By the way, has anyone been playing with that HotorNot badge?

How do the high volume sellers cope??

Just about ten minutes left on my Ebay auctions and the only query I've had is from people trying to rip me off!

And I can't drag my eyes away. I desperately want to get up, walk around, do something else, but instead I keep refreshing the page, waiting, hoping that someone's going to put their hand in their pocket.

Gaah! It's killing me!

Um...

Panic not over.

The PC's dead. I've borrowed one off my Dad. And it's slower. Stunningly slower.

I could murder someone, dispose of the body, get caught years later, go down for a 25 stretch, come out and it would still be booting up.

Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho, it's off to Ebuyer we go!

Bollocks.

For those of you who are wondering what "Lost"'s comment below is all about, look here.

Life, sometimes, is good.

In other news, Graham and Mark have posted a meme about celebrity lookalikes. Someone once told me I looked like Trent Reznor, lead singer of Nine Inch Nails. I'll spare you a picture.

Suffice to say she was slightly mental and trying to get laid. Alcohol may also have had something to do with it.

We never had one of these at our school. I've never liked them really. You see, you can stick a vending machine full of Mars Bars, Snickers, Coca Cola, Tango and crisps just about anywhere. There's a good number of them in Birmingham's Childrens' Hospital, which to my mind kind of defeats the object of a place where people go to get more healthy. The same argument can be levelled at the ones they put in Sports centres and schools.

They should give more thought to what's actually in the machines and the message the venue is trying to put across.

And from September, that's just what schools have to do. At long last, the Government has put out some good legislation. From the beginning of next year, sweets and high-fat foods and drinks are to be banned from schools.

Now that's a good idea!

Panic over.

It appears that having a motherboard reach 50 degrees celcius isn't good for performance.

I took the side off the box, the temperature dropped a whopping 15 degrees while I watched! Everything's fine now, oddly enough.

Still, don't let it put you off buying a laptop.

My PC is dying!

It keeps freezing up at random intervals, which I assume means the motherboard is giving up the ghost.

So someone please buy one of my Laptops so I can afford a replacement!

Pretty please...

You are a Social Liberal (80% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (21% permissive) You are best described as a: Socialist Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid

Hmm, whatever. Dumb America-centric questions. Gotta pidgeonhole everyone.

Blame Graham for this one:

10 years ago - 1995 - Oh Er Um. '92 to '97 is kind of a blur. Variously college, clubbing, pubbing. I think I'd just moved into my batchelor pad: a one bedroom council flat where I took the door off the bedroom, the curtains down, covered the walls in posters, listening to lots of rock music, hanging out with my friends, all of which were female, one of which I hadn't snogged.

5 years ago - 2000 - Our first year in this house. One kid, five pets. Making friends with psychopaths and being called "pervert" in the street because the neighbours' kids came round begging to be video'd. We got broken into - they took the camcorder, my pager and a mobile phone. We reckon it was the psychotic neighbour who thought we were perverts.

1 year ago - Two kids, three pets. The year of our second family holiday. Downloading loads of stuff, getting on with life. Now I think about it, a bit of a stationary year.

Yesterday - Stayed in, did a bit of shopping in Northfield. BBQ chicken drumsticks and vile nachos for tea.

Tomorrow - School for Allison, three year checkup at hospital for Bethan (routine, nothing wrong). Need to pay the bills and renew my bus pass, have to get washing powder.

5 snacks I enjoy - Pakoras, sandwiches, pepperami, a handful of prawns while I'm looking through the fridge, Chow Mein post noodle.

5 bands/artists that I know the lyrics to most of their songs - Fairground Attraction, UB40, Deacon Blue, The Police, um.

5 things I would do with $100,000,000 - Buy a farm, sort the folks out, travel the world, do "Good Deeds", invest.

5 locations I'd like to run away to - pick a cave, any cave.

5 bad habits I have - Cutting the hard skin off the back of my heel with a razor blade, picking my nose and wiping it (instead of flicking it, which Charlie wouldn't have a problem with), smelly farts in bed, dunno about any others, but they're the big 'uns.

5 things I like doing - Not watching the kids channels, going for long walks, going on holiday, swimming, shopping.

