well it’s been dull.

at the drop of a hat, i wanted to travel to land’s end, the southwesterly corner of britain, and marvellously close to a selection of SIGINT locations to add to my collection.

considered going down on saturday, but hadn’t planned this trip well enough to raise my confidence above threshold, so spent the day doing loose-end cleanup, housecleaning, testing my compressor and other stuff, planning an 0500h sunday wakeup to set off south.

this was before my neighbours started a party.

or rather, one of them.

the female of the pair had presumably absconded with the kid to relatives/somewhere, leaving the male to get out of his tree. this in itself would be OK, were it not accompanied by qotsa, underworld, black sabbath and other otherwise good bands at high volume past midnight.

and then his CD started skipping: BUP-BUP-BUP-BUP-BUP PAP-PAP-PAP-PAP-PAP THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD having hit some dust on the disk, or similar flaw.

i am a patient man, but last time this happened it went on for three hours (THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD POP-POP-POP-POP-POP) as he was paralytic on the floor and unrousable; i try not to inflame matters by making a big issue out of it, but i was not willing to sleep through this again.

therefore at 0050h, I went around to see what could be done.

he was on the floor once more, dead to the world, beerglass full and untouched, and a sweet floral smell in the air. the back door was open but i didn’t wish to get done for breaking and entering, and he was certainly not going to respond to a doorbell over the racket.

then i noticed the second lounge window ajar; a little radical thinking as to what was defensible behaviour and silly enough not to land me in court, so i retreived a 8-foot bamboo pole from my garden, and used it to prod the prone body.

a couple of attempts at this, and then two or three minutes of carefully-directed prodding – armpits, tummy, ticklish bits – and his consciousness rose, and he sat-up, running entirely on autopilot. he killed the volume without even seeing me.

i withdrew the pole so quickly that i doubt he noticed it. he apologised as best he could, i complimented him on his musical taste, and went to bed.

0125h. bollocks. oh well, that screws the 0500h start.

so, sunday was more of the same. and here i am now. at least i have a routeplan to land’s end, if I ever need it.