The Pen is mightier than the sword...

I saw an interesting article this week, but with a rather disingenuous and clearly made-for-garnering-attention title - The decline and fall of books.

From both the title and the fact that I found the link in the Times' Tech & Web section (even though the article itself is in the Arts & Entertainment section), one might have assumed that some statistical research had been done, and that the conclusion would be that within ten years everyone would be reading e-books and electronic newspapers à la Minority Report, and that the printed work would wither away and die.

However, on actually reading the article the thrust was about the decline of the traditional bookshop, not the book per se. It is indeed true that the traditional high street bookshop has largely disappeared - in terms of being able to wander into a shop and browse for a book, all that remains are the chains such as Borders and Waterstones, which for the most part offer a diet of sensationalist Z-list "biographies" and chick lit. Then there are the supermarkets, which offer the same fare, with the addition of the morbid childhood trauma paperback that has become the fashionable read for bored housewives. The glut of such books seems to suggest that this sort of thing is commonplace, so much so that one can safely assume that the likes of Sharon Shoesmith don't shop at Tesco.

It is indeed a shame - nay, a travesty - that many of the traditional old bookshops have disappeared from view, and that those that remain are in facing a serious financial struggle to even survive. I remember very well the days before the Internet, when I would take a journey into London and march up and down the Charing Cross Road - there were many interesting and controversial political works to be found at a place called Al Hoda, there was Sportspages (mentioned in the article) where I would be able to get hold of obscure German-language football annuals.

Then of course there was Foyle's - the veritable grand old mother of all bookshops. With its distinctive 1930s era atmosphere, Foyle's was place where everything was happily higgledy-piggledy, an Aladdin's Cave where you could find anything from little books on expressing the present tense in Tagalog through to the richly-bound door-stop biographies on Waffen-SS Panzer divisions. Even the method of payment was wonderfully old-school: you'd select your book and hand it to an assistant sitting behind a desk, who would scribble out a hand-written receipt which you would then take to the cashier to process. It was like either stepping back in time.

Alas, this is no more. Desperate to keep up with its slicker neighbours such as Books Etc. and Borders, Foyle's went through a massive revamp: remarketed, rebadged, and reorganised. It even lost the apostrophe: Foyle's became Foyles. The dusty, almost library-like charm has long gone, as have the paper receipts. The books on offer are of the same ilk as their competitors, and not since the day it was rebranded was I able to find the military history titles I used to make the journey into London for. It's as if along with the remarketing the politically correct police had called by to tell the management they could no longer stock copies of Panzermeyer's autobiography Grenadier.

So yes, the traditional bookshop is disappearing from our high streets, but does this signal - as the title of the Times article suggests - the decline and fall of the book? Far from it. If anything, the likes of Amazon and eBay have increased our interest in all things printed. We are now able to find books we could never locate in the bookshops, and more besides. With online portals such as Alibris that connects online buyers with small booksellers around the world - one can pick up obscure, long-lost texts and even those books from childhood days. Book festivals like that held every year at Hay-on-Wye bring in armies of visitors from all around the world.

It is going to be a very long time until we, as human beings, determine that the printed word is dead as we leaf through our latest purchase on our Kindle e-reader. Blackwell's Espresso Book Machine may itself be a marvel of modern technology, but its very existence is proof of the fact that we'd rather hold a book and be able to physically leaf through its pages than perform this function with a sweep of an index finger across a touchpad or the click of a mouse.

Fame at last? Or a hatchet job in the offing?

Today when I arrived back home from work there was a rather odd surprise. Caroline had left a message on my mobile, as a journalist from the Mail on Sunday had called round to speak to me about my Michael Wittmann site. I quickly called him back and said that yes, I would have the time for a brief chat.

It turns out that there had been a moany complaint from some French hack that the site somehow "glorified" the Waffen SS, particularly with the sale of the Wittmann t-shirt and divisional symbol beer glasses - funds from which are used to support the upkeep and maintenance of the site. I obviously made my best attempt to set the record straight as best I could, and am hoping that the researchers at TMoS will have a good look at the site where everything is there in honest black and white - and has been for the best part of the last decade.

I can genuinely understand some people getting hacked off about the subject matter, but if we all complained to the press about things we didn't like nobody would ever get any work done. Except, perhaps, those who are paid to deal with processing the complaints. That is of course if they don't start complaining themselves. It is also rather odd how some French journalists are able to get all stroppy and po-faced over anything said about the Second World War and in particular the role played by the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich at Oradour-sur-Glane, but close up like a startled huître when called up on something closer to home like Indochina and Algeria, where one could argue that a number of "Oradours" took place.

