Adding insult to the injury of last weekend's shit weather, we caught a tummy bug from relatives. Our two girls threw up three times in the early hours of Monday morning in perfect and unbelievable synchronisation, even though in different rooms! D and I suffered from wobbly tummies and cold shakes on Monday. I did make it into work, but had to go home early to sleep it off. We are all fine now. Back to business as usual.

I need to start doing something more useful with my spare time in the evenings. Several times in the last few weeks, my mind has turned to THE BOOK! I don't think I've mentioned it before, but I have written a book; honest! It's great idea for a story but the plot is poorly conceived and start to finsh, the prose is mostly dreadful. I need to think hard about this. Several times when I was writing the 1st draft, I nearly broke down and wept it was so hard. Odd isn't it? You'd have thought writing was quite pleasant and not at all like hard work. Blogging's not too bad.

A book is different though. Coming home from a day's work and then trying to find enough wakefulness and creativity for a couple of hours of sustained effort is not always easy. Often, the result is only a couple of paragraphs.

Still, I'd love to get my name in print. The blogging might have to stop to make way for it...

Can't shake them just now. My spirit doesn't dent easily, but I must confess that the crap weather this weekend has got me down a bit. It might have been a different matter if I could have done some windsurfing. Work on the 'oriental corner' of the garden has literally got bogged down.

The children have been goading each other into frustrated rages every ten minutes which hasn't helped! Finally, in a desperate bid to get them out of the house, we went to see 'Bridge to Terabithia' today, a family film which was actually rather good. It's billed as a sort of children's fantasy with trolls and such, so I thought it would be a special effects-fest with little or no plot, especially when I saw that it came from the same stable as 'The Chronicles of Narnia'. Reviews seemed positive though and justifiably so. In fact it's almost entirely 'real' world about a boy you can actually believe in. Verdict: go see it if you have children to take along. 4-star.

Phine has 'tagged' me with a chain-letter style blog. If I weren't sunk knee deep in this lassitude, I'd struggle to make her happy, so right now, there's just no hope. Sorry PB.

In spite of, or perhaps because of the crazy-mad-day yesterday, I sank myself into the last pages of this Iain M Banks book and once again the bastard went and upset me. Congratulations Iain! I salute you. I didn't like the 'Eaters', no I really didn't. You just flopped your sordid mind inside out and spilled your brain onto the pages, James Herbert style. But that wasn't enough was it? You built our hopes up and hooked us in and then in the end you dumped us on an unforgiving shore of ruin! Bastard!

I wonder whether the book club will like Richard Morgan's book 'Altered Carbon'. I shall propose that instead.

On the work front, it was a better day today. Perhaps I may be able to salvage this project I've been given. There may still be time...or perhaps like Horza in 'Consider Phlebas' I am hurtling out of control.

My eldest doughter's school play tonight and I managed to get home in time. Bless them all it was wonderful. It brought tears to my eyes (but like my Dad, I'm such a sentimental old fool that means precious little). Children are just fantastic; so clean of malice and so full of hope and potential.

It's supposed to be a batton, not a crock of sh*t! I've been passed a broken project! Now, on top of all the people and procedures I have to learn about, the paperwork and the technology to learn about, the uncertainties to nail down, I've been asked to completely redo the plan. To cap it all, the trains were all f*cked out of London today. Bloomin' marvellous!

Hope you all had a better day than that.

Yours truely, showing off. With gratitude to Otherphil for his fantastic camera, for taking this shot and making me look like a hero!

Saturday was a VERY good day!

Sorry all. Haven't had time to read your posts. I am busy at work and busy at home with various projects.

Good things that happened to me in the last week:
1) Escaped from my consultancy post at LOB Bank after 2 years and 2 months
2) Now started at Smallish Oil Co. where the coffee machines are half-decent
3) Otherphil phoned me on Saturday and said "How about some windsurfing?" I said yes and it was a great day for it. Will try to post some pics.

