It turns out that one huge benefit of making your post a private one is that you get to see exactly who is reading it, because they have to contact you direct and ask you for a password. Which is nice. Thankfully quite a few of you did, and provided me with just the ego-massage that I required. What you didn’t do, by and large, was leave me any helpful comments. If you don’t know what I am talking about then by all mean feel free to email me, hit me up on Twitter or Facebook and I’ll send you the password. But despite the warming glow of people asking to read something of yours I shall resist the temptation to ask you to do so again, I suspect I’d get far less of a take up than before.

I’ve been feeling a bit more productive again of late, and having pretty much rounded up part one of Blood On The Motorway it’s time to turn back to my normal blogging. Before we go any further let me do a little bit of whoring and point you in the direction of a piece I wrote for Demon Pigeon about Axl Rose and a bit of a moratorium over at the Year of Health. As well as this I’ve taken my first steps into the wider world of trying to get paid for writing things. I’ve signed up to a company called Suite101, which is a site that gets you to write short articles for them and then they pay you a slice of the Google Advertising revenue that you get from the article. On the face of it this is not going to be a particularly lucrative deal, but from what I can tell (and the proof will come if this actually happens for me) but most articles wont pull in more than, say, $1 a month, unless they get really noticed. But that’s not actually that bad when you consider that will be for 12 months. If I can crank out three or four of these articles a week, then it wont be long before I build up enough of a head of steam that the money coming in will be quite nice. It’s never going to be enough to allow me to survive on it (unless I get really lucky on it and have a whopping hit of an article) but it’ll be a nice bit of extra cash.

That is, of course, if it works as advertised. I’m still pretty sceptical about the whole thing, but the way I see it is that if it doesn’t work then I’ve not really lost anything save for a little bit of time. As well as that, it’ll give me an excuse to write some copy that I can then use in a portfolio, and broaden the type of writing I can show around. As much as I love Demon Pigeon, it’s hardly the kind of content that is likely to lead to a job. I really do want to start building up a decent portfolio, and as much as I’ve kept writing in public ever since I left the Asian Express, very little of it is usable for a portfolio, and most of the stuff I can use is about 5 years old, and a lot of that is not really very good. So even if this doesn’t bring in the cash, I can write about whatever I want, so I can use it as an exercise in bulking out my portfolio. But I do hope it does bring in the cash.

But that’s enough shop talk. I know this blog has become a bit of a procrastination station recently, but I really do want to take the whole ‘writing’ thing seriously, and as a result it’s pretty much all I have to talk about. Boooooring.

So what else have I been doing? Not a lot. Yesterday I appear to have agree to another web project, although this one is not particularly labour intensive, should be fun too, and will probably become more popular than anything else. We shall see.

Other than that I have been largely watching the repeats of Mad Men on BBC2 on a Sunday night. It’s divine, even though nothing ever actually happens in it. One of the episodes this week had a plot that actually revolved around some people going for a drink after work, and nothing happened when they did. I am utterly transfixed. I think it’s the world’s most expensive and brilliant screensaver. The real hook in it is the characters, which are brilliantly drawn and very well acted, but have the added bonus that the writers make no effort to ascribe them a goal or obvious motivation. They’re just people, complex and trying to get through the day. Marvellous stuff and I am very happy knowing I still have three and a half series of it at the very least makes me happy. Oh, and talking about the show this much gives me justification to put pic of the lovely Christina Hendricks at the top of this post. Yum.

Other than that I’ve been watching a lot of the Hurricane Katrina docs that have been on to mark the five year anniversary. I’ve only watch the first half of the epic Spike Lee doc ‘When The Levees Broke’ but it’s magnificent, moving, and bewildering. Can’t quite see how it’s going to stretch to four hours though. Oh, and we’ve been watching the original Swedish Wallander, which is excellent but bloody hard work, so much so that watching one episode puts you off watching the next one a bit, even though it’s really enjoyable.

So yeah, it turns out that all I’ve been doing is watching telly. No change there then.

