Dear Sis,

I know you read this blog from time-to-time, so I thought I'd post this letter here, that way anyone who reads it will know what a wonderful person you are.

I'm so glad you came along with my family a couple of weeks ago! It was wonderful to see you over a period of 7 days as we only seem to flash in and out of each other's lives for a few hours at a time, often months apart. As usual, you were kind and thoughtful throughout and it was so good of you to help out with my sister-in-law and her attempts to ski. I know my eldest daugther J loved skiing with you and it must have made her feel VERY grown up to go off with her aunt and uncle.

I hope you managed to do all you wanted and had a great time yourself. I know we cramped your style somewhat, so I want you to know that I really appreciated you being there. You're a lovely person and your husband is great too!

Hope to see you again very soon.

Lots of love from Sleeper

I have had tinnitus in my left ear for just over 2 years now. Happy Birthday to that incessant high-pitched ringing! It's often quite quiet and sometimes very loud but never, ever goes away completely.

Not that I'm complaining see... I just thought I'd mention it.

My faith in human nature is restored. At lunchtime today I remembered to book a hotel room for my night out at the end of April. Tara suggested Hotel 'C' and mentioned a room rate of £89. Well the name cropped up several times in a general search on the internet one of which was a well known support site for trannies. The hotel is close to the club we'll be going to. "Mention 'Violets' to get a special discount" the site said.

I phoned the hotel and a polite man answered.
"How much for a room?" I asked.
"£132" he replied in a voice that conjured images of his neatly pressed uniform.
"Oh," I said, disappointed. "I thought it would be much less than that! Aren't there any special rates?"
There was a pause. "What company are you with?"
"Er...not a company really," I stalled, remembering 'Violets', momentarily unsure.

Perhaps the website the password is old and this smooth fellow doesn't know it, or perhaps worse he does know it and I'm just about to spill all to a total stranger; 'Violets', in other words "Yes, I am a bloke, but sometimes I like to dress as a woman and go out!" Oh to hell with it! I'm way past those inhibitions and besides, I can't afford the standard rate.

"Violets," I offer after a very brief pause.
"Excellent sir," says the man in charge of reservations. I can sense the smile on the other end of the line, but there's nothing sneery about it.
"That will be £79 sir. I didn't want to presume or suggest anything until you did."
WOW, fantastic! It's almost worth a straight guy pretending to be a trannie to get a discount like that.

----- And now for something completely different -----

In the process of getting little T (5) ready for bed, I'm shampooing her hair. She and R (8) are engaged in another prattle about humorous body parts.
"Toby says he's got a bagina, but I told him it's not a bagina, it's a VA-gina!" she adds authoritatively to me.
"Well done," I smile, "except of course he's a boy, and boys don't have vaginas, they have willies."
"Of course!" T scoffs. There's a short pause then, "Mummy..."
"No," I correct patiently. "I'm Daddy. Mummy's the one with the bumps on her chest."
"Daddy..."
"Yes..."
"Can I go downstairs after my shower?"
"Yes, for 5 minutes. It's late."
"And have something to eat?"
"Yes, if you're quick."

Hooo-hoo! I normally avoid technical posts like the plague, but this is soemthing that is likely to end up affecting every Windows user in the world within a couple of years.

Looking at the Dell website the same day that Vista was announced, I noticed that it was already no longer possible to request a PC with the Windows XP operating system. Why? Could it be that Microsoft have applied the correct pressure to partners to force the issue? Why would they want to do that, apart from the usual reasons such as unwinding from the support of the previous OS.

Check this out...

Vista - 'Cost Analysis'

It seems like there's a hidden agenda, and in case you don't have time to read the link, I'll summarise it for you: Microsoft wants total dominance of the Information Technology in your home. Be afraid...very afraid! it will cost you thousands and thousands of pounds over your lifetime IF you choose to use a PC as a multimedia device, DVDs, music etc.

Another week on Calamity John's ranch looms and I have decided I must be tougher. Last week's blue funk was the result of insufficiently interesting work. I shall find an opportunity to ask for more responsibility and greater autonomy.

Ever since I joined the ranks of wage slaves I have not been very beligerent. I must stand and fight instead of cutting and running. It is a double-edged sword to have a nature that is so easy-going and accomodating. Hold my ground, carve out opportunities for myself. I began this process last year and it worked well then, so now I must build on it.

Good news on the dressing up front! I have permission from D to go out on an overnighter at the end of April. Hopefully our house move will be over so it will be a good way to de-stress. Looks like it might be a trip to the Way Out club and I may even get to meet Tara again. Tara has been a good friend to me these last three years, in an electronic capacity if not geographically close by. Of course the usual problem is what to wear!