5 TV shows I like(d) - Star Trek, Hitch Hikers Guide to the galaxy, Dr who, Firefly, Lost.

5 movies I like - LOTR (counting as one BIIIG film), The Fabulous Baker Boys, Bridget Jones's Diary, Star Wars (1977 ORIGINAL CUT), The Abyss.

5 famous people I would like to meet - Ya know what, I have no desire to meet anyone particularly famous. Really. They've got their life and I don't belong anywhere near it and I'm actually quite comfortable not being anywhere near a famous life.

5 biggest joys at the moment - Swimming, the kids when they're behaving, days when we've got the house to ourselves, downloading our favourite US shows now all the new seasons have started, stretching out and luxuriating in bed.

5 favorite toys - the Pc and four items from our bedroom toy drawer. Not telling. Ner ner.

I hereby tag...all of yo'.
-------------------------

1) What stickers do you have on your car, if any?
Well, when I've finally got it back, I'd quite like to collect stickers from the places we will visit. Might not be enough room on the windows, though.

2) How/where did your last bf/gf say I love you.
Opened her mouth and words came out. In bed, last night.

3) What do you hear right now?
Delia Smith. The computer, Bethan pissing around. Charlie shouting at her.

4) If you could drink anything right this second, what would it be?
Water.

5) Does anything hurt on your body right now?
There's a slight pressure in my sinuses and my shoulder aches vaguely.

6) If __________ died, you would laugh and spit on his/her grave.
Yes. And he probably knows it.

7) What's your job position called?
Proprietor. Apparently I'm not allowed to call myself Managing Director.

8) What size ring do you wear?
Ain't got a clue.

9) Do you own a picture phone?
Aye. The TARDIS picture came off it.

10) What's your bf/gf's birthday?
May 27th.

11) What's your Mom's favorite band/musician?
Dunno really. It's a bit changeable. I know it was Bruce Springsteen at one point.

12) What's your Dad's favorite band/musician?
Sinatra. Frank.

13) What was your elementary school's mascot?
Didn't have one.

14) What's your favorite bottled water?
The big Vittel bottles because they're small enough for my pocket but too big to swig back in one go.

15) What's the next concert/show you're going to and when?
Most probably something involving squeaky voices and tinsel. December.

16) What were you doing at 9 pm last night?
Making BBQ chicken and finding a bowl for crap nachos.

17) What's your favorite Starbucks drink?
I believe both sexes of Starbuck are quite partial to whiskey. Can't say I blame them (Battlestar Galactica reference there, folks. Never been into the coffee shop and quite happy about it).

18) Do you exercise as much as you should?
More than I was a fortnight ago, but probably not enough.

19) Did you attend your High School prom?
That would have been quite an event at our single sex school. Urgh.

20) Would you give your bf/gf a second chance if they cheated on you?
Well, it depends. If she cheated on me with a woman, I'd want to be involved next time. With a man, I don't think so, but we'd stay together. She doesn't get off that lightly.

My eyes sting and I stink of chlorine.

Three hours in the water tonight, the kids have both passed out and Charlie just spent 90 minutes preparing for an early night.

Me? Coming to terms with the evidence that the laptops that are supposed to be my saving grace don't actually seem to sell and reminiscing thanks to Graham's trip back to 1995.

OK, so here's the news. I'm selling pretty nifty, state-of-the-art Laptops on Ebay.

This is part one of my masterplan.

Part two involves getting people to pay me to teach them stuff they want to know about their computers - from how to use MS Office, to how to administer a small network, to how to strip down and rebuild their PC.

After that comes the easy bit - sourcing and providing the I.T. Hardware to complete sales or projects people pay me to do.

And it's all under the auspices of my very own company:



I even bought an address to go with it. There's not much there right now, but www.lithaborn.co.uk is all mine.

The downside is that these high value items tend to attract scammers, and sure to form, I've had to spend the whole night awake communicating with someone who says they live in Holland, but registered with Ebay US and wants me to urgently post the Laptop to Lagos, Nigeria.

As If.

