Nik's Saga

So what have I done today? Well, I've written some code, I've written a lecture, written a lab, given out some results, bought some lightweight gold cord to do the outline of my current project and done a bit of embroidery. All rather mundane really. Oh yes, and I saw a copy of The Lost Boys going for under a tenner in Hagaup (pronounced 'how-kwip') so I bought that too.

It's been not too bad a day, even if I was a bit concerned when it started snowing again. I can see that I'm going to be paranoid about my car throughout the winter. I managed to get up and into the office before 10 (which was good - I think), and even managed to have a fairly productive day (probably as a result of being relatively unstressed).

Tomorrow it'll be more of the same. I have a research funding proposal to finish and submit which should cover the morning then, hopefully, I'll get another lecture written before I have to start looking at the final coursework. Actually, if I focus then the marking shouldn't take too long as I only have 12 students.

Now I'm trying to relax, getting ready to watch Spooks and, hopefully, get to sleep earlier than last night's 3am. Ah well, I can dream... or not dream, as the case may be.

I have come to accept that sunlight plays a more important role in regulating my internal clock than I ever imagined possible.

Yes, it's 01:00 and I am wide awake. There is a possibility that this is common-or-garden insomnia, but I think that it's the daylight problem. Fortunately I don't suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder - my depressive cycle is most certainly different to that - but I'm beginning to wonder if I need a daylight bulb to reset my wake-up times.

Later this morning the sun will rise at 10:51. It will start getting light about an hour beforehand, say 09:30. In Liverpool the sun will rise at 08:02, so it starts getting light around 7-ish. In Liverpool I would have no problem getting up for the working day, but here in Iceland I'm having terrible trouble with it.

My body just doesn't want to wake up until 10. Then I run through my normal 17-hour day, which means I don't get to sleep until about 3am. Which is why I'm wide awake writing this right now. I have turned from a lark to a owl, just by moving into an area where the sun rises later.

This prompts an interesting question. When I go back to the UK for Christmas, will I suffer the equivalent of jetlag? I won't be changing time zones in the accepted sense of the word, but in siderial terms I'll certainly be shifting my local time frame by about 3 hours.

Is this a common problem travelling from the poles to the tropics in summer or winter? Do people suffer from 'lattitude lag'? Interestingly enough, a Dogpile search for 'latitude jetlag' provided only one result of any use - a CNN article about a trip to the arctic, in which north-south jetlag is mentioned. All of the 'jetlag' sites go to great lengths to tell you that you don't get jetlag flying north-south.

(For those of you who aren't familiar with www.dogpile.com, it's a metasearch engine that searches Google plus a host of other search engines at the same time - a bit like Google on steroids.)

So I have an interesting scientific theory I can test in just over a fortnight's time by seeing how long it takes my internal clock to synchronise itself with Liverpool time. I'll predict that it'll be 3-4 days as you're supposed to make up an hour of difference a day. In the meantime though, it's now after 01:30 and I'm still wide awake.

*sigh*

Akureyri is at the top (i.e. upstream, to the south) of Eyjafjörður, Iceland's longest fjord, some 30 miles from the mouth of the fjord and 60 miles from the arctic circle. It lies at 65.7° N 18.1° W, which is just over an hour to the west of Greenwich (one hour of time is 15° of longitude). The temperature is currently 0 °C / 32 °F The sky is clear and we have a force 2 wind from the SSE which is blowing down the fjord from the Interior.

After work today I took the time to do a little shopping and to recharge my car battery while I was at it. 9 miles upstream from Akureyri is a famous shop, the Jólagarðerinn, which I think translates as Yule Park or Yule Garden. It's more commonly known to the local English-speaking folks as the Christmas House, as it has Christmas lights all-year round and is entirely given over to selling Christmas decorations. It's been on my must-visit list for a while, and as it's out of town I thought that today was the day to go for it.

To get there you drive straight down the 821 beside the fjord. The fjord itself is split into two sections, the downstream part (open to the Arctic Ocean) and the upstream part (separated by a road-bridge that is almost a causeway). Over the last couple of weeks the downstream section has had some ice at the edges, but the upstream section has been (and still is) frozen over. It's very strange to see such a large body of water frozen over with a crazy pavement of pale jagged blocks sitting embedded in newly-frozen darker ice. What is even stranger is that on a very cold day the downstream section produces a layer of fog boiling up from the water's surface. Very spooky.

Driving down to Jólagarðerinn is pleasant enough, but driving back is stunning. Tonight a huge full moon was rising over the mountains to the north east, made all the larger by its apparent proximity to the lifted horizon. The fjord itself was still enough to reflect the moon, the mountains and the lights of the town in its waters.

And did I actually buy anything on my trip out? Well yes, for once. I've returned with some candles, some tree decorations and a set of blue fairy lights to outline the bedroom window (although I picked up the lights at Kaffi Rose, a garden centre on the way back that's also doing the Christmas thing in a big way). Now I just have to put them up.

I am so relieved today. A change in the weather has allowed me to rescue my car.

Yes, today it is a near-topical 8 C / 46 F here in Akureyri, a change which has produced a quite impressive melting of the snow overnight. It's sufficiently warm that when Doug gave me a lift out to the airport to try the car again, the car started first time without any problems. There were, admittedly, several good signs that made me think it might when I got to it. Firstly it was completely free of snow and ice, inside and out (it's had some very pretty ice patterns on the inside of the glass recently), and also the door opened easily (the lock and the catch have frozen before today).

So at last my car is back outside the house and I am much, much happier. Apart from anything else, this means I can now retrieve a couple of things from it that I really could have used last week. Hurrah!

Laurel leaf update: 4 complete. I have now done a quarter of the leaves required.

Still no car. I got a lift down to the airport this morning in the hope that I could get the car started, bring it back into town, do a little shopping and bring it home. Where it would at least be accessible even if I couldn't actually use it. It wasn't to be.

So it was an irregular bus back to the shopping center to do a restricted shopping session then the rest of the walk home. Fortunately I met Doug and Syed as I was leaving the shoping centre so I didn't have to walk back up the hill.

I was going to buy myself something to cheer myself up, but there wasn't anything I wanted, never mind needed. I am so going to indulge in some retail therapy when I get home. Which should be December 13th. I'm not sure about travel while I'm at home - I may hire a car to go up to Scotland. At least the buses in Liverpool run more often than once an hour.