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Soooo, nearly three weeks without an update, but the good news is that rather than being a layabout, I've been (largely) hard at work on the novel, and I'm getting pretty pleased with the state of things so far. At the moment I have the first 5 issues sewn up, a further four needing a second draft, and the bones of a story arc in place for a second narrative thread. I had a good meeting with the Jonic about developing the site itself, and while I don't think I'm anywhere near ready to launch, the progress is ongoing in a way that it hasn't been for months. A lot of this is down to having the support of a girlfriend who doesn't mind me buggering off to work upstairs of an evening and even kicks my arse a little to make sure I do. That this coincides with her wanting to watch Big Brother is, I am sure, a coincidence.

As well as working hard, Ellen and I both took all of last week off to spend time with our lovely little lady. Over the course of the summer a general lack of funds coupled with a plethora of events such as moving house have conspired to prevent us from doing a lot that is Rosie-centric this summer, so we decided to redress the balance. Rather than spend a week away somewhere (which we will be doing later in the year with a trip to Devon) we decided to take advantage of the many local summery things that are convenient and cheap and have the added advantage of being close enough to mean we could spend the nights in our own beds. And so over a packed week we went to Leeds to Tropical World and a lovely walk through Roundhay Park, to Scarborough for a lovely day at the beach, to Waterworld in York, and one lovely afternoon for Ellen and I in a beer garden whilst Rosie had a day at Nursery. To cap it all we then tested how excellent our daughter is by taking her to her first festival, Moor Music. I reviewed the festival itself for Demon Pigeon here, but it's worth noting that Rosie had a fantastic time and seemed to enjoy sleeping in a tent more than she does in her own bed. So it turns out our daughter is very excellent indeed. But then we already knew that.

Of course the downside to taking a week off work is that you have to return to work itself. But you can't have everything. I may have a password protected post going up over the next day or so, when that happens feel free to email me or hit me up on Twitter if you are so inclined and I'll provide said password.

Last night Ellen and I watched one of the myriad films that is currently clugging up our V+ box (we're verging on having enough to start our very own To Watch Pile) a thoroughly charming little film called Waitress, which I confess I had recorded simply for the presence of a Mr Nathan Fillion, but which surprised me by being in turns warm and dark and funny and sweet. On top of that, I'd say it was the first Rom Com I've seen in as long as I can remember where I honestly didn't see the end coming. Highly recommendable.

I've a couple of mega busy weeks at work that have left me too knackered to do much, so I haven't done much in accordance with my knackeration. But now, I feel compelled to write and tell you all that I am in mourning, albeit a temporary state of bereavement. Yesterday I had to go and see my friend Laurie at T-Mobile and hand him my shiny lovely HTC phone. In return all he gave me was a dull and lifeless battered brick of a Motorola, which has clearly been a courtesy phone to so many people that I'll be utterly shocked if I don't contract the Hanta virus just by holding it up to my ear.

It's been less than a day and already I fell like I've lost a limb. I know that to the vast majority (i.e. all) of you this will sound very silly, but I've become very dependant on my phone, although I rarely use it as such. It is my RSS reader, my portal to Twitter and Facebook, my music player and my podcast reader. It is a portable search engine, my bus timetable, my reader count, my calorie counter, my exercise tracker and more besides. Even though I sit and write this at a computer which has the internet, without my phone I still feel a little bit adrift, cut off from the wider world. This is due to continue for another two weeks. Hence, sadface.

But let us not dwell too much on such hardships, let's face it in the grand scheme of things this barely even registers as a problem, so I shall move on, albeit whilst simultaneously glaring at my replacement phone like it might bite me at any moment. Last time I spoke to you I was about to install Ubuntu and it was a staggering success. It's a lovely operating system, although it has taken me a few weeks to recover all my old files from the old Windows set up. The best thing about it is that it now has Chrome browser which is staggeringly fast, the applications do everything that's been asked of them so far (which is not a lot, admittedly) and the move from Word to Open Office has been very easy. But the best thing of all is the speed. Switching on my PC with Vista was the sort of thing you used to have to do in stages. Turn it on, go and make a cup of tea, come back, log on, go and do something else for five minutes, come back, hit the browser, go and make a Sunday roast and hey presto the computer is ready. All told the whole process could take up to 15 minutes. I timed it with Ubuntu the other day and from hitting the power button to having a web page open and fully loaded took 32 seconds. And my computer is so much happier, no longer roaring at me liked a wounded bull staggering on its death march, but more like a happy cat, purring lightly. I love it. If you are having problems with Windows (ie if you have Windows) I heartily recommend making the change. It's really easy too.

