Day 874

Went into town - wet calm morning with straight-down falling gentle rain. Still no new Maplin catalogue. Cashed my Giro.

From an out-of-breath reporter on R5 just after 11am I realised something had happened IRA-wise: I went down and switched on BBC1, and shortly Quincy was interrupted to announce an IRA ceasefire, which is something out of my experience. Maybe they can sort something out now over there.

Did more Latin, getting pretty good now. Maybe this time is the breakthrough.

In the evening watched an old episode of Hi-de-hi, funnier than I expected. Simon Cadell is very good.. He's very ill apparently. Pity.

Made a successful 9600 baud serial transfer of an 80K file from the Psion to the 486 via Windows Terminal. Saves all that serial port mouse/3link swapping.

Day 873

Quite a few touches of Autumn about now. Up at 9.30, strained my back exercising. Instituted a new regime of not smoking with cups of tea but after them, which should help separate the two activities.

Catalogued all the pictures I've scanned, 4½ discs, 62 files plus 6 more compressed.

They're talking about an IRA ceasefire: will the Unionists resist and Major end up like Heath in 1974? I'd hate to see Major get any credit out of it, the ignorant narrow-minded bastard.

Day 872

Nice weather for the Bank Holiday. Did a lot of scanning - scanned the same picture at 100, 200, 300 and 400dpi for future reference.

Great cartoon in the paper, Tony Blair as lad in bedroom putting together self-assembly Build A Better Britain kit (a Red Rose Product), watched in approval by his Harold Wilson poster.

Day 871

Ran out of Rizlas at 11.40pm yesterday and went to bed quite pissed. Passed a pleasant morning listening to Radio 5 and doing scans. Went to Sainsburys for wine as soon as licencing laws allowed. Today the Sunday trading laws were changed, S's have been open for months anyway. Apparently there were massive queues at Lakeside.

Came back, conducted a dead-wooding session on the hard disc: saved 3 M by setting up various progs to run off floppies (now that the hard disc has ceased to be a novelty I can keep it for necessities).

Had tea, spent an hour reading the paper. I rather like the Independent on Sunday. Later in the evening watched and taped Monty Python.

Day 870

Quiet day. Read a good library book about the history of hanging in the afternoon.

Day 869

Went into town, still no Maplin catalogue. T rang up at lunchtime.

In the afternoon at last managed to make a decent 400dpi scan, but by careful positioning rather than solving the basic problem, whatever it is. I notice still no reply to my query to Logitech 4 months ago.

Watched Red Dwarf V in the evening.

Day 868

A new Software Source shareware catalogue and Private Eye had come, and having exhausted these I was finding things a bit boring in the morning when a mad-looking woman came past on a bike and did some random shouting. I stood by to repel boarders but she went off. Nevertheless the incident unnerved me and I was anxious all day. So much for care in the community.

Always remembering that according to opinion polls Neil Kinnock is Prime Minister, it seems Labour are on 56%, 33 points ahead. At least two years to the next election, but it's encouraging. D seemed in no doubt that Tony could pull it off.

In the evening French & Saunders.

Day 867

I woke up to a rotten hangover at 9am. Beautiful morning though, big white cumuli. Talked to D till 10.45, then left. Back by 12.50.

Felt better after tea. It was a very good idea to tidy up before going to D's. It was a good trip too, a good idea all round.

Watched about 10 minutes of Desmond Morris, found it very boring so watched the Commonwealth Games instead.

Day 866

(Wednesday night). Got to D's about 4.20. We drove out to a place called Coombe Hill in the Chilterns - great view from 852ft up. The sun came out as we were there, revealing an impressive landscape. We could see Chequers too.

Day 865

Plotted a route to D's: 67 miles via the M25. Can't decide what tapes to take.

Listened to rather good R4 play The Pirates Are Coming in the evening, wish I'd caught all of it. It'll be on again if I know R4 right.

Watched Panorama, Rwanda again.

Day 864

Did some Modula-2 and C experimentation. In the evening rang D, said I'd arrive abt 4pm on Tuesday. She sounded v. relaxed, as she'd just been fucking or drinking or smoking dope.

Day 863

Continued going through my diaries for the time since I left uni. I've misplaced events from year to year in a way I never did for the time I was at uni. Finished the notes in the late afternoon and started discing them.

In planning the trip to D's, realised I haven't been in a pub since I last saw her on Feb. 12, over 6 months ago, and furthermore that the last time I went down the Green Man was nearly 11 months ago. Who'd've thought it?

Day 862

Six years since my A-level results. Was affected by girl on news killing herself due to low grades. Another tragedy of the Dream.

Tried transferring the ZX80/BASIC2 Othello to the Psion, with minimal success.

Parents came back in the afternoon, and were pleased with my house-sitting. Arranged to come back and borrow the car on Tuesday to go and see D.

Day 861

D rang up to say she was going to Turkey for a year next week, so I arranged to go and see her next Tuesday.

Watched French & Saunders in the evening.

Day 860

Cashed my Giro, went into town. Came back, carried on sorting out all my files. Didn't manage to throw much away but divided some files into sub-categories. I found stuff I thought I'd chucked out years ago, like an original official campus map, rather symbolically torn in half.

Watched Desmond Morris. Sex this week, they had a camera actually inside the woman's cunt at the moment of orgasm. What would J. Logie Baird've thought.

Day 859

Read a bit of Latin. Experimented with the shareware paint prog, which has the discouraging attribute of telling you how many times you've used it without registering it.