So I've spent some time trying to trip this buyer up, or have them removed from Ebay. Ebay doesn't look too kindly on you if you leave some important contact information out when you sign up and it just so happens that this buyer hasn't registered a phone number - so I reported them.

I've also banned them from bidding on any of my other items.

I can't afford to get defrauded or scammed straight out of the starting gate, so right from day one, it's time to play hardball.

I'll let you know how things go.

Now, the next thing on the list is to sign off the dole. I might put that off until I actually sell a couple of Laptops to genuine people though - just in case.

I'm watching "this Morning" at the moment...

Yes, I know, but bear with me.

There's a story on now about a chap that's gone from 44 stone - Fourty Four Stone! - to 17 stone, which I think is what I am now.

It's a great story and good luck to him. He does it by walking five miles every couple of days. Now, just by our house is a canal with a towpath that leads right into the city centre, which just happens to be about five or six miles away.

The only problem is - and this is a weird thing - my gout stops me walking too far. It's weird because while I was away, I did things and ate things that should have crippled me, but they didn't. But you see, the day i got back, I walked the mile and a half to the local Sainsbury's and came back with a pain in my foot.

This crappy city's no good for my health. I've felt almost out of breath since I got back, my foot's been a constant niggle and I can't seem to drink enough.

Bloody city.

Allison got her tooth knocked out in a fight yesterday.

No, don't worry. It was a very wobbly one that was probably going to go sometime this week anyway, but she happened to be sitting next to a couple of kids who were fighting, copped a stray slap and out it popped.

So her new name is "Gappy" and the tooth fairy left her a nice shiny pair of 50p pieces this morning. Unfortunately that means that the tooth fairy has just £1.20 to last the rest of the week, but never mind. It was worth it to see the look on her face this morning when she opened that little envelope.

We went swimming tonight, me and the kids, while Charlie went to her Aromatherapy night class.

Doesn't seem like much of an event, does it? But y'see, the thing is that in the past six years, I've only interacted with people outside the family in the evening a handful of times and almost never ventured out with the kids around dusk.

To me, it was a watershed. I feel like I'm finally getting some semblance of a social life back. And it's about time.

Not that it was easy - Bethan is a little adrenaline freak. She was just a tiny bit too small to go down the big water slide on her own, so I had to take her, so I had the great pleasure of listening to her scream and shriek in thrilled enjoyment through the bends and drops on the 30 second trip into the meter deep catch pool at the bottom. I'd go under and push myself back to my feet to check she's OK, only to find her already powering off to have another go. Nutter!

Allison, on the other hand,is a much calmer prospect. She just wants lessons, or to paddle around in the deep end, where I stand on tiptoe and wrestle the slightly worried kid from around my neck. But in her own way, that is a major achievement. I still can't believe how far she's come from the girl who'd freak out if some shower water got in her eyes just two weeks ago, and there she was tonight, happily trolling around in water that's a whole 18 inches too deep for her, splashing and bobbing around when the wave machine started and having a wonderful time.

I'm fucking knackered, they are too. But it's that really excellent knackered that comes from doing something really good together.

And just to add to the joy, the 70lbs I could do with losing is going fast!

Tomorrow should be an interesting day. For the first time in ages, we'll have the house to ourselves for a while. I know how I'd like to be spending the morning, but unfortunately, I think we'll probably spend it washing and mucking out the puppies before they go to their new home - the Blue Cross shelter in Bromsgrove, where they'll be cared for and only homed to people who've passed their stringent vetting procedures and stumped up £70. A much better prospect than if we tried to home them ourselves. Then in a few weeks, when we've paid off the mounting bills this month, Suki their mum is off to get neutered. No way we're going through that hassle again.

Ah, the mundane mediocrity of a normal life. It's eluded me for so long, it sounds like sheer nirvana.

I just joined in this meme on Mark's blog, so here's my end of the deal:

Leave your name and
1. I'll respond with something random about you.
2. I'll tell you what song/movie reminds me of you.
3. I'll pick a flavor of jello to wrestle with you in.*
4. I'll say something that only makes sense to you and me.
5. I'll tell you my first/clearest memory of you.
6. I'll tell you what animal you remind me of.
7. I'll ask you something that I've always wondered about you.
If I do this for you, you must post this on your journal. You MUST. It's the law.

