How To Vote This Time (in Scotland)

In Scotland, the upcoming election is actually pretty straightforward: most people have three meaningful choices, depending on the answers to two questions. There are just a couple of wrinkles in one scenario. I'll get to that.

If you want Brexit... In this case, it's pretty simple - vote Tory. The Brexit party (and UKIP) don't have any meaningful chance in any seat in Scotland, so that would be a wasted vote, and the SNP, Lib Dems, and Labour are all in favour of a second referendum, and thus stopping it. So if you want Brexit, you have one choice.

If you want Independence... Again, a very simple case - vote SNP. The Greens have no meaningful chance in any seat in Scotland, and everyone else is opposed.

If you want both... This is now actually a pretty small group - about a third of people who voted Yes in 2014 did so because they really wanted to be out of the EU, and now that the UK is heading that way most of them no longer actually want independence. But if you do want both, decide which you want more (or want first), and vote according to the questions above.

If you don't want either... This is the more complex case, and depends on who currently holds your constituency.

• If your seat is currently held by a Labour or Lib Dem MP, it's easy - vote for the party that holds the seat.
  
• If your seat is currently held by an SNP MP, the choice is slightly tricky. Basically, you should vote for whichever of Labour or the Lib Dems did better last time, except for two caveats. If you are absolutely determined to avoid Brexit and willing to sacrifice independence to achieve that, your best bet is to vote SNP. Alternately, if you're absolutely determined to avoid independence and are willing to sacrifice Brexit to achieve that, and the Tories came second last time, then you should vote Tory.
  
• If your seat is currently held by a Tory MP, you unfortunately don't really have any good choices - neither the Lib Dems or Labour party have any real chance of taking any of those seats, so you're stuck. If you're absolutely determined to avoid one of the two, and are willing to sacrifice the other to achieve it, then hold your nose and vote accordingly. If not, I guess you should vote for whoever came third last time, and accept your vote is probably wasted.

And that's it. For me, it's an easy choice - I'm still opposed to Brexit, still in favour of independence, and live in an SNP-held constituency. Furthermore, my current MP is also both pretty formidable in the Commons and also a good representative for the constituency. So that's an easy vote to cast... this time. That said, I'm rapidly losing confidence that the SNP are actually able to achieve independence, and even confidence that they even really want it. And given that their domestic record is mediocre at best, I'm very strongly considering coming to the view that this will be my last vote.

Leaving Narnia

After seven months, Funsize and I have completed our read-through of "The Chronicles of Narnia". I had, of course, read these before, but it was a long time ago - I read all but LWW back in high school, and then read LWW a few years ago. (I skipped LWW in high school because I was extremely familiar with the story thanks to TV and stage adaptations.)

My general feeling with the novels is that they're patchy in quality - some bits are very good indeed (I especially liked the underworld in "The Silver Chair"), but some bits are pretty dull. "The Last Battle", in particular, seems to be about waiting for the Deus Ex Machina to come up and fix everything, and then duly watching as it does exactly that. (Of course, several of the books feature Deus Ex Machina endings, but given the nature of the series that's not a valid complaint, as it would in other cases.) I also can't really see myself revisiting the series again any time soon, and certainly not on my own behalf.

The other thing to say is that the books were perhaps a poor choice for Funsize - after a bit of this she seemed to lose interest, so I found myself mostly reading them aloud while she happened to be there, rather than necessarily reading them to her. But that may well not be a feature of the books, so much of the stage she's at - she doesn't really seem to want any storybooks read to her these days; her attention just about runs to "Pip the Puppy" rather than even "Zog" or his kin. The current book doesn't really seem to have proven any more successful, despite a significant change in topic, and I don't expect much from the next one either.

And that's all I have to say about that.

A Missed Opportunity

An opportunity has popped up at work that would have been ideal if:

• It had come up a year from now, and
  
• I hadn't moved project a year ago.

As it is, it's just not a good fit, so I'll need to let it go. Which is a damn shame, because I'd finally hit on an answer to "where do you see yourself in five years?"

#50: "The Last Battle", by C.S. Lewis (a book for Funsize; and this completes "The Chronicles of Narnia", which is a book from The List)
#51: "Nightflyers", by George R.R. Martin

Day 300: Update on Goals

Edit: Somehow, this got posted prematurely. As it happens, everything in the post is up-to-date and accurate, but it's still annoying. I expect this will sort itself out over the next few days...

Day 300, so time for the penultimate update on my goals for the year...

