For a very long dull period I have felt almost unable to read at all. This weekend whilst suffering a degree of mental disquiet, I have finally begun to devour literature once again. The text which restored my faith in the printed word was A Clergyman's Daughter - a strange, severe little novel which most Orwellians seem to recommend against reading in favour of one of his more influential titles, but which I've been meaning to pick up since the Literary London conference last summer.

What struck me most about the novel was how similar it was to a Gissing novel of the early period - a series of 'happenings' connected by long passages of psychological examination of faith and doubt, poverty and duty. Themes not dissimilar to those Born In Exile in a strange way.

Perhaps unsuprising then to find this passage in Chapter 4:

She ate her Christmas dinner - a hard-boiled egg, two cheese sandwiches, and a bottle of lemonade - in the woods near Burnham, against a great gnarled beech tree, over a copy of George Gissing's The Odd Women.

That Orwell admired Gissing is not in doubt, and has been explored thoroughly elsewhere. Perhaps what suprised me most is how in this reportedly inferior novel of the 1930s Orwell achieved the very flat, greyness of tone which he so admired in Gissing to remarkable effect. Along the way he manages to debunk the state-sponsored dominance of the crumbling (both in faith and in fabric) Church of England, in a manner that I can only imagine Gissing would have applauded.

A Clergyman's Daughter doesn't have the universal appeal of some of Orwell's other work, but it succeeds almost as a historical work. A snapshot of how we used to worship, and the cold, dull English fear of not having enough to eat.

I realised that it was at this stage in the release process for 'Warty Warthog' that I originally installed Ubuntu back in September. The idea then of running a Debian based distribution was alien and scary, and I wondered just what all the fuss was about. Around a month later, I was convinced. Having run the 'Hoary Hedgehog ' development release for some time on another machine, I decided to take the plunge and upgrade my main machine this morning.

All went incredibly smoothly, and I'm really happy with the outcome so far. No doubt the next few weeks will see the remaining rough edges knocked off, and the impending GNOME release introduced. Once again, I'm impressed just how robust and usable this distribution is, whilst remaining up-to-date with recent upstream package releases.

Started the day by discovering that First Great Western no longer offer a Day Return fare from Weston to Reading! Set off into the early morning sunshine, recovering from the shock of high ticket costs on a diverted HST. To Reading via Hawkeridge Junction and the Berks and Hants route. Lots of confused passengers wondering why it was taking so long, and where Swindon had gone!

Noted 165136, recently reliveried in connection with the London 2012 Olympic bid. 66603 was also sitting forlornly just west of the station. Brief wander around Reading station. Freezing in the shade, so rebooked and headed south to Basingstoke. Quick change for an Eastleigh bound train - all efforts to catch one of the remaining slam door units failed. Ended up on 444 - my first ride on one of these units. Much better than the 450, a reasonably comfortable and spacious feel, and a smooth ride.

Eastleigh was very quiet compared to my last visit. Decided to try a bit of camera practice on passing units until something happened. Slowly I'm beginning to experiment and improve how I use the camera. Luckily 60032 was out and about, and obliged by passing through the station light engine, and eventually returning southwards on a ballast train, with a great deal of noise and clag!


Decided to head back to Basingstoke. Frustratingly, everytime I took my eyes from the rails, something interesting seemed to pass us at speed. Spent a pleasant hour or so trying to stay in the sun and out of the cold. Spotted the blue liveried VEP 'Gordon Pettit' sandwiched between other slammers. Hopped on a late running Voyager back to Reading, where 180101 finally showed up - after months of being at the opposite end of the line to wherever I was! Back via the same route as this morning. Nice to get home whilst it was still light!

Since Thursday evening, I've been offline thanks to British Telecom. I'd decided to upgrade my internet connection to Demon's new Homeoffice 1000 1mbps offering. All seemed to go well, and Demon contacted me with new settings and suchlike. On Thursday, a restart due to needing to open the case meant reconnecting. But it wouldn't. It seems Demon had done their part in moving my account over, but BT had yet to do theirs. Talked to support for a while.

Talked to support again in the morning, and then used their live 'web support' function to chat with a Customer Services guy from my office PC. Very helpful, and would try to sort it - but as all British people know, BT sort of do what they want, when they want. Otherwise, Monday was likely to be the day. Decided to update DNS for the new IP in advance to save time.

Woke this morning to find things working fine, and the connection whizzing along. Very pleased with the service, and the short downtime really wasn't so bad - the hardest part was knowing just when it would be back, and knowing I was relying on BT to get me back online.

Celebrated by doing a few things I'd meant to do for ages, and that changing the power supply reminded me about - adding another 512Mb of memory, and also an additional fan in the case. I didn't realise until the sun began to set that the fan I hastily picked up from the shelf of the computer store gave off an unearthly green glow in the dark! Interesting.

It is comforting to be back on line, and having the machine work a little quicker is nice too.