I've really come to appreciate the AA. At home, if my car wouldn't start, I'd just phone the AA and they would send someone - not necessarily a man, as I was delighted to discover once - along within the hour and it would be fixed. Unfortunately the AA doesn't cover Iceland. There is, however, an Icelandic equivalent that I'm investigating. I'll get someone in the office to translate the membership stuff for me on Monday, I think.

I'm trying to be cheerful, but it's difficult. Distances are large here, and a car is pretty much essential. At least I can walk to and from work, and the crampons are working very nicely, thank you. Worse still, there's and SCA event going on in Northern Ireland right now that I'm missing - the Glen Rathlin brigade organise excellent events, in my experience and I'd have loved to be there.

The river is almost entirely iced over now, and the water no longer comes through the pipe around the side of the dam, it's just coming straight over the top. Which means that you can see the rocks in the normal course quite clearly. Some have a coating of clear ice through which you can see the water flowing underneath.. It's fascinating to watch but difficult to photograph as the area is in a gorge that's in constant shadow at present. Unfortunately the ice will be long gone before we get sufficient light to photograph it properly.

Oh well. Back to the laurel leaves.

First of all, forgive me if this post makes no sense. I've been at the office Yuletide party, or Jólaglögg (or at least that's what the songbook says). They were serving a particularly fine punch and I partook thereof.

Actually, when I say 'office', I mean 'building'. The new building that hosts the IT Faculty also hosts the university Rector (the Principal) , some of the administrative staff and the Akureyri offices of several governmental departments, who were all invited to the party. It was to be, we were told, the first of many.

Icelanders have a wonderful community spirit. In the UK it would have taken far more alcohol to make people bring out guitars and start participating in a community singalong, let along leading one. We had four assorted guitarists and a crowd of happy singers, even those who weren't drinking. I rather liked that.

Of course, most of the songs were in Icelandic but, in deference to there being a predominantly English-speaking department we had several songs in English also, the lyrics to all of which (in both languages) were detailed in the songbook that was handed out as we arrived.

Remember a few weeks ago I mentioned the pronunication while singing issue? That I dreaded what my singing in Icelandic would be like? Well I managed, somehow, although I did tend to miss out the long words. And everyone seemed quite happy that I was joining in. I also upheld the honour of the department by leading the assembled masses in Black Crow's Spirit, an action song I learnt in the Girl Guides many, many moons ago. Thus we, the outlanders, took a full part in this community event. Next time I'll take the lap harp and sing something a little less extravagant.

I actually had a really good time. The singing helped, and I suspect the alcohol did too. :) The Icelanders sang a lot of strange Icelandic songs, some of which have familiar tunes so I could sing along using the English words. The strangest, however, was in English - the Icelandic Cowboy

I'm an Icelandic cowboy
On my Icelandic pony
I travel around in the west.
I kmow all the ways around Snæfellsnes,
'Cause that's where my baby stays.

I've been to the east
And I've been to the west.
I've been to the north and the south.
Once I met there an old polar bear,
But I found out he had a big mouth.

That's why I'm singing
For you, forgotten cowboys,
Forgotten cowboys of the world.
Come to Iceland, 'cause it's a nice land
And you can shake the shepherd's hand.
And if you come to Iceland
You can join the local band.

I'm told that this is sung at every community event going. It has a classic country and western tune that you can predict even if you don't actually know it. Very strange.

So now I'm back at home and giving serious thought to having something to eat, as alcohol on an empty stomach isn't a good idea. I know, I should have breakfast, but most days I don't. Or lunch, for that matter. And I have a large bar of chocolate calling to me right now...

Sometimes I think I'm adrift in a totally alien culture, and I don't just mean Iceland.

You see, I'm not a people person. I'm a 'people I know well and share common ideas with' person. I'm great with people with whom I can hold a conversation on art, literature, science, history, whatever; those people I can handle. Ask me to make small talk and I'm completely lost.

I discussed it at length with my therapist some years ago. I've always seen conversation as a method of passing information between two or more people, a way of transferring ideas. I am, if you wish, a meme's ideal host. To me, information should be shared, enjoyed, questioned, discussed. But I've never really got the hang of the social aspect of conversation, of talking about nothing in order to strengthen the ties between members of a group. Why talk about soap operas when there are the fundamental truths of the universe to consider? Why not strengthen the ties by discussing philosophy? Why should I be concerned with what happened on Pop Idol? Is it any of my business if a politician has an extra-maritial affair so long as it doesn't interfere with his work? If the Beckhams are pregnant again then that's very nice for them but why do I need to know?

If I'm bad with adults, I'm worse with children. It's not that I hate them, it's just that I have no idea how to hold a conversation with a child unless it's aided by a lego set or a mobius strip. Frankly, they terrify me. They're small (I'm scared I'm going to tread on them or something by accident), delicate (see small) and make loud high noices that hurt my rather sensitive ears. I am normally very uncomfortable around children. Given that my response to things I'm uncomfortable with is to withdraw from them as far as possible, I try to avoid children.

This is why I could never teach in a school. I can handle kids who want to learn - cub scouts were fine, in that they were well-behaved, came to meetings to learn and do strange things, and it was only two hours a week - but unruly children with no interest in learning would drive mad. I only really helped at cubs because I felt that I really ought to do some sort of community service (although it was certainly fun at times, I don't deny that).

Iceland is a very child-friendly place, and it's an aspect I'm having trouble with. Children are included in everything - dinner parties, office parties, even at work. It's rather disconcerting and is taking a lot of getting used to. And, unfortunately, I'm not very good at getting used to it.

Still, not being a wild party animal means I'm getting more embroidery done. Two leaves down, fourteen to go.

I thought I'd made it to a major landmark in my current embroidery project yesterday. I thought I was halfway through the goldwork bit.

The piece in question is a heraldic design consisting of half a sun, a crescent and a laurel wreath. The SCAdians among you will probably recognise the description, but for everyone else, the above items are all gold in colour, so I'm using a technique called Opus Anglicanum, or English Work. It's so called because England was the centre of the technique in the 12th and 13th centuries. It's still used today for things like regimental banners and heraldic tabards for ceremonies like the state opening of parliament.

It looks great when complete, but it does take a long time. So far I have the sun and the crescent done, and they've taken 20 hours. I'm now working on the laurel leaves, and they look as if they're going to take two hours each - a total of 32 hours then for 16 leaves. Aaaargh!!!! Fortunately I have a large stack of Malaysian DVDs to work my way through, and most of them I can watch and sew at the same time. Hmm... if I can get one done per evening I should at least get them done before Christmas.

