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

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.

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.