*may not apply to male respondents.

NASA wants to go back to the moon. With Iraq costing millions a day, the rebuilding of Louisiana reportedly costing almost as much, everyone's wondering just where the money's coming from.

But you know what, I hope they do it.

Going back on the moon, a permanent base, missions to Mars all in my lifetime? I'll have a piece of that!

Let's face it, with all the shite that's going on here on Earth, we need something hopeful and exciting to look forward to. Humanity doesn't spend enough time staring into space and dreaming.

OK, I'm a Doctor Who fan, but I swear the kids asked to have their photo taken in front of this genuine Police Box in Scarborough, just over the road from Winking Willy's, an outstanding harbourside cafe which does the most amazingly fresh fish and chips and where we forced our way through a truly gutbusting 22 ounces of prime battered haddock each on Friday.

I never want fish again.

There are very few thrills to beat watching your kids learn to swim. I watched our three year old girl dive without fear into four feet of water, resurface, cough, splutter, swim to the side of the pool, climb out and try again. It's probably the bravest, stupidest thing she could have done and I could not have been more scared and more proud.

I watched my six year old girl - scared of water to the point of hating washing her hair - go from dabbling her feet in the jacuzzi to paddling around happily out of her depth, enjoying playing splashing games with her family. She's come so amazingly far. She cried when we let for the last time. Now she wants to go every day after school.

It's so lucky we have a swimming pool - well, three swimming pools - within a couple of miles.

Wonderful, wonderful girls. Events like that make up for all the times they drive me crazy.

You cannot imagine how much I don't want to be here. Back to the same smelly streets, plodding the same too-well-trodden routes to the same old bus stops, wading through the same old crap in the shops.

We're back from an excellent holiday. We spend three hours a day messing about in the campsite swimming pool, visited an excellent restaurant where we ate fish that had been caught that morning and travelled all of two hundred yards instead of being quick-frozen and transported 180 miles, and we got sunburn. On the beach. In September. In Yorkshire. That's how good our holiday was.

And we come back and the first thing we have to do is mop dried dogshit out of our devastated libing room carpet because no-one wanted to look after our dogs while we took the holiday we were forced into taking.

We come back to a cesspit. Do our friends, our family really think we live this way? Do they seriously think we're happy to let animals crap and piss over every part of our house? Do they think we'd allow animals to set up home in the entrance hall when we've got to walk through there with a week's worth of luggage?

I'm fucking steaming angry. The house stinks and isn't fit for habitation. We've already been on rightmove.co.uk for places to rent anywhere but here.

Yeah, welcome home us.

Standing in the open air

So, after i cleared the cache out of my phone, it let
me log on to yahoo. Right now Im walking to the chippy
for a well earned fish n chip supper. Chances are Ill
be doing the same tomorrow night, only in Filey.

___________________________________________________________
How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday
snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos http://uk.photos.yahoo.com

This is how the world's richest country treats its own citizens. Rescue workers, soldiers mill around with no orders and no authority. Dead bodies lie in the stagnant waters for two weeks. Ignored, rotting.

Question: What qualifies America as the best people to run another country?

Hurricane Katrina is truly America's most shameful hour.

Mark's humdingers:

1. if you change one thing, anything, what would it be?

Time is one of my favourite subjects. I surround myself with timepieces - watches, clocks, calendars, timetables. I can just sit there and watch the seconds tick by in fascination sometimes.

It's the whole linear thing - to see little measurements of time going by like that, knowing how many have gone before, how many are to follow. It's wonderful meditation material!

As a consequence, I've spent many an hour idly philosophising about that very question. What would I change? What are the consequences of that change?

If you go back and ensure the world wars don't happen, what then? There's millions of people - in an already overcrowded Europe - still alive who would otherwise have died. What would those millions do? What are the consequences of all those lives being altered so fundamentally. They go on to raise families, contribute to economies, to world events. The balance of power is fundamentally altered. Russia stands as a looming presence on the edge of Europe. With no German army to hold them back, and no Western Alliance to work with, they stand alone and unanswerable. What then?

