The archive

This morning, as the new railway timetable wreaked havoc on my working day, the mournful sounds of the cattle market drifted across Highbridge for the last time. From next week, the farmer's carts will no longer clog the roads on their way to the market near the Highbridge Hotel.

As I write, the annual Guy Fawkes Carnvial in Burnham (which of course pays lip service to Highbridge but never comes here) has just finished, and the giant unwieldy floats are snaking their way back to points south and west of here, shaking my…

The curse of First Great Western strikes me again. After the touch and go game of roulette with cancellations of Taunton-Great Malvern services on Friday, today it's the mainline which is causing grief.

Once again, a patch arrives from the ether which reminds me people are still using Inkblot. I'm always pleased to hear from people who've made something I wrote years back do what they need it to now, and I was delighted to receive an email from…

After a couple of weeks of messing around, the mikegtn.net server is finally up and running once again. After almost four years of trouble-free running, and with parts dating back much longer, I noted things were amiss a couple of weeks back.

Highbridge has had it's new roundabout for a week or so now. The contractors could be seen last week working well into the evenings to finish the road markings and segregated cycle facilities. Finally, only a little over a month late, the new road alignment opened to traffic.

I'm no longer accustomed to baring my soul in these entries like I used to. Somehow the arrival of the blogging phenomenon made the idea of the original c.1999 'daylog' seem painfully self-conscious and eventually just obsolete.

Getting home was never going to be easy after the dramatic events of this weekend. Woke to fairly decent weather in York, but it was still raining down south. Amazingly, noted that departures to the south west appeared to be back on the National Rail website.

After a very comfortable night at the Alexandra, I felt fully prepared for the day's journey. However things almost got off to a bad start when the hotel staff refused to let me check out! The Night Porter had explained that their computers weren't…