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An early birthday present! I was chatting to my mum on IM this evening and she said that I could order the hard disk necessary to get my iBook back on its metaphorical feet. I have therefore ordered the above little nugget of technology, and look forward to its delivery; should be here Monday. One of my colleagues has kindly agreed to fit it for me. The drive I'm getting is both fast and capacious (for a laptop drive) at 100GB and 5400rpm, and will make my life much easier; it got good results in Bare Feats' tests.

Surprisingly sexy packaging for a hard disk, eh?

Though you can't see it clearly from this pic, it's currently snowing quite heavily in central London. I'll bet cash money that the young lady is currently hoping it keeps going so her school gets shut for the day.

My editor is in the process of refreshing his French, and has recently taken to posting to his blog using French rather then English. It shames me to say (given that I hold an SCE Higher Grade 'A' in the damn language) that I couldn't manage anything approaching the fluidity of language that Nik's attempting - all I get is ghosts of teachers attempting to train me in the arcane arts of conjugating reflexive verbs, the use of slightly underhand set phrases of ready-conjugated complexities ("Il faut que je dise" is one that sticks in my mind), and echoes of "Bring me your notebook". I was pleased to realise, however, that I understood pretty much everything in his most recent post. I ran it through the automatic Babel Fish translation service, and was interested to note that it didn't mangle this text as much as I've seen it do to others in the past. It translated Nik's post as:

There is large a problem with the company which directs the trains in my line: the communication. Sometimes it is when we are sat down on the train in the center of nowhere and the driver say to us that it do not know why. One formerly it is perhaps on the ways when the screen reads ' System Fault'. Yesterday Ca was with the fenetre tickets. ' I have a ticket "weekender". Or can I go tomorrow, ' I ask. ' Norwich? Peterborough?' Paul is still in Gran Canaria with Trevor, Jon and the others, thus I desired outward journey with quotes, or perhaps the beach. Well on it will be cold, but I have large a wind-breaker and I like to look at the sea on the rocks when there is nobody around. ' Only London, ' known as the woman in the other face of glass. ' London?' I say. ' But I can go in Clacton and Ipswich before the exchange of organization which directs the trains.' ' Yes, ' she says. ' It is true, but maintaining it is all different.' ' Why?' I ask. ' One moment, ' it say, and appele supervising to them. Both speak for one moment, and supervising it leans towards the fenetre. ' We do not know, ' it says. ' Before the exchange, you can go everywhere known the network, but now we are to dispute some with our department of walk. They cannot decide if you etes peremettre to travel in places which you cannot go with the ticket which you always use to go has London.' ' If that must I make?' I ask. ' Can I go to the beach this weekend?' ' I do not know, ' it admits. ' You can still ask for matain tomorrow... ' I leave has this point. Thus I am not with the beach today, but they are not necessary bad. Many papers about my loan-housing arrive this morning and I owe these lira. Perhaps I will walk in the centre town for a coffee and I can read them in comfort. More comfort than there has on the trains or is a beach cold, any way.

"it leans towards the fenetre" is one of my favourite phrases. Something at the back of my mind tells me that there should be an accent floating above one of the vowels, but it nonetheless amuses me that Babel Fish just couldn't be bothered translating it.

Bleh. I hate flathunting; it's such a bloody hassle. Frankly, I have neither the wit nor motivation to do it properly, and I grudge throwing so much money away each month and getting effectively nothing in return. London living is so expensive, too; the places we were looking at this morning we all £800/month unfurnished. Bloody rip-off. We should find out how feasible buying is, but there again you see that's a hell of a lot of bother too. And then you have to work out what area you want to live in which could take a lifetime. You have to work out how easy transport is into central London for me and out to Kent for the young lady. I wish someone would just sort it all out for us and hand us a set of keys.

Ah well. Jenny made surprise pancake batter yesterday, so I'm off to make 'em alongside some crispy bacon and maple syrup.

I'll leave the last word to Jenny, who was very taken with the kitchen in one of the properties we viewed; it was accessed from the living room by descending a short flight of stairs.

I recently bought an old LCII complete with 12in RGB monitor from eBay for the ridiculous price of £5.50. This old Apple computer was the first I ever saw, and I vowed there and then that I'd own one one day.

I've been mucking about with it over the last few days, and have been impressed at how little it has aged. It's both aesthetically attractive and surprisingly competent. I added an Ethernet card, and it's now both accessible over our network, and can access the Internet. Since I'm using Internet Explorer 2.1, many modern sites don't display properly. But you can still, for example, use the BBC's 'text-only' news page:

This blog is crying out for more pictures, so have this work of genius; she of the knitted iPod sock perched precariously on a Skatebike.

What a nice few days. The young lady has a week off for half term, so I took a couple of days away from work, and we have spent almost every waking minute since Saturday morning together. This does, I admit, sound simultaneously obsessively creepy and ridiculously needy, but we've seen so little of each other since before Christmas that it has been bliss.

