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It's been 15 months since my last entry. I've been back on UM for about 2 months now, after 8 months without a computer and life has changed a little bit since then.

Once upon a time I had a good job, which paid well. Then the dreaded redundancy came. I was already suffering depression at the time and that pushed me into a state that took a long time to recover from. I was unemployed for around three years and in that time I managed to accumulate a fair bit of debt. Just under 2 years ago I managed to get back to work. The pay is a lot less than I was used to, and as for a carreer mocve I am back at the bottom step of the ladder... where I started out 26 years ago... but the important thing is that I am on the ladder.

The problem was that rather than helping the debt, initially it made matters worse. When my cats assassinated my lap top I simply did not have the money to buy a new one. I started my long exile from UM.

Then, unexpectedly I got a rather official looking letter. It was a large cheque, the result of some investments I had made back when I was sensible and had a good job. In the space of a few weeks two more such cheques arrived. Now I am not only debt free but I even have a small amount of savings. I also have a lovely new computer and my UM exile is over.

It's 5:38 am on the morning. It's Saturday. I don't have to work today. I'm tired and in need of a lie in. So why am I writing in my blog? Well one word... CRAMP. It's not a thing I suffer from very often but when I do it hurts like a... well I can't think of an appropriate simile that won't be censored by the language filter, but it hurt LOTS.

It will be a while before I can get back to sleep now, if at all.

Much as I love spending time on UM, I'd rather be in bed.

Okay, I have no one to blame but myself. I knew my hard drive was dying. I knew it needed replacing, but there was always something else that I just wanted to buy first. If it could just wait until the next pay day, or the one after that. And it did, admittedly I've become more practised in reinstalling corrupted software than I would have chosen but the drive kept on hanging in there. Then, at just after ten p.m. on Saturday 14th June, it died. As John Cleese might have said, "This hard drive is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! It's a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If Dell hadn't screwed it into the laptop it'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is data storing processes are now 'istory! It's off the twig! It's kicked the bucket, it's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-HARD DRIVE!!"

And so my computer has had a transplant operation and survived.

I didn't realise how much I would miss talking to my friends on Messenger or posting here. I would not advise U-M cold turkey to any of you.

It's good to be back.

Today I had a hair cut. Not that dramatic an event, but I absolutely hate it. I always have. For some people it is the dentist they hate for me it's the barbers.

It's not really a phobia, I'm not scared of getting my hair cut, I'd just rather not.

I have wondered why I hate it so much. Partly, I suspect, it is because I'm a naturally scruffy individual, but there is more to it than that.

I suspect my dislike of getting my hair cut goes back to early childhood. My father would take me to one of those old fashioned barbers with the red and white pole out side. It was called, Peter's and had a huge red barbers chair. For the small kids a padded plank would be placed across the arms of the chair and I would sit on that.

Peter (for, unsurprisingly, that was the owners name) would chat away as he cut my hair. He would always say the same thing to the kids, "don't move, stay very still, because I don't want to cut you". He would then add the bit that, he no doubt thought of simply as a joke, " don't sneeze or I might cut your ear off". Even this didn't send chills down my spine, it's what came next that did, "I feed all the ears I've chopped off to my cat". Now even that might not have worried me too much except that Peter's cat was very, VERY fat. My childish logic told me that a lot of kids kust have lost their ears in that shop. I never twitched a muscle whilst I sat on that plank.

More than 30 years later I still don't like having my hair cut, but at least at Michael's (and no the owner isn't called Michael, it's Glenn), where I have it done now there isn't a cat.

It's funny how, during my long period of unemployment, I craved being around people. I missed the banter that you have between work mates. In fact for a large part of the time I missed conversation full stop. I live on my own (well there is also my cat, Nyana, but she's not much of a conversationalist) and days would pass when I did not exchange a single word with another human being.

Now I have two days off work and I am enjoying being on my own. We are a contrary bunch us humans, we always seem to want the opposite of what we have.

These two days away from work are an attempt to recharge my batteries. I am not sleeping well and I am tired. A couple of days relaxing and not doing much at all will help I think. It will also give me a bit of a chance to catch up on a few things that need doing at home (I've just finished dead-heading my rose bushes for example).

Then it will be back to the grind stone for a couple of days before I go to Tom's funeral on Friday... that is one day off I am not looking forward to.

It had been my intention to write about the great day I had this time last week. About the thrills and tensions of watching Wasps win another title and about the enjoyment of celebrating with friends afterwards. That will have to wait. Sadly one of those friends is no longer with us.

Tom was in good spirits and (so I thought) good health when I last saw him on Saturday. Tom was the father of my close friend Simon and a friend in his own right. The word "nice" simply does not do Tom justice, he was a truly lovely man. He never lost his Geordie sense of humour and was a pleasure to know.

Despite being in his eighties and having fought back from cancer and a stroke in 2005 he was still more full of life than many men half his age. His sudden death on Thursday has left me stunned.

My thoughts are with Maud (his wife of over sixty years), Simon and the rest of the family.

RIP Tom, it was an honour and privilege to have known you.

It is that time of year again. The English rugby season is coming to an end, Wasps are in a final at Twickenham and I have a ticket.

