The executioner has arrived. Our loft full of pigeons will soon be no more.

I’ve made myself scarce. With guns (well, an air rifle is still a gun) and noxious chemicals around there’s no place for spectators. Luckily for me.

Air rifles aren’t very loud are they? I just realised that the clicking noise I thought was his step ladder is actually him doing the deed.

I’ve lost count of the number of shots. As most of the adults would have escaped through the hole in the roof he must be shooting the ones that can’t fly.

Is anyone reading this whilst eating? Sorry.

[update]
Oh boy. He says that he’s been chucking some of the bodies out of the hole in the roof. The roof slopes towards the alleyway (i.e. our front door) not the road.

Killing done. Just the cleaning up to do.

[update]
I’m going out for a bit, I think I need some fresh air.

About half the moon is in shadow now. South London isn’t the best place for sky watching, especially with the moon right over the floodlights of the bus garage, (so no chance of photos from here) but at least the sky is clear so I’m getting the best view I can.

[Update 22:47] - Nearly totally in shadow now, I can see the the reddish hue on the shadowed parts quite clearly. I tried to take some pictures anyway but the camera just whirred as if to say “there’s nothing there mate” and refused to do anything.

The other night the doorbell rang, we weren’t expecting anyone and it does tend to ring for no reason so we ignored it. Then it rang again, and then a third time. So I went down to see whether there was actually anybody there. A nervous looking middle aged bloke was hovering on the other side of the gate. When I got close enough to hear what he was saying I discovered that he was apologetically asking whether there were “any girls upstairs, any women?” “Um, er yes,” I replied puzzled, and then realisation dawned, and I hurriedly continued “Oh! No, not that sort of women.” Later, pink_weasel said “you should have taken some money off him anyway.”

Well, a little bit moany, by comparison with some people[1] I’ve really got nothing to complain about, and what I have is largely self inflicted.

There ought to be a law against it.

I’m waiting for a furniture delivery. It’s coming sometime between 7 and 6 today. Getting dressed before 7 on a Saturday? When you have no plans to go further than the local shops[2] today? It’s just not right.

Seeing as I haven’t posted all week…

Happy New Year

I have foolishly gone and made a bunch of resolutions, and told people what they are (so I can’t conveniently forget all about them), so I might as well post them here:

1. Give up alcohol for seven weeks. An odd length of time, but it means I can start drinking again just in time for Lettice’s 30th.
2. Give up soft drinks, sweets and crisps. Yikes! All in one go.
3. If I buy breakfast on the way to work then I must buy a cheap lunch. Kind of vague this one, but I know what I mean.
4. Pay at least £100 into my savings account every month. Standing order now set up to transfer the money the day after I get paid, so I don’t need to do anything else for this one.
5. Limit my wargames/role playing games spending. I did a little experiment a while back and the results were a bit scary. I’m aiming for a lower figure this year - £500 total, so I have a limit of £100 per quarter and an extra floating £100 for magazine subscriptions and similar costs.
6. Get a hair cut at least every two months. Lettice may want me to go for “the full Tom Baker” but there were some very frightening photos of me taken at the Christmas party and I think short is better.

Five days into the year and I haven’t broken any of them. Though the fact that alcohol free lager tastes even more revolting than regular lager and that alcohol free bitter doesn’t seem to exist, may be my undoing.

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[1] Lawrence Miles has dumped his diary/blog for November and December online in one big splurge. It’s not easy reading. This guy is one of the most talented writers to ever touch Doctor Who but he’s got some serious issues - I really don’t want to say anything trite like “tortured genius” because that turns a person into a cliché.

[2] More importantly to the Farmer’s Market - West Norwood is moving up in the world!

Had a fantastic long weekend, four days of relaxing and enjoying ourselves.

Thursday night, left work and headed down to Croydon where ate at Wagamama’s (the Salmon Ramen is very good) before going to see Mitchell and Webb at the Fairfield Halls. I think this is the third time I’ve been to that particular venue - the first was to see Victor Borge some twenty years ago, and the second was to see the Rocky Horror Show about eight years ago. Anyway, Mitchell and Webb were just as good live as on the telly - some familiar sketches (taken to new extremes in a few cases) and some I didn’t recognise from the TV series.

Friday, we went up to the British Museum to see The Past from Above exhibition. Really breath taking stuff that really brought home just how vast the extent of human history is. Most parts of the world have see who knows how many lifetimes lived, with not a single line in the history that most of us know.

Also at the BM, was a (relatively) recently reopened gallery dedicated to the Enlightenment and hence the birth of the museum itself. It does a very good job of emulating what the BM is like in our secret thoughts - all book lined walls and eclectic displays.

