Q: What's worth than foot in mouth?
A: Foot through floor. Obviously.

Yes, last night, clearing out the loft, I put my foot through the ceiling. A moment of carelessness, I suppose; I'd got a bit casual. *sigh* I've been through all the if-only's and why-me's, and now the anger is catching me up.

Fortunately, the buyer's surveyor has done his survey, while there's still no date for the move - so I should have a few weeks to buy some plasterboard and, with the help of my old man, nail it up and paint the ceiling.

&@#*$!*

Standing beside an estate agent, I peer out a bedroom window and into a rainy Saturday.

As a consummate dreamer, I'm a master of staring through windows. From home the view is stunning; the roofs of the houses opposite may blot out the shallow valley—which is filled by nothing more scintillating than red brick suburbia—but the tops of the downs are mine. These hills are papered with a patchwork of woods and fields, and—rather incongruously—a white lion carved out the chalk. They start the day in silhouette but finish by collecting the sun's final rays. Inbetween times they come and go, disappearing into and out of the clouds, some days not appearing at all. Being windward of the prevailing wind, they collect rain and snow that misses us - orthographic precipitation blown along the valley. Only on the clearest day, when they seem close enough to touch, do they dress in green; at other times the miles of air between us filter everything turquoise, or grey. But my! are they strong: propping up the vast uncharted oceans of the sky that ascend from my eye-line to the ceiling. I've counted every smile, laugh, and tear of those hills, but still a glance right can surprise me. No camera can manufacture a snapshot of them, let alone capture their variations.

So I look out onto a sodden garden with dismay. When all I have to stare at is lawn, will I become as a myopic as everyone else, only concerned with my own little world? Or will the loss of my muse motivate me to brave the underworld and rescue them, finally achieving something with my life? And inbetween whiles, who will look after them? Can anyone so assiduously attend the hills of my birth?

*

And so we trudge from the bedroom to the lounge.

A last minute bidding war, may have pleased the purse and extended purchasing options, but I'm beginning to realise how much I've been short changed.

'The ceilings are quite high.', says the estate agent, scrambling up the scree of my melancholia. So I reach up and press the palm of my hand flat against it. Later at home I try the same trick: even on tip toes I cannot get my whole hand flat. It looks like my horizons are going to closing in on all fronts, then.

So here we go, not just a new year but a whole new decade to screw up. It's like gazing across a virgin snowfield or looking out onto a beach that's been cleansed by the tide. I defy anyone not to feel a thrill of hope at this pristine page of the future waiting to be scrawled all over. Perhaps a hope that, after a decade of the war on terror, we can get a grip on our paranoia before governments mandate nude air travel. A hope that our legislators will listen less to the special interests, bankers, and corporations, and more to the needs of the common man (whether he wants free healthcare or not). And on a personal level, a hope that I get this sodding application finished, that the house gets sold—or at least some sort of financial equilibrium emerges—and that I find a way to make the most of the talents I've been given. I hope you can do the same. Failing that, let's at least doodle a few rude cartoons on the pages of time. Good luck and God bless.

I have a theory: men don't clear their driveways of snow because it's necessary, but because they want to be play in it. I know if I had responsibilities that kept me inside, I would propose a few fatuous health and safety arguments and be out there shoveling snow. I mention this because, yes, we've ended the year as it began: with heaps of the white stuff. I awoke 4 o'clock Friday to that peculiar glow which accompanies heavy snowfalls; a needless swish of the curtains confirming the forecasters predictions. Walking the dog I found drifts a foot deep buttressing the hedgerows, but 3-4" was the typical covering. Schools broke for Christmas—one day early—and every kid with a sledge was on the hills; The Downs have never been more appropriately named. The closest I saw to a major incident was a delivery truck getting stuck on our road, unable to ascend the compacted snow. There were no power outings or eight hours stuck in the Channel Tunnel here. I'll be honest, I couldn't quite muster February's enthusiasms - the memories have barely melted. But Saturday, the sun blazed out of a white horizon, and every tree retained a stripe of snow down it's northern side—like Jack Frost had been round with squeezy mayonnaise—and the branches were so thickly iced, with an inch of recrystallized snow, and the gaps between them so thin—that the they looked like snapshots of puzzle-book maze - “get to the centre of the tree.”—that, to borrow a phrase, “it were proper Christmassy”. Given how the weather seems a trifle senile these days, I s'pose it's no surprise our White Christmas was delivered early. There's more snow forecast tonight so perhaps, if it stays cold, we can we hang on to the Christmas spirit till Friday. Although the weathermen are hedging there bets as to whether it'll get washed away; still, I don't care what the weatherman says...

I'm feeling bad because I feel good. Really good. Normally, after an argument, I'm reduced to fuming. I shout and scream a bit, and then capitulate and sulk. But a fun, heated debate somehow became an argument, because--in my opinion--the other person can't stand to lose. They were asserting counter examples existed yet they threw up a smokescreen of excuses instead of finding one, and attempted to "push all my buttons". Then they broke down in tears, and finally walked out, and are now sulking. So basically, I inflicted emotional hurt on another person. And yet I feel fantastic about it. Although, I remain concerned that they'll do something stupid. (And while we're on the subject, how do you answer, when--after inquiring where they're going--they ask, "Why do you care? Why are you worried about me?") On sober reflection, I pushed the argument further than I needed to. I could have stopped. I s'pose I believe they deserved it. And I'll no doubt resume my passive-aggressive capitulation, but this little victory will cheer me for a while. I'm not sure that makes me a great person.

"Work smarter, not harder" goes the saying; which is advice I'd wish I'd heeded on Wednesday. My project had slipped so far behind schedule that, after Buzzcocks, I booted my computer and tried to bludgeon my code into extracting the serial number from a hard disk.

But again and again it refused to work; each impasse forcing me to dive deeper and deeper into the guts of windows. (And trust me: Windows gets very gory very quickly.) I was well into the witching hour before I gave up rifling through the kernel's small intestines and went to bed.

But bright and fresh Thursday morning, the problem blinked at me: I had written StorageAdaptorProperty when I should have written StorageDeviceProperty. That may seem like a "Duh! Of course”-moment, but to a computer it's the difference between a circle and a square. And it was blindingly obvious to me with a clear head. (The "Duh! Of course”-moment came later in the day when I discovered I needed to WRITE permission to read from a disk. Duh! Of course!)

Anyway, working a couple of the wee hours gained me nothing but a hangover. :(

On a related note I needed a 3½" floppy disk to confirm my code would reject floppies*, just in case. I hadn't got one to hand, so I spent an hour rooting through boxes and upending shelves on a quest to unearth one. It was only when I returned to my desk with my dusty prize that I realised my machine lacks a floppy disk drive. Still, at least I have the disk once I find a drive.

* (Insert your own priapic euphemism.)