Good thing I don't have anything else to do. :)

Christmas is breaking out in Akureyri. We have the lights in the town centre, the lights on in the other shopping centres, the lights on the main roads, the lights on the houses...

Everything is happening much earlier than it does in the UK. I used to be odd because if I actually bothered with Christmas decorations they went up for December 1st, the first of Christmas. That was when the advent calenders started, so it must be the day Christmas started. Only the shops did things earlier than that, and they began after bonfire night.

Christmas in Iceland doesn't seem to be particularly Christian. The country has such a long and proud viking history that they celebrate Yule instead, and have the full 12-day party with a bit of Christianity thrown into the middle. They have, however, taken to the decorations with a vengeance.

The addition of Christmas decorations is quite cheering through the long evenings. From where I sit I can see a flat that has lights all around the window frames. I think that I may go and get something similar myself - I've always liked Christmas lights. Several houses along the road have lights strewn across their balconies, and others have them hanging from the eaves. They all look very picturesque, particularly given the current snow.

The current snow turned to rain today, which is now freezing and turning to ice on the roads. I've just been back to the airport with Doug to try to get my car started and, although I'm getting fuel through (I can smell it) it still won't start. I wonder if it's the spark plugs. Unfortunately it's got one of those engines where everything is sealed and electronic, so I think it may have to go to the garage (once I get it started) for a check-up and tune-up.

It's definitely getting warmer here - I've heard the rumble that signifies a major avalanche off the roof twice in the last five minutes.

So in spite of the car issue, I'm still quite cheery. I think it might be the prospect of building a yuletide wreath for the door - on my list of things to do tonight.

I have just made an astounding discovery. There is a set of shelves in the unused office room downstairs here in the house that contains over thirty years worth of both Scientific American and Sky and Telescope.

That's enough to keep even me going for quite a while. Oh, there's also Physics Today and a couple of maths titles, but SciAm and S&T are the real treasures.

It's tricky getting science current affairs magazines over here. When you can get them they're expensive due to shipping costs and the import duties on entertainment items. It's a tough one that - are they education or entertainment? I've had to subscribe to SciAm and New Scientist in order to get them myself (or rather I will when my new subscriptions kick in) so it's wonderful to find something to read in the meantime.

One of the things I like about S&T is that it doesn't restrict itself to purely technical articles, but also has items on the history of astronomy as well. I've always been interested in the history of science, and now that I'm likely to be teaching the introductory Philosophy of Science module for the Cognitive Science course next year it may be quite useful. It seems to be the norm to teach PoS using the history of astronomy to illustrate how science works. What a hardship!

The skies are very astronomer-friendly here right now - which is why it's so cold. Unfortunately the sun is failing to perform according to spec so the good viewing nights are singularly lacking in aurorae, while the fantastic magnetic storms that occurred a fortnight ago occurred behind heavy snow-cloud cover. Ah well, I still have four months of good astronomical darkness to look forward too. We're bound to have a good auroral storm some time.

When you have your first 3am gaming session for a couple of years then have to get up at 8am to catch a flight, you tend to be a bit tired for the rest of the day. Well that's my excuse for having done nothing useful today.

Both of my flights this weekend have been in clear skies, giving me an excellent view of the landscape beneath me. A lot of the interior seems to be a plateau, with valleys gouged out of it ike flakes of flint from a prehistoric axe. Occasionally there's a sharp ridge between two valleys, but much of the land is flat with steep sides down into u-shaped glacial valleys. I did take some photos, but I'm not sure how they'll come out from the aircraft.

A disadvantage of the clear weather is that the temperature dropped to -20 C / -4 F last night so that when I came to start my car when I arrived back at lunchtime the fuel system had frozen again and Doug had to pick me up instead. I like the snow, but the car business is beginning to get a little tiresome. I also have problems closing the door, as the catch doesn't catch. I think perhaps I'm going to have to give some serious thought to how to winter-proof the car, particularly since we're actually quite early in the winter as of yet. Things shouldn't get this bad until January, so we might be in for a bad winter. The temperature is forecast to reach the dizzy heights of 2 c / 35 F on Tuesday, so I'm hoping to collect the car then. By which point I will have got antifreeze for the fuel system, I think.

It was a real shame, the business with the car, as it put a dampener on what had been a really good weekend. I'd done a little Christmas shopping (I now have a nice new Icelandic wool hat for myself and another couple for other people), I was pulled into the big craft shop - always dangerous - and came out with a kit to make a Christmas wreath for the door.

Then I got back, found a non-functional car and got rather cold and miserable. No wonder I curled up into a ball and slept the afternoon.

My name is Nik and I'm a roleplaying addict.

Last night I got my first serious gaming fix in waaaaay too long a time. I went down to Keflavík for an SCA meeting then spent the evening (er... night) playing D&D. It wasn't actually in my plan, but it's the sort of addition I'm all too willing to make room for.

Actually, my plan was to fly down to Reykjavík, do a bit of shopping, visit the games shop (because I hadn't had a gaming fix in far too long) and buy something swashbluckling then go over for the Klakavirki meeting, maybe play a boardgame in the evening then come back today. But the marvellous Ray (the GM) had other plans.

So I spent two and a half hours creating a 7th level elven bard (with the aid of my new 3.5th edition Players Handbook, obtained on the base) then had seven hours of serious gaming time and eventually fell into bed at 3am.

It occurred to me that I have clearly been contaminated by mixing with the SCA fencing community. My normal character would be either a mage or a barbarian with the largest, nastiest weapons available. Peace through superior firepower, as it were. But what do I end up playing? A bard armed with a case of rapier and the occasional completely ineffective song. I've been got at! Antonio and the rest of the gang clearly have a lot to answer for.

Success! I have a funtioning car once more!

As usual in this country, getting it working was something of an adventure. My colleague the Moose took me down to Bilanaust, the local equivalent of Halfords (although much smaller) where I got myself a new battery, a large can of antifreeze, a pick/brush for clearing snow and ice off the car, an ajustable wrench and, wonder of wonder, a set of velcro strap-on crampons.

There was one slight problem. I have what I think of as a perfectly normal battery. Normal in terms of size, that it. Well it isn't. Like my car, it's small. So small that the smallest car battery they had was a bit bigger than the original, so there was a slight panic that it wouldn't fit. Fortunately it does, and the restraining bolt still restrains it.

