Day 996

Didn't wake up till 11am after staying up till two watching Paul Calf and Get Carter. Wonderful sense of background in the former.

A Giro came but also the Black Spot, the Restart letter. Cashed the former in a cold sunny morning and felt as if back in happier 1988 or 1989 days.

And so: 1994. In June I got the job at Alphabet City. Three weeks later I was back on the dole but I got a SW radio, programmable calculator, mouse and scanner.

Labour won every election in sight, culminating in the triumph of Dudley. A fitting tribute to John Smith, whom we mourned in May. A fine man. And so we continue to await the Day, with Tony Blair, whose fault is not what he might do but what he might omit to do.

Day 995

Did various financial manoeuvres in town - got £20 already towards the £65 multimeter I want.

Day 994

Didn't wake up till 11am: better set my alarm tomorrow. Used the serial adaptor to link my computer and the 486 laptop mum lent me. The DOS 6 Intersvr prog is brilliant - gives you transparent access to the other computer's drives. All worked with no trouble.

Dark, rainy, windy afternoon. In the evening watched the sequel to the Paul Calf video diary.

Day 993

Listened to a lewd but very funny versh of Journey to the Centre of the Earth on R4 in the afternoon, sad ending though.

Did a ton of picture scanning, no probs.

Very windy now, no rain yet though, unlike Wales where they've got terrible floods.

Carried on with the Latin after a longish gap, did quite well.

Day 992

Went to town in the afternoon on my bike: it was raining and blowing strongly but it was quite mild and pleasant really. Got starflower oil from Superdrug.

Did a bit more computer art in the evening. Perhaps I should get in touch with M tomorrow; ought to write to D too.

Day 991

BOXING DAY. Up at ten, after a fortunately undisturbed night. There wasn't much recurrence of symptoms today.

Watched the exciting bits of Flash Gordon in the morning - annoyingly they cut the end credits and The Hero. In the afternoon Never Say Never Again - I could've sworn there was a Th**r impersonation at the end when I last saw it - perhaps it's been cut in respect for the victims of her regime.

Taped Yellow Submarine (at last), cut out 3M of dead wood from my hard disc - back to 7.7M free now. Did some scanning and practiced changing people's expressions with Paintbrush: got the Logitech Windows mouse driver to work! When I first bought the mouse it kept crashing. Odd eh. It even seems to've speeded Windows up a bit (no bad thing, given the speed it runs at on my computer).

Day 990

CHRISTMAS DAY. Had a restless night, with singular night-time occurrence of the 'dizziness' symptoms I had in the summer. However, by continually telling myself 'Don't Panic' I woke up at 8am. I still felt rather odd and had a hangover to boot, but I felt better as the day went on.

Round to my parents' for a pleasant Christmas morning. They gave me the Psion Parallel Link, a serial cable, the Latin dictionary, blank discs and tapes and John Henry by They Might Be Giants.

In the afternoon watched The Wrong Trousers, laid out the tea.

Day 989

CHRISTMAS EVE. Up at 9.30; had a shock when my hard disc failed to start in the morning, with the computer reporting nothing but '1701'. I suspected cold, and gently played the fan-fire over the aging computer for five minutes. The disc started first time! I've never heard of that happening, ever. I might keep the room a bit warmer in future.

Round to my parents', peeled a pound of sprouts in the morning for tomorrow, which took ages.

Walked home, starting with a circuit round Langwell Drive, like I did on Christmas Eve 1991.

Had a couple of cans of beer from 7.30 onwards - it is Christmas after all. Tidied up the room so I can wake up to a bit of space on Christmas morning.

And so it only remains to say: Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Day 988

CHRISTMAS EVE EVE. Now in the Christmas waits of childhood today was the last lap, a kind of half-Christmas state. Apparently the pedal car Christmas I remember was 1973: my earliest memory, so far as I can work out.

Went to the Co-op in the morning for vodka in a heavy frost. Continued work on the spreadsheet; think I've got it now. Read the 'perfect' Dickens Christmas in Sketches by Boz. A book best for Making A Night Of It, a triffic description of a Victorian piss-up. It could happen today.

Put up extra Christmas card strings, sorted out the videos, calculated a 150W bulb as consuming 153W from timing the revs of the electricity meter. The kitchen fluorescent is 77W, not bad for the amount of light it produces.

