Well, it's both January and 2008 so I guess I'd better write something. My recent inactivity on all things web-based is due to three things. Firstly, having just moved house, I'm only due to get the interweb at home next week (typically, they can only install it on a weekday, which means me surrupticiously "working from home" that day). Secondly, being back in a government workplace with odd policies as to what constitutes "acceptable websites" I am reluctant to spend much worktime visiting this blogger clone of ours. Thirdly I am lazy. I mean busy, of course, what with all the ASP.NET development I seem to be doing nowadays.
Christmas was mainly moving house, so not really much interesting to say there, but New Year was a different story.
Sian and I spent New Years' Eve being herded around London like cattle. Having had a (rushed) meal at the reasonably famous St Moritz Swiss restaurant we hit a local Slug and Lettuce before deciding around 10 to start heading down to the river for the stated aim of the whole trip which was to see some of the fireworks which are supposed to be the finest that Red Ken's council tax money can buy, and up there on the world stage alongside Sydney and, er, some other places. Unfortunately about five billion other people had the same idea - most of them appearing to lack English as a first language.
As we got to Trafalgar Square and ran into the first groups of Polish revellers (who seem to be keen to fit in by singing traditional British songs at the top of their voices, while the real Brits look at them as if they're mad for singing in public at all) we realised that getting to a place to see the pyrotechnics would be rather tricky. Her Majesty's Finest had cordoned off pretty much every road near the river and had put up some sneaky signs directing people to a "Fireworks Viewing Area" which I was pretty certain didn't exist, or if it did was so far away from the actual fireworks that it might as well not exist. Consequentially a vast sea of people were being directed by mounted police and these misleading signs away from the river and towards the City and we wandered around for about an hour before giving up and deciding to return to Trafalgar Square to watch the top of the whole thing over the buildings of Whitehall and try to work out exactly what was going on on the big screens they'd put up next to Nelson's Column but forgotton to plug the sound into properly.
And so passed 2007 and we entered 2008, in the rain, surrounded by about 90% Polish and other nationalities and if it hadn't been for the bangs of the fireworks and the occasional explosion above the rooftops I wouldn't have noticed the year had turned at all - the aforementioned big screens were useless and there wasn't so much as a single countdown.
Going home was also a nightmare. The billions of people all had to use the tube at once, which pretty much rolled over screaming "DON'T HURT ME! DON'T HURT ME!" almost immediately (great advert for London's ability to host the Olympics, that!). We walked all the way to Holborn, before giving up and trying one of the many rammed buses to get back to our hotel, only arriving at 3AM. The festive atmosphere was sorely lacking on the way home too - all the bars and pubs around Trafalgar Square, Covent Garden and The Strand were shut to discourage any attempts to have fun that might have been attempted by anyone. We did find a bar near Holborn but it was rammed, people mainly using it as a toilet stop, and by that time we'd had enough.
Still, I guess it was an experience ;)
So, if you feel like seeing the fireworks in London at New Years Eve, I have this advice.
- Arrive by the Thames at 6PM.
- Bring beer. Lots of beer.
- Bring an umbrella.
- Write down the Polish phrases for "shut the hell up you drunken fools" and prepare to shout it a lot.
- Don't plan on getting home before 4AM, even if you're staying in London.
In other news, the house move has costed us around £2000 already (in addition to the taxes and mortgage and whatnot), most of that money going to B&Q one way or another. Houses are expensive, but at least you can drill into the walls whenever you like. Cheers to Martin for practically doing all of the DIY stuff when we first moved in - was a great help - and to everyone who helped us move. We currently have a spare room full of boxes which is mainly waiting for Argos to send us our new wardrobes and stuff. They quoted a delivery estimate of "within 35 days" for some of the items, which to me is pretty much like saying "within the year", and I can only assume they're growing the trees, before shredding them into MDF and constructing the furniture from scratch. Apart from that I quite like living in Stevenage - it beats Watford anyhow. There will be a housewarming as soon as we're sorted, tentatively scheduled for mid-2009 (or about the time of my next Mosaik post).
Also, my web server was hacked, a fact that I'm still not entirely comfortable about as I'm still unsure how the hackers got in so can't guarantee that no-one else will do it the same way. They replaced the index pages of about four of my sites with a picture of an Iraqi tank, exploded, but caused no other obvious damage. Then again, who can tell what kind of access they got and what they installed? I'm thinking a complete rebuild of the server and a rethink of it's configuration is in order, but god knows when I'll find the time.
Anyway, happy new year everyone.