How about ensuring Jesus is freed instead of crucified? The christian church ceases to exist. Judaism is suddenly the only world religion. Or is it? Does that benevolent action lead to a new respect for the Roman empire? Does Judaism slowly dissappear in favour of Roman pantheism? What of Islam? Would jesus ever be acknowledged as the Jewish messiah? If God sent Muhammad as the final messiah, charged with putting god's message to humanity right, then would Muhammad have been chosen, if Jesus's mission had been a success?

Stop the meteorite from hitting earth and killing the dinosaurs off? Would humanity exist? Would our prehistoric mammalian ancestors have been given the supreme opportunity towards dominance if the dinosaurs - who had got on with life and evolution very nicely thank you for hundreds of millions of years - hadn't been wiped off the face of the planet?

Stop Kennedy being killed? He'd already sown the seeds of the space race and seen off Cuban Communism. What else would he have been capable of? What if there'd been no "curse of the Kennedys" and he would have begun a dynasty of inbred seemingly benevolent but increasingly unhinged American leaders? Would Marilyn Munroe have died?

Stop the Israelis and Palestinians fighting? No, that was always going to happen (and was Britain's fault, just like the Iran/Iraq instability was Britains' fault).

No, despite all the attractions of having the power to change just one thing, I'd say I'd change precisely nothing. It takes far more strength to let things be and allow all the terrible bloodshed and atrocities than to risk the consequences of a rash action.

2. who will play you in the film of your life?

In my youth, no-one. Let's draw a welcome veil over that embarrassing part of my history.

Formative years? Oh I dunno, the bloke who played Frodo Baggins would be good.

Parenthood and later life? Mandy Patinkin. Watch "Dead Like Me". He's cool, he's in charge and he's got just the right amount of pathos.

3. what attracts you to your philosophy of life?

Choice and comfort. It's sprituality with no luggage. It's being aware of the divine in the world around us without all the proscriptive baggage of an organised religion. Religion definitely isn't a good word to describe my spirituality. Philosophy fits much better.

4. are you ever wrong?

Oh yes, but not for long.

5. Is "The Dark Side Of The Moon" over-rated?

I think it's genius, the way they synchronised it with "The Wizard of Oz".

Lord Bargain's interview:

1. When will the world end?

After consulting the crystal ball of fortune, the tarot of success and the mystical bones of justice, I see that the world will end at 12:45pm on the 7th September 2005.

Oh.

Bloody new age partworks.

2. Who would win a fight between a lion and a tiger?

At two minutes to the hour, Jack Bauer comes haring across the serengetty in a tank masquerading as a common or garden SUV, leaps out and frantically holds a gun to the Lion's head.

"Where's the hyena's hideout? Where's the hyena's hideout? I will shoot you!"

BopBipBopBip...

3. Will 24 hour drinking leads to increased alcoholism and crime, or a more relaxed drinking culture?

Naturally, 24 hour drinking will lead to the end of western civilisation as we know it. City Centres will become no-go zones, drink related crime will increase exponentially until they have to turn the entire Isle of Wight into one vast Bettie Ford Clinic.

We will see rampaging mobs of career drunks roaming the streets, looting every supermarket and off-license for fresh supplies of thunderbird, 20/20 and tennants super.

Or maybe there'll be a month of chaos, then everyone settles down.

4. What’s your favourite and least favourite accents?

I love the Welsh accent. Mostly because I spent my youth listening to it on magical holidays and because Gareth Thomas - Blake of Blakes' 7 - is Welsh and was the first hero figure I remember having.

If there's an accent I can say I can't bear, it's maybe the German accent - and this is nothing to do with the War, Basil. There's a guttoral quality to it that just makes my spine itch.

5. Will the meek inherit the earth?

Who'd want it? Can we change the Will to include Mars?

The simplest ideas are often the best. In a similar vein to the fascinating Postsecret is a new site set up by a friend of JustAGirl.

Somebody Has A Secret...

Panic over.

The holiday we've been given by my Mum was looking like it was unaffordable, but now she's added a bit of pocket money to the deal, which dispels all of my fears.

