28March1997

My dear folks,

It’s Good Friday. Puffballs of cloud are drifting across a blue sky. The view through the study window is important to my day. It sets the tone somehow, either inviting me to be out & about or encouraging me to stay gratefully put. The fact that it’s Good Friday has no bearing on my schedule. I’m working today till midnight & go on to night shifts on Sat/Sun, part of a deal with the rota lady to facilitate a week at the Quinta in April. And to be honest, I don’t mind at all. The lemming pictures of the queues at the country’s airports & the logjams on the roads don’t tempt me.

The application forms for a job with BBC OnLine were delivered to me yest. Appropriately, they arrived as email files which I brought home on a floppy disk & to which I shall turn my attention later. They ask questions about favourite Internet sites & how Internet journalism differs from other media. The subject turns my thoughts to the 39 members of the Higher Source Cult who, after making a living designing web sites on the Internet, went off to meet their UFO on a poisonous cocktail of drugs & vodka. Poor crazy bastards! I doubt they’ve found their higher plane. The story led yest.’s output & was part of the current affairs programme I was working on.

The cult was not the only community to turn its hand to computing. One of my computer buff colleagues was telling me about a group of monks who now earn their living in just this fashion. It makes perfect sense to me. It was the monks after all who laboured away in their libraries down the centuries, copying manuscripts & keeping the store of knowledge intact. As I write, the Benedictine monks of the monastery of St Dominic of Silos are chanting away in the background. They fit the mood of the day. Not that Easter means much here other than a welcome break.

I’ve been able to make some progress towards a modest Web site myself. There’s a programme integrated into Office 97 that provides idiot-proof templates for people like me. I’ve set up a simple one which I hope to install on the Net shortly. At least I shall be able to tell any BBC OnLine inquisitors that I have done so. I doubt that they’ll want to look.

At last I’ve mustered the resolution to vacuum clean the flat. I don’t know why I find it so hard to get down to. It’s a job I always leave till last. With the fat hairy sausage sprinkling his hairs liberally around the flat, it needs doing at least once a week. Less successful were my efforts to remove a wicked ink stain from the pocket of a good shirt. I tried my best immediately after the accident a week ago, to no avail. Then the laundry across the road had a go. Finally, I got a sachet of “colour run” from a pharmacy & dunked the shirt in that for an hour while I cycled off up the canal to raid Sainsbury’s. It was all a total waste of time. I shall have to hunt around for a badge that I can sew over the offending stain as it’s clearly there for the life of the shirt – a favourite shirt too. The episode has irked me all week, more especially as it is not the first of its kind.

At least my diet continues satisfactorily. I’ve been waiting for weeks for anyone to say: ”Hey, but you’ve lost weight!”. And yest someone did for the first time, & so I have, getting on for 20 lbs. I no longer wince when I catch unexpected sight of myself in the bathroom mirror; my jeans are flapping around my waist & I’ve reintroduced myself to two splendid pairs of trousers that had long since given up hope of another outing. I feel much happier, as if I’ve tunnelled the real me out of some alien envelope. I never liked myself bulging in the middle, even though I’d learn to look on the bulge with forgiving eyes.

Having written which, I must add that there’s still some way to go - & I’m only too aware of the sad fate of most dieters. Somehow I feel though that this one marks a lifestyle change for me. I’m joining Jones’s club, as a moderate member mind you!

Barbara has been hard at it down in Portugal, overseeing the painting of the casas & the spring-cleaning ahead of the arrival of a full house of guests next week. It continues hot & dry & windy there. (It’s windy here too – I struggled to work on the bike yest.) Jones is hoping for rain but not immediately as it’s the last thing that our guests will want. (Jones, the latest Quinta schedule follows. It looks fine for the proposed new guest. I will make “Sky card “enquiries on Bernie’s behalf – after the Easter weekend.)

Our election campaign continues somewhat despairingly for the government whose agenda has been hijacked by continuing tales of sleaze & sexual stupidity. And, if the latest reports are to be believed, Tony Blair is now so far ahead of John Major in the prime ministerial stakes that Blair has lost all enthusiasm for the TV debate he’s been demanding for months. The rationale is apparently that he has nothing to gain from a debate while a creditable performance from a desperate Major might just start to even the odds. What a funny old world!

Thank you Llewellyn & Jane for your welcome letters. My thoughts are with you over Easter, as with the other folks in SA & in Canada & Germany.

Blessings ever,