Other than that the big thing that has happened is the wedding of my two good friends Laurie and Clara. It was an absolute belter of a day, and Rosie managed to make it (almost) to the end without any problems, although we paid for it for the next few days with her sleep routine being shattered. And it seems as though weddings are the 'in' thing this year, as my oldest internet friend (and phenomenally talented writer) Lis got married to the also excellent (and prodigiously talented writer) Jay, which I was very moved to get an invite to but very disappointed not to be able to attend. Also, my old friend Emma and her fella Laurence managed to elope in some style and get a Vegas Wedding, replete with Elvis impersonator. Very pleased for all concerned.

Other than that I don't want you to think that I've been completely lazy, as I have been working on BOTM (stop sniggering at the back) as I got about 9000 words in and then decided that I need to have a rethink, and have decided to move away from a single 1st person narrative to a more traditional 3rd person narrative. Obviously this is daunting and somewhat irritating to do this far in, but which is definitely the right move, not least of all because it allows me to move to multiple story arcs. I was starting to worry about what I have but this has really resparked the fire. In truth I was basically working with stuff I wrote over a year ago, and it felt a little stale, and I was struggling with the story. Traditionally I am more of a suck-it-and-see writer, which is all well and good for a first draft but when you are serialising online you have to realise that your first draft is going to be a final draft. I really need to plan the whole thing out, or at least come up with a general plotline.

This is definitely new territory for me. One of the things I most enjoy about writing fiction is that part when you are writing and what you write surprises you. It's great fun and that is to me when you know that your characters are taking on a life of their own, when they start to make decisions that you wouldn't take. But I'm also aware that this method of writing is very hit and miss and considering this is going to be pretty much the first time my writing has ever really been read, I don't want to find myself building up a readership only to box myself into a corner plotwise, which is always a real risk. I'm never going to be the kind of writer to plan things out in meticulous detail plot wise, I still want to go on the journey with my characters, but more structure is definitely going to be the way to go with this. I'm not sure how I am going to implement it, and I still need to sort out a time to sit with Jonic and talk about the design but things are most definitely progressing. Incidentally if there are any writers out there who know of any good support software for detailing all your thought processes, plots, characters etc, I'd love to know. At the moment everything is spread about in various Open Office documents, and it would be nice to play around with a new toy.

Anyway, it's nice to be back, and here's hoping the good people at the HTC factory send me my phone back ASAP.

A while back I flirted with the idea of completely junking Windows from my computer and replacing it with Ubuntu, the freeware Linux system, on the sage-like advice of Mr Jonic. I got pretty close to doing it too, even bought a magazine with the boot disk, but then it didn't work and I got frustrated and the whole idea fell by the wayside. But recently the old computron has become more and more laboured and tired from having to run Vista, and I have to say I can't blame it, it must be like being a paper-boy with arthritis, having to labour on when the kit you've got just doesn’t cut the mustard any more.

Last night was especially bad, and trying to do more than one thing at a time has become night on impossible, and so I downloaded the Ubuntu software and burnt it to disk and thought I would give it a go. And my dear Creamy Jesus is it nice. Firstly, it looks so pretty. It shares a fair bit of both Mac and Windows sensibilities, so basically it looks really nice but doesn't have the navigation issues that I always seemed to have on Macs (to be fair I haven't used a Mac in years so this is probably not the case any more) that prevented me from ever buying into the cult of Steve Jobs. Not only that but the responsiveness of the computer improved exponentially, and that was just from using the CD to boot. I gather it will improve even more once I install it to my hard drive. I love it. It is a bit alien still, and I seem to get requests to download software every time I want to do anything, but I imagine that'll calm down pretty quickly.*

So tonight I'm going to take the plunge and install it, probably only on partition for now in case I change my mind and go back to windows, but I'm quite excited. Before I do I still have a few things I want to test, like playing movies (can't see any issues there) playing with the word processor, and make sure I can still stick music on my phone without any issues, but if it passes these tests then by the end of the weekend I will hopefully be free from the shackles of Windows.

