HOLIDAYS SHOULD BE BANNED

Oh people. I can't be bothered to do owt. I worked six hard days at work and then ran flat out over the weekend and morning before my holiday, just to be sure that when I did go on holiday, I had done everything I needed to do, and could have a proper holiday not worrying about having to do anything.

And it worked. I had a proper holiday not worrying about having to do anything.

And I got to like not having anything to do, because it means you can just do what you want. Spend a morning trying to find a summer jacket to buy, in hopes that, one day, summer will return to these shores. Play the DS Lite until your eyes get cross-eyed. Eat cream-teas.

Only now playtime is over and i've got to go back to work tomorrow. At work, I can't do what I want. I have to do what other people dictate. And truly, I would never choose to spend my time ringing Environmental Services about the non-appearance of plastic bags or writing letters to the Housing Department about a mouldy bathroom.

And to make it worse, this coming week is election week and I have elected to help out some prospective Labour candidates too. Only I don't feel the least bit political. I just feel like slobbing about eating toffee and watching DVDs of the Peep Show. I don't want to go knocking on people's doors trying to get someone to vote a certain way, like a cold-caller salesperson trying to get someone to switch their gas supplier. I want to go and sit on a beach somewhere.

Holidays are lethal. Life is going along just fine, you're in a routine, things are good. Then big old nasty holiday comes along and snatches away the illusion. Makes a mockery of your life and routine. Shows you a glimpse of what life would be like if you were rich. Eating out, shopping, lazy mornings, lots and lots of sex, reading a newspaper cover-to-cover, cliff-top walks, getting drunk, boats, flip-flops and sand.

Either life should be like this all the time, or it shouldn't be like it at all. It's just cruel.

A WORD ABOUT VISTA

It's a bloody nightmare.

I wanted to go wireless, so I had to buy a new Laptop. New Laptops come with Vista. But Vista doesn't go with anything else. Software has yet to catch-up. So, the new digital camera I bought to go with my fancy new Laptop and operating system had to go back to the shop because, sniffily, Vista refused to recognise it.

Then trying to set-up the wireless hub was a nightmare. Kindly, BT did put a note about Vista in the set-up instructions saying that not all of it would work and that I'd have to download certain stuff from their website after initial set-up. Which I dutifully attempted to do, finding on the way that I couldn't get the Internet to work using wireless. Only broadband would work. Which made the whole purchase of new Laptop and Hub pointless.

It was a major irritation. I had set-up the Hub, I had downloaded the software, I had installed a virus protection thingy, and clearly I had done it all correctly because I could connect to the internet using Broadband. And yet, despite all those hours of unaided perseverance grappling with an unfamiliar subject, the one thing that I really wanted to achieve remained seemingly unachievable.

It just wouldn't do it. I couldn't make the Laptop work on wireless despite trawling for all the 'diagnose problem' links I could find and going through them all at least six times each. I started to accept with an all pervasive sense of doom that I would have to phone BT's technical help-line.

My experience to date with IT support has been through work and I don't have happy memories. All that jargon thrown at me, all those times when they were asking me to click on a certain icon that I just couldn't see, that inability to make yourself understood despite saying English words of one syllable very slowly.

I must admit that my sense of doom didn't dissipate when the IT advisor who was landed with my call spoke in a lush Indian accent. Shame on British Telecom for sending its call centres abroad.

But, yet, I have to say, it was an almost joyous experience. Indian IT advisor lady just remoted onto my Laptop, whizzed around everywhere and had it fixed without me even having to do so much as reboot.

So, now, wireless. Finally.

I would advise anyone who is not especially technical minded not to upgrade to Vista just yet. Not until the software has started to catch-up and the bugs have been chased off a little.

ARRIVAL OF THE HUB

My Wireless hub has arrived! Wahoooo!

Trouble being that I wasn't at home when it arrived, and as the package needed signing for, it couldn't be shoved under my hedge or handed to my long-suffering next-door neighbour.

So it went back to the depot.

Where it sits still.

And I can only go and pick it up weekdays, office hours.

During which time I am at work.

In my office.

And I can't change the delivery address.

Why are delivery firms so impossible?

Fortunately, I have a week's holiday next week.

Unfortunately, I was planning to use it to go on holiday to Devon.

Regular blog posting from my lovely new wireless laptop is therefore postponed until after my holiday.

But until then, to the tune of My Humps by The Black Eyed Peas.

My Hub, my Hub, my lovely BT Hub! Check it out!

YOUNG MEN WHO SLAUGHTER

"You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today. But you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off."

There feels something creepily familiar to me about the chilling video made by Cho Seung-hui before going out and killing 32 students at Virginia Tech.

Posturing with weapons, expressing a clear hatred of the wealthy West, talking of "martyrs" and being forced into acts of violence on behalf of "brothers and sisters".

I'm thinking Mohammad Sidique Khan and friends.

WHY NO POSTS?

Not only am I still waiting for my wireless hub from BT, but I now have as stinker of a cold.

It's not just the normal annoying sniffle that you can muddle on through. This thing is strangling normal function. My ears crackle and pop, my throat throbs, my chest can't breathe. Until this morning I haven't been able to sleep and yesterday I couldn't keep any food down.

I am coping by taking paracetamol and moaning extensively.

The blossom blooms and I cough and sneeze.

Still hubless.

DENTIST FOUND GUILTY OF PEEING IN THE SURGERY SINK

Bet they're all at it