The next excitement was trying to start the car. I tried, and the battery performed marvellously, but the car still wouldn't start. It sounded as if there was a restricted fuel flow getting to the engine. Eventually though I got it to catch and, once it had started it ran beautifully.

I suspect what had happened was that there was some moisture in the fuel system that had frozen and partially blocked the pipe. Either the repeated attempts to start the engine warmed it up sufficiently to clear the blockage to the frantic accellerator-pumping together with the suction effect as the engine tried to run had the same effect. I think I'm going to have to get some of that stuff you add to the petrol tank to clear it of moisture.

Now it just has to work tomorrow morning so that I can get to the airport to fly down to Reykjavík and I'll be a happy bunny once more.

My car is still at the office. It almost started this morning when I got in, but wouldn't remain started. Considering that the temperature is now down to -13 C / 9 F I can't say I blame it.. Tomorrow one of my colleagues is bringing his battery charger in so I can at least top it up and try to get sufficiently mobile to go down to the garage.

The snow has now reached six inches in the non-drifting areas, and is soft and powdery. It's so unlike anything I've experienced in the UK it's amazing. I know I keep saying this but every time I go outside I'm struck by how wonderful it is. To walk through it you don't pick your feet up and pull them out of the snow, you shuffle forwards beneath the surface and kick the snow out of your path. It creaks and groans as you walk on it.

Seemingly Reykjavík got snow a couple of days ago too, which is quite unusual this early in the winter. It might be interesting flying down there on Saturday - I'm planning on having a functional car by then in order to get to the airport. My big plan is to do a bit of Christmas shopping in Reykjavík, as it seems rather unfair to move here to Iceland then not bring Icelandic Yuletide gifts back with me. I may also pick up some more unspun wool, as I'd quite like to try spinning and felt-making and I'm sure that She Who I Supply wouldn't object to more supplies in the post.

All I have to do now is get through tomorrow. I have a pile of marking to do - assembly language, what a joy - and a final lab to write for next week. I have the final lecture done, I just have to do the lab to go with it.

Well, I say my last lecture - I may be giving an extra one on quantum computing. Without the mathematics. Quantum Computers For Engineers, I think I'll call it. And not invite any of the departmental mathematicians or physicists in case they frighten my first years again with greek letters and strangely shaped brackets.

Today I discovered another hazard of living in a cold climate: batteries have problems.

It seems that by the time you get down to the temperatures we're experiencing here during the day (around -5 Celcius / 20ish Farenheit) a normal UK battery has only about 50% of the oomph it has in warmer climes. It is necessary, therefore, to buy a cold-weather battery.

Now I'd noticed that my battery was a little sluggish, but this evening things came to a head when the car wouldn't start for me to go to choir. Still, it was over two years old, which is pretty standard for battery life. So my little car has stayed at the office overnight in the hope that sometime in the heat (!) of the day tomorrow it'll start and I can go down to the garage and get myself a new high-power battery.

As a result I've missed choir practise, which is a bit annoying as it was a compulsory one for the carol concert in December. I'll drop Mike an email explaining what happened, but I suspect that my Wednesdays are now free until after Christmas.

My personal battery starter also has problems on these dark mornings. On days that I don't have lectures - like today - it's very easy to turn the alarm off at 07:30 (in pitch darkness), roll over for an extra ten minutes and wake up again at 10:00 (still pre-dawn, but at least it's light outside). A lot of people have this problem, I'm told. At least two of us in the office today.

So it's a night in front of a movie (quite possibly S.W.A.T. starring Samuel L. Jackson and Colin Farrell) with my needlework instead.

In honour of it being Icelandic Language Day, today's posting is being brought to you by the work ekki.

Strictly spealing, ekki translates as not, but its usage is much broader than that. One friend told me that he wondered for a while if it was a common childhood nickname as he'd heard a lot of adults calling Ekki! to their kids. In this context it means don't! or stop that! I like the sound - Ekki! - it has a certain emphasis combined with a semblance to the work 'yucky' that appeals. So I might be tempted to describe the outcome of the recent elections as Ekki!, implying that it was bad and wrong and yucky.

I like the work ekki. It's short and to the point.

Many Icelandic words are not short. As Icelandic is a Norse/Germanic language many words are composed of shorter words, which means that the number of syllables gets out of control very quickly. Consider my university faculty, the Faculty of Information Technology. In Icelandic this translates as Upplýsingatæknideild, information - from the Upplysing bit - and technology from the tæknideild bit. I can't pronounce it yet; I get as far as Upplýsingerrr.... and trail off into an embarrassed silence.

Ah well... give me time and I'll work on the problem.
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Charmed appears to have run its season here on Channel One, and in its place we have Dead Like Me, a strange but amusing programme about a girl who dies at the age of 18 and becomes a grim reaper, responsible for the collection of other souls.

That I can take. The concept, the humour, all fit quite well with my idea of what entertaining television should be. What I am having problems with is that Mandy Patinkin is Old.

You see, I never watched ER, so I think I missed that in-between stage of him playing a responsible character. To me, Mandy Patinkin should have long hair and be wandering around saying Alo. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die. He should not be a kindly uncle figure. For goodness sake, he's not even carrying a rapier!

That aside, Dead Like Me is the current highlight of Icelandic television and is the only thing worth putting the embroidery down for. As a result, the embroidery is coming along quite nicely, thank you. The reading is also coming on apace, although whether that's due to the lack of TV or the strange urge that seems to come over me when it's dark and snowy to curl up in a corner with a book, I can't say.

Yesterday I read Avenger, the latest paperback release from Frederick Forsyth. I like Freddy Forsyth's books. He manages to get a rollicking good plot in without the technical padding that Clancy uses. Both authors are excellent in their fields, but I rather like the conciseness of Forsyth's work. Although I do admit that I found myself questioning a little of the right-wing propaganda (for shame, me becoming radical...). The twist at the end was quite good.

And thinking of Usama Bin Laden, BBC 7 are currently broadcasting the 1973 radio adaptation of Asimov's Foundation trilogy. In case there are people out there who haven't yet heard the tale, it seems at while in the UK as a student Bin Laden was very fond of Asimov, and that when Foundation was translated into Arabic it went under the title of Al Qaeda. The theory that Bin Laden sees himself as a present-day Sheldon is quite an interesting one, and I have to wonder if he read Foundation, did he also read Dune? You know, priviledged kid goes off to join desert tribes and start a jihad?

