Alarm, Alarm!

The flat continues to progress and I now have a state of the art alarm system installed. Separate zones, panic buttons, and the ability to part-set it so that it can be armed overnight when I am sleeping make it one clever bastard of a system! It even bleeps when the front door is opened by anyone, and can be set so that it also does so whenever any room(s) is/are entered so you could, say, have a party but be warned if anyone enters your bedroom. The cleverest thing though is that it is set to recognise and differentiate between little pussycats jumping around, and fully grown people breaking in and walking around so that it doesn't go off during the day on those rare occasions when the cats move off their beds while I am at work! Yes, one clever bastard of a system.

Just been watching a biography of Sir Edward Elgar on BBC Four. Very interesting 1962 film by Ken Russell mixing archive footage with reconstruction, and obviously featuring a great soundtrack. Full of chest-swelling empire-building sabre-rattling Britishness, no, Englishness. I am not English, but somehow listening to Elgar's music makes me proud to be English. Not just Elgar when I think of it, but various other English composers of a similar style. Class.

Had far too much to drink last night. Travelled across to Edinburgh to go to a leaving party for two colleagues. One of the two pubs we were in had a two drinks for the price of one offer which isn't unusual, but slightly unusual was that it was for every drink, not just spirits or bottles of beer. So an order for a pint of lager got you two pints. Now the sensible thing to do would be for our group to order half the amount of drink and share it, but no, we each got two drinks every time, and it just made us drink them faster to keep up with each other. Very sensible. Not. I only threw up once though, into a litter bin at Buchanan Street bus station when I arrived back in Glasgow. Felt better after it all the same. I am very much suffering for it now though, with a badly swollen ankle being more painful than it has been for weeks. Spent too much time standing yesterday. And that's not to mention this morning's hangover which thankfully has now passed.