchanged for the time being, but how I gained three pounds in a matter of hours remains a mystery. Maybe it was something to do with the two Mars bars, the Yorkie, the packet of chocolate fingers and the fudge sundae, who knows?

And speaking of dressing gowns, many months ago, tired of wearing the manky old ones lying about at the farm, Jess and I made a trip to Marks and Spencers and purchased the plushest such garments we could find. A his and hers pair, if you will - well, more a hers and hers pair really, because none of the men’s ones were as fluffy as the women’s ones, so I got one of the latter and cut off the lacey bits when I got home.

Several months later - today, in fact - except it’s gone midnight so it was really yesterday - I was wearing that very same dressing gown when the back of my neck began to itch. Itchy itchy itch, it went. I tried to put the discomfort to the back of my mind - which should have been easy, because that’s where I keep the back of my neck - but it was getting very annoying so I investigated the source of the itch and discovered it to be the label on my dressing gown. So I chopped it off.

I then got dressed and went to hang my dressing gown on the back of the door where it lives. Except it doesn’t live there any more, because I’d just rather stupidly chopped off the label it hooks up by. So now it’s draped across the chair in my otherwise immaculate room making the place look like the big mess I’m going to so much effort to prevent. It from. Looking like. So now my dressing-gown-hanging-up system which has served me so well for so long is in tatters. Clearly this is a very distressing situation, and in the face of past experience I expect overwhelming displays of sympathy.

So it snowed.

I’ve been working late tonight, and I thought to myself: when I’ve finished my work, I shall go for a walk in the snow. It will be the middle of the night, so there’ll be no one else about - all through the village the snow will be crisp and unbroken, and I’ll have it all to myself. I can wander through the streets - which, though the sky is black, are brightly lit from the street lights reflecting off the snow. I can enjoy the pretty scenes, and lay down the first human footprints alongside those of the foxes and hedgehogs with whom I’m sharing the night. I can do all this as snowflakes fall gently all around me, lending the world that feeling of peace that only falling snow can bring.

But by the time I’d finished my work, the snow had stopped falling. It still lays thick upon the ground, and I could still go for a walk, and make my feet the ones that break its perfect symmetry. But the snow looks very cold, and my bed looks very warm, and I need to be up early tomorrow for there’s lots more work to do.

So I won’t go for a walk. Someone else can have the pleasure of being the first to step outside and sink their feet through its even surface. I expect they’ll enjoy it as much as I would.

The plan, since you ask - I assume that you do - had been for Jess to remain in the haven of Leicesesesestershire, where she could revise without brotherly distractions, until Tuesday. Unfortunately she started getting allergic reactions to the cats - hair sprouting from her face, slime oozing out of her ears, that sort of thing - so we revised the plan and I took her home on Sunday night before she exploded.

Why she suffered reactions this week is a mystery. Normally all she has to do is ingest an antihistamine and thenceforth she can inject cat fur into her eyeballs all she likes without the slightest side effect. I’m afraid we must face the very real possibility that we may never know.

It had been my intention to get my tax return finished at the weekend, but I had to abandon that halfway due to the aforesaid change of plan, and today has mostly been spent attending to some other jobs that couldn’t be ignored, so now it’s three o’clock on Tuesday morning and I still haven’t finished it. I’ve resolved to do as much as I possibly can before going to bed - I suspect that means I’ll be pulling an all-nighter, but sometimes these things have to be done. If I see an opportunity to sneak off the bed while my boss isn’t looking I shall grasp it, but he tends to be quite observant, so I can’t see myself getting away with it.

I suppose I’d better stop wittering and get on with it.

And so another day thrusts forward through the screeching bowels of time, onwards past dusk and yonder into the very blackness of the night, and settles down upon that lonely eyrie on the mountain of ages that marks, like a fiery beacon or a monkey in a sombrero, the point at which I blog.

So the plan was that Jess and I would spend this weekend apart so she could concentrate on revising for her imminent exams, but she’s decided that actually me demanding the occasional cuddle would be less of a distraction than her brothers running round the house screaming and attacking her with plastic light sabres, so she’ll be coming down to Leicesesecesestershire after all - subject, of course, to the wind blowing at less than ten million miles per hour for long enough that it’s possible to traverse the country without risk of being swept off your feet and landing several thousand miles away in the midst of two hundred midgets singing Follow the yellow brick road - which, as those of you who’ve bothered to look out the window today will be aware, is by no means certain.

