Otherwise known as 'going home for Christmas', the next fortnight will, I predict, be spent in a welter of free technical support for friends and family. Joy. Many of my tech journalist colleagues have been telling me that when they're prevailed upon to fix computers whenever they visit the Mother Country – or Mother County, as the case may be – they simply tell those involved that they don't know anything about computers, viz "Your PC only connects to the Internet for seven minutes? Wow, that must be annoying." *Silence*. *Turn back to what you were doing*. It takes some cojones (to be pronounced co-jones, like two people from the Jones family working together) to pull off, but it may become necessary.

In other news, we only just got round to putting up a Christmas tree on Friday, He's a pretty, slim thing, though. Witness my wife, stricken with the cold, wrapped up in a voluminous Aran jumper, decorating him.


And here she is again, sitting beside me on the train Oop North. Witness the two laptops sitting in front of us – married people don't talk to each other, dontcherknow; married geeks communicate on ICQ – and marvel at having t'Internet on t'rain. Admittedly it's slower than Connex South Eastern – hey, a gag! – but it's still a great way to while away the long, long train journey...


Merry Midwinter Festival to all, by the way. See you in 2007!