I have today off. Partly in order to do useful things such as meeting my current landlady and arranging the end of my tenancy here; partly because I'm in the middle of a large piece of PuTTY work and would like to have time to get on with it before I forget what I was doing; partly because it's been too long since Gareth beat me at snooker; and, also in large part, because I've been feeling particularly short of sleep this week and thought it would be nice not to have to get up early this morning.

Never let it be said the gods don't pay attention to worldly things and respond appropriately. It was incredibly windy last night, and to some extent it still is this morning, and this wind is causing the downstairs flat's chimney to resonate like a giant milk bottle[1] right next to my bedroom. So in fact I've had less sleep than I might have liked, and I'm up at 8:30 in the morning having given up staying in bed as a bad job. If the afterlife is such that it allows me to meet the weather god face to face, I will seriously think about punching him out.

[1] all right, not the best metaphor in the world, but it does sound more like someone blowing over a milk bottle than anything else.