It does feel strange though, to be saying goodbye to it (not completely, work computers will apparently soon be upgrading from XP to Vista, deep joy) as it's the only operating system I've ever known. I still remember using a computer for the first time in a classroom back in about 1991, and getting told off for moving the mouse before I was told to. Since then my world, like pretty much everyone else, has become more and more reliant on the world of computers, and although I haven't always been on the Internet, I've consistently owned a PC of some kind since about 1995, and seen them grown from glorified calculators with basic word processors, into the super-whizz computrons we have today. And all of them, run on Windows.

And while we're looking back, I was reminded today by Joe in the comment thread of my last post that come October of this year I will have been blogging for seven years, since my first ever post on Livejournal (again, at the instigation of Mr Jonic, I really should buy him a beer at some point to say thanks) started with some vague grumbling of my then job. Madness. Also, in the same comment thread, it has been pointed out to me that my favoured shortened name for Blood On The Motorway is liable to cause giggles. So from now on I shall try to refrain from using it again. Cheers Jen.

*I actually wrote all of this earlier on, but the install has gone ahead and this is coming to you live from Ubuntu-land. I'll post more on this later, but by golly-gosh it is marvellous, so much quicker, more responsive.

You may have noticed that things look all shiny and new around here, as promised I have a new theme until the site gets a full overhaul for the launch of BOTM. One downside, however, is that the change seems to have borked my analytics right up, so I can't see if anyone is actually reading any of this. Any other bloggers will know that there's little worse than not being able to obsess over your stats, but hopefully this will all resolve itself in the next few days. Today I've managed to get a bit more writing done for Blood as well, so I'm now six issues in. For those of you who are interested, I will be aiming for two posts of 1000 (or so) words a week, so this will take care of the first three weeks while I'm getting set up. Ideally though I want more of a cushion, something around the 10 issue mark, so I can make sure I'm not putting anything out without adequate revision. One of the real threats with doing online fiction is that I'll end up putting up stuff that's not quite good enough, so I want to try and keep a buffer as much as I can so that things are getting a few revisions before they go up, unlike this blog, which tends to fall out of my head via my hands, and get whacked straight up.

But anyway, I promised you some thoughts on the good and bad of what I've been watching of late, so here goes:

1. Doctor Who. I mentioned before how much I thoroughly loved this whole season of the Doctor. I can't claim to have been the biggest fan in the past, I never really watched it as a kid and while I liked the Ecclestone series and parts of the Tennant stuff (although I never really liked Tennant himself) I now feel as though I have 'my' Doctor in matt Smith, and together with Karen Gillan (be still my heart) and Stephen Moffat they have finally created something that stands up as well as anything produced by the Godlike genius of Sci-Fi, Joss Whedon. Smartly scripted, emotionally engaging, brilliantly performed, this was children's TV that remembered that kids are smart, and they are people. Wonderful stuff, and the double-finale was about the best I've seen a series wrapped up, and the episode Vincent and the Doctor (Richard Curtis, where the bloody hell did that come from?) is easily the best thing I've seen so far this year. The scene in the Museum had tears streaming down my face, and Ellen's too.

2. Desperate Housewives. Ellen managed to hook me into this a few years back, and I have been a fan ever since. Again, taking what is essentially whimsical melodrama and marrying it to taut storytelling, good performances and wry humour all combine to make this a show I look forward to more than most, and this season has been excellent, right up until the last episode, which aired on Channel 4 last night. How on earth did they misjudge it so badly. All the various strands and interweaving plotlines were left vaguely resolved, but without any emotional payoff. I mean, there was a serial killer arrested, and a car blew up in the middle of the suburbs with a wanted terrorist inside, but by the very next scene these individual plots were completely ignored. It was lazy storytelling, plain and simple, with the writers too eager to shoehorn clues about next year's plots to bother resolving this years. Disappointing to say the least, and it makes me wonder if the show's days are numbered when the writing staff have clearly disengaged.

3. Southland. Ellen and I managed to sit through about twenty minutes of this distincly average Shield clone, before I realised that it was actually nicking the plot from the pilot of the Shield wholesale. Terrible, and the acting was pretty substandard, and the characters should have been walking around wearing their cliches on a billboard rather than cop uniforms. Woeful. Although still not as bad as the Idris Elba vehicle on BBC1, Luther, which was so bad that I've tried my utmost to forget it even exists.