• Books: By day 300 I should have read 49.31 books. Despite a very significant slowdown in the last couple of months, I remain ahead of that target, if just barely. The current estimate remains that I'll end up slightly over the 60 books for the year, but that I'll fail to finish off the British part of The List.
  
• Weight: Nothing to report. I have however had a meeting at the gym to revise my exercise routine, with the hope that this will allow me to make better progress with this in future. We'll see - I'm not hugely hopeful.
  
• Blogging: This remains on target for the Imaginarium, but I have slipped slightly behind over here. I expect to rectify that in the next week or two.
  
• Redecorate the Study: Done.
  
• The To-Do List: Done.

Another short update this time. Two items are now complete, one remains on target, and a fourth is close to the target. The final item remains an embuggerance, but there is at least the hint of some movement.

Boris Is Right

Much as I hate to admit it, Boris Johnson is right about the need for a General Election.

The simple fact is that his government clearly doesn't have a stable majority with which to get their agenda through the House. Were it not for Labour playing silly buggers, they should be laying a Motion of No Confidence, forcing the issue and bringing down the government. And yet it's also true that nobody else has the numbers to form a government - Corbyn won't get the support of the Lib Dems or the former Tories, and so can't do it, while nobody else has the support of Labour and can't do it. And so, since there's no alternative government available, it should be a General Election.

The only reason Labour haven't pulled the trigger is, bluntly, that they're sure they'll lose... but that's not an acceptable reason for them not doing their jobs. The country needs a government, and to get that we need an election.

(Incidentally, it's worth noting that Boris Johnson shouldn't even have been appointed Prime Minister. When she tendered her resignation, the outgoing Prime Minister was required to recommend her successor, but that successor had to be someone who could command the confidence of the House. That was the standard that needed to be applied, not "who has been elected leader of the Tories" or even "who has been elected leader of the biggest party." Given that Boris manifestly does not command a majority, and indeed never did, he should not have been recommended in that manner. And, indeed, since Theresa May could not actually recommend anyone who could command that majority, she should have been required to stay in post. But never mind.)

What's unfortunate is that I'm convinced that the Tories will win a comfortable majority in the election, whenever it happens, which will allow them to push aside any opposition to Boris' deal and bring about their hard Brexit. The SNP will probably make gains, but it will avail them nothing - Boris won't be minded to grant a Section 30 order, there's no way to compel him to do so, and the SNP refuse to contemplate any Plan B. So I'm finding it really hard to see any hope in politics right now.

More IT Musings

I've run out of hard drive space on my PC. That is actually not a surprise nor indeed is it particularly a problem - hard discs are fairly inexpensive these days and installing an additional drive into the PC isn't impossible.

However, I'm back to considering whether it's really worth it. There are a few things going on:

Firstly, there's still a question of how long the PC will realistically last. My latest check on the state of the art suggests that it's still not hugely behind, at least for the tasks that I make use of it for. Of course, if I used it for games or video editing, that would not be true... but I don't. However, there's always the risk of a catastrophic failure hitting the machine, at which point there's a need for a new one. (Then again, that doesn't negate the benefit of adding an additional drive, since it could just be extracted and moved to the replacement PC... probably - see below.)

Secondly, there's a question of whether what the PC really wants is a second, high-capacity drive, or whether I should install a smaller solid state drive, move the contents of the C partition across, and thus free up about a terabyte of space on the existing drive. That would have the advantage of giving a significant performance boost as well as adding more capacity, but is one step less portable when the time comes to completely replace the machine. (And it's worth noting that the existing hard drive is one of the components most likely to fail and thus force that move. And any new PC would have an SSD already installed, so that wouldn't be coming with.)

But, thirdly, I'm also leaning towards the benefits of setting up a NAS device, and thus moving all of our data storage off the PC almost entirely. The effect of this is that the existing hard drive on the machine would suddenly become much more open, and the need for a second hard drive (of any sort) would disappear. The only real problem there is that that is also by far the most expensive approach in the short term.

Finally, I find myself considering what our long-term computing needs really are. At present, we have a desktop PC (nominally my PC) and a laptop PC (nominally LC's). I really quite like this arrangement, in that it covers all of our bases, gives a lot of flexibility and, crucially, gives us access to a big, fixed monitor for long-term work. (I was never particularly happy working with a laptop.) However, at work we have now been issued with very powerful desktop-replacement laptops, complete with docking stations that allow us unfettered access to external monitors, keyboards, and mice. In effect, it's very much the best of both worlds.