Another problem is windsurfing. The next few weeks should be a good time for it. I must get out more often this year, but making time will not be easy.

I certainly got lucky last week, spotting that fraudulent internet bank payment. I've paid for and installed a new anti-virus package, 'Kaspersky'. It uncovered several dangerous trojans and potentially dangerous spyware/adware applications. I must ensure we always have this protection turned on now. £36 seems to be a small price to pay to avoid having my bank accounts emptied.

The children have had a lecture on downloading and installing and they're supposed to check with me first. I'm wondering whether I should lock-down all priviledges on their accounts...

I don't seem to be able to shake the blue-funk I've fallen into. Last night's company-client do didn't cheer me up very much. This morning, Commuter-James and I came up with a Beginners Allotment Kit which included a large roll-out sheet of tissue paper with all the seeds already attached in the right places. "Lay out on the ground and throw some soil over it." That did put a smile on my face for a short while.

No, all I can think of at the moment to cheer me up is retail therapy. My mental window-shopping moves from new computer to monstrous telescope to bigger memory chip for my mp3-phone to some nice new work shirts...and then I think about getting something for my alter-ego, Penny.

I haven't been out as Penny since November now and although that's not the reason I'm feeling low, it would be great to do that again. Lisa asked me out next week, but I can't make it. Oh well, there might be another opportunity once we've moved house.

Back to the retail therapy for a sec...I better not do any spending until I get confirmation from the bank that they've refunded the £1000 stolen from my bank account! Of course I can't log on to see because they've frozen internet access to prevent more fraudulent transfers.

My son is 8 today, bless him. Space theme featured heavily in the presents and cake.

I pulled my coat tighter about me as the biting wind blew icy daggers about my neck. The R600 on-line terminal slung over my shoulder was heavy, an old model and the rucksack strap bit deeply into my shoulder.

What with the urban city-sprawl prices being what they were there was the usual shortage of console space so I headed back to the layback provided by my corp and settled in at the mock-wood desk and decided there were a few personal matters to attend to before resuming work.

First on the list to check was my bank account. A recent excursion to the French alps had proved costly and the last thing I need is for Dizzy to get worried about credit! The ancient Sony R600 chugged into life and eventually I netlined into our account. Something looked wrong immediately. The primary account showed it was over four-thousand in credit which just wasn't possible. The regular payment from the corporation wasn't due for another ten days. Suspicious as hell, I brought up the detail page on the primary and two seconds later spotted something even more alarming; a payment of exactly one-thousand credits to an account named A.LUKOSEVENICIUS. I wracked my brains trying to think of any big-money transactions that Dizzy might have done the day before for that kind of meat but nothing came to mind.

With a cold shiver of dread, I realised that someone had jacked into our accounts somehow; autonomous spyware, phone tapping or electronic eavesdropping of some other kind, I don't know. All I knew was, I had to get in touch with Bank central and try to get the position unwound. I got Dizzy on the other line as Bank central redirected me through several levels of security and 'incident handling' teams. Dizzy confirmed it had nothing to do with her and then the handler came on line.

"No, I don't know anyone of that name."
"No. Neither I or my wife have initiated any bank transfer in the last 8 days."
"Yes, please disable the on-line access immediately!"

It seemed they were on my side which was something of a victory. I breathed a sigh of relief as I disconnected. Both the transfer from the secondary account and the payment were made within three minutes of each other, one presumably to cover the other. Even then it wasn't over. When I got home that night, Dizzy wanted to know more.

"We need to sweep the DACS home-console," I tell her. "It's likely to be someone snooping on that. We have to train the children not to download stuff. God-knows what trojans they've unwittingly installed."

Later, I initiated the Spybot Search and Destroy agent on the DACS. Sure enough, an hour's worth of automated techno-sleuthing uncovered seven potentially dangerous intrusions. I pressed the 'Destroy' button.

[With humble apologies to William Gibson whose style I was trying to immitate while telling this true story.]

I should be elated. Instead I just feel depressed, and that's just not like me.

We returned from our skiing holiday on Saturday and it was, according to my eldest daughter, "the best holiday I've ever had!" In fact, all three children loved it and all picked up skiing very quickly. Even my wife D had hired skis for a day and had a lesson, something which makes me very proud of her, after all, we're talking about someone who was at the back of the queue when sporting prowess was being handed out! The sun shone every day we were there and was OK, because of the large quantities of snow dumped in the alps in the 4 weeks before we went! My sister and husband were with us and were great to have along. Our friends G & J were also with us and even their tantrum-prone children rallied towards the end. The fact that I got very little decent skiing in of my own was of no consequence as the investment in my children was so productive.

