today has been an exercise in spam reduction – it’s been quiet because the entire united states is on vacation this week, so i decided to write a spam-pattern-matcher and wire it into procmail to do more intelligent filtering of my inbox.

that occupied a merry two hours. now what?

weekend before last was the summer solstice – i shot up to oxford on the bike, getting the air-filter replaced, left over from the previous month’s 7500-mile service. then i went up to the rollright stones to hang with various friends, amongst whom are included the crew of pagans (The Dagda) who did security at last year’s open-air Terry Pratchett play as documented elsewhere.

it was a nice chance to see friends again; Jane (Still off from Qinetiq with a broken arm fom a horse-riding incident) — Aussie, Blind Paul, Helen, Gwydion, Bernie, Wendy, Andy (all Dagda) and to make new friends like Don and Ilsa (respectively head warden, and a jobbing summer student)

Aside from the 300 hippies, the idiots trying to set-up a techno rave in the foeld next door, and the sunrise, the most interesting thig was probably yet again falling-foul of a BBC Camera Crew for the program InsideOut ([www.bbc.co.uk]) in a program hosted by Arthur Brown (aka: The God of Hellfire, from The Crazy World of […] see [www.arthurbrownmusic.com] and [www.godofhellfire.co.uk])

Being neither (1) a hippy, nor (2) a pagan biker, (3) a new-age traveller, nor (4) a dowsing-rod wielding druid, but instead appearing rather clean-cut and scientific-looking, I was asked to present a piece to camera on the lichens that cover the stones, some species examples of which are ancient plants more than 800 years old, dated by diameter of growth.

Nobody from the Rollright trust seemed to want to do it, and since I actually am a (lapsed) amateur lichenologist, and had been chatting to the sound-recordist anyway (Hamster on a Stick! Hamster on a Stick!) I got didded.

Should air sometime in October/November.

Other news:

• Treestumps have been removed from the corner of the back garden, leaving a 10’x12′ area for concreting, and installation of a shed/motorcycle garage. Am considering whether to install underground conduid for Cat-5.

• Suzi is on the mend. No sign of a fit for three months.

• Off to see The Polyphonic Spree this week. Yay!

This weekend was mostly lived in a boozy haze – I had my friend Nick down to visit from Preston, having previously een best man at his wedding some years ago. His wife’s pregnant and the baby is due at the end of the year, so I thought it a good idea to grab him for a weekend of vice, or at least booze, food and cuban cigars.

Went rather well, actually, and it was especially nice to have a chance to visit my own village, go to pubs, unwind and letch see the local nightlife.