Bad things that happened to me:
1) Didn't get into right part of train and missed my stop. "Myownfault" would have been proud. ;-)
2) Lost Otherphil's car/house keys on the beach! =-O But luckily we found them after scouring the area for half an hour. Grrr. "Myownfault" again.

That's me done for now.

Finally we've got broadband at home again and everything is set to rights again!

Several days ago I promised to post information on my visit to the 'Way Out' club, so here it is...

I was really looking forward to this event as I haven't had a night out as my female alter-ego since last November! It seemed like a really long wait and was further complicated by it coinciding with our house move. Luckily the move went well and I worked very hard to get things sorted out on the Friday and Saturday so that I could get 'time off for good behaviour'. D was fine with this and I eventually caught the train to London with a large rucksack packed with all my clothes and makeup etc. I wished I could have used the train journey to catch up with sleep because my exhaustion eventually cut short my evening.

I met Jim and wife K for a meal prior to dressing up. I've met Jim before but not his wife K, so I was interested to see what they were like as a couple, going out. D has no interest in joining me when I'm Penny, so it's very interesting to meet wives who accompany their partners on this kind of thing. It's fair to say that K is supportive in a 'resigned' kind of way to her partner's needs rather than being keen or enthusiastic.

After a couple of drinks and then a meal at Pizza Express, we went to our separate hotels to change. I felt pretty good about my outfit and my look this time, especially as I made up for my inexpensive dress by spending more than I have ever spent on a pair of lovely shoes from Wallis! So I had a short, black dress with silver sparkles in it, black, patent-leather shoes with high (but not silly) heels, tan hold-ups with a shine and I wore my wig up in a hair grip at the back of my head which I thought looked good. Only thing I did wrong - other than trying to pass myself off as a woman at all - was do my lipstick too dark. I think my complexion suits lighter lipsticks.

The club was almost a disappointingly short distance from the hotel, but still far enough for me to nearly sprawl in the gutter! Tsk! If you've never worn patent leather shoes, here's a top tip for when you do...they stick together if you catch one against the other. Luckily, the street was deserted so no one saw my unladylike stumble.

Jim and K were already there so there was no danger of me sitting on my own for a while which was just as well as the WO had a number of well dressed men whom Jim assured me were looking to pick up a 'woman'. Hmmm...OK, tread carefully here. Well I got into the groove and did quite a lot of dancing which I like, but 75% of the music was crap. All the time I was looking forward to Miss T. (work colleague) and her friends turning up. Sadly they never made it due to transportation problems and then to cap it all, I got a headache, probably just the result of being tired. I finally gave up the effort at 2pm and crashed back at the hotel.

You know, the thing that I really struggle with on these nights out (apart from the makeup) is the transgender talk. Honestly, it's hard not to yawn when another bloke-in-a-frock tells you how tough he/she has/had it. I'm certainly not 'above it', but it does get a bit tedious.

Still have no broadband connection at home since moving to the new house. My ISP claims the phone line isn't compatible with ADSL and I've spoken to the phone company who insist that it is.

Now given who these two companies are, I'm inclined to believe the smaller one, the ISP. I've booted it back to them though and we'll see how capable they are.

We're in the new house. The move went fairly smoothly although there was a period when we were waiting with the removals firm, outside the new house, wondering whether the chain would complete! Thankfully it did. With help from friends and family, we are now mostly moved in and the house almost feels like home already. The fact that it's such a good step up from our previous house is a big help! As for the children, the fact that the television is connected and the trampoline is reassembled means business as usual.

One item of note is how much more friendly the neighbours seem to be than where we used to live. To be sure we were on good terms with the folk in houses either side of us, but within 4 days, we have been 'received' by 6 of the surrounding houses, half of whom came over and introduced themselves! I can't say whether it's because the town we've moved to is smaller or because the road is less busy, but whatever the reason, it's a fine result.