Well, of course it’s been Christmas, and it’s been fun. My gifts, I hope, were well received, and I got some great ones. Several hundred minutes of West Wing and Spooks and Early Doors on DVD, quality smelly and footy-related goodness!

But it’s been a few days since the break, so why no blog since then? Two words. New toy.

The footy Christmas do was a right laugh. But rough as a buzzard’s crutch today, and I swear it takes me longer these days to get over a hangover. Full fat coke, junk food, it only dents the unpleasantness.

I still haven’t got my replacement battery for the D70. Like I said before, it’s a good job that I bought after-market batteries as my spares. Otherwise I would have been without my camera for six weeks and counting.

Now, I like to think that I have quite broad tastes and that when it comes to food, I’ll at least try almost anything. There are things I don’t like much: custard, sprouts, rice pudding etc. etc., but they pale into insignificance compared to Pinoykebabs. Sheesh. Blimey.

Wow. Just, wow. We shuffled our way right to the front, and in an 800-or-so capacity venue that’s no mean feat. The gig was moved there from Whelans next door because it became clear that their 300 capacity just wasn’t going to cut it.

Normally I’m not too fussed about being at the front, but for him you need to be to get the full impact of his incredible playing. That, and the P.A. was a bit on the quiet side. There were shushings coming from the crowd at the back all night because they were struggling to hear, especially his hushed talking in between songs. Running out of money in this internet cafe: more later.

One crappy Ryanair flight and then one very crappy bus ride and here I am in the middle of Dublin. A little pootle around town, no doubt spending money, and then it’s off to the Hotel for a bit of shut-eye before the Jose Gonzalez gig tonight! Woo hoo! I have it on good authority that he’s superb live.

How cosmopolitan is this: flying to Ireland to see a Swedish singer of Argentinian descent. I wonder what time the locals consider decent for the first Guinness of the day?

What a right kerfuffle. Trying to get MySQL replication working has consumed the Sunday morning early start. Oh well. Off to walk Des. He’s most insistent.

Now I’m hopped up on 10mbps cable, the old US Robotics CMX cable modem finally reached the end of its useful life. Not least, the 10BaseT connection would saturate before t’internet gave up all its goodness. So, two days ago it was time to ask NTL for a new modem. Twenty minutes on hold and a transfer to the wrong department later, an appointment was arranged for today.

A shiny new modem arrived today, with a very cheery engineer who gave a few choice little bits of insider information that will no doubt turn out to be handy (nothing dodgy, just stuff you wouldn’t necessarily guess). One ten minute call to customer services and I had my PIN for registration. A slight snag where the registration CD software assumes that you are upgrading from dialup. Do you want to keep your old dialup ID? No? Then you must want an entirely new account.

One more call to customer services (10 mins) and it was established that I needed to talk to broadband tech support. Fair enough. They picked up almost immediately, and told me the best thing to do was to register a new, temporary ID, and then call them back after 2-3 hours when it was fully established in order to get my old mailbox etc. transferred over into my original ID. They gave me a ticket reference number to give when I called back. After 3 hours I called back (again, very little wait time), gave the ticket number, and after a little bit of re-explaining, the transfer was done. All is now peachy.

So, it was hardly painless, but I have to say that apart from one hiccough, it’s been handled pretty well. And now I have a speedy pipe! So to speak. Of course now I’m not bitching about my connection, but the failings of the servers, the network in general, latency, and the price of fish. Oh well. Speaking of fish, thank you Rick Stein for your Ragout of Turbot and Scallops with Vouvray and Basil. Omega 3licious!

My NTL bill for this month smells of chicken. Why on earth does my NTL bill smell of chicken?

He lost to David Cameron. I don’t care either way, really. I don’t vote Tory (big surprise). The thing is, his magnanimous concession speech was as dull as it was toadying. He wants a job. It reminds me of the superb Spitting Image puppets: David Owen and David Steele.

But that’s not what I’m disappointed about. Once, just once, I want a loser in this kind of election to stand up and say “Right, well, if that’s the way it is, then knackers to the lot of you!” and walk off in a pouting sulk. Could happen.