Meanwhile I was intending to tackle my tax return tonight, but that doesn’t seem to have happened. I suppose I could do it now, but really I’d much rather go to bed with Arthur C Clarke, so I’ll put it off until tomorrow. Because obviously I won’t end up doing the same thing tomorrow and every other day until the end of the month and then having to do it all at the very last minute and finding it’s harder than I thought and missing the deadline and being fined ten million quids and put in prison and shot. Goodness me no.

Let’s see, what else have I got to tell you about? Not a lot really, except that it’s probably about time I reminded you all that the Annual SimonG.org Exceedingly Late Christmas Meet draws ever nearer - you know, of course, that it will be taking place in The Pelican on the 27th - so jolly well don’t forget to keep your diary clear.

I think that about wraps it up for today, really. Good night.

I’m back! I had a lovely long weekend, which I think is justified on the grounds that I didn’t have a weekend last weekend and I won’t be having a weekend next weekend either. Though shortly after that I’ll be having another long one and then an even longer one still, but we’ll overlook those for the moment.

What shall I tell you about? I could tell you my dad’s cunning plan. See, what’s happening, right, is my mum’s retired, and my dad’s going to retire too, but he’s got to sell his shop first, which is taking aaages. And they want to move up north, but his need to go to work every day is holding things up, so it occurred to him that they could move now and he could commute, if only he had somewhere he could sleep during the week. The fact that his shop sells BEDS and is full of BEDS hasn’t occurred to him, so what he thought he might do is buy a boat.

But wait! For the full cunningness of the plan has yet to be revealed. You see, by - ooh, let’s say October time - my dad will have sold his shop and have an empty boat lying around. Meanwhile, Jess will be starting at university, and I’ll be going with her, and we’ll need somewhere to live. So we could live on the boat!

There are only several major snags with this plan that make it totally unworkable. One is that my dad might not have sold his shop by October, in which case the three of us would all be living on the boat together, which would no doubt be very jolly and merry but probably a tad cramped and exceedingly inconvenient seeing as my dad’s shop is in Leicesesecesester and Jess will probably be going to university in York. But the problem which completely rules it out as a realistic option is the fact that you can’t get a broadband line wired into a boat unless you’ve got a really really long extension cable.

So that isn’t going to be happening.

And how about mini eggs, then? I’m referring, of course, to the shocking move on the part of Mr Cadbury to bring them back to our shelves, as he does this time every year, in bags exactly the same size as the bags they came in last time, but with SIGNIFICANTLY LESS MINI EGGS IN THEM! I’m so disgusted I’m going to buy an absolute maximum of five hundred bags this year, and I urge you to do the same.

And do you ever read a blog but you weren’t really paying attention and when you get to the end you realise it was a different person’s blog to what you thought it was, so then you have to go back to the top and read it all again because the first time round you read it in the wrong voice? No? Oh, just me then.

I love my job. The most satisfying bits are when I’m drawing things for worthy causes - if someone wants me to knock out a logo for their otter polishing club then I won’t complain, but it won’t give me the same warm glow as when I’m illustrating an educational pamphlet to raise awareness of the plight of polished otters.

Of course, most of the jobs I get aren’t to such laudable ends. A lot of the time I get commissioned by someone like the head of the Radish Inverting Department at Geometrically Improbable Vegetables Ltd to produce caricatures of his middle management team in amusing situations which he can hand out to them at their annual review in the hope of distracting them from the fact that they haven’t got a payrise this year. Except that in reality they’re never remotely amusing, and will just result in bemusement when they’re given out and no one gets the jokes*. I’m more than happy to do this kind of job - companies of the size that can afford to spend so frivolously can always be relied on to pay promptly, and they’re not doing anyone any harm - but they’re not the sort of work that makes me feel like I’m spending my time on this earth in a productive and useful manner.

Then there are the jobs which are just the sort of good cause I like to help with - illustrating storybooks to educate young children about environmentally friendly ways to dispose of their used syringes, let’s say - but once I send out my initial sketches to the person in charge of the project, everyone in the company gets enthusiastic about it and wants to be involved, and they start having meetings to discuss what they want me to change, and the project drags on for months until eventually the head of the department retires and their replacement’s got altogether different ideas and scraps the project altogether. I still get paid, but I don’t feel like I’m making much of a mark on the world.

