Following on from the dread puking lurgie a couple of weeks back, I suspect that my resistance to illness has fallen somewhat. I’m not completely sure why, but it sure seems to have happened.

This week I’ve been plagued by a sore throat and cough that just keeps getting worse. It’s not rib-rattling (yet) but I’ve also seen the effect it’s had on a colleague (who I suspect I’ve caught it through - the joys of working in an office that sometimes seems to resemble a plague-ward on a bad day) who is most definitely on the rib-rattling stage.

I’ll see how it goes over the weekend - I’m not debilitated by the cough (at the moment) although it’s making sleep rough. (Not helped by the fact that Psycho Cat followed me into the spare bedroom last night, and still spent the night wrapped round my feet.) Not much fun, but there we go.

And once I’ve knocked this one on the head, I suspect I’ll be making sure I take all my vitamins, and make sure that Vitamin C in particular is kept a bit higher than usual, just to build up some resistance to these things again.

At the end of our road is a duck-pond (one of four in the village) which has it’s own community of ducks. They’re never exactly afraid of cars at the best of times - one of the people on the road feeds them regularly, so it’s quite common to see a whole line of mallards crossing the road - but they’re even worse at the moment.

It’s breeding/hatching season, you see - so it’s not just all the mature adult ducks, but whole conglomerations of fresh-out ducklings too. And they’re even more food-focussed than the adults. Or maybe they’re just dafter, I’m not sure.

This morning, on leaving the house, I had to stop and wait for the whole line of feathered (OK, downy) fuckwits to cross the road before I could get on with my journey. I don’t mind really - it’s nice to see them plonking about - but it does make me wonder how many will actually survive through to adulthood.

In the last week, I’ve received three newly published books. For some reason, a lot of the authors I like (and regularly read/re-read) publish books at about the same time. In this case it’s not too bad, because I can save at least two for a couple of weeks ’til we’re on holiday.

As it is, I’ve bought (they were all on pre-order, but they’ve now been paid for, too) new books from:

• Quintin Jardine
• John Connolly
  and
• Alastair Reynolds

Not bad going, over all. I’m looking forward to reading them while on holiday (well, I’ve started the Quintin Jardine already, but there we go) although it’ll then be back to waiting for their next ones.

Last week, we decided to get someone in to do the mowing of the grass in our garden. It’s something I’ve been doing, but it takes up a large amount of time on a weekend when we could be doing other things - sorting out the veg patch, for example. The entire garden is something like 8,000ft² (roughly 165′ x 65′, which is just over 10,000ft², but there’s other stuff in there than just grass, so I reckon it comes down to about 8,000ft²)

So we got a guy round on Friday to have a look, and he quoted us £30 to do the entire thing - mow it, strim the edges, and clear it all up. Not bad at all - yes sure, we could get someone cheaper (as Lionel pointed out elsewhere) but for the moment we’ll see how we do with this guy.

He turned up yesterday when we were both out, so I came home to a fully mowed garden. And he’s done a fantastic job - everything’s been done, the mowing, the strimming - even the dog toys were tidied away, (with the exception of one tennis ball that died - hardly a worry) and all the clippings plonked into our compost bins.

All in all, £30 well spent, in my opinion. Although we may need to buy a couple more compost bins before long.

When we got the chickens back in November, we decided to name them after our grandmothers. (With the exception of one grandmother, who happened to have the same name as Herself - obviously that was a no-no)

One of the grandmothers- Gladys- was renowned as a dragon of epic proportions, and capable of having a right temper on her.

The chicken named after Gladys is turning into a similar creature - it’s very spooky. At the moment she’s all broody (again) and is pecking out at me whenever I try to move her. (The eggs aren’t fertile, she’s just sitting on them, and not getting up for food/water, which is a bit of an issue in the current temperatures) She’s even taken to pecking me when I put her on her perch at night - that’s a new development, only started this week.

All told though, it’s looking like we really should’ve thought more about the names before applying them to the girls. Ah well, live and learn.

One of the things I hate about summer is that I turn into a buffet bar for mosquitos. (and other bugs as well, but mainly mosquitos) There’s something about me that obviously tastes good to the little bloodsucking fuckers, and they just dive in for a chomp.

After having a meal outside on Sunday evening, I’ve got no less than five bites on my legs already, three of which have swollen up unpleasantly.

We’ve got a mosquito-repellent in the bedroom which seems to work OK, and we’ve got a UV anti-bug lamp, although I really need to sort that out and put it somewhere so it’ll actually do something to the little vampiric bastards. However, the UV thing can’t really go outside (not long-term, anyway) so I’m also considering an outdoor version like this one which might help zap the buzzing little tossers.

Ah, the joys of summer.

Oh dear god, it’s one of those years (also known as “Leap Years”) again this summer.

All through the summer, the TV is going to be filled with Euro 2008 football, (despite there not being any part of the United Kingdom that’s got through to the final competition, it’s still going to dominate both BBC and ITV while it’s on) then the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and at the same time the eighth ninth series of Big Brother on Channel 4. Whoopee-doo.

I guess I’m going to be either doing a lot of writing, and/or watching DVDs instead…

[Edited : Bloody BBC story about Big Brother got it wrong, and claimed the ‘07 series was the seventh, when in fact it was the eighth. They’ve changed it now, but all the same, oops.

So another film adaptation of a comic book. Ho hum. However, this one’s got Robert Downey Junior in the starring role - which should at least guarantee it’s watchable.

In fairness, Iron Man was actually OK. I’ve seen far worse comic-book adaptations (I’m looking at you, Hulk) but nor is it one of the best - not by a long chalk.

