Went to Cardiff for a meeting. Actually, that simplifies things a bit - I crawled out of my pit to catch a taxi to the airport at 7am, climbed on the plane that taxiied out to the start of the runway before turning back to the stand with an ill person on board, *then* we took off, and landed at Bristol airport where my glum faced collegue was moaning about the wasted time (and can you blame him!).

The worst of it all was that I ended up waiting for the customer in our Cardiff office for 2.5 hrs but he didn't turn up, I missed any chance of flying home that night, and ended up in an hotel *again*, which meant I had to catch a train from Cardiff to Bristol and... oh really, you're not interested in this are you - suffice it to say that it takes me nearly 6 hours each way, and involves the full bhoona of planes trains and automobiles.

The best part of it was the waiting times at the various airports and departures lounges. Why? I got to finish Chris Brookyre's new book, 'The sacred art of stealing' (checkout for some gen on the man). This immediately spurred me on to read Carl Hiaasen's last work 'basket case' (again, the authors website is at ). I have a thing for reading when I'm travelling. I *know* I'm supposed to pull out my laptop and do something useful (like work), in the various departure lounges I seen to spend my life in, but I cannot motivate myself to try and pull together designs on a tiny (800x600) screen.

I have ordered a new laptop from work tho', a Dell Precision top end thing with more bells and whistles than a leprechaun on St Patrick's day, so I'll have to just have to come up with a new excuse as to why the design is late!

Anyway, the customer never turned up with us because he was having a tour of one of our facilities with our top man - apparently there had been some hitch with some previous work, but the customer was persuaded to let us have a go anyway, so that's moving towards the top of the radar screen right now.