I’ve had a few like that recently, and it’s a little demoralising, but I daresay that a hundred and fifty years from now when I’m lying on my deathbed and reflecting on the life I’ve led, my last dying neurones will find some comfort in the knowledge that, if nothing else, I did at least succeed in bemusing some middle managers. I think that’s a life well spent.

*If any of my customers are reading, I’m not talking about you. Your ones were absolutely hilarious.

It’s gotten rather late owing to the Internet not working for several hours owing to TalkTalk being rubbish, so we’ll make this a quickie.

First off, I was wrong when I claimed in yesterday’s entry that I’ve got three webcams - my dad pointed out that we’ve got a whole pile of them in the garage, purchased to spy on my grandma when she was too weak and feeble to look after herself but refusing to go into a home. But they’re now of only academic interest - though any academic who’s wasting their time studying the number of webcams I have access to should never have gone into higher education - because Alistair pointed out in the comments that such a thing exists as a webcam splitter, so I downloaded one, and it works, and so the Golden Age of my webcam has come again! Rejoice as appropriate.

And while we’re reliving the glory days of simong.org, sparkle princess was asking in the chatroom about a video I made five hundred years ago when attempting the bondage body bag Favourite Thing, prompting me to upload it to youtube. So here it is.

Can I go to bed now? Good.

When I lived in Essex, my webcam sat on a shelf above my computer and ran all day long. If at any point during the day or night you felt the urge to see what I was doing, and optionally save any pictures where I looked particularly stupid and put them up on a webpage for everyone to laugh at, you could - and, indeed, Stu did. When I moved back to Leicesecesestershire, I no longer had a shelf, so I bought another webcam that hooks over the top of the monitor, and used that instead. It continued to transmit live coverage to my website twenty-four hours a day.

Unfortunately it was now located in my bedroom, resulting in the notorious naked incident, after which I was a bit more careful about when I turned it on - which, due to laziness on my part, was very rarely.

Just under a year ago I announced that henceforth the Golden Age of webcammage would return, the camera’s position on my new flatscreen monitor being such that unintentional nudity would be automatically self-censored. The crowds rejoiced.

But the Second Golden Age didn’t last very long, because the very day after it was announced I started talking to Jess on MSN, and ten days after that we started using MSN’s webcam conversation feature to gaze at one another longingly. Since two applications can’t access the webcam simultaneously, this meant shutting down the one that feeds it to my site, and due to laziness on my part I very rarely turned it back on afterwards.

And so the Second Golden Age was over. But soon a Third Golden Age will begin.

For it occurred to me recently that if I had two webcams*, both applications could have their own camera to play with and they wouldn’t have to share. And then it occurred to me that I do have two webcams, because I’d still got the one from when I lived in Essex lying about in a cupboard.

The trouble was that I still didn’t have a shelf to put it on, so I set about dismantling it and constructing a new swivel mount out of household objects.

So far I’ve removed the guts of the camera, sellotaped one severed end of a scart cable to the back, and jammed the other scart plug into the top of a highlighter pen to make a little base. By joining the two together at right angles with a scart splitter, I have a webcam that swivels on two different axes.

Now all I’ve got to do is somehow affix the base to the top of my monitor. I’ve tried a combination of cardboard, glue and vast quantities of sellotape, but the weight of the webcam is too much for it to take and always ends up pointing at a forty-five degree angle, resulting in a picture that falls short of the sort of quality broadcasting you’ve come to expect from simong.org. I’ve spent the last hour experimenting with paperclips and pushpins, but so far no satisfactory technique has emerged.

Of course I could just buy a new webcam for considerably less effort and not significantly more money, but that would be boring. I’ll crack it eventually, and then you too can gaze at me longingly whenever you feel so inclined. You lucky lucky people.

*Actually I’ve got three webcams, the third having kindly been donated by Paul Blitz some time ago, but it’s a complicated one and I’ve yet to figure out how to work it. Plus it would need a shelf.

I’ve taken advantage of my Jessless weekend to tidy my room, which doesn’t usually happen due to me having other more pressing things to do - and also because I’m a slob who’s generally happy to wallow in his own filth, but the filth was taking up so much space there wasn’t anywhere left to wallow, so a clear out had become fairly essential. I can move again now, which is nice, and once I’ve got rid of the bulging bin bag and massive pile of stuff that needs throwing out, I think it’s safe to say my room will be tidier than it’s ever been, and almost certainly the tidiest it will ever be again because I can’t imagine I’m going to put aside another day for spring cleaning between now and the time I move away, so if anyone’s been planning to surprise me with an acrobatic stunt team performing live in my bedroom, this is probably the ideal time to arrange it. I was always quite partial to those fat women who occasionally did comedy acrobatics on The Paul Daniels Magic Show if they’re available. The Roly-Polys I think they were called, though I can find no evidence of their existence on this Internet thing.