The storyline has a lot of bits that feel like afterthoughts, or “Oh yeah, we could do that” moments. Effects-wise it’s fantastic, and Jeff Bridges makes for a pretty good baddie - but all the same it’s let down (in my opinion) by a pretty ropy and by-the-numbers storyline that leaves too much stuff either a) up in the air or b) forgotten about.

Compared to the (currently re-showing on BBC) Indiana Jones trilogy, it really shows its weakness - Iron Man’s OK to watch once, but would I think “Oooh, good” if I saw it on TV in even ten years time? Absolutely not.

Most of the weekend’s been spent out in the garden, which has been really nice. There’s been some hard work - finishing off the extension to the woodshed, so it’s about another eight foot long and will take another six months worth of wood. (at least)

Over the summer, we’ll be ordering another trailerload of wood, so it can season properly- we’ve got enough for a couple of months once it gets cold again, but we want to have more in stock than that, and be able to have it used in rotation - some of the wood we buy this summer may not get used ’til Winter ‘09, by which time it’ll be good and seasoned. That’s the plan, anyway.

We’ve also been doing a buttload of weeding - it’s nowhere near completed, but we’re getting there and will continue with it during the week as well.

So that’s been the weekend, really. Not much else happened (except for seeing Iron Man, of which more in another past) but it’ll be good to go back to work for a rest…

At the end of the month, we’re going over to Ireland for a week’s holiday - and I’m really looking forward to it.

Getting there will be interesting - we’re taking Hound, and the car, so it’s going to be a matter of driving the 350ish miles from Norfolk right the way across the country to Haverfordwest, staying overnight there, getting up at stupid o’clock to get on the vomit comet ferry across to Ireland, then driving another 190 miles all the way across Ireland to where we’re staying near Glenbeigh, on the Ring of Kerry. All told, about 550 miles plus ferry crossing - and the same on the way back, of course. Bearing in mind it was only about 250 miles to get up to the Lake District, that really is going some.

As it is it’s looking like it’ll be a good week. We’ve got what looks like a stunning house lined up, and then plan to just spend the week going round the Ring of Kerry and just relaxing again. I foresee lots of photos…

I’m also planning on doing a bit of writing while I’m away - although I said that when we went to the Lake District too, and got absolutely sod-all done on that score, so we’ll just see what works and what doesn’t.

But I can tell you now, I’m just about counting the days…

I’ve just had it confirmed that I’ll be staying on with my current contract until the end of the month.

That’s two extensions now - and this three week one is for a completely new project, which is even better. The agency’s ecstatically happy, and I’m pretty pleased too. Considering the initial contract was for 2 weeks and 2 days (i.e. 12 days all told) it’s now been extended for a further seven weeks - and that’s all because they keep finding more stuff for me to do, rather than because of anything negative.

I must be doing something right…

Yesterday evening, I was working on fixing a problem by using a small bit of javascript, and I couldn’t get it to work. Annoying, but them’s the breaks.

Finally, I realised why I couldn’t get the thing to work on a browser, when I was sure I’d written it correctly - and double checked it when it didn’t work first time.

I’d turned javascript off in the browser to do something else, and hadn’t reactivated it yet.

[Edit : I forgot to add the thought in the next par when writing the post initially]
It’s the only time I’ve found so far where tabbed browsing is inferior to separate browser windows - if you turn it off in one place, you turn it off in all of them, which doesn’t happen (as easily) with multiple windows.

Grrr, twenty minutes of debugging and re-reading code - and all because sometimes I’ve got the memory span of a goldfish.

I’m just loving today’s XKCD comic.

Sometimes they’re a bit hit-and-miss, but this one’s worth the effort.

It’s possible that today we will be finally re-allowed to use mains water for drinking and cooking. It’s not certain yet, because they’re doing ‘final’ tests today to decide. (Of course, if we still can’t, it won’t be final tests, but there we go)

We’ve been on bottled water since 17th April.

In that time, we’ve had a dropped off leaflet about why we couldn’t drink the water, and one letter - addressed to the previous occupants, who moved out at least eighteen months ago. And that’s it. It really hasn’t been Anglian Water’s finest hour (three-and-a-half weeks. Whatever) in terms of customer service.

Any information that’s been acquired has been gained by us calling them. In fact, we wouldn’t know about today’s tests if I hadn’t spoken to Anglian Water’s customer services people on Friday. And because they couldn’t be bothered to tell us, it would’ve meant that all the access to the back of the house (where there’s an outside tap they could use to test the water) would have been locked, so they couldn’t test our place.

We also took the opportunity to get them to deliver more bottled water to everyone on the road, as on Friday there were two six-packs of bottled water left on the pallet dumped on the roadside a couple of weeks ago. For a bank holiday weekend. As it is, I’ve been dropping off some of those six-packs of water to the older people on the road (and bear in mind that a good 50% of the people on our road are at least sixty) rather than them having to try lugging bloody heavy loads of water back to the house.

All told, it’s been a total farce from start to finish. And once we’re actually back on the mains service I’m going to be having a serious conversation with Anglian Water about why the hell it’s been such a fuckup. That’ll be a fun conversation, for sure.

Following on from a stomach bug (food poisoning, viral thing, whatever) there’s a stage in the recovery process that is a real throwback to childhood, but that has a joy all of its own - and far out of proportion with the actual import of the event.

That event is the first post-illness solid dump. There’s a true happiness about this, coupled with knowing that you can finally drop your guard a bit, and not worry that every single occasion involving that area is going to necessitate a run to the closest loo.

Or, to quote a friend…

Thought I was going to fart.
Was wrong.