Now we just have the house-cleaning left to tackle, which will probably take all of the remaining four days - and which is going to be pretty much all on my shoulders. Joy.

And is it just us, or is everyone noticing a huge amount of Daddy Long-Legs around this year?

We're getting about ten a night - ten more than we usually see in a week - all of which get the RAID treatment. Charlie hates them with a passion, so the whole place now smells like fly spray. Lovely.

Meet the next American President:

Possibly.

OK, so it's old news, but my healthy lack of interest in American politics meant I only discovered that the Democrats are expected to put Hillary Clinton up as their Presidential Candidate in 2008 this morning when I heard a report on the political and beaurocratic crapfest surrounding the fallout from Hurricane Katrina. She's asking for an investigation into the whole affair.

Good luck to her, I say. Can't do any worse than Bush, can she?

The Musicoutfitters top 100 part 2: 1992 (the year I finished my 'A' levels)

1. End Of The Road, Boyz II Men
2. Baby Got Back, Sir Mix A-lot (Well, ya gotta, ain't ya?)
3. Jump, Kris Kross
4. Save The Best For Last, Vanessa Williams
5. Baby-Baby-Baby, TLC
6. Tears In Heaven, Eric Clapton
7. My Lovin' (You're Never Gonna Get It), En Vogue
8. Under The Bridge, Red Hot Chili Peppers
9. All 4 Love, Color Me Badd
10. Just Another Day, Jon Secada
11. I Love Your Smile, Shanice
12. To Be With You, Mr. Big
13. I'm Too Sexy, Right Said Fred
14. Black Or White, Michael Jackson
15. Achy Breaky Heart, Billy Ray Cyrus
16. I'll Be There, Mariah Carey
17. November Rain, Guns N' Roses
18. Life Is A Highway, Tom Cochrane
19. Remember The Time, Michael Jackson
20. Finally, CeCe Peniston
21. This Used To Be My Playground, Madonna
22. Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough, Patty Smyth
23. Can't Let Go, Mariah Carey
24. Jump Around, House Of Pain
25. Diamonds and Pearls, Prince and The N.P.G.
26. Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me, George Michael and Elton John
27. Masterpiece, Atlantic Starr
28. If You Asked Me To, Celine Dion
29. Giving Him Something He Can Feel, En Vogue
30. Live and Learn, Joe Public
31. Come and Talk To Me, Jodeci
32. Smells Like Teen Spirit, Nirvana
33. Humpin' Around, Bobby Brown
34. Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover, Sophie B. Hawkins Nothing to do with the naked photoshoot she did around the same time, honest.
35. Tell Me What You Want Me To Do, Teven Campbell
36. Ain't 2 Proud 2 Beg, TLC
37. It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Boyz II Men
38. Move This, Technotronic
39. Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen
40. Tennessee, Arrested Development
41. The Best Things In Life Are Free, Luther Vandross and Janet Jackson
42. Make It Happen, Mariah Carey
43. The One, Elton John
44. Set Adrift On Memory Bliss, P.M. Dawn
45. Stay, Shakespear's Sister
46. 2 Legit 2 Quit, Hammer
47. Please Don't Go, K.W.S.

Well the WAP sites run happily enough through this nifty little Windows-based WAP browser, but when I try to use them on my phone, they're not so happy. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

testing

Well, the Yahoo wap site doesn't want to work on my phone, so I'm
trying Gmail instead, from the nice people at gmobile.hopto.org

--
>> http://hedgewitch.blogspot.com <<

testing mobile sending

I've sent this test post through a WAP browser to see
if I can email a few blog entries with my phone while
I'm on holiday. Why? because I'm sad!

___________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger - NEW crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

In 24 hours' time, I'll be the father of a six-year-old.

In 48 Hours' time, I'll be the father of a six year old whos just had her first day in year 1 of school.

I may also have signed on for the penultimate time.

In 168 hours' time, Graham will probably be sitting in this very spot.

Between Monday night and Friday night I will be variously cleaning the house, taking and retrieving Allison from school, packing and repacking suitcases, shopping for groceries, trying not to trample puppies underfoot, gathering information for the Business Plan, using up the last of my DVD-r's clearing some space for more downloads, having arguments about whether or not we can afford to go on holiday in the first place, watching the long-term weather forecast for East Yorkshire like a hawk and a dozen other things on top.