It’s been a fairly dull weekend all round, and my conclusion is that Jessless weekends are rubbish. If any of my readers has been thinking of trying one, my advice to you is Just Say No. Locate your nearest Jess immediately and put her somewhere safe so you’ll be able to find her whenever the next weekend comes around.

Meanwhile, my weight loss is going surprisingly well. Look at the blue man! See how he’s already discernably thinner than the red man, and way ahead of the grey man! It turns out that all you have to do is walk six miles a day and eat small quantities of healthy food and even smaller quantities of unhealthy food. But it’s far too early to start patting myself on the back - I’ll have to lose at least another stone before I can reach it.

Look, it’s me! Blogging, on a Saturday! But while to you that’s cause for raucous celebration, dancing in the street and partying into the night, for me it’s a bit rubbish because the reason for it is that I’m presently Jessless, she having reached the dubious conclusion that revising for the exam she’s got next week is somehow more important than cuddling me.

To compensate, I’m going up several days early next weekend - assuming the farm’s free, which we haven’t yet been able to establish - but in order to do that, it was necessary to spend this weekend getting lots of work done.

I’m not used to spending the weekend without her. During the week, my computer wakes me up by playing the music of the Puppini Sisters at 9AM. I’d forgotten that it doesn’t do it on Saturdays, so I was lying in bed waiting for it to start, pleasantly surprised that I felt wide awake so early, until quarter past midday.

This, of course, meant that I didn’t get any work done in the morning, and the rest of the day was spent trying to perform one of those simple tasks that should be straightforward but go wrong at every possible opportunity, with the result that so far today - with the exception of that one simple task - I haven’t done any work at all. I can feel a late night looming.

Incidentally - and on a completely unrelated topic - could those of you planning to attend the meet declare your intentions over here? People more organised than I propose to give the bar staff a rough indication of numbers slightly less rough than the one they’ve been given thus far.

And on an equally completely unrelated topic, I’d like to take this opportunity to apologise to those of you in the Lancashire area for the fact that it’s been overcast every night since the new year. I should never have bought Jess a telescope.

Well now, let’s see, what have I got to tell you about today?

Well there’s the lardometer. I told you I might bring it back, and bring it back I have! Hover your mouse over the little men to see the true shocking state of my health, then shake your head sadly in the certain knowledge that I will fail to achieve my fairly unambitious goal.

And since people keep asking me about times for the meet (which you will recall takes place at The Pelican in Addlestone on the 27th), I suppose I should say something here - I shall probably aim to arrive some time around 11, and from past experience I imagine most people will get there between then and middayish, and remain until closing time. So that’s all you need to know about that, really.

But the real reason I gathered you here today was to relate a brief and cosmically insignificant hot chocolate related anecdote.

A few days ago, while I was still enjoying my yuletide break at the farm with my lovely Jess, she declared, quite out of the blue:

“I feel the urge for a mug of steaming hot chocolate! So I shall sally forth to the kitchen and manufacture such a beverage with the application of the kettle and one of the sachets of hot chocolate powder that we purchased from Tesco a mere week ago!”

And sally forth she did, only to have her dreams shattered when I explained:

“While it’s true, my love, that we did purchase such sachets from Tesco a mere week ago, we have since, as you will recall, paid a fleeting visit to Leiceceseseicstershire, and I have to relate the awful news that I took said sachets with me, with a view to drinking hot chocolate while so ensconced - but I drank not a single mug, so their transportation thither was fruitless, and worse, I forgot to bring them back! So you can’t have any hot chocolate, and it’s all my fault! I’m the worst boyfriend ever!”

Naturally, she was shocked and dismayed by this news, but after she’d been hitting me over the head with a frying pan for ten minutes, a thought struck her.

“Our situation may not be as dark as you paint it,” she remarked, “for on Christmas morning Santa gave us, as you will recall, a copy of Tana Ramsay’s Family Kitchen: Simple and Delicious Recipes for Every Family, which features on page 61 her recipe for real hot chocolate with baby marshmallows, which requires only plain chocolate, milk and mini marshmallows; and while we’re presently out of stock of mini marshmallows, we have both milk and milk chocolate, which should be sufficient to produce a rudimentary mug of hot chocolate to satiate my desire.”