Day 858

Went into town. Still no Maplin catalogue, a pity as I've been thinking of getting a switching box for the serial port to eliminate Psion Link vs. mouse conflicts.

M came round for a while in the evening. She was disappointed to hear how ABC turned out. Not as disappointed as I was. For once I have exceeded her technology-wise with the 3a, so that impressed her.

Putting the milk bottles out about 9.40 I clocked Aldebaran deep orange in the high west. It was always the herald of autumn - odd that a year ago I was worrying about the oncoming isolated autumn. 1994 has zapped past.
At least in 1992 and the first half of 1993 M was here. The second half of 1991 I can barely remember.

Day 857

Went to Sainsburys as soon as licensing hours allowed for wine and water. Worked on the Modula Reverse Polish prog, continued to make excellent progress. Did some more Latin.

Listened to some of the Charity Shield, Man U beat Blackburn 2-0. Got to sign on tomorrow. Ah well.

Day 856

Did a bit of Latin and a Psion Reverse Polish engine. Then made very rapid progress with the same in Modula-2, which has procedure pointers about a million times easier to use than C's.

Football season started today (not Premier) - ridiculously early.

Day 855

Went into town to the library, and spotting Modula-2 info in a reference-only massive computer dictionary, went and bought a recycled pad and pencil and came back and made extensive notes. Then felt a book called Parallel Programming might contain facts, indeed it did, clever eh? Borrowed it, got back rather late at 11.30. (It occurs to me that I never go out in the afternoon now if I can help it, much less the night - should I worry about this?).
Spent the rest of the day winning doing Modula-2 experiments.

In the evening watched Red Dwarf V, the Inquisitor ep 'where I came in'. They've nearly repeated the whole thing now, and I've heard a 6th series is imminent - great!

Day 854

Rained almost all day. Played a lot of Johnny Vegas' Draw Poker, excellent shareware game. Transferred data from the Psion via Windows Terminal, 9600 baud, no trouble.

In many ways the ABC caper was a watershed, especially with it ending so exactly 3 years after the finals. To be frank, at the moment I can't see what's going to change and make things different.
Then again, without wanting to tempt Fate, none of the disasters I've had have been entirely without compensation, and looking back a lot of them seem to've been pretty instrumental in bringing about good times.

Day 853

Was amazed to have those shareware discs delivered at 9.30; I didn't post the order till 11am on Monday and it can't've been collected till 12.15. So that's 47 hours from door to door.
Went into town to the library - no Modula-2 books despite hundreds in the catalogue. Came back, spent the day experimenting with the software.Also did some work on my own language STASIC (BASIC linearity, stack calculations).

Day 852

Read a bit of the life of Johnson over tea. Quite interesting actually, he had a mental crisis when he was 20, like yours truly.

in the evening read Fellowship of the Ring. In the radio version he misses out Tom Bombadil and the Barrow-downs; fair enough, but he forgets that the Barrow was where the hobbits got their knives/swords from. And he has the Mouth of Sauron say 'Blade of the Downfallen West' forgetting that this means the Barrow-blade which he has removed from the story and not Sting.

Day 851

Went into town, paid £10 into the bank to cover a cheque for more shareware (I'd found a 'buy 4 get 1 free' voucher valid till September) inc. a Modula-2 compiler. Could get here Thursday, better borrow a book on Modula-2.

Experimented with the ASIC semi-BASIC compiler I got last time. It has no expression evaluator except in assignments, and even there it can only cope with 2 terms. But it does produce very small .COM files (604 bytes for a DIR listing, and you'd be hard pressed to do that in assembler) so is worth trying.

I remember saying to M that I was a sucker for languages (a fault she also admitted to) and it's true: I've got Locomotive BASIC, QBasic, TSRBasic, ASIC, Turbo Pascal, Quick C, Prospero Fortran, Zen FORTH, the A86 assembler; and even an OPL compiler for the PC. Is ten enough?!

Why is there never anything decent on telly on Monday nights? I suppose they know people stay in anyway so they don't bother.

Day 850

Did some more Latin.

Day 849

Converted the QBasic Psion screen dump displayer to C.

Day 848

Went into town. Found a new book on Old Turbo Pascal (ie v3 and before) with new info in it. Stroke of luck.

Worked very hard in my parents' loft. In the evening watched Red Dwarf V, truly excellent with them all coming to after 4 years playing the Red Dwarf RPG and finding they were all different people. Of course it was a hallucination but it was very very interesting.

Day 847

In the evening watched Punt & Dennis; Punt (the small one) wrote jokes for Unnatural Acts. Put the bin out at my parents'.

Day 846

Cashed my Giro, and went to Tandy (walked snarling past ABC) and bought a simple multimeter for £12.99, which'll be extremely useful for various projects and checking appliances etc. Blew the fuse measuring too high a current in the afternoon, luckily there was a spare one inside the case. Nice touch.

When I got back from town my catalogue parcel had arrived. Haven't had a pair of trainers since Winter 1988-89. And these are special walking trainers (!)

More Latin, waded through some difficult poetry about Orpheus.

Had to change the Psion batteries after 33 days, not too bad I suppose with the heavy use I've made of the serial link. So the rechargeables are now in service.

Day 845

My parents have gone to France for 17 days, so I am house-sitting for them. Tidied up their loft with great effect, making clear the access lanes and unstacking areas. Made it much easier to find stuff.

Day 844

Composed more of a letter to T. Went into town, got a book about radio transmission from the library, signed on. The bloke tried to engage me in conversation about job hunting (whether spontaneously or by order I don't know) but having just waited 20 minutes I was not to be drawn.