The net does it again. Emails from an old school mate how her old man's net addiction chatting to some tart abroad is causing massive ructions down south. Any court in the country would call it unreasonable behaviour, but he's screwing up one of the great relationships with one of the few lasses big hearted enough to put up with him in the first place. And before you accuse me of being overly judgemental and biased about this, the muppet's one of my best mates from school himself. Probably a tad hypocrital about this as I'm using a net media to publish my ramblings; lets face it, never going to flog it as a serial novel am I; but one of the things that really pisses me off about the net is it's surefire ability to screw up relationships that don't need screwing up. Seen it about a lot, and the only solution is always "pull the plug" or if you're too much of an addict, admit it. The net can be cancer to real people's real lives, and it continues to p*ss me off.

But hell, I do miss it.

There's still a large hole in my life where I battered away at the F board for years; every now and again when I log onto a PC, my traitor fingers are halfway through typing in the web address (I'm old fashioned, set an icon set up) before my mind says "whoa boy, remember you can't go there". I can find myself staring at the email screen, willing something to happen, or a text to come in; just as I sometimes used to constantly hit refresh on the boards index waiting for something to happen. It's not the same, but it's spoiled for life anyway.

Which is why I sometimes do what I did tonight, made the mistake of going out for a midweek drink. Naughty when you're on call, but I had to get out of the house. Thus I found myself once again sitting in a Cleethorpes pub surrounded by really unevolved people, wishing I hadn't bothered. You'd think I'd know by now. Plus the beer's ghastly; I put up with it in my local because it's cheap, but I've never had a pint of Lincolnshire beer that didn't taste of mud. I've got to get out of this town; I've got to get a moving solution that works... I HAVE an idea but it's clearly insane so I'd better work on a better one.

So, the rest of the day. Into work half an hour early today; a rarity, but none the less it happened. Witty comments from the targeters as I walked past, witty comments from the outgoing team boss at handover, panic from my team as they saw my car and thought they were late.

Ah ha. Aha ha ha. Hah.

Thank the gods I wore my extra strength corset, or else i fear my sides may have split.

That was the highlight of the working day really. Targetters had no work for us; we couldn't go and harass the ship that needed harassing as only two of us have had the health and safety training to go on board and be insured against killing in nasty ways; airport was out of the question as another team had it covered. So a boring day of poncing about, before coming home to see what the slow cooker had made of my dinner, to which the answer is something indescribable. Now, why is it that FLoH can make a soup with all the vegetable contents of her fridge (at the end of their useful lives) and come out with something tasty and nutritious without trying; whereas if I do it, I get something awful that looks like the after effects of a Newcastle Brown binge?