By the pricking of my thumbs ...

Well, it took four months, but I fell off the proverbial wagon this morning.

Let me explain. Every morning at around eleven o’clock a van pulls up outside the office and tootles a Colonel Bogey horn which is followed by a mass exodus of hungry looking programmers. The van sells the usual sorts of sandwiches and cakes, but they also do a range of hot pasties and pies. I haven’t availed myself of their services before, but this morning my resolve weakened and I bought myself a hot cheese ‘n’ onion pasty for the princely sum of 98 of your Earth pence.

All I have to say in my defence is – yum. It was spanking gorgeous. I now throw myself on the mercy of the people’s court and promise faithfully not to have another one for at least four more months have passed.

It really does feel as if this winter is dragging its heels before making way for the spring. I thought that the days were warming up a little, but it seems we are in for another blast of the cold. I looked out of my office window on Wednesday afternoon and was delighted to see that it was still light and sunny at half past four, but by the time I actually left the building, a dense freezing fog had gathered, like something straight out of a Sherlock Holmes novel. Needless to say, the traffic crawled along, no doubt avoiding stray Hansom cabs and sundry hounds of the Baskervilles.

In contrast, the roads this morning were practically empty, and I was at the office for twenty past eight. How strange. It was still grey outside, so I had to resort to setting my desktop wallpaper to a nice mountain scene with clear blue skies stretched across both of my screens.

In squamous news, the skin seems to have stopped peeling off my hands and it is now just my thumbs that are affected. The intensive Vaseline cream seems to have done the trick in softening the dry and cracked areas, so hopefully that will reverse the tide, as it were.

In podcast news, the comedian and activist Mark Thomas has recently launched a series of interviews with economists and politicians, explaining the economics behind the credit crunch and asking exactly how screwed we are, exactly. Frightening and enlightening in equal measure, and I think it is a fair question to ask exactly what these merchant bankers (yes, that is rhyming slang) did to deserve $20 billion in bonuses last year. W, as they say, TF?

Finally, you don't have to be mad to be a Muslim suicide bomber, but it helps ...