Journals.

Reading these journals, blogs, online diaries, or whatever you want to call them, has been my dirty little secret (well, okay, one of my dirty little secrets) since the tail end of 1996 when I was working in the systems office of the Edinburgh University Library - a job that I've enthused at to more than one of you, I'm sure. The money, frankly, was terrible, because I was a temp and paying temps between half and two-thirds of the going rate for the job seems to be the way it's done in lots of circles. The people, though, are what makes or breaks many a working environment, and I can personally recommend librarians as workmates. They're smart, they believe in information and learning, and nobody goes into it in the expectation of getting rich. I liked them. There was also the fact that I could walk up to their malfunctioning Windows 3.11 for Workgroups 25MHz 486SX and fix the networking problem in five minutes, then walk away having gained instant respect and feeling ten feet tall. As instant-satisfaction jobs go, it had certain advantages. It also had a desk with a PC on it. This meant that, in the quiet moments when nothing much seemed to be happening, and during my lunch breaks, I could footle about online. I got very used to this quite quickly.

To start off with, I'd often (okay, nearly always) spend my dinner hour with my (then non-bastard non-ex-)girlfriend, who'd just finished her law degree and was gearing up to go off to Stirling, study publishing, dump me, break my heart, and all the other things young women do when they want to give those close to them something to grumble about in later life. After she departed for points Central, of course, I spent that hour mainly at my desk wandering around the web (or "potterring on the information allotment" as nik_strychnine used to term it at the time). This led, via a link pointing at the Gothic Babe of the Week page (yeah, okay, so sue me . . .), to something I hadn't seen before - an online diary. This was kept by Tracy Lee, a young (well, a little younger than me, anyway) mother from DC, who happened also to be one of those filthy goths that even then I used to hang around with. This was all quite fascinating, and soon I was reading regularly. There were two or three others I started reading too. The one I mainly remember was Nicholas Grinder's Countdown to the Big Four-Oh, the diary of a man rapidly approaching forty. And, as it happened, the diary of a man with fascinating taste in music and many other things, who was remarkably good at making his dissatisfactions immensely readable. There were others, but I stuck with those two for quite a while. They've been on and offsince, and every so often I go looking for them to see if they're back and what they've been up to. Creepy, eh? Anyway, I've just noticed that Tracy Lee's turned up right here on this very webshite - indeed, well before I did, a year and a half ago, as tracylee (surprise surprise). Grinder, on the other hand, seems to have moved to the States.In fact, he's down in Austin, which I visited some years ago as it's Ximena's old stamping ground. He can be found at http://www.nerichardson.co.uk.

I'm very pleased about this. I mght try to dig up a few others. I used to take an odd pleasure inseeig what Gus was up to, but the last time I checked he wasn't a semi-unemployable punk layabout somewhere in Redneckistan, but a respectable sysad (if that isn't a contradiction) in a decent neighbourhood. Consequently he was spending too much time being productive and not enough being plain mad. He was probably a lot happier, but who the hell wants to read about happy people?

In other news, there is very little other news. I can't find my copy of the new Michael Moore book, but it'll turn up. I've turned a few more pages of The Power that Preserves instead. That's a grim book. And I've listened to some Waterglass. Not such a bad evening.

Quoted in today's Guardian:

"The influence of the songwriting is as follows : the lightness of touch of Bob Marley, though it's not reggae; the rough edges of Neil Young, though it's not country rock; and the emotional range of Nina Simone."
Nick Cave plays down hopes for his next album

In other news, it seems that Sophie Ellis-Bextor is not useless after all. And I have a new car mirror, with sixty quid more in my pocket than I would have if I'd bought a new one.

Clarification: the mirror's new to me, but old in absolute terms.

Flood!

We've just had notice that the flood barriers are to be put up here, every night until further notice, as the end of my workplace where I actually work is handily situated on the floodplain of the Granta. The effect of this is to seal off the two most low-lying doors from late afternoon until morning. In theory, should there be heavy rain and the water level rise further, the building will be secure aginst the water which will almost surround it. In practice . . . well, let's just say I'll not be leaving anything valuable on the office floor when I go home. The flood defences haven't really been tested in action yet.

Also, of course, it looks like we'll be having a fire strike, so certain forms of hot work will be forbidden (although this doesn't directly affect us), most electrical appliances will have to be disconnected overnight (presumably not including the various fridges and freezers) and smokers are being asked not to, anywhere near the building. One wag suggested that they could just be asked to stand in a bucket of sand - regardless of whether they happened to be smoking at the time.