2. Ruby Theory of Traffic Delays to the max on Friday evening. An incident on the M3 at Basingstoke during rush hour, followed by another on the same stretch of road less than three hours later. I heard about the first about on the travel news and saw the second (it was on the opposite carriageway). When I first saw the flashing blue lights I thought it was clearing up after the first, but the short traffic queue and other approaching emergency vehicles indicated that it was a separate, just happened, incident.

3. Excitement at work – a new hand drier in the loo. We don’t get much excitement at work. This is one of those super-powerful ones that ripple your hands as you use them. It’s so powerful it has dislodged the dust that’s been collecting behind the radiator for several years.

4. Meanwhile I suffered frustration at the ineptitude of another development team. I’d sent them some data they needed in a set of spreadsheets. They asked if they could have a version with the data combined into a single sheet. “Well, you’ve go all the information, can’t you do it?” was my reaction. “there are several hundred records; It will take many man-hours” they replied. Really? I did it for them. It took ten minutes. I told them to learn the excel VLOOKUP function. They are supposed to be highly skilled IT developers, after all.

5. We went to the zoo last weekend – a trip for CS3’s Spanish exchange who was staying. I didn’t take many photos as I’d lost my camera and was reduced to using my phone, which is pretty pants when it comes to photograph. And to think I chose the phone because the salesman said it had a better pixel rate than the other option. It also has the buttons for space and punctuation the other way around from my previous phone, which causes me endless confusion and frustration on every text. But here’s the weird bit – I needed to use a phone similar to my old one last weekend, and still couldn’t work out which button was which. Yeah, I know texts are so last century, and it’s all WhatsApp and IM now, but my phone doesn’t do all that malarkey and nor do I want it too. Same goes for checking email and farcebroke 24x7. If I go out I want to escape the internet.

6. Back to the lost camera. It wasn’t in its usual place at home, so I checked some of the less usual ones without luck. I thought I must have left it at CGF’s, but it wasn’t there either. Back home and I tried some of the really unusual places – still not found. OK, so it’s not in my house and it’s not in CGF’s house. Only one place it could be – somewhere between the two. Yep. In the car all the time – so I could have taken it to the zoo, after all.

7. A trip to HMV today, and we’ve stocked up un enough DVDs to avoid my having to watch Bridget Jones until at least Christmas. (yeah, I know DVD’s are last century too). I couldn’t believe CGF had never seen Kes (or read the book). It’s set just down the road from where she grew up. Lancashire / Yorkshire / Cumbria / Northumberland? It’s all the same place really isn’t it?

8. Home just in time to see most of the England Vs Ireland match. Would England prove themselves to be the best team in the British Isles? No. The team that played better won the match – which is at it should be. It would have been a shame if England managed to score a winning try in the closing minutes – not that they ever looked in danger of doing that.