Day 935

Very wet and windy today: rode into town into the teeth of the gale, got a copy of Dragon.

T rang up at midday to say she'd be coming on Friday. Better get some impeccably vegetarian food in.

Again worked very hard on the Combat Administrator, with good results. Added morale, could do missile fire next.

Quite a good day on the whole, I like a bit of wind and rain.

Day 934

Worked very hard throughout this enjoyable grey, rainy, windy day on giving the D&D prog a visual interface. Working well.

Watched Quantum Leap, a good one in just pre-civil rights Alabama with Sam as a black bloke.

Worried about unemployment (as usual). With Autumn coming round a fourth time it's quite serious. But after the ABC Debâcle I've never regained my confidence work-wise.

Day 933

Did a lot of programming, got the QB ephemeris working well with the planet glyphs. Works much better than positioning text characters on a coarse grid. Still the aspect ratio problem between EGA and VGA, rather harder to overcome unless you like oval EGA charts. But my patent colour/mono detector works well.

Improved the D&D combat resolver too, but some really intractable problems with it, unfortunately.

Did a lot of Latin, finished the Ch.22 exercises.

Just heard something very funny on R5, the dole as modern version of National Service with the young 'sitting round dunking Hob-Nobs in weak tea and watching The Young Doctors for two or three years until they sit up and think, Time to write that novel.' Great R4 play earlier in the evening, Distance Between The Stars - almost in the Just Fourteen league.

Day 932

Got a lift into town to the library - a great PC Companion, with really useful stuff including confirming the KEYBUK/SETVER method for DOS 5 on Amstrad PC's.

Got some more Latin done, got to work tarting up the QBasic ephemeris prog (as opposed to the Basic 2, Pascal and OPL ones) and getting it to work with EGA Mono and VGA by inspecting the BIOS Equipment Status byte. Just started now on proper planetary glyphs instead of the ASCII characters I've been using.

Went for a walk in the afternoon, felt very well for a change. Perhaps I'm going to get something constructive done.

About time that T. wrote.

Day 931

Prepared for Ch.22 of the Latin. Still going well. Went to Sainsburys in the afternoon, recycled a couple of catalogues that've been hanging about for ages.

There was a funeral starting from no.51, Mrs H must've died. The H's were old as the hills when we lived next door, 20-25 years ago, so they both had a good innings.

Day 930

Cashed my Giro, rode to the out-of-town Sainsburys.

Day 929

Two months to Christmas eh? Up at nine to another rather long morning. Beguiled it with all the Out of This Worlds we've got on tape. Finished that Crusades book, very interesting.

A compelling episode of Eastenders in the evening. Pris later.

I've been feeling a lot better recently. Got to move on I suppose, though how victory will come about I can't tell. I saw a penny and picked it up in the afternoon, though whether 'all day long' means till sunset, till midnight or for 24 hours I don't know. It was odd really, I'd just spent one penny on a stamp. I was posting a prize draw entry too...

Day 928

Went into town, got a new coat (green, v. nice) went and signed on - that last very depressing but not for long. I borrowed mum's car as bags of clothes are difficult to carry on a bike.

It's easy to blame groups when you're unemployed, Hitler was clever to tap that. Tories planning yet another piss-smelling 'reform' (benefit-stopping measures). Bastards. 'Come on, come on, hurry up Tony come on...'

Day 927

Up at ten, then realised it was 9am GMT and I was in for a long morning. But with videos, the paper and Quantum Leap at noon it was quite enjoyable. In the evening the 'Piranha Brothers' Python ep.

Day 926

Found the day rather long again. Going to town 3 times a week may have eliminated the pressure of Saturday but it has left a bit of a gap in it. Listened to the play on R4 (uninterrupted listening to this another advantage of town regularity), a Daphne DuMaurier, very good.

Did some scanning - persistence and slow scanning are the key, successful scans of at least 1200 pixels long have been made.

Watched the last Alan Partridge again, pretty good. Saturday nights just aren't what they were, eh? Still, they used to be worse.