Based on that, part of me considers that when the time comes for a replacement, what we'll actually want to do will be to replace both computers at the same time, with two identical, powerful laptops. And then invest in a docking station and all the kit to allow one of these to be plugged into the workstation in the study, giving access to everything else.

Which is an even better approach than what we have now. But with two downsides: firstly, sufficiently powerful laptops are necessarily expensive, where it would be considerably cheaper to instead go with a good, but less powerful, laptop and a fairly powerful desktop. Secondly, switching to the two-laptop approach would mean that any second hard drive I purchased now (whether the high-capacity one in the first approach or the SSD in the second) would immediately cease to be useful.

So, it's a tricky one, with lots of options to consider.

The upshot is that I'm thinking that the way to go is to add the NAS device. That gives us plenty of storage and also has the advantage of giving us the most flexibility when considering future upgrades. Given the expense, though, it will be a while yet before any purchase is made... unless the storage issue becomes urgent in the meantime.

The Purple Room Returns!

Well, the redecoration is done, and we once again have an official Purple Room. The various steps proceeded mostly as I outlined in my previous post on the topic, and were performed mostly over the course of four days (day one to empty the room, day two for the ceiling and starting the walls, day three for finishing the walls and doing the gloss, and then day four to put everything back).

We ordered the new computer desk shortly after starting, and were rather surprised when it arrived on the next day. We've therefore been able to assemble it, though I haven't yet had chance to take the other to the tip. We've also rearranged the room, which gives a bit more space for the various bookshelves, and actually leaves the room feeling a bit more, well, roomy. However, the working area for the computer does seem a little cramped. There may be something we can do about that - certainly, there are a couple of adjustments that need to be made, after which there may be scope for some shuffling of contents.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with that as a good job well done. And I'm especially happy that we've now completed the last of the tasks that we identified as wanting done as soon as we moved in.

#49: "The Amber Enchantress", by Troy Denning

Heating Woes

One thing that has never been quite right in the house is the heating. It seems we can get it "far too hot" easily enough, and we can get it "far too cold" easily enough, but Goldilocks is just not for visiting.

I'm really not sure why that is. I'm not sure if it's that the thermostat is badly placed, or if it's just bad. Or maybe the individual radiator thermostats are badly set up, or just bad. Or maybe the insulation just isn't what it should be. Or maybe the heating program really needs revisited - it comes on too late in the morning and goes off too early at night.

(There's also the issue that the radiator in the spare room is set to a much lower temperature than the rest of the house. Which is fine, since that room is seldom used, and not at night... but it only works if the room to that door is kept closed, which is not reliably the case.)

Part of me would quite like to have someone come and inspect the system and make some recommendations. Unfortunately, the cynical part of me thinks that any such visit would just happen to conclude that what's needed is the special package of upgrades that they happen to have on offer at that particular time.

Anyway, it's a frustration. I think the upshot is that I'm going to have a go at refreshing all the settings in the system again to get that back to where they 'should' be, and at some point, probably next year, we'll have to look into upgrades, probably to one of the "smart home" systems.

How Things Work

I use a lot of software, mostly for work although also for entertainment purposes. But I'm not a particular fan of software. I'm especially not a fan of the tendency towards "the new hotness" - the tendency for some fields to see a constant ongoing churn of new tools doing almost exactly the same as the old, but that people jump onto en masse because it's new.

My preference, frankly, is to use a much smaller set of tools, but to use them well. That in turn requires stability in the toolset - ideally, you should choose one tool for each job, and then stick with it until and unless something comes along that demands that you change.

(That "something" is of course subjective. You might find that a tool that was previously free starts charging and so requires a change. Or maybe the tool simply stops being supported. Or perhaps the new tool has some killer feature that means it's vastly superior to the old, to the extent that the change is warranted. But simply being newer is, for me, not sufficient, and neither is simply being presented with a marketing brief that has a few more check-boxes filled out. New features are only worth anything if you're actually going to use them, and if you're constantly switching from one tool to the next, you're never going to make good use of anything but the basic features.)

Funnily enough, two examples of the benefit of this approach have cropped up quite recently. Yesterday there was some discussion of how to use a particular feature of Excel, which is a tool that I'm definitely not expert in using, but it's also a tool that I've used basically forever and expect to continue using forever. So there was value in digging through various guides and tutorials to find the answer, and thus expanding the set of things I can now do with Excel. If we were in the habit of replacing our spreadsheet program every six months, it would not have made sense to do that. (And, equally, it's likely that the knowledge of how to do it wouldn't have been so easily available.)

