I wasn't sure what to write.  I haven't told anyone what I've been doing for ages, but my days seem to be full of repetition with nothing extraordinary happening.  I realised, however, that the repetition is at least something, and is in fact quite different to the what was, so I've transcribed a day in the life.  A day in the current life.

14 Jan 1999

I woke up this morning, disoriented for a moment since we've only had a bed for a couple of days now.  Since Kas and the Kids arrived in England and we moved into the flat in Great Bookham at the end of October, Kas and I have had our mattress on the floor.   I'd slept through my alarm again.

I shuffled up the hallway to face the bath and its pathetic shower head dribble.   The bath was icy cold - the whole house was cold.  We got our first power bill a week or two ago, and we're still figuring out how to pay the bill!

After a quick breakfast with Kas and the Kids I grabbed my coat and headed off for work.  I made my usual dash through the churchyard, past the gravestones, saving the few precious seconds that would get me to the bus stop before the bus.  There's only one bus in the morning that takes me all the way to work, and I've only managed to catch it once or twice so far this year!  (Today wasn't one of those days.)  All the other buses drop me off with a 15 minute walk through the more industrial parts of Leatherhead to get to work.

Normally I read on the bus, but this morning the sun was out, and I can't remember how long it's been since the morning was so bright, so I climbed to the top deck to enjoy the ride.  The days have looked mostly bleak lately, what with the grey skies and the trees stripped of all their leaves and the cold, but it's amazing what a difference a blue sky makes.  We've only had a few days of frost so far this winter, but I guess it's not over with yet.  Kas says it snowed briefly a couple of days ago, but the snow melted as soon as it touched anything.  I'm thinking of taking the family to Scotland before winter is over, just so I can see for myself that it does actually fall out of the sky!

The Silvermines Security offices are a shambles at the moment - we've had a doorway knocked through from one side of the building to the other, and we're in the partitions-are-out, open-plan-is-in part of the lifecycle so half the office furniture (on my side of the building) has been pulled apart to be replaced.

We're working on software for security cameras, to go onto trains etc.  (Warning!   Propeller hats on:)  I spent today (all week, really) writing a PCI Device interface class.  I'm using MSVC 5 at the moment, but the target OS will be VxWorks.

I had lunch with the other guys in my team - there are four of us in the immediate group.  Today we went in to Leatherhead - most days we just go to the big Tesco supermarket next door, and sometimes to the pub down the road to vie for the coveted Cajun Chicken, which we seem to have brought to the edge of extinction.

I bought Jordan a set of books for her birthday tomorrow - I can't believe the rate she gets through them.  I thought I was a bookworm when I was a kid, but compared to her...!  She seems to be getting over her homesickness, slowly, although she still cries now and then, especially about the dog.  Connor still tells people there's nothing good about being here, but he doesn't mean it.  We had quite a rough patch with him when he first started going to school here (and I think before he left Australia), but things seem to be getting sorted out with him.  Living with me again after seven months separation must have been a shock to his system, too.   :-)

I was homesick myself just the other night, for the first time since I've been here.   Not just for my friends - I've missed you since I left, but homesick for home.   I miss the television; not just having one, but Australian TV; being able to recognise people straight away, and understanding what they're joking about, and recognising the shows that are on.  I miss knowing which magazines are interesting and which newspaper to buy on the weekend.  You get to a point where you do so much of everyday life on automatic - when you're an alien everything needs your full attention.   Even something as easy as shopping is difficult when you don't recognise any brands and you have to read every label.  The cars and streets are so small here, and there are so many people that parking is a nightmare.  I braved London on the Friday before Christmas to go Furby hunting (successfully!), and it was so busy!   Thousands and thousands of people, and I didn't see a single familiar face all day.

I left work today at 5pm, an hour earlier than usual (so I wouldn't be too tired to write).  It was dark already, and had been for a while, so I read on the bus.   The current book is Lord of the Flies, which is a shock to the system after the last book I read, which was the parenting book Raising Boys!

Nobody was home when I got there.  When we got back from visiting my father in Devon for Christmas, the flat looked quite barren compared to his cosy house.  Over the last week I have been collecting some bits and pieces of the partitioning being discarded at work, and even though we don't have any more actual furniture yet, even the pieces make the place seem more lived-in.  We live above some shops in the Bookham high street.  Our flat is quite long, with a corridor running the entire length.   The Kids have small rooms each and we have one large room that is our dining/computer/everything else room.

Kas came home with some dinner, but since Jordan went to bed early tonight I didn't read them any more of our current bedtime book, Watership Down.  Instead Kas and Connor and I played multiplayer Loderunner 2 on the computers I got networked last weekend.

Tomorrow there will be some more furniture moving at work and maybe I'll have finally have enough of the leftover bits to build something of use at home.   This weekend I will (hopefully) be finishing off the work I have been doing for PowerUp.

It's already after 1am - I don't think I'll be catching that bus tomorrow!