I'm not entirely sure that sleep will figure on the agenda much.

It bloody well will appear on the agenda once we're firmly ensconced in our holiday apartment in Filey.

As a rule, I don't remember my dreams. When I do, they're banal - shopping with the family, a day at work, things like that.

So the dream I had last night kinda stood out.

I dreamed that Lord Bargain, Swiss Toni, The Urban Fox and Graham were sharing a flat. Oddly enough (and this is absolutely no representation of my opinion of anyone's sexuality) everyone who visited their flat ended up blogging the following passage - "Somehow, I got shagged up the bum! I don't know how it happened, but I think someone got me drunk...". Weird, eh?

Anyway, in this dream, I wasn't going out with Charlie. Don't know if we'd split up or what, but I was in the process of meeting this blonde Jennifer Tilley soundalike (only british).

Now just lately my Dad's been taking me shopping of a Saturday morning. Sometimes I pay, sometimes he pays. This was the scenario for my dream, this new girlfriend person met my dad, then came round for dinner with Mom, who responded to her introduction with a pithy comment. The rest of the dream was took up reassuring this girl that it was still a good idea to date me.

When I told Charlie about the dream, I got drilled mercilessly about this other woman. Damned if I can't even get away with a bit of infidelity even in my dreams!

The meaning, I think, was to reassure me that the recent animosity between Charlie and my Mum isn't personal, that it's just the usual "protective mother resenting the woman who's taken her boy away" thing.

In the long run, I think it might have been easier for my subconscious to write me a note. Maybe then I might not be in the doghouse for dreaming about shagging someone else...even though I didn't. Tsk.

Why am I still awake?

1) Cos it's bin day and we needed to clean the kitchen, filling three bags with fuck only knows what.

2) Cos I've just been watching the pilot episode of Firefly.

I may pass out soon though.

It's not insomnia, it's necessity.

Despite having thousands of links in my Favourites folder, and despite all the goodness that the internet holds, I find myself completely stumped for new things to do on the web.

Suggestions, anyone?

I don't get it. I really don't. Your city is under water, you have no electric, no food, no clean water. There are dead bodies floating past you and the most powerful man in the world is hovering over your head in a Government warcopter.

So what good is that new TV, that new computer going to do you? What twisted logic leads you to take potshots at the rescue copters evacuating 20,000 people from a football stadium?

Looting food, water I could understand. Just about. But these people are raiding electrical shops, gun shops. They're jacking cars and buses. People around the world are going to look at New Orleans and they're going to see the American people acting like this, and when America comes to those countries asking for aid in rebuilding Louisiana, what do you think the answer will be? These people are ambassadors, representatives of the United States and their message is going over loud and clear around the globe. Fuck the people, just grab as much as you can. It's the American way, isn't it? The acquisition of more things?

I heard on the radio this afternoon that people are calling this America's Tsunami. How crass. How selfish. How egotistical. A quarter of a million people died in the East Asian Tsunami. Untold millions were affected. Cities and towns on two continents were devastated. How can you look at a flood that's barely covered one city, barely killed a thousand people and put it on the same magnitude? How can you say that the deaths from Hurricane Katrina were as unavoidable and immediate as from the tsunami? These people had plenty of warning. They had every chance to get away.

I've also heard it said that the people doing the looting are as poor as the people from Indonesia who were devastated by the tsunami.

Are they serious? We're talking about the richest, proudest country in the world. They wouldn't let such abject poverty exist in one of their most major cities, would they? You seriously expect me to believe that right in the heart of America's Oil refining industry, there's people who survive on less than the basics - with little or no running water, meagre rations and living in tin huts?

If this is true, how can America bear to look the rest of the world in the face and lecture anyone about human rights and decent living standards? Why on earth should we accept that the American Way is the Right Way?

There's a quotation I heard once which says something like "The effectiveness of a state can be judged by its citizens". Following that rule, the US needs to be condemned in the strongest terms possible by as many people as possible.