Parents met S's mum in town; apparently S is disillusioned with her course like M said. She's back in Mugsborough but I hope she doesn't suggest going out tomorrow night, or any other night anywhere expensive.

Day 987

This always used to be a difficult day in the wait for Christmas. Worked very hard all day on FCALC; had just got the cell transfer routine working when I moved on to viewing an 8x16 section of a larger sheet. For some reason everything fouled up and it took several hours to discover the fault. Got on top of it now though.

In the evening watched Roger Cook hectoring sellers of quack medicines. Saw the news about the Russian attack on Chechenia. In the air-raid the reporter found himself next to the Chechen foreign minister, who gave an impromptu interview. 'Rossiya demokratikya' he said, gesturing upwards.

Day 986

Worked out a replicate mechanism for my FCALC QBASIC spreadsheet with surprising ease, despite feeling a bit dizzy. Made a trip to town: paid £1.50 in library fines for a total of 26 book-days overdue, got vodka from Sainsbury's, got yet more multimeter fuses. It was appallingly cold on the way to town, I lost all feeling in my fingers.

Came back, heard there'd been a calf-plane crash in Coventry on the anniversary of Lockerbie.

In the afternoon went to the big Sainsbury's, got a huge 1½ litre tank of vodka. So I'm sorted till next Friday morning, the 30th: 70cl from the Co-op then'll provide till Jan.2, but if there's extra festivity I'll get 70cl from there tomorrow or Friday.

Carried on with the spreadsheet, got all the $A1 A$1 $A$1 stuff bashed into shape, rushed on, incorporating functions into the EXPR subroutines and triumphantly finishing an IF function as good as PC-CALC's. Not bad, considering I only started on Friday.

Listened to The Solitary Cyclist on R4.

Very interesting parallel: in 1968, 2 years after the 1966 election, the Tories took Dudley from Labour on a 21% swing. In 1994, 2 years after the 1992 election, Labour took Dudley West from the Tories on a 29% swing. If the parallel continues we can expect the Day in 1996, and not a moment too soon either. Apparently only 8% of people think the govt. are doing a good job, the first ever single-figure rating; Labour are about 39 points ahead.

Day 985

Noticed that the kettle's taking longer to boil - the cold water must be colder. Proper December weather.

Finished off the expression evaluator, transferred it into QBASIC and integrated it into the spreadsheet. Great to see all the figures changing at will, though it's a mite slow. Next step: replication.

Had a mild scare when I mistakenly copied the corrupt version of DOS 5 COMMAND.COM onto the OK one instead of vice versa. The progs that've accessed the corrupt one must've been checking C:\ first before reading COMSPEC. Found a working versh on a dusty old disc after booting from my own 3.20 floppy.

Later tried to make a DOS 6 bootable disc but was defeated by drive incompatibilities. I'll try a direct sector copy from DEBUG tomorrow.

Rigged up some new fairy lights, tested the dodgy telly speakers.

Day 984

Went into town, signed on; when will they bring in a decent queueing system? Someone who arrives after me always gets served first. Had better luck at the library book sale: got nine back issues of PCW for 1990-91 (very relevant to my PC1640, you see) for £1.80.

Went to the building society and put in £10 of Granny's present, since I wasn't expecting it. The woman was surprised to find someone paying in in the week before Christmas.

Blew the fuse in my multimeter again. I'm going to get a 10 amp model as soon as I can get £60 - perhaps if I can get that tax back next year. I'll carry on using the current (ha ha) one for the things analogue meters are better for- pulsed current etc.

Watched the very last Desmond's.

Day 983

Woke up with a splitting headache about 11am. Read the paper till T got up and we watched Quantum Leap, a nice Christmas one. After which we walked down to the station and I saw her off about 1.10. She said she'd write. I tentatively agreed to go and see her on Jan.22nd.

In the evening watched a documentary about the Greek World Cup effort. No signing on tomorrow - oops, no, there is, lucky I checked. I've got to go to the building society, anyway.

Day 982

(Sunday night). Nice relaxing day, worked on a spreadsheet in QBasic. T rang up about 7pm to say she would be in Mugsborough at 7.30. Met her, came back via the Cricketers where we had 3 pints. We had a great conversation till 5 am; T insisted on watching violent films which I turned my back to, but we got on famously.