But back to the radio. I'm collecting a lot of drama and comedy from BBC 7 at present. They have oodles of science fiction - as well as Foundation we currently have The Midwich Cuckoos and Brave New World, and we've just had Voyager and The Kraken Wakes. I'm looking forward to the repeats of all of the Dr Who and Blake's Seven stuff over the next few months.

The really good thing is that with the aid of a bit of software I can record them in the office and take them home to listen there. Who cares that it's dark at night (and in the morning)? Who cares that I gave a two-hour lecture before dawn today? I have books, embroidery and radio plays, so I'm happy.

Today I had a new and, er..., exciting experience. I came across a genuine bad egg.

What? I hear you ask, you've never come across a bad egg before? Well,no actually. I have been cossetted by the modern food chain with its quality control methods and have never before cracked open an egg to find it bad. Even eggs a month or more past their sell-by date have been yellow and yummy.

But today... today I did some baking.I'd promised Syed that I'd bake him an Eplakakki (Applecake) from a recipe given to me by the wife of one of my colleagues, so with today being the festival of Eid I thought it would be a good and appropriate time so to do. Out came the eggs, which were, I admit, a week beyond their sell by date, and two of them went into the cake. No problems so far.

All eggs here in Iceland are white, by the way. Except for the guillemot eggs, which are green.

The cake went into the oven, I washed up and went away to do a bit more reading. About an hour later I went down to check on the cake (looking good) and decided to have eggy bread for lunch. Out come the eggs again and, when I cracked the first one out into the dish I gagged as the smell hit me. Not only that, but the white had turned into a small amount of a clear watery substance while the yolk had swollen up and become black and firm.

IfI hadn't been almost throwing up at the smell I would have dissected it out of curiosity, but the lack of available gas masks precluded this and it went into a plastic bag and into the outdoor bin immediately. I didn't really feel like eggy bread after that.

The cake, however, was a great success. It was tested after dinner with banana choc chip ice cream. Syed even had seconds.

Saturday seems to be developing a routine of its own. I wake up, think 'Aha - no work', pick up a book, maybe have a break to have something to eat, then suddenly the book is finished and it's evening.

The gap in betweem has been performed to a soundtrack of three football matches (one in Icelandic) and various stuff from my collection. ITunes is handy like that - I have several megalists set up that will take over six hours to complete so I can just fire and forget my musical accompaniment to the day.

I'm beginning to feel a bit guilty about this - shouldn't I be doing something more productive with my days off? Shouldn't I be visiting things, doing things, making things? But there's a part of my saying "look, it's your day off, you don't have to do anything with it". I'm still not sure whether I should listen to that part of my mind.

Today's book was Ken McLeod's The Star Faction. Cyberpunk with a big dose of political theory thrown in. It was certainly an interesting read, although I'm not sure whether I'll buy the rest of the series.

Actually I probably will because they'll have them in airports. Ho hum.

One thing the book did make me think about was politics. My politics. What exactly are they? I know that I don't like any of the major parties so what, if I were to form my own political group, would it believe in?

A few things come to mind immediately - things like free education, free healthcare and free access to information - but the more I thought the more I started thinking about work, jobs and salaries.

There should be a job available for everyone, and that job should be suitable to his capabilities and interests. Everyone has a right to a job. But in having a job, he also has responsibilities to go with it. He is responsible for actually performing that job and, through it, contributing to society both monetarily through taxes and physically through the function of his job. It is perfectly acceptable not working on medical grounds and in these cases an average income would be provided (old age is a perfectly good medical ground and pensioners would similarly have an average income pension).

The job providers too have rights and responsibilities. They have the right to employ people suited to their available jobs, and the right to expect the education system to provide people capable of performing them. Their responsibilities include fair treatment of their employees, the provision of sensible wages and that they must provide a service to their local community. This doesn't have to be a direct local manufacturing service, this might be something like providing kit and transport for a local school football team.

The government has responsibilities, the biggest one of which is to maintain the quality of life and standard of living of the country's population within a sustainable environment. It should not, however, use these as excuses for invading other countries. Defence should be strong, but defensive.

Internation cooperation and collaberation should be encouraged, but not to the point of agreeing to an action that is either morally wrong or would injure the standard of living within the country (not that I'm thinking of oil or fish at this point, you understand). Facts, not opinions, should be used as the basis of policy.

I've no idea about economics, so if anyone has, and can tell me how to make this work, please let me know and together we can change the world.

And just another courple of things that would be funded in my Utopia: Space science (manned, unmanned and ground-based), other science, education, medical services, museums and galleries.

Although the Turner prize would be limited to painting and sculpture, no unmade beds or pickled sheep, thank you.

My little girlie Saxo is now a big tough studded brute. Well, not exactly...

This morning the snow had formed a small drift around my car. Only about 8 inches, but a drift all the same, sculpted by the wind into an undulating dune that crossed the driveway. The car itself was under 3 inches of tiny white spheres of frozen water that were having a good try at creating a hexagonally close-packed structure. The snow was firm and dry and shook off my trouser legs like powder. It was snow completely unlike anything I remember from the UK.

It was also tricky, but not impossible, to drive through. The depth of snow did help to keep the tyres moving in the same direction but wasn't deep enough to impede their forward motion. From the house to the sideroad was fresh snow; the sideroad was a mess of snow and frozen blocks where other cars had gone before me; the urban road was packed snow and more slippery, as the snow had been melted by the pressure of the cars upon it then immediately frozen again; the dual carriageway was recently gritted, which helped.

As promised, the garage had my tyres for me when I went along at 16:00 after what seemed an eternity writing coursework and Monday morning's 08:10 lecture. It took them about 20 minutes to fit the four tyres and repair my spare after the puncture it took at Keflavik last time around, during which I discussed Liverpool FC's plans for a new stadium at Stanley Park with one of the mechanics and drank a free cup of coffee.

(You get a lot of free coffee here in Iceland. Even the supermarkets have it in large dispensing flasks at the door with stacks of polystyrene or paper cups.)

So I went on my way rejoicing, and indeed, I did rejoice! The difference was immediately noticable, as areas which had been slippery on the way to the garage were now no problem at all. Hurrah! I can now face the winter with the prospect of mobility.

Sometimes it's good to be female. It saves you from all sorts of terrible emotional problems when people question the size of your, er, accessories.

In this case it was my car. Or, to be more accurate, the size of my car's wheels. Last night we had a rather severe frost here in Akureyri - it might have been a combined frost and snowfall, come to think of it - and when I looked out of my bedroom window this morning the road outside shone white. And I do mean shone - until now when the road has been white the grass on each side has been white as well, but this morning the road stood out quite dramatically.