This seemed like such a good scheme that I decided to have a mug as well, and so began rummaging in our tin of Quality Street for blocks of Dairy Milk while Jess poured some milk into a pan for boiling in accordance with Tana Ramsey’s instructions. Then, tragedy struck.

“There isn’t enough milk!” she cried. “Only one of us will be able to savour this most delicious of delicacies!”

We eyed one another like two men in a lifeboat wondering who was going to eat who, but this time it was my turn to be hit by a brilliant thought.

“Fear not, my sweet,” I exclaimed, leaping to the fridge with gusto and zeal, “for the memory stirs of a long-forgotten carton of long life milk on a shelf on the fridge door! Aha, I was right!” I continued, withdrawing such a carton from its storage place. “I shall add this to the mix and all will be well!”

I held the opened carton over the pan and tipped it up. Months-old congealed milk began to slop out, lump by lump, while I grinned inanely, pleased with myself for having solved all our problems so easily.

“I think that milk might be off,” said Jess.

We sniffed the carton. It didn’t smell good.

We sniffed the pan. Nor did that.

“Oh no!” I bewailed. “If it weren’t for my interference, you would have produced a single perfectly palatable mug of hot chocolate, but now I’ve contaminated the good milk with the sour and we’ll have to throw it all away! So you can’t have any hot chocolate, and it’s all my fault! I’m the worst boyfriend ever!”

So she hit me over the head with a frying pan a bit more, before I redeemed myself by walking up the road to her house and nicking a bottle of milk out of the fridge. And very yummy the hot chocolate was too.

The Christmas holiday having surprised us all by coming to an end, I drove back to Leicesesesesestershire last night all alone, and slept in an empty bed - well, empty apart from my considerable bulk, but more of that later.

Today I was supposed to be back at work, but all I’ve done so far is catch up on my emails - a not insignificant achievement in itself, but hardly sufficient to justify not having done any other work. But I suppose it takes time to get back into the swing of things - even when I had a proper job I never got much work done on the first day back - even less than the not-much-work that I got done the rest of the time, I mean - and it’s harder still when you haven’t got an evil-eyed boss breathing down your neck and wielding a cat o’ nine tails. No doubt I’ll be fantastically productive tomorrow to make up for it.

But let’s gravitate back to my considerable bulk, as so many small objects - lego bricks, chairs, planets, that sort of thing - are wont to do. I don’t really do new year’s resolutions, but last year I had a vague notion that I needed to lose weight. Unfortunately I was too busy having fun, and gained the best part of a stone. Now, I have no wish to contract cancer or die of a heart attack - well, if I’ve got to die of something - and I don’t concede for a moment that I do - I suppose a sudden heart attack in my sleep at the age of 140 might be acceptable, but certainly no sooner - and as such 2007 is absolutely definitely positively the year in which I get healthy. I’ve come up with a fiendishly clever means of achieving this, which is a simple combination of eating well and getting lots of exercise. I’m surprised no one’s thought of it before.

I might well bring back the lardometer when I get round to it so you can all watch my inevitable failure played out in graphic form.

Now I suppose I really ought to go and try to make myself do some work.

And it occurs to me that while I managed to blog on the last day of 2006, which is a bit of a miracle these days, I neglected the traditional reflection on the year. And looking back at my final post of 2005 I see that I posed lots of questions about the year to come. So let’s see what the answers are!

Will 2006 see me resolve my recent cashflow problems and figure out ways to bring in plenty of business without spending so much on advertising, or will I be forced to supplement my income with a job in Burger King?
Well I’ve had a lot more money coming in, but also a lot more going out, so I wouldn’t say my cashflow problems are entirely resolved. I’m not working at Burger King yet though.

Will I get loads of work from all those calendars I sent out or was that a horribly expensive mistake?
Absolutely none whatsoever.

Will I ever get into the habit of going for my daily bike ride every day?
Good lord no.

What new and exciting ways to break my car will I come up with?
Loads.

Will I ever move into my house?
No chance. I think it’s safe to say that I’ll be moving away from Leicesecestershire this year and never going back.

Will I recover from this illness?
I can’t even remember being ill now, so I suppose I must have done.

Will I see any pigeons?
It was like Trafalgar Square.