This year Wasps are in the Guinness Premiership final, to determine the champions of England. Just as with he European final last year (and the last English Final Wasps played in, in 2005) are opposition are the mighty Leicester. Wasps beat Leicester in both of those finals.

So will Wasps finish the season with out a title for the first time since 2002 or will they win their 8th major title in 6 years? In a few hours I will know.

As the title suggests today I had a WOW! moment.

I have recently started walking home from work. I want to get fitter and lose weight and walking home seemed a good start, especially as it is a seven mile walk. Not bad for a fat boy eh?

Anyway, part of this walk is through a little park which runs beside the River Shuttle (it's hardly big enough to be called a stream). I enjoy wildlife and this little park is full of birds. I make no claim to be an expert bir watcher but I take an interest and generally know what it is I am looking at.

Today the Shuttle was more full than I have seen it before and faster flowing as a result of heavy rain at the weekend. As I neared the end of the park I noticed a tree trunk stinking out of the river bank. As I saw the tree trunk I thought to myself, "this would be a perfect place for a kingfisher". I have never seen a European kingfisher. I have seen pied kingfishers in Zimbabwe and Kenya but I have always wanted to see my native variety.

At the exact moment I thought this there was a flash of blue and a kingfisher flew past, not 6 feet from where I was standing.

To finally see one was good in itself but for it to happen at the exact moment I was thinking about it, that makes it a WOW! moment for me.

It has been a while since I visited this blog. That is ironic really because I stopped blogging just around the time I actually had something to say.

I had been unemployed for a long time. In November I returned to work. After a long period without work it was hard to re-adapt, but I haven't been sacked so I must be doing something right. Slowly but surely I am getting myself respect back and the fog of depression is clearing. Hopefully I will be back to my old self of a few years ago soon.

On the down side I had to cope with the loss of a friend in January. I had know Kristy since she was just 3 or 4 years old. To hear of her suicide at just 20 was a hugely painful thing. I can not begin to imagine how much it hurt her mother and step father, and still does to this day. Kristy was possibly the single most intelligent person I have ever known. Her loss leaves a huge hole, although I believe I am far from alone in having had my life enriched by knowing her.

On the plus side my sister's best friend Jacquie has recently got back in touch with her. They were always good friends am they are good for each other. I always got on very well with Jacquie and I consider her my friend too. Talking to her it is like there hasn't been a gap of many years. Talking to her was always easy and that hasn't changed. The problem is that I am spending far too much time on MSN and not getting enough sleep.

Jacquie's re-appearance has inspired me to get off my backside and start getting in touch with friends that I have let slip over the last few years. My friends were always an important pat of my life. Over the last few years, whilst wallowing in the self-pity of depression, I have not been a good friend to some of them. It is time for this to end.

I have said it in the past, "I am going to try to keep this blog up to date from now on". I hope I keep my promise to myself this time.

A few years I go a sat a psychometric test in work. It told me very little about myself that I didn't already know. I agreed with virtually all the conclusions except one. The test claimed that I didn't care about other peoples feelings. I don't believe that tom be true. I care deeply, I just don't know how to express it. I don't know how to approach people that are feeling great pain, that doesn't mean I don't feel for them or care for them.

In the last two days I have felt very confused by feelings and by events in which I was not involved.

On Thursday evening at around 8:00 pm there was a knock at my door. When I opened it I was faced with a female community support officer of the Metropolitan Police. I was a bit surprised by this (in the fact that she must have been close to being the shortest police officer in the World). She was helping to conduct door to door enquires. She told me that on the 7th of September there had been a brytal ssult on two people, one of them a 14 year old girl. I asked her where and she pointed to just over the way from me. Had I opened my front door this ssult would have been in plain site only about 50 feet from me.

I told her that I had been out that night an had heard nothing. Only after she had gone did I realise that I had been indoors watching TV when this assault happened. This doesn't change the fact that I heard nothing, but it caused me to think. If I had seen what was going on could I have made a difference. I can not believe that I would have done nothing, I would have at least called the police, but how far would I have gone? Would I have been brave enough to intervene. Would I have been proud of myself? Would I have got hurt? Would I have been a coward? I really don't know, but I couldn't help spending the next few hours feeling that if only I had heard the commotion two teenagers may not have been hurt.

I know that it is not my fault but I feel impotent that something happened so close t me and I knew nothing about it.

This feeling of impotence was magnified even more at lunch time today. Whilst I added a few posts to the Space News section I had the TV news on in the background. On the local London news there was an article about a 14 year old boy from Doncaster (a town in South Yorkshire - in the North of England). He had inexplicably left home and come to London. His mother was in London searching for him but he had not been seen in two weeks. This was all background, I wasn't really taking it in... until they gave his name and that of his mother. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I had met the mother and knew of the bot (although I had never met him). The boy's father was my best friend at school.

These sort of stories are common on TV but you never expect them to happen to someone you know.

My thoughts are with the Gosden family. I don't believe in a god myself, but if you have read this and you believe then please give a little prayer for the safe return of Andrew Gosden (and all the missing children) to their parents.

I might not be good at expressing it but believe me I care, I really care.