Aha, I thought, perhaps it's time to go and get those studded tyres.

Just over the river is a Shell/Bridgestone tyre franchise which was recommended to me by several of my colleagues, so I pootled along there - slowly, so as not to skid too much - and happily walked into the shop to ask about studded tyres. A scarlet-clad mechanic came out and looked at my car then returned to the office to consult the computer.

There was a problem. They didn't have tyres that small in stock.

My car is a Citroen Saxo, it's not a Sinclair C5. It's not that small. I can get a longbow into it quite comfortably. I can even get a disassembled trebuchet with a seven-foot throwing arm into it (just) and he was saying it was too small to stock tyres for. If I'd been male I'm sure I'd have felt my manhood was being questioned and I would have picked up the nearest tyre iron and begun an orgy of testerone-fuelled destruction.

Fortunately I'm not and just found it surprising and slightly amusing.

The tyres are being shipped up from Reykjavik (where they must clearly have smaller cars) and I'm going to have them fitted tomorrow. This is a Good Thing, as on the way home from work tonight I almost missed the turning into Fosshlid, the street off which I live, as I turned the steering wheel to the right but the car decided to go straight on. Fortunately the speed limit is 30kmh (about 20mph) and I was driving slowly as a result of the snow, so I applied the brakes carefully and only overshot the road by a couple of metres. The road itself was empty so there wasn't a problem reversing either.

The challenge may be in getting the car to the garage tomorrow. The main road should be fine, but I could have problems getting onto it. Ah well, 2mph is a perfectly reasonable speed in a built up area, isn't it?

I was about to rant about how crappy Microsoft software is - again - then I thought What's the point? We all know it's crap anyway and they're not going to do anything about it any time soon so I won't.

So instead I'm going to talk about language. I'm very conscious of language here. Almost everyone I've spoken to speaks English, including the bus drivers. The only person who didn't was a taxi driver in Reykjavik and we muddled along because I could remember the name of the hotel next to the bus station.

The Icelanders are very proud of their language, sufficiently so to have Icelandic Language Day next week. One of the historical reasons for this is that it almost died out at the end of the 19th century when Iceland was governed by Denmark and Danish was the language of the administration. It was cool to speak Danish.

At the same time a victorian etymologist announced that Icelandic was very nearly Old Norse. The Icelanders picked up on this and decided to save their language in the same way they had saved their national writings, the Sagas. Suddenly it was cool to speak Icelandic, although grandmothers continued to speak Danish on Sundays after church.

(By the way, not all of the sagas were saved - the only copies of some of them were eaten during a particularly harsh winter.)

My ability to speak Icelandic, never mind Danish, is limited to basic pleasantries - hello, goodbye, thank you, that sort of thing - but I think I'm beginning to get the hang of pronouncing words that are written down. Of course there are some strange pronunciation rules that I have to think hard about, like ll (pronounced 'tl'), f (pronounced 'p' in certain circumstances) and 'hv' (pronounced 'kv').

Then at choir this evening it was brought home to me that English is just as bad, possibly worse. Take the carol 'O Come All Ye Faithful', with the verse God of God, Light of Light, Lo He abhors not the Virgin's womb. That's womb to rhyme with room. Except it's not obvious. I stood in a group of alti who sang 'wom-b'. As in 'bat'.

I suspect it may have something to do with us getting rid of all of the accents on our vowels. At least in Icelandic you can look at a vowel with its associated accent or lack thereof and know that it's going to have a particular sound. There is an obvious difference between á and a (it's ow as opposed to ar without the r).

Thankfully all of the carols we are singing are in English or Latin (except for 'What is that Agreeable Smell?', which is in French and despised by all). I can hold my own in English and Latin, but if we start singing in Icelandic I fear that the alti around me are going to have a hard time not breaking down in fits of hysterical laughter.

I have just seen a particularly strange cartoon on 'PopTivi', the local channel dedicated to pop music and what I have to suspect is the equivalent of the BBC3 audience in the UK. The series is about a dancer called Erotica (voiced and visually inspired by Pamela Anderson), who is a member of the Tenderloins Strip Team, a group who seem to tour the world taking part in pole dancing competitions. Between contests Erotica fights crime and crushes evil under the nom de guerre of Stripperella. In a costume that leaves little to the imagination. What she does have though instead of a BatPhone is a BraPhone.

As one also well endowed in the bosom department, I find myself wondering just how practical this BraPhone is. I mean, to answer it she has to take it off, and somehow manages this without the need to remove either her shirt or even her sleeves. Perhaps it has velcro strap fastenings at the shoulders - although whether velcro would be up to the mechanical stress of her action sequences is open to doubt.

There is also the breast cancer issue - is the regular exposure of the breasts to microwave radiation a potential health hazard? Although I suppose in her case the silicone layer might provide a certain amount of radiation shielding.

I may be forced to watch this again to further comment on the reality of the series - from a purely academic viewpoint, you understand.

It's cold here today. It's very cold. We've had a wind down of the arctic that hasn't bothered to go around you, it's gone straight through you. This after a night of continual rain and gales which were strangely musical as I lay in bed under the eave of the house.

So it was cold when I got up, and cold when I went into work and cold when I went for lunch and cold when I came home. What's worse is that I have a toothache as well.

Now some of you know how I feel about dentists. I had a bad experience as a child and now they have to sedate me before I'll let them come anywhere near my mouth with anything pointed. I have this terrible fear that they're going to fill my mouth and stop me breathing so I start having panic attacks. In Scotland that was manageable as I used to go to the Dental Hospital in Dundee, but here's it's a different matter. My face is swollen like a hamster but I'm fending off the pain with Ibruprofen and hoping it'll die down and I can go to the Dental Hospital in Liverpool when I get home.

Today I was in work before the sun rose and didn't leave until after the sun had set. Not that I saw it rise or set, of course, and in fact the closest I came to seeing our local star was when something bright backlit the clouds somewhere to the south.

I knew, logically, that the days would be shorter in the winter up here, but that hasn't prepared me for that physical reality. I mean, it used to get dark early in Aberdeen, didn't it? Peanuts! Today - using the strict sense of the word, from the sun passing zero degrees altitude on the way up to passing it again on the way down - was six hours and forty eight minutes. Yesterday was six hours and fifty five minutes. Seven minutes a day doesn't seem much, but if you compare it to Liverpool, which loses about four and a half minutes of daylight at day, it starts getting very dark very quickly.