Day 981

Yesterday'll be a date to remember to: Labour turned a -5,000 majority into a 20,000 one. A 29.12% swing to Labour, the biggest since the thirties. (If repeated nationally, Labour would have 612 MPs, the Tories 0 MPs). They never say how the swing is calculated, but I think it's the average of the change in percentage vote of the gainer and loser, ignoring sign (ie Labour were +30 points, Tories -28). It always used to be the Liberals who did that sort of thing.

Can we say watershed? Shall I say El Alamein again? Roll on The Day.

Having walked back from town yesterday, avoided going today: started work on a QBasic spreadsheet prog, to get me into the principles of sheets. Finished putting up the Christmas decorations. Baked the quiche for tomorrow: I was right to get free-range eggs, as T rang up in the afternoon to confirm tomorrow, and mentioned it inter alia. She mentioned some unpleasant magic a friend of hers had been subjected to (she reckoned).

Being something of a witch on her own account she said she'd directed some sort of magic for me to 'find some sort of energy' on the Solstice. I pointed out that that was the day I got sacked. She claimed it might've been for the better. Anyway, I can expect her about seven tomorrow.

In the evening, Harry Enfield.

Day 980

My glasses, weakened already, broke in half in the morning. Wasted an hour in town waiting for the repair. Looked at the picture exhibition of landscapes in the library. The repair cost £53 - safe in our hands, eh? I exerted charm on the people in the opticians, it was quite a pleasant experience.

Discovered a new Giants album, John Henry, in Andy's Records. I must have it for Christmas!

In the evening yet more attempts to stop the scanner crashing the system. Wish I could find the cause.

Dudley by-election today. Coming back from the optician's I clocked a girl I'd seen before, this time up against the angle of the wall of Habitat, asking for spare change. I walked past, of course. I may have a roof over my head but, as I don't need to explain, I never have any money. One for every Tory's conscience. Bastards!

Day 979

Cracking on with December: there used to be about 80 years between Dec.1st-22nd when I was younger. Went to Sainsbury's in the morning for vodka and quiche ingredients. Encouraging stuff in the paper about repentant Tories in Dudley.

Yesterday on the news I saw Tony Blair and John Prescott meeting the 300,000th Labour Party member, a young woman of just the sort they need. All looked dead chuffed, especially John P. I hope Dudley turns out well.

Watched Star Trek: TNG; Wharfe got his honour back (at last) and left the series.

In the evening got out my multimeter and worked very hard getting the Christmas decorations up and the lights working. Will try and finish it in time for T's visit - I want things to be particularly festive. Hope she isn't fussy about free-range eggs, after all the effort with vegetarian Stilton etc.

Day 978

Made and finalised drink plans, including T's visit, leaving me with a 12p surplus over the Festive Season, apart from emergency funds. I'll make a quiche for the visit.

Day 977

M rang up, and came round at 11.30. Talked and did Psion experiments for 2 hours. She's applying for a job round here. Or joining the police.

Heard on R5 that the students at Leeds have got a pagan chaplain. There are 12 chaplains altogether so it's only fair that one should represent Britain's original religion.

Day 976

The paper today had ceased talking about whether Labour will win the next election and started talking about size of swing to them. The obligatory note of caution: this is equivalent to Feb. 1990, and things looked good then. But no-one has ever come back from 39½ points behind (24 allowing for the Tory shame factor). There was a Tory leaflet through the letterbox, I chucked it out.

Did some musical experiments, putting my old battery 'collection' to work powering the Casio keyboard - no powered moving parts so ought to last a while.

Finished all the Adrian Mole books, which I've been reading recently. In a way it all turns out rather sad in the sequels, or is this just me transferring my experiences to it? I always did identify rather strongly with A. Mole, partly because of the 1984 A. Mole diary I had. Ian Dury's song was quite good too, remember the series on ITV (and the final wink). Those were the days eh? Nothing to worry about - except being obsessed with Amy Allott, homework, bed at 10pm... I take that back, perhaps Unemployment City is better.

Day 975

Just two more Saturdays to Christmas, and T's coming next week (hopefully).

Keith Joseph, architect of Th**rism, is dead. Beggars - crime doubled - unemployment - part-timism - I'm all right Jack. SI MONUMENTUM REQUIRIS, CIRCUMSPICE.