I was of course very happy to answer what were a number of all-too-familiar questions, the very obvious lack of knowledge of the essentials notwithstanding. One would have hoped that any journalist probing about such matters would have at least heard of Villers-Bocage; the fact that my mentioning the War and Peace show resulted in quizzical looks was further proof that no real research had been undertaken - for as far as I was aware everyone and his dog had seen that awfully scurrilous documentary fronted by that odious hack John Sweeney. One would have thought that any roving journalist dispatched to the outer London surburbs in the hope of scoring an impromptu interview with a mysterious amateur military historian would have at least been provided with some sort of brief: this is no criticism of journalists themselves, but of a system fuelled by the desperate need to continually turn out stories. A press hound can be sent to Mexico City to churn out an article on swine flu one day, only to be sent to some Northern dump to write a piece on the price of oily chips being sold to obese schoolchildren the next.

My interviewer seemed pleasant and professional enough, so I can only hope that the piece - if it does make it to print, replete with photos of me with the Wittmann t-shirt - is as objective as my site itself and not some sort of hatchet job. I just hope I am not closing my eyes or gurning like a clown in the photographs.

Of course I'd rather my site have been seen as a work of objective history from the get-go rather than have to counter the ridiculous claims of people who should be spending their time more constructively, but publicity is publicity all the same. I can only hope that people use this introduction - for want of a better word - to get onto the site, have a good read and actually learn something. I hope that some of these readers might then go out and check out a few books on this fascinating and at times controversial subject for themselves. And maybe purchase a beer glass for their mantelpiece.

I naturally carried out some simple post-event research and discovered that my interviewer was this year's winner of the young journalist of the year at this year's British Press Awards - if he produces something that is objective and serves the historical record I would of course be more than happy to add my own plaudits.

It was certainly a strange end to what was a busy Friday - surreal, even. So surreal given that with all of my recent blogs I can say that I might very well qualify for my very own entry in the Daily Mail Nazi Story of the Week...

Politically Correct Quatsch

More politically correct witterings found in the press, this time from Germany - where every corporate marketing slogan is checked against what must be an encyclopaedic reference list of every single banal phrase used, uttered by or associated with the National Socialist regime.

Petrol giant Esso has been forced to withdraw advertising posters after it emerged their slogan was the same as the that of Buchenwald concentration camp.

The oil firm and its partner coffee chain Tchibo had not realised the phrase "Jedem den Seinem" – which roughly translates as you get what you deserve – was virtually identical to the words on the gates of the camp.

Source: Telegraph Online

"You get what you deserve" (or to be more precise, "to each his own") sounds like any reasonable marketing slogan to me. I wouldn't want to work in marketing in Germany today, as you would need to consult a copy of Everyday Banal phrases used in the Nazi era or emblazoned on the walls or gates of every obscure concentration camp that cannot be used today for fear of annoying and/or offending your local leftist/communist/rabbi before you even do anything.


Given that the Nazis had excellent marketing skills and manufactured a good number of snappy one-liners, I'd reckon the number of available decent options are few. Those horrid Nazis, not only did they have the snazziest uniforms tailored by Hugo Boss, they stole all the best marketing one-liners! Ach, Gott in Himmel! Donnerwetter! Zum Teufel!!!

This comes hot on the trail of a TV station being censured for using the term "Powered by Emotion", which some nincompoops saw as being too close to catchy "Strength through Joy" (Kraft durch Freude, KDF) which the Nazis used to advertise Volkswagen cars and holidays on the beaches of the Baltic.


Politically correct madness, in another language.

Oh, and a happy new year to all my readers. That's myself, Caroline (when she chooses to bother) and Fido the dog who lives with the Wanastudamakerbaker family in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Idiots...

In my wait for a parking permit at work, I am having to park on a side street and take a seven-minute walk to the office; and on my way, I pass a small branch of Tesco on a street corner.

Now this small store has a small car park, with its entrance and exit clearly marked both with signage and paint on the road itself. There is one entrance and one exit, and the fact that the traffic flow is one-way should be pretty clear to anyone who can read English, let along somebody who would have been expect to read and understand the highway code.

