Ah, the end of another Bournemouth Meet. A successful one, if my standards are anything to go by (which of course they really aren’t).

My recovery from illness - for now, anyway - proved just in time for the descent of no less than 13 friends on what for the sake of argument I might call my home town. Together with the six of us who live here, they’ve made it the biggest Bournemouth Meet so far - although I’m not sure if I could quite call it the best. A lot happened, not all of it good and not all of it bad, but all of it was the kind of stuff that makes memories; that makes stories that’ll be told for years to come. And that, in a way, might be what counts.

There were awesome meals and spectacular fireworks and four hours out in the cold. There was Subway and Shakeaway and running from one bus shelter to another in the pouring rain. There was drinking and laughing and joking and a walk home drenched in anxiety and confusion and barely concealed emotion. There were friends, and there was saying goodbye…

I’m left feeling a little vacant… There was so much activit

y so much of the time, and then with a few hurried hugs and handshakes I ran across to the almost-departing bus and disappeared… No more Bournemouth Meet; just a quiet evening, an early night, and work tomorrow and every weekday, stretching on into the future. Forever? No, not forever. But perhaps for long enough.

Side Notes:

Hard disk died again this weekend. I’d like to construct myself an external hard disk by cannibalising my Rio Riot, but it’s little projects like this that are really draining my finances right now. Does anyone know if the Riot’s internal HDD is a standard laptop 2.5in drive?

This weekend was scarily expensive, I’m super-broke now. Can’t wait until I get paid in two and a half weeks. £1500, whee!

The much-debated £56 costume order arrived yesterday - they said please allow 30 days, actually took three. Next problem - anyone know how to tie a hakama properly? The internet gives me only a rather confusing seven-stage diagram.

Tried Ubuntu Linux earlier. Top marks for user-friendliness, ability to use source rather than binary packages, and an easy install. Thumbs-downs for not detecting NTFS partitions, not having a proper modem dialler out-of-the-box, manual editing of xorg.conf to enable nVidia GLX, and having to use packages from an unsupported repository to get MP3 support.