Day 1351

Borrowed mum's car and went to Dulchester in easy stages (stopped to roll a fag at Siding Hay). Got sidetracked into trying to make the lab PC mount the network drive. After lunch went back to the lab and found how to make the Sun prompt show the current directory: you alias cd to change the environment variable prompt to the contents of the environment variable that stores the current directory. So I sorted that at last.

Got off campus about 1.35, drove into Dulchester and checked the location of Natalie's house for the party, home by 2.30.

M phoned, and as I still had the car I gave her a lift to the sorting office so she could post Christmas cards, then to Sainsbury's where she bought turkey, sprouts, and all the appropriate stuff. Didn't realise how expensive Christmas was! M said something rather touching, when I confirmed I planned to go to Natalie's party: 'New Year'll be a bit boring without you around'.

Came back, made cheese straws for tomorrow, shaved, out again to M's in a damp, misty evening. Watched Carry On Columbus and talked. I suggested (and M agreed) that in recent years we'd had much better times on New Year's Day than on its eve.

Left at eleven, came home and spent a long time replying to two e-mails from T. Oddly she used the same 'Why thank you, kind lady' phrase that Natalie did in her last message.