pumpkinstrokemarrow

Next blog button is starting to throw up sites which throw up unpleasant messages which purport to come from Norton about unpleasant scripts which presumably come from the blog that the next blog button has taken one to. As a paranoid, one wondered whether the messages do indeed come from Norton. Not a big deal to spoof such a thing. Maybe the security folk from Google (would here be known as nannies, if in the employ of the UK government) are on holiday.

Odd dream last night which was vaguely may late work related - but, unusually, not obviously wishful thinking. (Freud might have been a bit dogmatic insisting that all dreams involve a big dose of wishful thinking - but I certainly find that a good proportion do). That being as it may be, the dream seemed to involve my working for a gas utility and being tasked either with placing a substantial contract to outsource the gas supply or to sell the gas to someone else who was doing the outsourcing. Dream, as ever, being a bit vague about such a distinction. I had about 10 working days to get the whole thing wrapped up without help and was being unaturally relaxed about the whole business, thinking that the required tender documentation only running to 10-20 pages or so. And someone was trying to interest me in some glossy technical pictures of gas flavoured steel.

I was starting to get puzzled about this, when the scene shifted to Adenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge and I found myself gazing at their fine indicator board. At least, I think they used to have such a thing forty years ago, at which time the hospital was the latest thing in hospital engineering. The board looked like a hospital version of the indicator board which was retired a few years ago at Waterloo station and the main purpose of which was to put up the theatre lists for all the surgeons on that day. Mr Smith's list: 1: Bloggs, leg off. 2: Sykes, leg on. 3: Janes, big toe nail amputation. And so onto the next list. I guess the idea was that in that far-off pre-technology age the hospital needed some central point where everybody could see what was going on in the all important operating theatres. But I would have thought having a public display of this sort would get the human rights people very sweaty these days. There was also the interesting angle that being at the top of the list gave one status but also usually meant that there was something fairly seriously wrong with you. Rather like the highest status prisoners (status vis a vis other prisoners that is) being the ones with the longest sentences.

Nearly got lost on Headley Heath today while trying out a walk on a new path while supported by compass. On the whole, the compass was helpful. At least one knew that one had been heading vaguely North and West and that to get back heading vaguely South and East would probably get one back to the road, if the not the car park, from whence one had started. While I know how to do direction from the sun and the watch, doing it on the move while guessing the time seems to be rather unreliable. And on this occasion the compass method got us back to the car park.

We also managed to put up what I took for a juvenile, if more or less full sized, partridge sitting by the side of the path. It did not get around to moving on until we were more or less on top of it.