Though every other day I see someone ignore the signs and roll into the car park from the end they shouldn't; only a couple of evenings ago I witnessed some moron pass right by the "No entry" sign and attempt to creep past another car that was facing the correct way. The puzzled face of the driver following the rule was a picture as his offside wing mirror was almost clipped by Mr. Moron; when I looked into the idiot's window all I could see was a face that either didn't care or was completely oblivious to the fact.

Today however saw the crowning moment. Walking past, I see a police car exiting the car park the wrong way - ignoring the clearly marked sign that says "Exit Only". Now I know recruitment standards for the police have plummeted in their futile attempt to bolster their numbers with so-called ethnic minorities, homosexuals and the disabled; I didn't know they had a quota for illiterate imbeciles as well.

If the so-called "authorities" cannot follow a very simple rule, what hope is there for the rest of us?

I'm still here...

Just a quick note to let you people out there that might be reading this guff (that's about two of you, including myself and my alter ego) that I'm not dead and very much still here.

Life has been busy, and there has been little spare time to be had... It seems that we were away doing something somewhere every weekend during July and August, with the weekends where we were doing nothing blighted by the ceaseless rain. British summer weather, hmmpf.

In the past couple of months I finally got my Mercedes SLK, although opportunities to drive with the top down have been limited... My brother got married at the end of August, prompting the inevitable questions to myself and Caroline... Went to France a couple of times, first on a wine-buying day trip and then to see Caroline's parents in Le Touquet... And work, including two pretty hectic projects. I'm working on another one now, and a conversation about blogs was the nudge I needed to make me come back here for a quick tap-tap on the keyboard.

I'll try and post again soon... I know some of you are missing the cartoons!

Update, Bastille Day

Has it really been almost two weeks since my last entry? I know work has been a little heavy recently, but the time has really flown by. It's Bastille Day today, 14th July - and thirteen years to the day since I graduated from Brunel. That seems to have flown by too.

My birthday whizzed by with no more than a whimper - mercifully - and I don't really feel that much older. At least I was able yesterday to take a sledgehammer to the patio and knock out a dozen concrete slabs without needing an oxygen mask.

It was a task that had been continually put off - going away this Saturday, raining that Sunday, the Euros, Wimbledon... But finally the time was right and I just waded in there. It was actually rather cathartic: I saw every hated face from every bad news story there, smiling at me from the concrete slabs - which made it far easier to bring the sledgehammer down through a nice wide arc with a resounding smash. Cristiano Ronaldo, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Roman Abramovich - you took one hell of a beating.

Caroline then cleared up the rubble and placed it neatly around the sheds - leaving a very nice and clear 1 x 3m area. Her plan is to rip out the rickety path and the lawn, and create something of beauty, a work of art even Alan Titchmarsh would get on his knees and admire. OK, we might be able to invite people 'round for a barbecue in 2017, but hey...

In fact the first person to visit - eliciting operation "Quick Clean" will be Mikey as he will be travelling down with us for the annual pilgrimage to the Hop Farm and the War & Peace Show. Where we will be joining the thousands of other "weekend Nazis". Groan.

It's raining again...

After finally getting used to a bit of sunshine and the temperatures nudging over the twenty degree mark, we're back to the norm again. Thankfully my ten minute walk to the office from the street I park the car was pretty painless, though looking outside the drizzle has turned into a steady shower. Bloody marvellous.

In the past week we have finally got all of the furniture in place - the platform bed in the spare room caused the usual rise in blood pressure, as did getting the sofa into the living room. But now that it's there... Far, far better than having to sit on hard-backed garden furniture! The doors on the wardrobes are also now up, after what was a pretty efficient session drilling the holes in then to affix the handles. The place is finally starting to look good, and all it needs now is for the remaining boxes to be cleared.

The place is really pretty pleasant, which has been a very nice surprise. Previously we have had to get in the car to get to the shops, or take an unpleasant trek through grey streets populated by gaggles of malingering ne'er do wells - but here we are less than ten minutes away from the high street, which has three supermarkets and a number of restaurants - which we will no doubt try out in the coming weeks. After living in a street that was miles away from anywhere for a year (and where the 'high street' was a gathering place for the area's teenage scum) it is very nice to take the ten minute walk along the banks of the canal to get to the shops. It is also nice to have to get in the car every time we need to go the shops - though warm weather certainly helped.

The cats have settled in pretty well, though both of them appear to have developed something of a fixation for the front door. All well and good, but they have a cat flap now. And we don't want Oliver destroying the wooden door, something that has happened before.