4. The IT Crowd. OK so we're only a couple of episodes in but once again Graham Linehan's sticom is better than everything. Fact. And I want most of Roy's T-Shirts, and the pictures he has in his new flat. Hell, I'd even take the bicycle off his hands.

5. Films. Not all of them, obviously, but one of the big pluses to having a V+ box is that I no longer have to miss those cool films that they inevitably stick on at one o clock on a Wednesday morning because I have to go to work the next day. Last night we watched To Kill A Mockingbird, which I was sure I'd seen before but I'm now not sure I had. Needless to say it was brilliant and moving and I now want to use Gregory Peck  as Atticus Finch as a template for how to be a good dad. Oh, and I finally got round to watching both Zombieland and An Education, both of which I highly recommend, although obviously for completely different reasons.

Anyway, that'll do for now, back to the apocalypse, goodbye.

Firstly, a quick note to say that those of you who have come to the site directly and not just looked at the shiny RSS feed will notice that the site looks awful. Turns out updates are not such a good idea, and I shall be looking at a new theme soon, but in the meantime, please do stay.* Now that's out of the way, I'd like to talk to you about my office. No, please do stay.

One of the strangest things about our move into the new and shiny new house has been the realisation that getting what you want isn't always the best of ideas. The main reason for deciding on a three bedroom house (aside from the obvious fact that a three bedroom house is always going to be bigger than a two bedroom) was that finally, I could have an office to do all my writing in. In the old house we had the computer set up in the mockery that was the dining room, but in reality was more of a big space that connected the lounge to the kitchen. As such, it was bloody hard to concentrate sometimes, with Rosie back and forth all the time, and the general cooking time ruled out for actual work. In the new house, however, we now have a spacious office room, with a proper computer desk, a filing cabinet (well, of sorts) and even a nice plush leather sofa bed that enables us to use the room as a guest bedroom. It's perfect, and should now enable your dear author here to get some serious work done. All except for one thing.

It's upstairs. Now, what with me not being a Dalek, you wouldn't imagine that this would be a huge issue for me. But Rosie is a bit young for me to leave her downstairs on her own during the day, so writing when on my own is out. Also, the office is right next to her room, and the hot weather and new room have meant that Rosie rarely settles when we put her to bed as it is, so the notion of sitting and tapping out an opus once she's gone to bed is also out of the window. And Ellen and I see each other so infrequently that when we do get an evening in together, I rarely want to remove myself from the lounge. So we now have a nice office that never really gets used for any great period of time. Which renders it essentially useless.

All of which is really just excuses. What I need to do is either bite the bullet and admit my mistake and move the computer downstairs, or stop spending my evenings sat in front of the telly, and instead get writing. But as well as the logistical difficulty of using my own computer, I have to admit that the V+ box, which I believe I may have already mentioned once or twice, is making it very hard to get anything done at all. By freeing me of the constraints of having to sit down at a specific time to watch a show, it now allows me to record anything that I think may be of interest to me. Which is a hell of a lot of stuff, it turns out. So now, as unshackled as I am to regular programming, I am having to spend all my time watching telly just to stay on top of it all.

So in other words, I need to stop being a lazy arse. In that spirit, I have once again started working on Blood On The Motorway, which for those of you who don't know, is the mythical online novel whose existence I have been threatening for a year now. I actually registered this domain a year ago, and the blog was moved to a sub domain, but this whole year it's been nothing more than a holding page, and I have been putting off its launch for some time. But today I talked to the mighty Jonic about getting the site itself designed and took another pass at the first four episodes/issues so that they will be ready to launch with the site. I'm not going to promise that it will be tomorrow, but it should be soon. I am actually quite excited about it, but I need to get a bit further ahead than I am at the moment before I launch, as if launching Demon Pigeon has taught me anything, it's that it's generally a good idea to keep your updates regular. Something we have become a bit shameful at lately, which I shall add to my list of 'stuff that I need to sort out once I summon the courage to use my computer more.

But enough introspection. Tomorrow I shall return with some thoughts on some of the many TV shows I have been watching, including the terrible end to the otherwise excellent recent series of Desperate Housewives. Yeah, that's right, I'm in touch with my feminine side, and my feminine side gets pissed off when shows are wrapped up in a ham fisted and illogical way.

*Facelift achieved, shiny new theme installed. I hope that once Blood On The Motorway is done properly that I'll get the theme for the blog to match it, but this will do in the meantime.