Day 925

Didn't achieve much constructive today really, thought over a few things, went for my afternoon walk. Watched the usual telly in the evening.

Day 924

Noticed that the side-effects of the new inhaler can include being 'shaky and tense', which might explain recent symptoms of nervousness. It is 16 days now though, shouldn't they've worn off by now?

Finished reading my old Vizzes, finished the letter to T, posted it on the afternoon walk.

Read a bit more of Life of Johnson, no telly again. Why concentrate all the good stuff onto Tuesday and Friday? No part-time or any time jobs in the free papers today.

Some minister I've never heard of has resigned for taking cash to ask parliamentary questions. What do you expect from this lot? Come on Tony.

Day 923

Went into town to the library in the morning, looked at winter coats in C&A. I could order one from Kays but it pays to be careful with cheap unbranded stuff from catalogues, which tends to fall apart before you've finished paying for it. Came back, carried on writing to T.

After the success of yesterday's afternoon stroll decided to institute a regular brisk 2000-yard walk at 2.45pm, thus providing 20 minutes' exercise and getting me out of the house.

Read some more of the Life of Johnson, quite interesting, lots of little Latin snippets to translate. He used to write his diary in Latin, don't think I'm quite up to that. Mane ii ad oppidum et bibliothecam...

Day 922

Felt a bit shut-in about 3pm so went for a brisk walk which worked wonders. Golden sun, golden leaves, blue sky, wind, excellent. Started writing to T.

Thought about part-time jobs, watched a bit of Vanessa, sorted out my menus prog - rock-steady like QEdit's menus.

Day 921

Went into town and paid in my loose change. Came back, my stuff arrived at eleven, not bad given I only sent the order off last Tuesday. Perhaps they trust me more now I've sent off some cash.

Rest of the day fairly bland, Harry Hill's last weird but funny thing on telly in the evening.

Day 920

Slightly less nervous today; gloomy weather, though it broke up a bit in the afternoon. Did some programming.

Counted up my spare change - £9.45. Taken to the bank tomorrow that'll provide £15 for the rest of this fortnight and extras, and still leave £6 for the next Kays installment.

Been thinking about part-time work: I might only make £5 extra pw but I might get a decent reference out of it.

Day 919

Found today very slow and boring. Got very nervous again at times, not as bad as yesterday though. Still golden and hazy like 1988.

Did a lot of computing without achieving very much except a very fine dithered 300dpi scan of a photo. I think I underestimated dithers, they look very good printed out. Unfortunately impossible to scale though.

Perhaps I should stop buying stuff by mail order, I can never think about anything else until it arrives. I'm not normally very materialistic but sometimes I get taken over by a massive desire to have something. Odd eh?

Day 918

A letter from T saying she wants to go to America next year.

Went into town, got the Turbo Pascal book out again. When I got back suddenly became very nervous, which lasted till about 3pm. I wonder why. It could be a warning sign - of too much drinking, or even diabetes perhaps. I never have got round to being tested for the latter, perhaps I should.

Computed. In the evening, watched Red Dwarf VI and Alan Partridge. Loose Talk later.

Day 917

Did a lot of computing throughout the day, battered the menus program into shape. I ought to start finding a program to use it with really!

Worked out that I'm getting 147 rollies a week out of 50g baccy. Changed my smoking intervals to save 1 more a day.

The ABC thing has put me right off working again. I always felt I'd avoided thinking about careers and it's caught up with me Though hat's not so much the problem now, I'd take any job they'd have me for, but it shows that even at age 14 I knew there were going to be problems. Ten years later I'm drifting aimlessly about, getting nowhere - But hey. A lot of unemployed people are far worse off than me.

Now the 'Loyalists' have called a ceasefire to match the IRA's. Now they can really try to sort something out in N. Ireland.

Tony has bridged the gender gap. He is 9 percentage points further ahead with women than he was before the conference, women being traditionally Labour's problem. Strangely, given what they'd do for us. And these are the new adjusted polls, where Labour are 17 points ahead rather than 38 (and Neil Kinnock has been Prime Minister for 2½ years). They say the next election will be October 1996. 2½ years down, 2 to go. Roll on Labour victory! We're Harold Wilson's Labour Party Band...