Day 974

Into town to the library for a multimeter book. Interesting stuff; was able to recall enough O-level physics to understand it.

Wrapped up Christmas presents ready 16 days in advance. Read Adrian Mole. In the evening Harry Enfield.

The Tories have lost control of the council thanks to a 22½% swing to the Liberals in a ward by-election. The Tory scum came third. With Labour on 60% nationally (absolutely unheard of) we can not only whisper 'El Alamein' and think 'D-Day', but afar a faint voice at the edge of hearing is saying 'Canada Effect'.

Now, Dec 1994, is the parallel to Feb 1990, when the Tories were pretty unpopular. Labour were doing well (but nowhere near 39½ points ahead) then. Don't forget that that lot, though it got rid of Th**r, ended in the Darkest Hour, but this time round all the figures are bigger. Neil Kinnock may have lost, but he came close to the mountaintop, reducing a big majority to 20, now down to 14 (nominally more or less - and there's the Dudley by-election next week). Tony Blair has only got a short stroll for the summit and down the other side. A small part of me is prepared for disappointment, but I'm beginning to think that El Alamein has truly come.

Had a small bonus drink what with this and that. With the Official Festive Season only 11 days away (and all Christmas funds ready) it doesn't matter so much.

Day 973

Extra duty on baccy (but not hand rolling, luckily for me - mum says it's because pensioners smoke it) and 26p on spirits. Ouch!

A terrible incident up north with a maniac slashing a load of women in a department store. Strange with yesterday's Montreal massacre anniversary. I hate that Muslim/Nazi disfiguring women stuff.

Just heard that an opinion poll will come out tomorrow (never forget that according to opinion polls, Neil Kinnock has been prime minister for 2½ years) with Labour on 60% - 40 points ahead. This sort of thing is unheard of. But it must be good news for next week's by-election. Who is this Sarah Baxter on R5? She talks sense.

Day 972

Went into town to do Christmas shopping; took me 1½ hours but I saved £2.20 through shrewd choices. Came back, spent the afternoon embellishing Dad's desk diary present. Posted the letter to T.

John Major says he'll have to wait and see if his government lasts. Not the words of a confident prime minister. Dare we say El Alamein? Can we whisper D-Day? Wait and see.

Day 971

An intriguing letter from T in the morning. Wrote a 7-page reply straight away. Cashed up my loose change to take to the bank to pay Kays tomorrow.

All day there were rumours about the VAT vote, good at first but bad towards 10pm and just before the vote. Then it became clear that they were wrong; the Tories lost 319-311. About time too. A pity Citizen John didn't get up and say he would now take his case to the country. Roll on the Day.

Christmas shopping tomorrow.

Day 970

Went into town, signed on, came back.

Listened to R5 all afternoon; they played the confidence vote of March 1979 (which I remember). Callaghan said '..we will take our case to the country.' The rest is history. A dreadful moment. The compensation was that they were comparing Citizen John's travails to it. I must be careful not to let this next-election stuff obsess me. If, Goddess forbid, Labour lost, I'd find it hard to weather the storm. Still, Tony was very popular in Dudley. Wish they'd come up with a few more policies though. Such is the longest Wait of all. Still, remember Gandalf's words: 'I shall not wholly fail of my task if anything comes through this night that can still grow fair or flower or bear fruit.'

By the way, coming out of the Job centre in the morning, clocked a Class 47 at the front of a London-bound train. Read the nameplate - University of Lowlands. Bitter irony or sign of hope?

Day 969

Watched Quantum Leap; more helping the blacks in the south in 1957, as Louisiana lawyer liberal this time. Good stuff.

In the evening watched the last-ever Lovejoy with a rather sad ending. I'll substitute my own.

Day 968

Weather changed at last, after 10 days. Rain and wind in the morning, great sun in the afternoon. Rang up M; had a good conversation.

Day 967

Sun again today but colder still. Into town in the morning: got evening primrose oil and a book from the library about making cash with your own computer. I reckon running my own business would suit me.

In the evening watched H. Enfield, and Crimewatch because that murder back in the spring was on. Not much light shed.

Day 966

Sun came out today, at last. Tony Blair got a very good reception in Dudley. I hope Labour win it.