The second concerns one of the uses of our build tool. This one is new (to us), but it's also a tool we'll be using very heavily, and it's also a tool we'll continue to use for the lifetime of the product (probably five years or more). So, again, it make sense to keep learning the intricacies of the tool with a view to getting really good with it.

Badminton Again

Many years ago, a number of my colleagues and I played badminton occasionally on a lunchtime. We haven't had occasion to play for several years now, which is a real shame - not least since my gym have various courts available for use, and they're free for members. So there's a golden opportunity there, and we've been missing it.

Until today that is. This lunchtime four of us went over and played badminton. It was a lot of fun, even if I didn't play at all well. Hopefully that will change over the next few months as we play a bit more... assuming we do, indeed, play a bit more, of course.

Microsoft's Worst Decision

I use a lot of Microsoft software. I don't, however, consider myself either a fan or a hater - they're just tools provided by a company, some of which are good, some of which are not so good, and some of which are good but not really worth the money. And, in fairness to them, those tools have generally, very slowly, been getting better.

However, there is one boneheaded decision, made some years ago, that still drives me mental every time I hit it. Specifically, they decided that PCs should be much more like any other appliance, and hide as much of the internals from the user as possible. And, in particular, they should hide all the BIOS feedback during startup.

That's all well and good, until you get to the point where the PC is busy doing something and gives absolutely no feedback as to what that "something" is - I see the HD light blinking on and off, but there's nothing at all on the screen, no response from the input devices... is it busy working on a task that's just taking a long time, or has it crashed and needs me to take action.

For goodness sake, tell us what's going on, and give an indication that progress is actually being made! And I don't mean showing us the spinny dots - all that indicates is that the UI thread is running, but it may well not be connected to anything else. That way, I don't need to either leave a PC that might be stuck sitting indefinitely, nor do I need to take a punt on a power-cycle that might do more harm than good.

Season's End

On Saturday the band played at the Queensferry Folk Festival, bringing to an end my second season with the band. In the event, we only played about half a dozen events, and I missed a couple of those. However, it was enough to keep me practicing, which is the key consideration at this time.

I've been enjoying my time with the band, with the one caveat that I'm not really being stretched at all - I knew almost all the tunes when I started, I learned the remainder very quickly, and we've learned virtually nothing new since then. But that's the nature of the beast. If you want challenge, you probably need to be competing.

I'm now going to take a week off of practice (almost entirely - I'll still go on Thursday, but will probably only take my practice chanter). In the meantime, I've stripped my pipes down to let them dry, and will then rehemp all the joints so that they're ready for the winter ahead. I also need to get my kilt, waistcoat, and jacket dry cleaned, so that they're also ready. Basically, there's some maintenance that has fallen somewhat by the wayside, and it's time to get that sorted.

(Come to think of it, that sentiment applies just as well to a number of other things...)

Slugs. Why did it have to be slugs?

I hate slugs. Not as much as I used to - they used to totally freak me out, but now it is at least a case of extreme dislike rather than abject terror. However, the recent development that we have a slug invasion in the house is most definitely not welcome.

It also started a few nights ago, when we spotted a slug in the kitchen. I therefore gathered it up in a bit of kitchen roll, strode to the back door, and unceremoniously ejected the creature. (This is actually not the very first slug we've seen there, but it was the first for a long time.) Then, a few nights later we had no fewer than three slugs all at once. And then one more.

Ultimately, I think this is caused by two things. The first is the drop in temperature, which makes the indoors that much more appealing. The second is that there must be a tiny little hole that they can squeeze through and thus get in. Alas, my fear is that that hole will be somewhere horribly inaccessible. Sigh.

(It's also possible that they've recently been stirred up by us covering up the BBQ and/or getting rid of a tree root that was sitting in the garden, thus disturbing their hibernation. In which case, maybe we've seen the last of them for a while. That would be nice.)

My other consideration, of course, is how all this affects Funsize. Fears can be contagious, so if a child sees a parent totally incapacitated by the sight of some creepy crawly, they're very likely to pick up on that. And so it is incumbent on my to just get on and deal with these things, despite the obvious and very real threat to life and limb.

Or something. I'm still going to eject them with great relish.