Living in Cardboard Box City...

...which is just up the road from Plasticbagville.

At last. We are now living in the new place, albeit in a state of disarray with the place still being littered with clutter. At least the cats have plenty of places to skulk.

The move was carried out with a succession of car relays, and we finally vacated Aldenham on Tuesday morning at 4am. The goodbye was rather unceremonial, and to be honest we were just bloody glad to get the cats in their boxes and get out of there.

Over the year it had become abundantly clear that the neighbourhood was getting slightly more "interesting" - something that became blindly obvious when we were walking back and forth across the parking area behind the house to pack the car. Every time there would be either a car zipping in and then zipping out moments later, engines running with no lights on, and that hideously sweet herbal aroma wafting from some of the windows. This was even going on in the very small hours of the morning. One really had to wonder what these people actually do - I have this recurring vision of scabby, shifty individuals who live on benefits, which they then blow away - literally - on weed. Fucking wasters, if you excuse the flowery language.

Talking about places we used to live, this morning a dramatic story unfolded concerning an explosion in South Harrow - in Stanley Road, which runs parallel with Sherwood Road, where we lived from October 2004 until March 2007. Some sixty people were evacuated, and the police are treating it as suspicious. Who knows, maybe we'll soon be hearing about a massive drugs bust in Aldenham Drive.

I'm back...

After a hectic weekend and a rather manic Monday, I am back.

The weekend was spent shifting more stuff to the new place, buying more furniture and generally sprucing the place up a bit. The wardrobes finally arrived this morning, after a rather convoluted telephone conversation (if one can call it that) with an Ikea home delivery guy who should perhaps attend a few more English lessons.

Anyway, the wardrobes and the bed are now at Pippin, all ready for us to get cracking with the screwdrivers, hammers and whatever else may be required. Most of the books are now waiting in the second bedroom to return to the shelves, and we got a nice little break yesterday when our current next door neighbour offered to help us shift the bulkier stuff in his van.

As the days are closing in, the lettings agency had been in touching to talk about prospective viewings, and amidst all the clutter we maniacally managed to get things looking presentable. Caroline had earlier in the week performed miracles with the kitchen and bathroom.

In the past few days a number of excellent cartoon opportunities have cropped up, but unfortunately I have never had a piece of paper on hand to jot down the ideas, and have often forgotten them by the time I finish off whatever I am doing. Most of the time these anecdotal moments take place at the supermarket, so maybe next time I go shopping I should carry a notepad and pencil with me...

Just a quick note...

Given that we will not be having broadband at home until sometime next week and I cannot be arsed to use dialup (no going back there, unless I need to send an email from a hotel room in Kigali), consider this a signing off for the weekend.

The plan is to try and get the furniture sorted - hopefully Ikea have more wardrobes in stock after the Saturday afternoon 21% off saga - and shift a bit more stuff across to the new place. The first blind finally went up yesterday, and it should now be a shoo-in to get the others fitted up.

I ordered the new washing machine and fridge freezer yesterday, and have set the delivery for the 2nd of next month.

Until Monday - over and out.

DIY: Why I hate it...

Yesterday we set about fixing the new Ikea blinds above the windows. An easy enough task, one might think. So we get the step ladder and measuring tape out, do all the measuring, mark where the holes are going to be drilled... As you do.

Caroline wants to put the blinds just above the window, so she marks out where the central fitting is going to go. All good so far. Then the drilling begins. Brrrrr... Grrrrr... Hnghhh! We hit metal. Yes, there is metal in the frame. The decision is then made to give up on having the blinds flush with the top of the window, and we then move things up by around four inches... We do the same thing again - measure, mark... Take two proves successful, as two neat holes are made in the wall into which the rawlplugs fit snugly. The first half-drilled hole is quickly filled in with some of that instant drying liquid filler stuff.

We then move to to measuring and marking where the side holding pieces will go. This goes pretty smoothly, and four neat marks are made where the holes will be drilled. All set, and then... We hit metal again! By this time we are both getting slightly annoyed - though in truth the situation is nowhere near as bad as the Sherwood Road bookshelves where half the wall crumbled apart as soon as a drill touched it.

With the centre piece firmly screwed into place, we decide that this is where the blinds are going to go, by hook or by crook. So the decision is made to give up for the night, and buy a metal drill bit to complete the task. Oh, the fun of it all - I'd happily pay somebody to do all this crap if they didn't charge an arm and a leg for picking up a screwdriver.