Aha! I hear you cry, doesn't that mean that you get lots of wonderful auroral observing time? Well, strictly speaking yes, but it's so cloudy right now that we can't see anything. Which is particularly annoying as there's a spectacular magnetic storm going on at present. The only sign of it I'm experiencing is my inability to pick up the World Service on the radio.

Still, when the skies do clear it is indeed spectacular. Even here in the town the skies are much darker than they were even in St. Andrews. Light pollution is low - all of the streetlamps are appropriately designed to throw light down, not up - and the general clarity of the air is also very good. Smog doesn't happen here.

So here I am, new camera at the ready, waiting for the sky to clear and a nice bright aurora to start up so I can bring you pictures. I know that the camera does quite good moon shots as I have a couple of these already, although it does try to focus on things a little closer than a quarter of a million miles when given the chance. Things like trees or rooftops. Never mind, I'm sure that if I read the manual it'll tell me how to override the autofocus mechanism. And focussing at infinity is something even I can do.

It's been a quiet day. The weather has been pretty good, but not quite enough for me to go off volcano hunting. The problem is that although it's only 93 miles, that's about 85 miles of dirt tracks and roads otherwise unuitable for my little car.

So instead I've spent the day reading and stitching. I realised when I was back in the UK that I needed a dose of good solid science fiction. A lot of the stuff I've read recently has been fantasy. So I wandered into the bookshop at Stanstead and came out with The Star Faction by Ken McLeod. I'm about 20% of the way into it and I'm having a bit of trouble with the style - it's a bit fragmented - but the setting seems quite good. I'll report back as I get further into it.

Other than that it's been a day of goldwork and making sweet and sour pork. Nothing exciting at all.

I've had several folks in the UK ask me if I'm affected by the erruption at Grimsvotn. Most amusing of these was my sister, who phoned Mum (not me - maybe she thought the phones were out :) ) to see if I was OK.

Well, no-one around here seems to be packing their belongings into the car and heading in the opposite direction. According to the local news no-one near Hofn (the nearest town, population approximately 1,700 people) is leaving either. If folks wanted to head away from it here in Akureyri then they'd have to take the ferry to Greenland or get very wet very quickly.

The volcano is 93 miles south south east of me here as the raven flies - that's a little less than the distance between Liverpool and Nottingham. It's probably visible from the summit of Mt. Sulur just behind the town. Unfortunately I can't view it from there as a) it's on top of a mountain and I don't do mountaineering and b) it's probably too muddy to climb Sulur right now even if I was.

The muddiness is due to the melt of this week's snow. I don't know, I thought the weather in the UK was changeable, but Iceland is amazing. The temperature range over the past three days has been 22 Celcius, from -4 to +16. +16 is a good temperature for the middle of summer up here.

This is due, I'm told, to the fact that the gulf stream curves up the west coast and meets the arctic wind on the north coast, giving us here in Akureyri a lot of wind and rain and providing us with a microclimate all of our own that is sufficient to allow us to have a major botanical gardens here in the town.

No matter what the temperature though, we do get the wind. Lots of it, blowing straight up the fjord. Except when it blows off the highlands from the south, carrying volcanic ash with it. Unfortunately I didn't manage to identify any ash on my car, although it was supposed to have fallen here.

Never mind. Weather permitting tomorrow I might go and try to cut a few miles off that 93 and see if I can get some pictures.

I've had a very intense day and I'm shattered. Did the normal stuff - woke up, thought good grief it's dark, plodded through the snow into work, that sort of thing - but also attended a seminar on the development of a functional language for quantum computing.

It was the first of the faculty's seminars by external speakers and I recommended that my first year students attend as I've set them a question on Moore's Law in their current coursework. A seminar on quantum computing, I thought, would help them understand a little bit more of the situation.

I feel a bit guilty about that - while it was very interesting it was a bit heavy on the linear algebra for me, so my poor students must have felt really out of their depths. Fortunately I was planning to give them a final lecture on quantum computing myself, so I may bring it forward a bit to explain basic quantum physics and its application to computing. Without linear algebra, but with lots of handwaving. :)

This evening a group of us took our visitor out to the Greifinn for dinner. The Greifinn (which translates as The Count) is the main resterant in town which does pizzas, burgers and fajitas as well as a selection of more local cuisine.

I decided to go for something local and had difficulty choosing between pan-fried salted cod with melted cheese and roast guillemot with herb sauce and fried vegetables. I eventually opted for the fish which, although understandably a little salty, was very tasty.

What did amuse me was one of the coffee selections:

Strong Countess's Coffee
Cappucino + dom

Now there was an image to play with - coffee served to you by a leather-clad noblewoman in high heels and fishnets. I was very tempted, but finally opted for a huge bowl of many different ice-creams and fresh fruit and let my imagination run wild...

After all of that I'm now going to settle in and do some embroidery while I watch The Mission.

Well, strictly speaking I didn't forget my guitar, I just didn't have room for it in the car. And, given that I hadn't really played it for quite a while I thought that it wouldn't be a big deal.

Was I wrong or what?

This lack of television - or to be more precise, the lack of television interesting enough to keep me in front of the TV of an evening - has led to me doing much more musical and other stuff. In particular joining the choir has had something of a knock-on effect on my musicality.

I can sight-sing pretty well, although I don't have much confidence in my sight-singing so I like to be able to take the music home and sing along with it later on. This wasn't a problem with the Vivaldi Gloria as I have it on CD, but we've now started on a concert's worth of carols. My choir is going on tour at the beginning of December so I've really got to know the carols pretty well. That's on tour to the towns in the next valley to the east (Dalvik) and two valleys over to the west (Blonduos).

Fortunately I do know them... except that I know the soprano parts but am singing the alto part in the choir. Although I can sing soprano - and a pretty high soprano at that - I can only do it solo. My soprano just isn't suited to chorale singing. So I have to do some work learning the alto parts.

Which brings me back to the guitar. I could just program them into my music package and sing along with them, but that's got a limited future use. It makes much more sense to buy myself a new guitar which will allow me to not only learn these carols but also compose new stuff more easily than I can do with a keyboard and start learning the lute (I just have to retune the third string down a tone).

So on the way back from work today I dropped into the music shop (underneath the embroidery shop) and bought myself a new guitar. It's a Hohner nylon-strung classical guitar with a sweet tone and a reasonable price tag. I'll be able to play it sitting on the bed, in the comfy chair, on the floor... I'm so looking forward to this.

