Why is it that even whem I’m utterly knackered, having been awake since 5.30 this morning that my body wakes up again at about 9.30pm ?

It’s now half midnight, and I’m not even vaguely interested in going to sleep.

Grrrrr….

Well, the return drive from Bracknell to Cambridge went OK in the end.

It didn’t start off well, as at 6 in the morning I couldn’t start the fucking car, and ended up having to call out the breakdown people. Turned out that the steering lock had engaged, and locked the key barrel of the ignition too, although it only took the AA man a few minutes of wiggling the wheel and swearing before it all worked. Fucking thing.

Finally left Bracknell at around 6:45, and got in to Cambridge for about 9, 9:15 – so not too bad at all, considering the M4 and M25 were starting to get busy. If I’d started off much later, I think the entire thing would’ve been a nightmare.

Would I do it again? No, probably not. It was more expensive than the train, more hassle (bizarrely) and saved me about 20 minutes all told. So no, not really worth doing. But it’s the first time I’ve been able to rent a car since passing the test, and it answered a lot of questions for me, so in that context the entire thing was a success. It means I know now that if I need to, I can rent a car easily – and in the next month or so it’s likely that I’ll need to do so at least once in order to go and check out rental places in Norfolk (far easier to do from Cambridge than from Bracknell) and so on, so yeah, it’s good to know that I can do it with no problems.

Mind you, I’m fucking knackered now…

So – have you remembered to turn all your clocks back?

I’m sure we’ve still got a couple to do – but all the main ones have been done.

And lo, ’twas the run-up to the Festering Season once more.

Over the year, I’ve had a list of resolutions, and thought I’d do a quick update before the birthday rears its ugly head in a weeks time, as a kind of progress report.

• Photography
  • Macro Lens – yes
  • Portfolio – working on it as a website
  • Talk to Agents/Publishers – spoke to some photographic publishers, which is why the above item changed.
  • Submit work to various places – started off with ImageKind, but no joy yet.
  • Join local camera/photography club – tried, and it all turned to bollocks
  • Look at potential for “proper” photography qualification – looked at it, but nothing that’s viable for 2006/7 academic year
• Work
  • Get the three main sites up and running- two of three, and other ideas too
  • Make them successful – getting there
  • Keep track of how they do – yes
  • Reassess in Jan 2007 – if they haven’t worked, kill ‘em – moving this to various times in 2007
  • Get more smaller sites done and paid – yep, two so far, and more on the way
• Writing
  • More “proper” writing – it’s starting – nothing publishable yet, but it’s starting
  • Longer pieces for d4d? – no, and that idea is back ‘on hold’
• D4D
  • That bloody sweary filter. – nope
  • Installing WordPress 2.0 – nope, and not going to
  • Photoblogging? – nope, but may come up elsewhere

Thankfully, it actually it looks like I’ve managed to get a fair amount done since the last update back in July. And that’s something I’m pleased about – seeing how little I’d got done by that time was quite demoralising. I knew that the work I was doing at the time, and the influence of Arsehole Boss in general wasn’t helping my motivation one jot, so it’s good to see that moving on work-wise has started having a positive effect on everything again.

Watching a fragment of ITV’s X-factor tonight, I realised what it is that I dislike about it.

Bascially, it’s just karaoke, isn’t it? All you have is a performer ‘singing’ someone else’s lyrics, with backing that’s either pre-recorded, or a bunch of session musicians. OK, so it doesn’t have the lyrics rolling up on a TV screen, but when all’s said and done, it’s just a person performing someone else’s songs – no musical talent necessary.

This afternoon we’ve taken Hound up to Burnham Beeches again, and she’s had a great time.

The past week, and the next couple, are the worst time of year for Hound – there’s fireworks all over the place, and Bracknell seems to become like a war-zone with them going off every night. While I’ve been away, there’s been a whole week already with fireworks every night, so Hound has been fairly stressed. I took her out this morning (she’s still been getting walked every morning, but apparently when Herself does the walk, it’s just not the same) and she ran round the local park like an absolute loon, burning off some of that nervous energy that’s built up over the week.

So Burnham Beeches was always going to be part of the plan this weekend, and she’s had a great time.

It also gave me the chance to get some photos with the new lens, and it’s a fantastic bit of kit – even though it was the “wrong” lens, it’s still great, and is providing me the chance to get a lot of a certain type of photos I was wanting to experiment with.

But the most important thing for us was to make sure that Hound had a really decent run – and she’s most definitely had that now. And we’ll most probably be doing something very similar tomorrow, although not at the same place. Variety is the spice of life, and all that jazz.