Today I attempt the impossible. No, not trying to balance an egg on it's end at the equinox. Not sitting through an episode of Big Brother without curling my fists into a ball while a rage sweeps through my body. Not even trying to explain to George Osbourne that poor people are still people too. Today, I will attempt to avoid all mention of the England game for its entire duration, and watch it on V+ when I get home. Yes, I know I said yesterday that I wouldn't mention the football, but hey, it's my blog, and this is going to take up my day.

In order for this miraculous feat to occur, several things will have to work in my favour. Firstly, since I came into work early today, I can leave at four o clock, meaning I have to get through the first half and the half time coverage without anyone in my office alerting me to the score. Sadly, since I work on a huge open plan floor, this is unlikely. In order to minimise the risk I have asked everyone in my immediate vicinity not to mention the score, and I am going to stick some brutal metal in my ears and avoid the internet. Of course this does nothing for the other people I don't know well enough to approach, nor does it rule out the fact that there are probably a few people I work with who would see it as hilariously funny to destroy my day. I am however slightly aided in this by the fact that most of the die hard fans have already taken the afternoon off. The only reason I haven't is that I am a dumbshit who only thought to do it when it was too late.

Come four, I will leave work without talking to anyone, and I will cycle home. This part shouldn't be too bad, given that most people will be off the roads, although I will have to be pretty lucky to avoid honking horns and pubs, and laughing or crying children. The last obstacle will be that I will arrive at home at roughly the same time as the match finishes, and given that my whole estate is currently decorated in thick blankets of red and white (seriously, there's even bunting), there is a good chance that any celebrations or desolation will spill out into the street. Once home, should I make it, I can settle in, ignore my phone, and watch the match on a two hour time delay.

What's the chances that all of this will come off? Slim to none, obviously, but it's worth a shot.

Oh, and today I stole Ellen's snazzy new bike and cycled to work, which took only 30 minutes and was thoroughly pleasant, if a little nerve-wracking in places. But at least I wasn't stuck on a bus of doom, reading a really shit book. When I was a lot younger I used to love reading John Grisham, since I was only about 13 and didn't know any better. I haven't read any for years, but last time my parents visited they brought a new one up, The Associate, which they said was his best in years, so I thought I'd take nostalgia out for a bit of a spin and give it a whirl while I wait for Ellen to finish Cloud Atlas. I really wish I hadn't. The book itself hinges on a ridiculous premise, whereby the main character is supposedly trapped in a complex tale or blackmail, but I have so far thought of about 10 different ways he could avoid being ensnared, and the fact that he is supposed to be a world class top-shot lawyer and he can't think of any is staggering. And the whole thing is draped in a thick veil of misogyny that is quite shockingly forthright. The blackmail revolves around a rape, but any sympathy for the victim is utterly absent, while any other female characters are treated with nothing but contempt. One female associate, when faced with the same gruelling lifestyle as the men around her, actually faints! Those poor feeble women, eh? Nonetheless, although the book makes me have to temper the rising of bile, I still really want to know what happens at the end, so I guess it's been pretty effective at that at least.

So wish me luck, and if you are one of my friends, please resist the need to text or call me this afternoon. Cheers.

If I have been a little quiet of late it's for one reason only, and that's the World Cup, and its glorious exhibition of the dullest football around. Well, there are exceptions obviously, but even last night's Spain game, which saw them dominating proceeding throughout and coming away with a two goal victory, was about as exciting as listening to a Travis album on repeat whilst waiting for a bus that never comes whilst an elderly lady taps you incessantly on the shoulder every five seconds to ask when the bus is coming.

I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of the dullness is down the constant droning of Vuvuzela hum, but since I don't really want to be one of those people who moans about it, and I do think that if we're going to have an African World Cup we have to accept that crowds in South Africa may watch football with slightly different traditions than us Europeans, I won't. But they are bloody annoying. But not as annoying as watching our national team attempting to create a new style of football known as 'comatose.' I won't write much more about that, since you are either already following the World Cup, in which case there is far more insightful commentary at every turn (although not on the BBC or ITV, naturally) or you hate 'the football' and would rather I just shut up about it. Besides, there is something that is grinding my gears far more than the underperforming nature of our useless windbags.

