Following the French tradition

yes the bloody French - the real reason they didn't want to get involved with Iraq is they could see it would interfere with the August holidays - well the Odtaa Files are going to close down until sometime in September - probably later - as after the holiday I'll be house sitting for the last week of the Edinburgh festival and then another week.

A few things have happened since I last posted - the house next door got attacked by a mob of 14 year olds throwing eggs - yes Mr Blunkett - your perspective and my perspective of your crime statistics differ - I think things are getting worse but we're less inclined to report them.

I was proud of myself that I went to intervene - but relieved that they had run away before I could put my shoes on. It seems its some ongoing problem with the gang and one of next doors kids.

My daughter has passed her first year at university - hip - hip - horray.

The rubbish in the garden has finally gone - and I'm probably about to be assinated by the local green group for destroying important nature habit - I'm still chasing the insect life out of my car. I need to find a body to fill the whole.

Mother is till giving me grief. She won't let me update her apartment in mallorca and as a result we've lost some bookings. I'm going to have to - s p e l l - the situation out to her slowly. She's put me in the position - I'm in charge - except when I want to do anything - its her way of giving me a lot of grief.

Seen some good films - Divided We Fall - was about some people in an occupied town during the war. It was about compromise and the ending - OK contrived - had collaborators - cowards - an escaped Jew and a member of the militia all together - gathered together around the birth of a baby - the message forget the past and get on with your lives. In a Hollywood film most would have had to die.

Oh and the cat threw up over my new academic diploma.

Mostly I have been working on writing proposals and a couple of web projects.

I plan to completely redevelop the Odtaa Files site - I am not so happy with Blogger and Google seems to have gone off the site. C'est La Guerre - as they say.

Enjoy

is there an author in the house

Old, decrepit - mind going - arghhh. I've been down - I am finding it hard to sort myself out. OK the government pays me some money not to teach - they call it a retirement pension.

I sort of feel that I should be trying to get work when at the back of my mind - I don't want to - its only stupid commitments that hold me back. I really get little enjoyment out of teaching and I really don't want to do some mundane clerical job in the council or as a temp - that's if they would employ me.

So I enjoy writing - even getting together a training package was more satisfying than the delivery. So I have decided to try and become a proper writer. I have started reviewing my ideas. I plan to organise myself so that I write a thousand marketable words a day - either articles or chapters of a book.

I am also starting to clear the decks - getting rid of unnecessary junk - deciding what commitments I want - what I don't want - and what I don't need.

No more IT teaching

Last night was the last time I will ever teach IT. I allowed myself to get talked into doing a one off Excel course - which was for a mixture of basic and advanced users. The basic users all gave me very high gradings - the advanced all moaned.

It took me over a day to prepare for the course - as - with a one off course you have to prepare handouts and most of mine were out of date. So in reality i would have been better off working for McDonalds - except for the smell.

I had the usual problems of hassle with photocopier - it didn't like where I put the paper - and - although it would collate - it didn't like my materials - so it jammed half way through the process - slowing me down further - forget about the lecturer in front who took 10 minutes - to photocopy about 10 pages - also forget about the traffic jam - which meant I did not have time to set up my demonstration files seperately.

After 20 years I'm out of it - out of IT - hooray.