All in all, we had a great time, and I suppose it's partly because of that that going back to work seems such a hideous proposition. Also, the death of our boiler this morning, in a convulsion of spewed water, brings with it the possibility of unwanted expenditure, not to mention cold nights and no showers until it's fixed.

I shall rise above it all soon, don't you worry. After all, I have a roof over my head and shouldn't have problem providing food for the family for a few days. That's more than many people in the world have learned to expect.

All the skiing stuff out on the floor, the bed and on children tonight. Some of it bought, but much of it borrowed from kindly friends. The excitement is building! Only one more day at the grindstone.

Fantastic! My sister is out there already with her husband. They will join us for their second week. I hope the kids love it. They will never have seen snow like that in the alps before.

My wife is 40 on Sunday while we're out there, so hoping to make that a really special day for her.

. must . survive . one . more . day . at work!

My second evening at the Book Club was great. In summary, '1984' by George Orwell is an extraordinary collection of ideas, but does not hang together too well as a novel. The characters lack depth and some of the events in the book could be linked a little more thoroughly. [My opinion].

I sat next to Net this time and she was as lovely as before, but I have decided that this is not a game for me to play. I shall continue to enjoy her company as I talk with too few women at all at work and I miss their PoV. Her companion L. is nice, but knows an alarming amount about me through the 'network of mums'.

I must dash off now as I have to get to my Pa's birthday!

Thankfully, Otherphil was in a talkative mood. In fact I don't know many people who aren't once they've had three or four pints.

The number of people who know me and now know about this blog is increasing and I'm not really sure what to make about it. On the one hand, you can see that it might cramp my style, but since I'm usually writing about me and my family and not about other people, perhaps it shouldn't matter at all. I don't slag people off (much) because people are usually the way they are for a reason.

With regards to the stuff I do and what people might think, I offer the only real words of wisdom my grandmother ever gave to me...

   "Don't care what other people think about you, just be yourself." Actually, I don't agree 100% with this, because it is important to consider other folks' views, but there is a basic truth in there that's worth preserving.

So we had a good chat, Otherphil and I. If I could only fix him up with the right kind of midlife crisis...

Did anyone see the eclipse of the moon? It was good, but not as impressive as the eclipse of the sun I watched in Torquay 7 years ago. That was awesome!

I've got a whisky now and D's got a sherry, doing the crossword. J's at a sleepover and we commented on how the level of noise drops disproportionately as the number of children is reduced.

I must apologise to those who read my last work of fiction and thought that it was something that actually happened to me. I've never done a parachute jump in my life. I have decided though to be a bit more creative here. It seems like you need to be a single or embattled mum to get a book deal from your blog, and I am neither. So...to strike that gold mine, I'm going to change tack ever so slightly. I'm going to continue my usual "make the most" theme and remind myself (mostly) about the good things in my life, but now I am also going to use this as an outlet for my fevered imagination. Please expect more fiction from now on.

Frankly this can only be a good thing for my miniscule readership. After all, there's only so much interest in Mr. Average. OK, I go out dressed as a woman occasionally, go windsurfing and one or two other things, but I can't blame you if you drop off from time to time.

Tonight I'm going to go and get drunk with Otherphil. I hope he is in a talkative mood. Cheers.

"ONE-THOUSAND, TWO-THOUSAND, THREE-THOUSAND, PULL!" I shouted above the din of the air that battered at my face and rattled my jump-suit about me. I held my breath then expecting the familiar gut-wrench of the chute flowering above me...but nothing happened.
   I'm six-thousand feet up and it's a glorious clear blue sky all around, that piercing, shard-sharp clarity of air that you only get at altitude. But suddenly I'm not noticing it anymore, I'm reaching for the spare.
   "It's OK," I say to myself. "I've done this so many times in training. Just grab the handle for the secondary and tug. I do. This time, the whole thing just comes away in my hand. Stunned, I stare stupidly at it for a second, blinking behind my McMurdo eyewear. My eyes are looking at the ends of the strap and a tiny corner of my forebrain mutters "it's been cut," but the survival machinery inside my head, the animal stutters and blanks out rational thought.
   "Fuck!" The word comes suddenly from somewhere.
   "FUCK!" Again, louder this time.
   The khaki earth looms.
   "Godnogodnogodnohoho-DaniDani!" Then suddenly something in my head begins to tick, like a wound-down clock that shaken stirs back into progress round the face. My hands scrabble at the strap release. I punch one off and claw the second as I grasp the left strap with my other hand.
   Below, the Thames unwinds, unconcerned and unheeding, growing larger somewhat.
   Somehow I manage to blink the tears away enough to see the flap and rip an opening so I tear the drag-chute from it's place and clutch the pack and "OOOF" it's nearly ripped from me. Claw like, I curl my fingers tighter round the webbing and drift awkwardly towards a field of oil-seed rape.