The sun is setting. Michele is playing with Humphrey, who has been eating sunflower seeds out of our hands for a couple of days now. This probably doesn’t sound like much but it’s actually a major breakthrough. He wouldn’t let us get near his cage when we first got him, and now we can stick our fingers through the cage and he’ll eat nuts from them. Such a pretty little bird.

During the last week I’ve spent the majority of my time on the lower half of the emotional cycle. Right near the dingy, oily, gear mechanism. This is probably related to thinking too hard about life directions, my overdraft and that sort of thing. But whatever caused it, I’ve been thinking. Not sure what about. The dreams don’t make it any clearer either; last night was another one about being shot, only my wound wasn’t serious…but someone close to me (I think it was Frances, my sister) had a very serious bullet hole and I didn’t manage to get her to hospital or anything. She ended up going on her own, which made me feel very sad. Dream experts can fuck right off with their Freudian bullshit.

[ michele taps me on the should to show me Humphrey keenly picking a seed off her finger ]

This afternoon was booked off work so that I could go down to Brick Lane and help fix a Linux box at easynet’s base. They had such bullshit security. We both needed to bring photo ID (Pete brought his passport) in return for which we were given some dodgy RFID cards with code numbers printed on them. These would allow us to pass beyond the glass wall that separated us from the lifts. We had to move over to a couple of glass cylinders, move the card near the keypad so that the green light came on, and then had to type the number displayed on the card into the keypad. The glass cylinder responded by sliding one side across inviting one of us to step in. Once inside the cylinder, the door closed leaving you trapped in a glass tube. For some reason the name “Augustus Gloop” came to mind but there was no chocolate anywhere near as far as I could tell. After wating a few seconds (while the bat-laser-scan-o-tron scanned us for weapons, drugs, and copies of NMAP I expect) the other side of the cylinder openned allowing the prisoner out on to the SECURE side of the glass wall. All very impressive as long as you didn’t notice the very ordinary looking door to the left of the glass podules that the security guards used when they wanted to get through the glass wall.
The lift was SECURE too. You had to do the card/PIN routine in there before you could select a floor. Of course a cynical person would ask what the point of the code number was if it’s printed on the fucking card, but Pete and I were too impressed to question it….although Pete did suggest that the lift PIN pad was there just to give the security guards a laugh as they watched us obediently go through the ritual.
As Dave H says, it impresses the easily impressed.

Well, we fixed the server, installed some Anti-Virus software and fucked off to the nearby pub. A good afternoon’s work. Being Brick Lane meant I also managed to buy a couple of very agreeable samosas on the way down to Shoreditch station too. Lovely.