The Final Task

The final item from my old to-do list, and one of my goals for the year, is to repaint the study. Initially we had hoped to do that during the Easter holiday, but it quickly became apparent that that was a non-starter - we also had to repaint the dining room, which was a higher-priority task, and couldn't fit both in the allotted time.

There are actually several steps involved in the repaint, which means that the study is a considerably more involved task than the dining room. Specifically:

1. Empty the study. This involves shifting huge numbers of books and other paraphenalia, then the bookshelves, the PC, and the PC desk. Hopefully, all of this will fit in the spare room for the required few days.
   
2. Rip out a few mounting sockets from one of the walls, and patch the resulting holes.
   
3. Paint the ceiling.
   
4. Paint the walls.
   
5. Paint the walls again (since we're changing the colour, two coats will be required).
   
6. Paint the skirting boards and door frame.
   
7. Leave to dry overnight.
   
8. Hoover.
   
9. Bring back the bookshelves, the books, and assorted paraphenalia. I think these are all basically going back where they came from.
   
10. Assemble a new computer desk (assuming it has been purchased in time).
    
11. Bring back the PC.

Obviously, that's a lot of steps for a small room! However, the individual steps should themselves me small. Indeed, the biggest parts of the task are probably clearing the room and then putting everything back. The actual decoration, given the size of the room and that it will hopefully be empty, should be very quick. We still have two preparatory tasks to do: the first is to finalise our choice of paint and then acquire it; the second is the purchase the new computer desk. Neither is particularly huge... but both are a case of actually getting on and doing it!

#47: "War of the Wolf", by Bernard Cornwell
#48: "The Silver Chair", by C.S. Lewis

Penny Dreadful

After five months, we've now cancelled Now TV - we'd reached a point where we'd watched almost everything we wanted to from the service, and it wasn't worth paying the subscription for the last two episodes of "L.A.'s Finest" (which, frankly, was just about worth investing the time to watch, and no more than that).

We actually got a fair amount of value from those five months - in addition to the final season of "Game of Thrones", I watched the third season of "Supergirl" (not great; it's been getting steadily worse since the start), the "Deadwood" wrap-up movie (which was good), "Chernobyl" (which was excellent, but somewhat flexible with the truth; ironically so, given the show's most-quoted line), the aforementioned "L.A.'s Finest", and "Penny Dreadful".

That last was one of those shows that I'd heard about but never had the opportunity to watch - a sort of alternate take on the "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" concept, where the various characters from classic horror stories come together in an interlocking plot. It was good stuff, rather uncomfortable to watch at times, all underpinned by a great performance by Eva Green.

Of the three seasons, I felt that the first was the most solid. After that first season I got the impression that they knew the characters still had a lot of potential, but didn't have a clear idea quite how best to use them. The third season was maybe a step up from the first, but suffered very significantly from splitting up the core cast - at times it felt more like watching three separate shows than a single coherent whole.

I was also a little dismayed by the ending. The main plot all came together really nicely, but the two side plots just seemed to... stop. They didn't really go anywhere, and indeed one of them ended by pretty much just undoing everything that it had been building up to. That's a bit of a shame, especially since it seems the end was planned, rather than being an unexpected cancellation.

Still, it was a good show, and well worth the time we invested in it. I doubt I would watch it again, but then the days of my rewatching TV are largely coming to a close - there's already too much that's new that I want to watch, and way too little time.
#46: "The Crimson Legion", by Troy Denning

Day 250: Update on Goals

Somehow, it feels like ages since I did one of these...

Anyway, we've now reached day 250, so time for another update on goals.

• Books: By day 250 I should have read 41.10 books. I'm now well ahead of that target, which is good. The current estimate is that I'll end up slightly over the 60 books for the year, but that I'll fail to finish off the British part of The List.
  
• Weight: Nothing to report.
  
• Blogging: Nothing much to say - this remains right on target in both blogs.
  
• Redecorate the Study: This will probably be the big change between now and the next update. We think we've picked out the rough colour for the walls (but will need to narrow it to a specific shade), and have picked out the replacement computer desk. So it's just a case of actually doing the work, which I hope to do during the October break. Watch this space.
  
• The To-Do List: This was completed some weeks ago. I've decided not to put together a new to-do list, so from the next update I'll remove this from the report entirely,

And that's that. Another short-but-sweet report, with one done and three well in hand. There's only the one permanent fly in the ointment to worry about, which is annoying but just not something I'm getting a handle on.