Since we moved I have been forced to restart my old epic struggle with a whole section of society. There are people, and I hesitate to call them such, who seem set to try and ruin my day with every opportunity, to baffle with illogic, to kill with tedium. I am referring the fine men and women of the First Bus Company in York. Before I moved to Acomb, I had gotten used to walking to and from work every day, and come rain or shine all I had to worry about was the possibility of large dogs attacking me. And that never even happened. But now, my work is a 40 minute bus journey away, with Rosie's nurseries an additional complication.

But it's not that simple, since every single day, the drivers get to our bus stop on time, and then sit there for ten minutes. Since the bus is supposed to come every 10 minutes (but it only ever seems to be my drivers who pull this stunt) they then just take up the next time slot. This allows them to say that although you are setting off ten minutes late, you are leaving on time. Now, ten minutes I will give you, but over the course of a 40 minute bus journey they invariably pull this trick twice more, once on the way into town, once on the way out. And this is even when they know that the traffic in and out of town will make them even later. Today a 40 minute journey took an hour and ten minutes, and yet the driver insisted that he was still on time, no matter how much I pointed to the timetable on my phone to prove otherwise. I understand that being a bus driver must be a really horrible job, and you take a break whenever you can. I would do the same, but surely if you are driving people to work every morning, you should act accordingly, and make some attempt to get your charges to their destination on time? But no, not the First bus drivers. And this is just the day to day nonsense, quite apart from all the times they refuse to open the doors because they have pulled away from the kerb by an inch by the time you get there. Or the times they refuse to acknowledge that a note is currency they cannot refuse.  All of these have happened to me in the last month, and there hasn't yet been a day where I have not had to curse the very existence of First Buses.

The long and the short of this is that I need a bike. I hope to get one this weekend, as it will bring about the end of my need to be ferried around on the bus of doom, as well as halt the seemingly terminal decline in the Year Of Health experiment, which has spectacularly fallen by the wayside of late. Hopefully a long round trip on a bike will lead a fitter, leaner me. At the very least it will mean I no longer have to spend a good two hours of every day, inside a travelling sweaty chav box as it bakes in the summer sun. I will just have to worry about being sideswiped by a double decker instead.

'Jesus Christ!'

This was the response of the nice lady from the disconnections team at Virgin Media when I recounted my tale of woe to her. As promised, I took the bull by the horns and phoned up to cancel my account with them, armed with the fresh knowledge that the £30 recommend-a-friend discount hadn't gone to my chosen friend either. The woman on the other end, who I imagine cannot have the nicest of jobs working in the disconnection team, was obviously authorised to do more than anyone else I had spoken to previously, and after she had spent a good five minutes apologising for the incompetence of her colleagues, she has now arranged a delivery tomorrow of a shiny V+ box, and my wireless router. Of course I won't entirely believe it until I am recording programmes at my leisure, but there you go. A little bit of persistence and eventually getting through to someone with the sense to do what was promised initially, and I have exactly what I wanted. So that's nice. Thanks again for everyone who sent advice on here and on Facebook, you lovely good good people. And apparently the £30 discount will come through after we've been paying on time for 3 months, so don't worry Jen.

So hopefully this tale will only need to be a trilogy of posts, I'll be very disappointed if I have to return to write a fourth installment. But onto other things. In the last few days I've really started to grasp how cool my phone is, as it seems to be able to play YouTube videos at a rather nice quality, even given a general paucity of connection. Honestly, aside from a few stutters, it's able to play videos when my connection is snot strong enough to even send a tweet. Yesterday I finally got around to watching something that a good many friends have told me about, Zomblogalypse. This is a web series made by some friends of a friend, and as such I wasn't expecting that much from it, in the same way you never really expect a huge amount when someone tells you about their mate's band. But actually this is lo-fi horror heaven, brilliantly scripted and acted, and funny as anything put together by more famous zomcom creators. On the bus home yesterday and the bus to work this morning I managed to cane the whole first series, and can't wait to travel to work tomorrow to get cracking on series 2. I'm also immensely jealous that I didn't come up with it first.  Click on the image below to go check it out.

Also, I am currently listening to the full Glastonbury set by Radiohead from a few years back, which is every bit as splendid as I remember from watching it on TV, and it's all thanks to my little Android. Cheers little buddy.