The bright lights

I was personally not a great fan of Terry Wogan's breakfast show, but I am very aware that a lot of people were, and I have it on good authority that a subset of his followers like to call themselves TOGs, which is either Terry's old Gits or Terry's old girls, depending on what dangly bit you do or don't have.

I am wondering whether I should make up something for the followers of Scobi Wan Kenobi. Having given it almost no thought at all, I have come up with SWKers. I think it has a rather cheery sound to it, and can see both my followers getting t-shirts printed forthwith saying "I am a SWKer".

If you have been wondering where I have been for a couple of days (yes, both of you) then I can tell you that I have been up to the capital of our country, the Big Smoke, up in Town, namely Londinium. I can confirm a couple of things:

- the streets are not paved with gold
- there are a lot of people up there
- I decided to walk from station to office and from office to hotel, so can confirm that I really did take myself by the hand and led myself through the streets of London.

I am transitioning, a fine word and one that does not even begin to describe the difficulties found therein, to a new account. If you have ever watched You've Been Framed, and based on polls carried out by Worrie, they have defined my demographic as "the sort of people who are likely to watch You've Been Framed", so I am guessing you probably have, then you may remember one of the key themes that are repeated QUITE A LOT, is the theme where the person, usually a bit older and a bit un-nimble and more than a bit overweight, is stepping off a jetty and on to a small boat, and as they have one foot on each, the boat begins to move away from the jetty. As any physicist will tell you, action and reaction are equal and opposite, and boy there is some action in a 22 stone person stepping on to a boat, and the finale is a rather wet person. Oh how we laugh.
Anyhow, ... squirrel ... that is what it is like when you are "transitioning". It can be quite an emotional tug of war with your old account still wants a piece of you, and your new account is so happy to have finally got a body, want you at least 100%. More often, it is just a pain in the bum that is a lot less fun than ending up in the drink as you try to step on to a boat.

London is an interesting place. There are people everywhere, from my small poll sample, there is no time of day after 11am when someone isn't in a pub or bar having a drink, and they always have a suit on. Don't they have work to do?

I think it is fair to say that I do enjoy a visit to London, but I am not a natural city boy. I don't know whether I am actually chewing on a bit of straw, but I do feel a bit out of sorts with all the bustle. Our office is pretty flash, lots of glass and marble, but once you are inside there are seats and desks and I am staring at a partition wall, so I really could be anywhere.

Nevertheless, my new account is full of interesting problems and I am relishing the challenge of something new. I just hope I can be as effective as my managers are hoping, and I make a success of things.

I stayed up for the night, so met up with a very old friend from college. Since we like to give pseudonyms for people, let's call him Taff, a name that, to my best knowledge, he has never been called. We have not seen each other for a couple of years, but we just slipped back in to a comfortable and very enjoyable evening of drink, food and chat, catching up on what we had both been up to since we last met, which did give us a vast tableau of topics to discuss.

I am working at home today, hoping that the garage can fix my car by tonight so that I have it for our planned 'vannin' trip down to Lyme Regis.