In stark contrast to the downstairs blind we manage to get the new curtain pole up in what will be our bedroom very easily. At least we can say that we got something done...

No broadband... Nao!

We switched to our new telephone number at Pippin last Friday, but to my pleasant surprise the broadband connection was still running... Until yesterday afternoon when it breathed its last.

So, having just initiated an account for the new address, we are without broadband - and it feels just like the dark old days before the Internet, where research was pretty tough work. These days when we are watching a film or television programme we often ask "where have I seen him/her before?" - and then almost immediately get the answer by getting onto IMDB and getting the full resumé within a couple of clicks. Previously when writing an historical essay I'd have to drawl through my own library of reference works, and often head down to the library; these days it's just a Google search away.

Maybe it's a good thing: rather than jumping on the computer to check the latest news or emails - only to inevitably to sucked into spending three, four, five or more hours online - we can get a lot more done with the new place...

Pretentious Nosh

I stumbled across this interesting article this afternoon:

Fat Duck falls short in battle of haute cuisine

I simply do not get this fashionista obsession with haute cuisine - in fact haute anything, with haute being a simply byword for "pretentious and so far up its own rear end it can see through its own mouth". For one, I cannot for the life of me understand why people would choose to fork out hundreds of pounds for an otherwise insubstantial 'meal' that has the appearance of a lump of caramelised dog turd accompanied by some small pellets of rabbit shit and gentle spraying of foamy monkey semen. With coagulated tortoise sick in a cat piss jus for dessert.

An alleged masterpiece from the Spanish haute cuisine restaurant El Bulli. According to the Telegraph, "some 8,000 people eat there every year, with around 400 attempting to book each table for a meal costing an average of £150 per head." They must all be bloody insane.

This is not 'food', but in the same bracket as the pretentious guff some would call 'art'. The claim often made by the so-called (and for the most part self-appointed) "experts" is that only the chosen few actually understand all of this oity-toity nonsense, but the truth is that most of them are making things up as they go along.

I have been to plenty of excellent restaurants across the world, and given that I have never spent more than £100 per head I can safely say that none of them would make this list, such as the excellent Edo Sushi Bar in Berlin where you can get an excellent all-you-can-eat deal for 15 Euros.

As for Gordon Ramsay - the man cannot make Yorkshire puddings for toffee. My Mother's home-made recipe trounces his flat, miserable insults to all right-thinking Yorkshire folk hands down.

It's all very moving...

Well, the move to "Pippin" - as we have dubbed the new place - is well under way, and quite a lot of stuff was transported across today. We have now cleared the loft as well as most of the space under the stairs at Aldenham, with much of this stuff now being put in the far larger and better-lit loft space at Pippin. Much discussion was had about the layout of the bedrooms, with the biggest issue being the lighting in the second bedroom and the placement of the platform bed; we also discussed what would be going where - and my idea to house most of my model tanks in my soon-to-arrive (Ikea stock permitting) new wardrobe.

Caroline also fitted the new catflap to the back door - a very good job if I have to say. Without being patronising, of course. No, a very good job. I think the chats will be very pleased to be able to come and go with having to scratch at the door, and both of us will be very pleased at no longer having to do the "it's your turn... No, it's your turn" run-to-the-door routine to let them in and out.

Sky+ seems to be working perfectly, and Caroline made her first recording this evening. I think it will be really nice to be able to watch one Sky channel while recording another, or perhaps even recording two at the same time. The first programme we watched together in the new place was Doctor Who on BBC3 - which didn't break up once - and our first meal was Domino's Pizza - nice and convenient, but bad. Very bad.

Update

So, as you can see I was too busy yesterday to write anything... Much of the day was spent telephoning banks, credit card companies, billing agencies and so on to update my details with our new contact details. For the most part it was a painless affair, though to the passing ear my almost continual use of the phonetic alphabet must have made the place sound like a police station.

Another pleasant surprise was the ease with which I was able to complete this time-eating task: I had to make some twenty-odd calls, and only on a couple of occasions was I left waiting listening to tinny muzak. And not one incidence of Greensleeves! There were clearly less Indian call centre connections than the same time last year when we were undertaking the move to Hillingdon, and those that I did encounter were pretty fast and efficient - things are looking up!

