Oh, hello again. What strange dreams I had. Dozens and dozens of 'em. I vaguely remember flying with M**** . . . we were just kind of flying slowly over this rather wide river, observing a strange collection of boats and ships, most of which seemed a bit . . . you know . . . past their best, belching out smoke and stuff. We were quite taken by one boat modelled on Thomas the Tank engine. Later on, I was part of a gang and we were involved in a rather bloody massacre with a rival gang. Being able to fly, I could escape when necessary but then I found myself in some kind of large glass conservatory, with my only exit blocked. There must been a low roof here, as people kept jumping up, trying to grab me and almost reaching me. Not good. Anyway, that's boring.

Lately I've been trying to upgrade the firmware on my Goodmans freeview box (GDB2), but this just isn't working out. It might help if I knew where the various pins on each of the 9-pin plugs should be going. Well, anyway . . . and my DVD-drive, a Pioneer DVR-108, seems to have trouble reading certain compact discs. What's all that about, eh? Oooo, I've found the GDB2 manual. Right, let's have a look here then . . . oh (five minutes later), that was useless.

Otherwise, just been updating this web-log thing with entries from days gone by.

I've been told that I haven't been writing much here recently, so I'm trying to make up. Right. Well, woke up this morning, probably around 7am . . . something like that. Had a shower, had breakfast (mmmmmm, bowl of Tesco's version of All-Bran, mixed up with dried fruit and sliced almonds . . . and semi-skimmed milk), some orange juice then made my way to work. Oh, but not before recording my work voicemail message. Yeah, that's right. We have to do this every day. A personalised message stating today's date and who to contact in my absence (Rob? zat spelt right?). So, fifteen minutes later I'm at work. I don't think anything remarkable happened during that part of the day. Oh, but didn't new brake pads arrive from Wiggle? God, yeah, I completely forgot about that. A set for the rear wheel, which I'm not looking forward to fitting, seeing as how the instructions stipulate a spotlessly clean wheel . . . well, I suppose it's the rim that's important, but if I talk about a spotlessly clean rim I'm just gonna get people giggling away like little children. It wasn't too bad cleaning the front wheel, but the back wheel involves all manner of gunk sprayed off from the tranmission, and the cleaning of which will involve white spirit, a tooth-brush and loads of soap and water. So, anyway . . . got home a few minutes after M****. She was in the front room, looking out of the window, laughing, like some kind of crazy woman. "Do you always do that? Just stare up at the house looking gormless?" she asked as I struggled into the house with my bicycle, my lungs sucking in huge amounts of oxygen. "What? I've just been cycling. I'm trying to get some air into me lungs, innit? Crazy woman." Then we both went down to the kitchen, me making some coffee from the frozen coffee beans I keep . . . erm . . . in the freezer. Java flavour. Flavour? Well, they're called java. I dunno. They're from Atkinson's, in Lancaster, which may be Lancaster's longest running business. And, erm . . . M****, a glass of orange juice. Maybe. I could be making this all up. "So what's for dinner?" I ask. "Well, I thought we could go to Iceland," M**** says. "Sure, sure. Just let us finish this coffee and I think I'll have a slice of toast. You should try this bread, you know. It's good stuff," I say. Then I think M**** was going on about telling everyone to get ready. "Imagine, eh? If we had to get all our children ready, eh?" looking around the table, at all the empty chairs. "No, you can't have any toast. You should have asked when I was making this. It's too late. AND PUT THAT CIGARETTE OUT!" So I put Marmite on my toast, I eat the toast. "I guess you won't need any sleep, then, " M**** observes as we head upstairs, towards the front door. "Eh? If you noticed, I only had three tablespoons of beans. That's not much, you know. I may have had two mugs, yeah, but it tasted pretty weak. I think three tablespoons is only equivalent to a single strong coffee. When I have a really strong coffee, yeah, that's like four tablespoons, innit? Heaped, and all. Have you got the key? I'll lock the door. QUICK! What we getting, anyway? What's for dinner?" So, yeah . . . first we thought about getting some nasty, fat-laden (laden?!) ready-meal thing, then M**** was going on about tagliatelle or something. "I think they've moved it," she muttered to herself as she wandered from aisle to aisle, in a kind of indecisive Iceland-induced haze. "How about those, erm . . . Dalepak vege-burger things, with CHIPS! No, wedges. NO! CHIPS! We haven't had them for ages. With chips or wedges," I suggest. "No. We're not having that . . . I don't think they sell tagliatelle," M**** said, sounding disappointed. So sticking with the pasta thing . . . "How about a pasta bake with this?" M**** suggests, holding up some orange-coloured pasta sauce, "What?! Where's the meat? They don't sell kidney beans here either. Where's the protein? What we gonna have with it? Onions? Just pasta, sauce and onions? Eh? What you on about?" I ask. "Well, we can have it with broccoli. You go get the broccoli. It's around the corner." But I'm like . . . well, what kind of meal is that? So we head back to the pasta sauces, wondering what to do . . . M**** drops the pasta sauce, it rolls underneath the shelving . . . "I think we should get out of here. I'm feeling a bit light headed," M**** announces. We leave the store with garlic bread, tomotoes, yoghurt, ice cream, quiche and some bowl of prepared salad (god knows . . . it seemed to contain cheese, sweetcorn, coleslaw, pasta and lettuce). Right. Is that better? Everyone happy now? Dull, isn't it? That's why I haven't written much lately.

Oh, and thanks be to Rob, for pointing out numerous mistakes found throughout December and January. Either everyone else out there doesn't care or else didn't notice, but the idea is to not have mistakes, so if you do see some, and if something is just wrong then please tell me. You can even do it anomomomomomononmonosously by using the 'comments' page, although that does record your IP address, so, erm . . . well, it's not that anonymous, but hey . . . whatever.

Just been watching 'Closer'. Found it's best to watch this film with your own soundtrack playing, so I'm there, listening to Stevie Wonder, Amon Tobin, Interpol, whatever (pretty much anything will do) . . . and the film's not so bad after all. Not nearly as dull as I thought. Their mouths move, but I cannot hear anything. Sweet. But, my . . . what fine green eyes does Clive Owen have, eh? Otherwise . . . today, I did meet Tom and Jenny at the Scarbrough Taps, for a few drinks. Then they did go to Pudsey, to meet up with Emma, for it is her birthday. At that point, I caught the number 50 bus back home . . . via Burley Road.

And such strange dreams . . . I'm in a mini bus, with several other people, and there are winds blowing that could blow cars off the road . . . the driver's struggling with the steering wheel, and it seems clear that we may not make it, wherever we're heading. The passengers are terrified and we're all kind of fearing for our lifes, when a blast of wind hits the mini-bus on the right side, pushing us off the road . . . the driver kind of goes with it, bears left, and drives into this grassy ditch and we seem okay for a while . . . and then I remember . . . a while ago, gravity just kind of turned itself off for a while, and somehow, out of the chaos and confusion, somehow I ended up in this mini-bus, one of the survivors.