You know when you come across someone you haven't heard of for years and it gives you a bit of a shock? Well it happened this morning. Not a meeting, more a web discovery.

I was reading www.space.com as I do in the early morning when I came across and article on magnetic stars. Now it just so happens that in the early days of magnetic star research one of the big names in the field was an Australian by the name of DWN Stibbs, who later became Napier Professor of Astronomy at St. Andrews.

Prof Stibbs was quite a character; he introduced the St. Andrews City-to-Surf Race, an 8-mile run from the Observatory to the beach, out up Strathkinness hill and back down to the Observatory that was open only to members of the department and invited guests. I even did it in my first year, clocking up what must have been the slowest time in the race's short history. When I was invited to take part in my second year I pleaded a knee injury but volunteered to help in any way I could - I became Official Balloon Releaser, both at the race and on the Departmental Day Out.

The day out was another of the Prof's ideas - once a year the department would pay for all of the astronomy staff and students to go on a trip over to Mount Shiehallion (where Maskelyne first measured the Gravitational Constant) via the Black Watch memorial and back via Queen's View and Kinloch Rannoch (where the traditional stone-skimming across the loch took place).

He also had 2-hour honours lectures at 15:00 on a Friday but supplied us with coffee and sticky buns during the mid-lecture coffee break. He would always give these lectures wearing a three-piece suit, academic gown and running shoes. I got on with him quite well, actually, and even had coffee in his office once. He's to thank for me drinking coffee at all. :)

So anyway, I was reading this article and it occurred to me to look him up on the web. The first page I found told me all about the optical munitions systems he invented during WWII - things like a solar compass for tanks, and an optical sight for guns. I was astonished. It had never occurred to me that, like many academics of his generation he'd have spent the war doing strange and interesting military research.

He's now 85 and still going strong, it seems, and is back as a Visiting Fellow at the Mount Stromlo and Siding Springs Observatory with the Australian National University's Department of Mathematics. Good luck to him.

... you find the local volcanic eruption more interesting than the US elections.

Of course I appreciate that that is completely the wrong attitude to take, but it's true. As I see it, if Bush wins, we get more terrorism but we might go to Mars. If Kerry wins we might get less terrorism but he's not keen on going to Mars. I object to that as I want both less terrorism and a mission to Mars.

It's like elections in the UK - I don't like any of the choices but I still think it's important to vote. I certainly don't envy my American friends. For the record, I think I'd vote for Kerry on needs of the many grounds. Although in the end it'll still be a politician who wins and I don't think I trust any of them.

Remember the words of the great Douglas Adams;

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

At approximately 22:00 last night Iceland did one of those things it does so well; it exploded.

The Grimsvotn volcano under Vatnajokull, the largest glacier in Europe, has erupted, producing an 8 mile-high cloud of steam and ash that caused air traffic to be rerouted around the east of the country.

The volcano last errupted in 1983, and its shallow magma chamber has been refilling since 1998, heating up the ice above it. Directly above the volcanic caldera there is therefore an sub-glacial lake, similar to those proposed on Europa. The increasing amount of magma is the chamber has increased the amount of water and hence the pressure upon the glacier above the lake and the volcano below it. Last night the glacier cracked, allowing the water to escape and the volcano responded to the resulting drop in pressure by errupting.

As the volcano is in the middle of nowhere the authorities aren't too concerned about lava damage. What might cause significant problems though is the glacial outburst flood or jokulhlaup, Grimsvotn is very prone to these, and is the standard example used in texts on the subject.

The erruption is quite spectacular, I'm told, complete with huge clouds of steam and ash accompanied by lightning flashes. Unfortunately it's about 200km (160 miles) south east of me so I can't see anything from here.

It's also overdue, the previous one having been in 1983 and the normal period between erruptions being about ten years. It is occurring in one of the most active regions of the country, although it is not the big one everyone is waiting for, which is likely to be either Hekla (near Reykjavik) or Krafla (in the Myvatn area).

I don't think I'll get to see anything other than on TV, so I'm holding out for a Krafla eruption for the real fireworks.

I think my scales are wrong. Several people have told me that I've lost weight, but ten kilos in six weeks seems just a little bit impossible. Yet that's what my scales are saying.

I've never trusted scales. No, rather I've never liked scales. When I was a child I used to have to go to the hospital once a month, at best once every three months, for them to keep tabs on the epilepsy I developed after being hit by a car when I was 8. The epilepsy bit of the consultation was easy - 'Have you had any attacks since our last meeting?' 'No.' 'Good.' The rest of it always revolved around my weight and how I should lose some. Or lose a lot. This was particularly rich coming from a neurologist whose physique was more Richard Griffiths than Dick van Dyke. He might have been an excellent neurologist (by appointment to Princess Anne, no less) but he was also a man for whom lunch wasn't complete without a couple of gin and tonics.

It actually started long before that. I was going to the hospital for something else - I forget what - when I was hit by the car, so they had my records to hand. I forget what they were seeing me for, because all I can remember was that all they seemed interested in was weighing me. As a result, it feels as if I spent most of my childhood and teens on one diet or another, none of which worked. I did the low-carb diet long before Atkins and still nothing happened.

The only thing that did work was nearly dying of peritonitis which had me down to a marvellously skinny size 16. Naturally it didn't last.

So scales have been on the 'avoid' list for a long time now. I've resigned myself to the fact that I'm a blob and I'm going to stay a blob forever. I just don't let it stop me doing things that interest me. For instance, I fence - not very well - but I fence all the same. I adopt a style which doesn't place as much stress on the knees as others and I go out and have fun.

Then I arrive here and there's a set of scales in the bathroom. The masochist in me tries them out and finds, as expected, my weight was where it has hovered for years. Oh well, so much for clothes getting looser (you see, I'm very dense - I weigh even more than I appear to). So I carry on with life and try to put it out of my mind, until finally today, after various comments, I weighed myself again.

It's so difficult to believe that I have lost weight - that I can lose weight - that I'm now wondering if my increased insomnia and migraines mean that I'm dying of something horrible instead. Crazy, isn't it, the way the mind works? Particularly as I know that's a ludicrous idea. I've just got the calculator out and worked out that I'm actually about five stones lighter than I thought I was, which is very strange. It means that I must have lost an insane amount of weight over the eighteen months. Part of that is probably that I can't think in pounds, but it's still a lot.

So why don't I feel better for it?