Day 916

Cashed my Giro, went into town, put £5 in the bank to cover my catalogue payment.

They're using clips from the Young Ones episode about University Challenge to trail the latter. Still hilarious after all this time.

Did a lot of scanning, no problems today. Wish I knew why it's sometimes so ill-behaved.

Day 915

Made two massive 260K 300dpi scans of the Silmarillion map, printed them out and stuck them together. So now I won't have to keep flipping to the back of the book to find out what's going on.

Watched The Fast Show in the evening.

Day 914

Went to sign on. Things were a bit disorganised so no-one hassled me. Went to the library, then got stamps for D's letter.

Spent much of the afternoon tidying up the room, listened to the R4 afternoon and evening plays. Had to go out in the evening for supplies, realised I hadn't been out on my own at night since D visited on Feb. 12th, 8 months ago.

Day 913

Misty but cleared. Finished the free PCW game.

Read a bit more of Moby Dick. Wrote half a letter to D. Had a look for applications for tomorrow but couldn't find any. Saw the New Moon.

Day 912

I've been feeling very strange recently, as if I'd been drinking far too much, which I have. Still, it's not as bad as the ABC Megalapse was.

Didn't get up till ten, didn't do much when I did, apart from some Psion experiments and testing the latest cover disc - very good games. I ought to write to D too - keeping to the airmail 10 grammes of course.

In the evening watched Alan Partridge again.

Day 911

Didn't wake up till ten, went into town to the library and wandered round for a while. Decided Nov 28 would be this year's Christmas Shopping Day.

Got a letter from ABC Personnel, no dishonesty etc. I wrote back to correct a few points but I think I'll leave it there. Bastards.

Good speech by John Prescott at the conference. Him and his wife were jiving on the platform later with the Blairs clapping in time.

Day 910

Wrote a Psion prog to use the data I transferred yesterday - works well. Finished the letter to T, got safely past the 'vital stamp buying stage' .

I was supposed to go to that job workshop today. The DHSS bloke shouldn't have said it was voluntary. Hope I'm not stirring up trouble. But I couldn't stand the thought of going back to those Ponders building wankers. Better send off some wild application before >Active Signing< starts, eh.

Day 909

Woke up feeling mutinous and bored; walked to the out-of-town Sainsburys.

In the evening transferred the Excel food database onto the Psion in CSV format and imported it into Data; started work on a meal nutrition calculator.

A good, constructive day once a 4-mile walk got yesterday's indulgence out of me.

Going through that green coat's pockets in the evening found stuff I used in the ABC era. Very sad.

Day 908

Did some computing, experimenting with Windows printing and the Psion. Fixed up the smoke alarm.

As the paper said it had improved, watched The Fast Show - better than last week.

Tony Blair made a great speech at the Labour Conference. I can see him and Cherie in No. 10. Echoes of Harold Wilson's white heat of technology in information superhighway references. This and the sunlight (even if it was cold) cheered me up a lot.

Day 907

Listened to The Mating Game, walked into town in the drizzle. Discussed wine boxes with the checkout woman in Sainsburys, got a smoke alarm battery from Homebase.

Came back, experimented with Windows - finally got the Middle-earth map to work as wallpaper.

Another rather low Monday, really, made the best of it I suppose.

Day 906

Listened to the last part of Lost Empires on R4, that J.B. Priestley thing with Tom Baker about music-halls. In the grey afternoon went out and got PCW from Sainsburys - partly because it makes me feel better knowing that interesting things can be acquired on Sundays now.

Has the glimpse of Better Life round at T's made me feel better or worse? Worse, because she's got cash and independence etc. Better, because I could get them too. Worse, because I feel that the lethargy that began in May 1989 would prevent me. How can I overcome it?

Day 905

Woke up about ten. I felt a bit ill but not too bad. We sat around talking and drinking tea in the grey morning light. Got home about two, started recovering. A six-paracetamol hangover. Total cost of £5.15 including drink.