Cars

I discovered the "Stats" thingy on Blogger recently.  What larks.  It shows me where all my readers are at any given moment, and which posts they are looking at.

Sadly, this has simply notified me that a lot of my traffic is from people who are looking at very old posts, mostly in Russia, the spamming bastards.  At least the word verification seems to have put paid to their antics.  Ah well.  As long as I don't analyse the stats too carefully I can pretend it's really people who are keen to read the words, and not just post adverts to their dodgy websites.  Bastards.

Today has been a bit like a traditional Whitehall farce, despite me not being in Whitehall.  I had a lot of complicated time-consuming work stuff to get through, so my laptop decided to re-enact a good old-fashioned go-slow.  Added to this, every 20 minutes or so it crashed whichever application I was using at the time, varying between Word, Excel and Powerpoint to keep me guessing. 

Mr WithaY arrived home unexpectedly mid morning as he had someone coming over to look at his old Landrover, languishing unloved since he got the new one.  There was a degree of arseing about as he fetched keys, and found paperwork, but then he scooted off again, returning a while later to meet the potential buyer.  The potential buyer turned into an actual buyer, but when he came back to collect the vehicle, Mr WithaY had gone back to work and the bloody thing wouldn't start.

He rang the doorbell and asked me if there was "any special technique" to starting it.  I said no, you just turn the key and off it goes.  He looked at me.  I looked at him.  We both looked at the Landrover, bonnet up while his wife fiddled about uselessly with the steering wheel.  I was already tetchy, due to the IT failures mentioned above, and also due to my ankle being painful after my latest trip to the physio, so I rang Mr WithaY at work and suggested he come home to sort this crisis out.  I was a trifle terse, I believe. 

There was an awkward silence as the farmer and his wife looked at each other, and at the Landrover sitting on the drive, silent and unmoving.  A brainwave struck me, and I mentioned that it had an immobiliser. The farmer's face lit up.  He dicked about with the key, then tried to start it, and hey presto, it roared into life.

I went back into the house and rang Mr WithaY again, telling him not to come home after all.

The farmer, his wife, and the landrover eventually left, allowing me to go back up to my study to get on with my work.

Five minutes later, Kevin the Decorator arrived.

Ten minutes after that, the phone downstairs rang, someone from Talk Talk who cut himself off, the fuckwit.  .

And so the long day wore on. 

Tomorrow I am going into London for some peace and quiet.