16August1995

London: 16th August 1995
My dear folks,

I have always found my days bland compared to my nights. My sins come back with a vengeance to haunt me in my dreams. I can't tell you how often I find myself back in the air force or the monks or the SABC. However, I set a precedent two nights ago by achieving all three in the same dream, trying first to explain to the sergeant major why I was not wearing my cap, then looking for somewhere to kneel in some huge church & finally getting caught up in some problematic broadcast. Then last night I became entangled in a dream so fantastic that I knew even as I dreamed that it was nonsense & awoke to hear myself saying: "That's a lot of "f.....g" rubbish"; which indeed it was. I can't for the life of me remember what it was about.

The "F" word isn't one I use a lot. But I found myself cursing roundly in the studio during the final bulletin the other night. The reader mis-read a word on the autocue, saying in a story about Kashmir that the Indian PM was calling for fresh elections instead of efforts - in the search for the remaining hostages held by Kashmiri separatists. The Indian authorities tape every word & picture we transmit & if there's the least error, they make a huge fuss. So does the Indian press. We have just got over one such incident & I didn't need another. The reader did not realise his mistake & was mortified to discover it. I didn't realise what blue language I was using & later apologised to the gallery crew. The error came too late in the bulletin to go back & correct. So we just hoped that not too many people had noticed.

Today is the last of 3 wonderful days off. They have all been hot, a bit too hot if one were fussy. But I'm not complaining. And they have all followed a similar pattern. I have spent several hours at the computer, then gone off somewhere on the bike for a couple of hours & finally returned to the computer. I keep the fan on in the corner of the room & can choose between the radio, the shelf TV or the CD for company. Mavis generally makes it three if he is not lying in the kitchen watching the birds. I dropped in on the bike shop a few days ago to buy lamps (now that the days are shortening) & also purchased a lock that now secures my saddle to the cycle frame. I noticed another cyclist with the same device. The place is crawling with thieves.

Yesterday, I took myself off to Swiss Cottage & Hampstead looking for some odds 'n ends, especially a cat flap for Portugal. But I also enjoyed a wander around areas long last visited. There were lots of cat flaps available but only the kind designed to be fitted to a door rather than a glass pane & I needed the latter. Even so, I returned contented with a copy of a Windows-95 manual that I found in Waterstones.

On the way back from the corner store I bumped into my neighbour, Stefania, & she invited me in for a chat & to give me details of an excellent pet shop she patronises. On her patio, I enjoyed one of the cold beers I'd just bought (I have made certain small compromises to my regime, Jones, in view of the weather). She confessed that she dreaded the laying of several small flagstones she'd acquired as she didn't know how to go about levelling them. It's become a speciality of mine, so I did it for her, first excavating the ground aided by Herman, her other half. It took barely an hour; the stones look very good & she's delighted. I came upstairs dripping with perspiration.

Today's excursion was first the BBC where I wanted to do a bit of homework & then to the said pet shop just off Kensington High Street. They had already assured me on the phone that they had a good range of cat flaps in stock. I bought one & spent an hour exploring the high street, sniffing around computer shops for software. There were several interesting items but none that convinced me that it was worth the approx £45 price tag. One can generally get a better deal in Tottenham Court Road where a little bargaining secures a useful discount.

I did get three paperbacks, Roger Penrose's The Emperor's New Clothes; Kitty Ferguson's The Fire in the Equations; and Francis Crick's The Astonishing Hypothesis. They're all about the numbers, computers, space time & all that, a brand of reading that I find both fascinating & a jolly useful way of going to sleep. I have twice ploughed through Stephen Hawking's A Short History of Time in very small sections & loved it.

But I think Paul Davies is my favourite author in the field. He has the knack of describing the most complex ideas in terms simple enough for the layman to follow. Even so, I often have to read a paragraph three or four times before I grasp what it's getting at. It's an amazing universe we live in.

My days off have given me the opportunity to get my nose fairly deeply into several computer areas I have been meaning to explore. I particular, I have been able to resolve two small problems that have long been niggling me....so satisfying. I find that I tend to work in the same limited areas of the computer most of the time & grow stale. To keep myself sharp, I need to be exploring new regions, like the publishing programme (that arrived with the computer) which I've barely glanced at.

I got a shock the other day when my British Telecom phone bill arrived & was more than double what I expected. I route most of my international calls through Mercury, which is cheaper than BT long distance. I couldn't work out why a whole series of calls to Portugal, Germany & SA had gone via BT. Then I twigged that the computer fax programme I've been making lots of use of recently (it's much quicker than my normal fax) was routing all the faxes via BT. I've had a word with Mercury on how to get around the problem. (My Mercury bill was correspondingly lower, so no harm done.) I thought email would see my phone/fax bills go into a steady decline. But mainly it's just adding new correspondents to the list.....not that I mind! It's pulled our extended family closer together and I welcome that.

It's back to work Thursday & Friday (another big "sluk" there of lime-juice & soda from the litre bottle beside me). On Saturday morning, I sneak off to Portugal for six days after much scheming & swapping. I couldn't get a seat to Faro, so am flying to Lisbon where Jones will meet me for a leisurely drive down. (Confirmed TP481, Jones, arriving midday.) I fly back to London on Friday evening - this time from Faro, happily. Until then, love from London.