And like the belligerent, cruel, hypocritical bully child it is, the US Government will take no notice whatsoever. Thoroughly disgusting.

We go on Holiday in ten days time. A week in Yorkshire.

It was a "gift" from my Mother.

It means we have to go when we need to pay £180 in bills, take Allison out of school for a week, abandon mother and ten puppies for a week and find temporary homes for a rabbit and a huge six month old, very boistrous puppy.

When I asked my mum for help solving one of these problems so we could all go on holiday instead of one of us having to stay behind to look after the animals she went crazy, accusing us of being ungrateful. Apparently I'm not supposed to bother her with practical problems and just be grateful for the holiday she'd booked for herself and my sister but had decided she wouldn't go on a few weeks earlier.

I've always made a point of not asking my parents for help. When a problem arises - any problem - my first thought is "how can we solve this ourselves?". This had led to many clashes and arguments between me and Charlie because her first thought is "Which parents should we get to bail us out of this one?". I've been nagged blind, or even tricked into accepting help we didn't need over the years, only to be let down or have to perform disgusting forfeits, like being nice to the man who once wanted to have me kidnapped and pushed off a cliff while he abducted my kids and forcibly adopted them.

I've been living on my own for thirteen years now. I think that's plenty of time to have cut the apron strings and to be standing on my own two feet, no matter how difficult the situation. I don't want to go to other people for help, I want to cope with what we've got.

Take last christmas, for example. Christmas, for Charlie, is the most important time of the year. There's a desperation that sets in around October time, and a manic need to enjoy the season that means we have to spend the whole of November and December (and January too) listening exclusively to Christmas songs. We have a DVD-r full of christmas MP3's. two weeks of continuous music.

She wants to spend every spare penny from September until Christmas Eve on presents. She worked out yesterday that if we spent £25 a week on shopping from now on, we could raise £1000 for Christmas.

I haven't checked her working out yet, but fuckin' hell!

Last Christmas was dire. I'd just been forced to quit a horrible job, my benefits weren't being paid and all we had to live off was what Charlie was getting in and what I could earn selling crap VHS movies on Ebay. Well, the videos netted us £300, which wasn't bad and was enough for me. Not for C. She borrowed £500 off her family (on top of the £400 she'd previously borrowed) so that she could mollify the manic desire to buy "enough presents for the kids" - a strange number, which changes every time she picks up the Argos catlogue or walks past Toys R Us.

On one level, I can understand where she's coming from. Her family brought her up on the verge of poverty, hardly bothering with presents for Christmas or Birthdays. Just a few years ago, a birthday present off her parents consisted of a punnet of fruit. So she has this psychological need to make sure her kids get a "good" christmas.

Her inability to cope with an "average" christmas that I could have provided singlehanded (It's no exaggeration that she probably would have had a nervous breakdown if we hadn't found some extra money from somewhere) means that we are now £1000 further in debt this christmas than we were last christmas, we can't borrow any more money off anyone and we're looking at a season with just a touch more money than last time. If we'd coped on our own, we would be able to cope this year - we'd be practised in turning virtually nothing into a passable Christmas. Now we have no-one to turn to and nothing to work with. I don't think she's realised that yet. She will when she reads this later today.

There is hope, however. I will soon be compiling a Business Plan for a business venture I know will work, which could give us something like £150 a week in disposable income. Added to that, I have another stash of crap videos which could raise some decent cash. On the whole, I think we can have a decent christmas without any help from anyone else. Unfortunately, I don't think "decent" will satisfy Charlie and I don't know how she's going to cope with that.

I'm off to work out a daily budget between now and Christmas so I can try and figure out where this £1000 is supposed to come from...

I wonder, now Bush has seen the devastation for himself, now an entire city has to be evacuated, now potentially thousands are dead, whether he still believes climate change isn't happening.

And isn't it good to see the true spirit of America emerging in the middle of this great tragedy? It's so heartening to hear that rescue efforts have been cut back in order to deal with the gangs of heavily armed looters. I do hope nobody dies because the police and armed forces were off arresting looters instead of dragging them out of their flooded homes.

Protect the stuff, fuck the people. Vote Bush in 2004. Hope you're proud, Middle America.