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.