Took shelter from a shower...Stepped into your arms...On a rainy night in Soho...The wind was whistling all its charms...

Blimey, it's all go over here in Ol' Blighty!

In our last episode, Your Humble Narrator was faced with the prospect of another dreary stretch "on the bench", as we call it when you don't have a project to do. The one I had lined up was supposed to start on
the 12th but they clearly drowned in the Hyperbolic Sea and were unable to reply to my numerous emails and phone calls. I'd done all the training there was to do and was frankly at a loose end. But then I got a call out of the blue from a guy who knows a colleague of mine looking for someone to join his project as a Team Lead/Functional Architect. Bear in mind, this was Thursday and the project was supposed to start on the following Monday. So I met the guy and pulled my best Fran Fine routine ("He had STYLE, he had FLAIR, he was THERE!") and that's how I became the Nanny...errr, the Team Lead/Functional Architect.

So I started yesterday at the D-Network, owners of the D-Channel, on a top secret project which I very nearly blabbed to you all about. Thankfully I just came to my senses and deleted that whole paragraph...you'll have to wait until it's launched for all the deets, but needless to say it's pretty cool. Nothing to do with their really cool shows or anything like that, regretably, but you never know what might come of it. It's a pretty daunting workload we have to get done by Xmas, but this is exactly the sort of thing I came here looking for: challenging, scary, sexy, no safety net. I'm even managing 2 staff, can you believe it? Finally I have people who have to listen to me and put up with my crap whether they like it or not. It's a far cry from all of you chumps...

So I did some more exploring on the weekend. Took a walk East along the Thames Path to Greenwich...yes, THAT Greenwich, as in 'Greenwich Mean Time'. As the sign into town says: "Where Time Begins". Technically it's also where time ends but who am I to quibble over terms with the Time Lords of Greenwich...they're the one's fucking this cat, not me. I went to the Cutty Sark restoration project but they wouldn't let me see it as it caught fire recently (heh heh) and I don't think there's much left under the giant dirty tarpaulin. I think they're just trying to milk the mystery. I also went to the Maritime Museum which, frankly, was a little bit too sailor-iffic for my tastes. Fine if you're into boats or the Village People but not really my bag. There weren't even any harpoons, for feck's sake. I could have ventured in to the Naval College (where you can do a degree in Gazing...ba da boom tish!) but I was feeling a little too much Old Man and the Sea, so I headed off to see if I could find the old Millenium Dome...a one billion pound white elephant designed as a showcase for the new century which flopped majorly. It's now the O2 stadium (O2 are a mobile phone company who won the contract for the iPhone in the UK).

Did somebody say iPhone? The launch was this week and it kind of came and went with a whimper. They sold about 100,000 of them (allegedly) but there's been a lot of problems with the network so I'm holding off getting one until they get it sorted.

There's a tunnel that goes from one side of the Thames to the other that you can walk through but I decided to take the long way around and go through it on my return journey. Predictably, after 2 hours of walking through some pretty sketchy and smelly slums and industrial areas I decided that I didn't want to be out alone in the dark so jumped on a bus home. I'll tackle the tunnel in a couple of weeks and fill you in on all the dark and gloomy deets. I'm guessing that the whole experience will be seriously underwhelming...a vast subteranean collage of garbage, homeless guys and urine...pretty much like London above ground...but let's just see, shall we?

Off for a whirlwind visit to Dublin for the weekend, which should be fun. Hopefully my liver has forgiven me for the punishment it received in Chicago. If not, tough luck, liver!

Hope you're all well, and counting down to Xmas!