Hardly Worth The Effort

According to this blog, last year I packed the BBQ up for the winter at the end of September. However, that was delayed from my original plan by not having a suitable cover until the last minute. With the start of September the temperature seems to have dropped significantly, such that even the nice days have a noticable chill to them.

That being the case, I think I'll pack up our BBQ for the winter over this weekend.

The upshot of that, given that my birthday BBQ didn't really happen, is that it was used exactly once in 2019, to cook a couple of burgers as a test to verify that it was in fact still working after the winter. Frankly, it was barely worth the effort of unpacking the thing.

(Meanwhile at work I will continue to look out for a chance to have one more BBQ in the year. But that's less of an issue, both since it can happen at short notice if we do have a good day, but primarily because the work BBQ doesn't really have that same "packing up" ritual - the equivalent is just a matter of not getting it out for use.)

Ah, Very Clever

Scenario One: The Tory rebels chicken out, and don't back the motion for parliament to seize control over the process, or don't back the proposed law to block No Deal. Boris remains in control, and we get his version of Brexit on October 31st.

Scenario Two: The Tory rebels don't chicken out, and a law is put in place to block No Deal. The Tories therefore remove the whip from those rebels, and then call an election - campaigning under the banner that the only way to see Brexit protected is to vote Tory. It's very likely that Boris would win that election. Furthermore, the former-Tory rebels, having lost the whip, cannot stand as Tory candidates, and therefore will almost certainly lose their seats to new, loyal Tories. Boris thus emerges with an actual majority and a much more united Tory party. Then then repeal the law blocking No Deal, and proceed as before.

(That assumes Boris wins the election, of course. But frankly there are only two chances of Corbyn winning: fat chance and nae chance. Theresa May ran the worst campaign I can recall and still beat him.)

Two other thoughts:

If there is an election, expect to see the remnants of Change UK (and their spin-offs) urgently seeking to join the Lib Dems. Or, just possibly, not supporting the rebellion and seeking readmission to the Tories. Any who don't will almost certainly lose their seats, so...

If there is a General Election the SNP will have a difficult choice to make: do their campaign on a "stop Brexit" platform, or do they campaign on an "Indyref 2" platform. If they go for "stop Brexit" they'll probably get more seats, but then can't claim those seats as a mandate for independence. Alternately, if they go for "Indyref 2" they won't win as many seats (though still a majority of the seats in Scotland and probably more than they have currently). Of course, that also weakens their anti-Brexit mandate. I'm not sure that matters.

The upshot: yeah, it's still a No Deal Brexit (regardless of whether a law is passed to block it or not), followed by years of Tory rule. Joy.

The Mug in the Microwave

As of this weekend we now keep a mug of water in our microwave. This is not quite as daft as it seems.

The thing is, Funsize has reached a height where she can just about reach some of the buttons on the microwave, and said microwave has a really convenient feature where, with the press of a single button, you can switch it on for 30 seconds at full power.

But running a microwave with nothing in it is a bad idea - basically, you've got a load of energy being pumped into a reflective chamber with nowhere to go. (Normally, whatever you're cooking absorbs much of that energy, which is why it gets hot. And yes, that's a vast simplification.)

And so, we now have a mug of water in the microwave. That way, if FS pushes the button, we'll end up with slightly warmed water. Which isn't the perfect solution, but is probably something we can live with.

A Broken Habit

After a rather frustrating summer, the gym is now almost back to normal - the boys' club that had block-booked one of the changing rooms has ended, the other changing room has reopened (cue the inevitable joke about waiting for a bus...), and the gym itself has reopened after its own renovation.

Unfortunately, my habit of actually going to the gym seemed to have been fairly comprehensively broken - I've made it along three times in the last couple of weeks (and plan to go again today), but each time I've found the whole process annoying, boring and, frankly, pointless. Basically, the good habit that I had painstakingly established over eighteen months has been comprehensively broken by my enforced absence.

I'm now finding myself unsure of what to do next. What I should do is request an induction on all the new machines, and to have one of the trainers compile a new exercise routine, and effectively begin again. What I'll probably do is soldier on as things are for a while, getting increasingly annoyed, and possibly then drift away from it. And what I'm strongly considering, given that the annual renewal is coming up soon, is just cancelling.

All of which is yet another reminder of just how hard it is to build and maintain good habits, and how easy it is to slip back into bad ones.

#43: "The Verdant Passage", by Troy Denning
#44: "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader", by C.S. Lewis (a book for Funsize)