Saturday passed in a bit of a haze; we decided to give ourselves that day properly off, and not even plan anything fun. We just lazed around in our collective pants watching Quantum Leap and 'Allo 'Allo.

Sunday was considerably busier. I wrote the final thousand words of a review for the mag, and we made the flat look all shiny and clean. We do complain bitterly about this flat with depressing regularity, but when it's tidy and the spring sun is flooding into the front room, it's a cheerful wee place.

Yesterday, then, was Valentine's day. We had a protracted discussion about whether or not this was a cynical Hallmark Holiday or a venerated tradition; in truth, we just didn't know, but we decided that it wasn't in any way important. Having worked out that we had barely a handful of sous between us, we didn't do anything extravagant. Instead, we planned a day in the house, cooking time-consuming and comforting food; all the ingredients were bought beforehand. Turns out it was one of the most pleasurable days together that we've ever enjoyed. Breakfast was American-style pancakes with organic maple syrup and crispy streaky bacon; these pancakes proved to be far easier to mix and cook than those we eat on Shrove Tuesday, and were a triumph. We then went out for a very blustery walk, though due to our apparently ingrained inability to remember which of the many marble arches around Hyde Park is Marble Arch, we spend this time getting very slightly lost around Piccadilly. Back to the house, then, to spend a pleasant 45 minutes mixing and shaping 53 meatballs (no, this figure wasn't in the recipe). These were duly cooked in a tomato sauce and served with fresh pasta (not made by us, unfortunately, as we have no roller) to sounds of near orgiastic pleasure. God, they were good. Oh, and we had bruschetta to start, with lovely fresh garlic and flakes of Maldon salt. Mmmm. We had intended to have a big feast o' fruit to finish, but were too stuffed. Instead, we had two each of some ridiculously expensive chocolates from Godiva. Worth every damn penny.

Now, I must sign off, as after a day of helping Jenny sort out her classroom and eating leftover meatballs we have tickets to see His Dark Materials at the National. These were bought with tokens Jenny's folks gave us for Christmas. There are pictures of the production here. Toodle-pip.

Nik knew that I was in the market for a very cheap PC laptop. I want one partly to learn more about Windows, partly to enable me to do more freelance work for our sister titles, and partly so that I can actually help my mum when she has problems with her own PC laptop.

Well anyway. Yesterday Nik came across this laptop online for only £380. It's perfect - I don't need anything powerful or even attractive, and I have a legal copy of Windows to put on it - but unfortunately even that bargain basement price is way out of my budget at the moment, what with a failed hard disk and some serious dental work to be done. Dammit.

Ouch. It's not just that apparently one of my old fillings is cracked (ouch physically), but that it will apparently cost the best part of £400 to fix it. Hmmm. Things were a little tight financially as they were. Will have to whore myself out to PC Pro(stitute).

In other news, we went to the recording of an instalment of The Museum of Everything tonight which was lots of fun.

Jenny's early mornings are beginning to take their toll, though; the poor angel is permanently exhausted, and we find we have so little time for each other. Keeping the house in order is proving to be a little beyond us at the moment, too. We actually considered getting a cleaner, but this does seem a mite drastic and not a little poncey. We appear to have role-swapped too, with Jenny leaving no end of clutter on her wake and me doggedly attempting to keep at least one room moderately presentable and cholera-free. Ho hum.

Plus it now appears that my hard disk is broken (actually, physically failing) and I really don't have the cash to repair it (see dental hell, above). Hence no computer for me for the foreseeable future. For these and other reasons, life is a little less than sparkly at the moment.

Night toots. Cx

Picture the scene, if you will. Myself and my good lady are snuggling down after a hard day's work. My beloved turns to me and whispers in a voice thick with sleep that she'd really like a particular dish as her evening meal the following day. Today is that following day, so after work I dutifully tottered down to M&S to buy said dish. Also to buy a handbag. Not for me; the young lady is attending some fancy bash and we spent a sometimes fraught amount of time at the weekend selecting a number of alternate outfits for said do. She forgot to accessorise, however, so I was charged with picking out a suitable handbag.

I thought I could rise to that challenge, and scourged M&S - then one of the few handbag-selling emporia still open when I left work - for a likely candidate. No mean feat, as the designers at M&S seem to think that festooning daschund-shaped tubes of Pleather with zips, and artily stitching geometric patches of tan leather together in a manner no doubt intended to convey the impression that it was crafted by a wild man of Borneo, are the very height of fashion. I got news for them.

I waited more or less patiently in line behind a 20-stone woman apparently buying her annual wardrobe to pay for my prize, dashed downstairs to pick up the food, then burst, gasping, onto Oxford Street. I breathlessly phoned my darling to give her the glad tidings: not only had I got her a funky, smart bag, but I had remembered her culinary ambition. "Oh noooo. What did you buy that for? You have to cook it all and wash dishes and..."

Love you too, angel.

In her defence, the poor dear is tired and stressed, and quite understandably revolts at the thought of putting in one joule of energy more than is required. x