Saturday, pink_weasel went to play at the Tate whilst I stayed home and read comics. But I did find time to visit West Norwood’s first ever farmer’s market (it’s going to be a regular event every two weeks) where I picked up some cheese and some welsh dragon sausages (pork and leek and chili). In the evening I left a very knackered Lettice in bed and went to Giroscope’s birthday bash in fitzrovia - Duke of York, for beer Palms of Goa for curry; and finally The Fitzroy Tavern, for more beer.

Sunday was a quiet day at home - my dad brought the second of two leather chairs, Lettice poured dye all over a book (on purpose) and we started watching Doctor Who - The Invasion (with the missing episodes filled in by animation). Though not the best animation in the world it captured the likenesses of the main characters well and was, of course, cleaner and smoother than the surviving ’60s live action episodes.

Today, we lay around in bed and then went to Croydon again to see Casino Royale. Possible the best Bond film ever. Certainly the best since the ’60s. Having a actor who can actually act certainly helps. It will be interesting to see what they do next time, now that they’ve done the whole “how Bond becomes Bond” bit, will they find something suitably interesting for Craig to get his teeth into for the sequel?

Phew. Back to work tomorrow where with any luck I’ll be holding second interviews for my assistant. With luck we’ll be able to make someone an offer at the end of the week and have them start very early in the new year. Which will mean that I should be able to take more than two days off next time.

As we’re all blogging for history, here’s a bit about my day.

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Alarm went off at 7:00. Lettice got up. I didn’t. Whoops. Staggered out of bed at 8:00 and between checking e-mail, showering, eating breakfast and faffing about managed to get into work around about 9:45. No meetings this morning so not a problem. Check work e-mail and calendar and tell the project manager that I love her because she’s worked out that in our incredibly tight schedule for the site (www.visitlondon.com) redesign I actually have no tasks allocated to me between the end of November and the sometim in February so I can take some holiday after all. But then I groan as I realise that Friday is booked up with meetings from 10-12 and then 12:30-16:00. Ouch.

Spent most of the day working on a project for our kids’ site (www.kidslovelondon.com). Nothing terribly exciting - a bit of CSS, bit of XSLT, bit of JavaScript (enforcing my own recently written coding standards to avoid document.write and use appendChild() etc.). Minor panic regarding the half term edition of the kids’ newsletter but it got sent out on time and everyone seems very happy with the new style.

Went to lunch with Lettice - she’s working at VL for a few weeks. And after that it was time for today’s round of meetings about the redesign project. Time and money versus ambition. Same as every project I’ve ever worked on. We actually have a very good team (and soon to be a much bigger team, an ad will be appear in this week’s New Media Age for six positions within the web team at VL) and doing most of the work in house will cut down on some of the headaches.

Ended up working until 18:30 which makes up for the late start, though a fair chunk of the last hour was spent playing Bang! Howdy (www.banghowdy.com) whilst waiting for other people to go through the designs of the Christmas pages with me. We need to have some pages up very soon in order to cover the switching on of the Christmas Lights.

London Bridge was busy and I just missed the 18:39. I bought this week’s New Scientist (suckered in by the ‘what would happen to Earth if humans vanished cover story) and this month’s .net (a couple of articles that I can quote mine for a brainstorm in one of Friday’s endless meetings). Ran into Séverine and we caught the 18:51 to Tulse Hill and then walked up to West Norwood together.

Home, sausages for dinner, then watched CSI: Miami with Lettice before sitting down to write this.

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So there you are, not my usual sort of post and probably not of any great historical interest.

… in lovely West Norwood. The new assistant in Woolies needed a bit of help in getting the right DVD off the shelf - useful hint for everyone: if you’re looking for a ‘D’ and it isn’t at the end of the top shelf, the start of the second shelf is a good place to check.

The gaggle of young women in the doorway of the hairdressers prompted the following exchange:
pink_weasel: “Is there anything more frightening that teenage girls giggling?”
Me: “When they stop giggling.”
PW: [laughs] “Yes. This is about that time you didn’t pick up that My Little Pony from the gutter?”

Bought an old computer game for £1.50 in the charity shop, the manual had a post-it note stuck to one of the pages.

Just heard a disturbance outside, looked out the window and saw a woman walking down the middle of the road shouting angrily at the world. She crossed the road to kick the door of the empty shop opposite and the continued her march towards the station.

She was naked except for knickers and a headscarf.

Whoever is cooking bacon, and allowing the aroma to waft in through my windows. Please stop. It’s driving me crazy.

At some point last night someone drove into the bookmaker’s next door. No idea whether it was an accident or a robbery. Didn’t wake either of us up. This morning the front of the shop was caved in and a Group 4 car was parked outside. Maybe Lettice will pop out later and take some photos.

The impact must have knocked the gate across the front of the passageway between our place and the bookies because I couldn’t unlock it this morning and had to walk the long way round.