The evening was spent sprucing up the new place with some help from Mum and Dad, and Caroline and I moved the first small batch of things over later in the evening - all of the items from the kitchen 'overflow'. It felt nice to actually have the space to put this stuff, and having to walk the entire length of the house to retrieve a frying pan is now hopefully a thing of the past.

We got back home and relaxed to watch what we though was going to be an interesting documentary on living goddesses in Nepal, but instead it proved to be a rather dull affair with next to explanation as to what was going on. Visually stunning, but pretty much non-informative. The lack of a narrator was a novel idea, but in this instance it clearly didn't work: it was too fly-on-the-wall, and you felt that you never really got to know the people whose lives were being followed.

Before going to bed I forgot to tell Caroline that as well as a shirt I needed a pair or trousers ironed for work (it's not what you think - I am just rubbish at ironing) ... Of course I only realised this when I was getting ready this morning. Thankfully I had a pair in the drawer, but once again my curious inability to remember the most banal things (while being able to recall other more obscure and arguably irrelevant things like lists of tank turret numbers) reared its head...

Well, back at work it was the usual case of trawling through two days' worth of emails and getting down to business... Which I should probably get back to.

Keys

Well, got a call from the solicitor this afternoon and contacted the agent... We are going to be picking up the keys to our new house this evening!

Caroline is all set and ready with the measuring tape and notepaper, and an evening trip to the sauna that is Ikea Brent Park awaits. At least I can get to buy some Gravadlax from the Swedish food store...

The 'Generic French Look'

Yesterday we were having one of those banal discussions - as we do - about people in films and on TV... Caroline has this particular loathing of the 'Generic Hollywood Blonde', who according to her all seem to have been churned out of some single factory somewhere in California. The discussion then turned onto the GHB's Gallic counterpart...

It has been decided that in moving to the new place we are going to take as few VHS tapes as possible, now that we are able to transfer the content to DVD. Now, Caroline has managed to get most of her stuff across but I have almost twenty-five years' worth of footage to shift. Right back to the LA Olympics of 1984.

Yes, I am a geek.

I have so far managed to transfer almost a decade of Springbok rugby matches, and this week am starting on FCB's Champions' League games. I am watching the 2001 final against Valencia again, and it is hard to believe that that wonderful evening in Milan was before Caroline and I had even met. It still feels like it were yesterday. There are some 150 VHS tapes to go, by the way.

Timewarp: Paying by cheque

This evening we decided that nobody wanted to cook anything - it didn't help that the grill died a sudden death - and so we plumped for a phone-order curry. Usually we'd have enough cash lying about to cover the bill, but this evening we were left scrabbling around for loose change.

No good.

So, what to do? I was reticent to use my credit card over the telephone, and so we decided that the only option was to dig out the chequebook. I don't think Caroline had written a cheque since sometime in 2002, and even finding the thing proved to be something of a mission. It felt like going back in time, to an age before credit cards and online ordering.

Anyway, job done - and looking forward to the prawn bhuna. What now needs to be decided is what to have with it - Lithuanian Svyturys or a Kronenbourg Blanc?

Shopping

Unlike most men I actually quite enjoy shopping... There's nothing quite like picking a ripe Camembert or wading through the increasingly good selection of continental beers on offer. Even paying - which amounts to more than fifty pounds a go these days - is not too much of a bind.

However one type of shopping really does my head in - looking for household goods and furniture. Stuff you cannot eat or drink, unless you are one of those bicycle-eating circus freaks. Unfortunately, with the house move we are going to have to a lot of this. We will be needing a cooker, 'fridge, washing machine, bed, sofa, bedroom wardrobes... And more that I am sure I cannot think of right now.

Agh.

It's been something of a relaxing afternoon... Though the rain has hit Port of Spain on a number of occasions, delaying the one-day match between West Indies and Sri Lanka. As a result Caroline now has the remote control, and is watching yet another property relocation programme... Sometimes it feels like Amanda Lamb and the pretty blonde one whose name escapes me are family members.

Better news in the morning though as the Stormers ran home five tries in thumping the Cheetahs 34-22.

Three days to go...

Well, it's our last weekend here... And the hard and fast business of being a homeowner finally begins. I did like this little place, but apart from the shonky boiler the one problem was the lack of a catflap, and the almost continuous relay back and forth to let the little blighters out of the back door. And then back in again. And out. And in. You get the idea.

Everything has gone to plan so far, and all that remains is getting the keys to the new place. But that's the easy part - much fun is going to be had choosing, buying and putting together furniture...