For the past two days this place has looked like a Chinese laundry with sheets drying, shirts dripping and jeans clinging to every drop of passing moisture. Two rounds of laundry went through the wash yesterday. But as a result, after tonight, my humble abode will be laundry-free for two or three weeks.

When I came to Wales six weeks ago a pair of welly boots accompanied me across the Severn Bridge. It never stops raining in Wales I was told. But I have hardly used them. Yesterday was another glorious day. Not a cloud in the sky all day. Cold but bracing in the mid-winter sunshine.

Many years ago I discovered there were two ways to go running. Under Plan A you fixed a time with a mate a day or two ahead. Plan B was your fallback position. You put out your running clothes the night before and fell into them first thing the next morning while still half asleep. It’s a climb up the track to the post office...open two mornings a week...downhill to the slate workshop by the stone bridge over the river...then uphill all the way to Glandy Cross.

Unlike the Alice Springs Sailing Club, the Romney Marsh Mountain Rescue Team is a figment of local imagination so hills are not my forte. But I am very good going downhill. It was half and hour to the Spar shop to return my DVD...and a very pleasant run back...as far as the river. After that it was uphill. But I swept past the dogs and cats on the last leg feeling really pleased with myself. I was out for an hour and used the first excuse to phone Heidi and casually mention that I had been out running.

The Sunday newspapers are once again awash with DVDs. So I returned with a 6-inch thick pile of trees as the wrapping paper for Gary Cooper in Hemingway’s Farewell to Arms and Tony Hancock in The Lawyer. A good day’s pillaging. Between laundrying, running and film-watching another two thousand words went into my weblogs as I prepared to return to work the following day. I hate Mondays.

After the long mid-winter break, Q-mode...the bull in the china shop approach...had its attractions. But I defaulted into P-mode this morning and procrastinated my way through the morning on the computer. Things started to go wrong when I attempted to download some PrivatePost software. After wrestling with the beast for a while I concluded that it disliked my operating system...so an e-mail went off to this effect.

But while waiting for the software to fail to download, I noticed that Yahoo could send text messages to my mobile phone telling me that an e-mail had come in. The clever thing about it was that I could choose which e-mails got to beep at me. Foiled again! My ‘Get Code’ text message...’your registration number will arrive in minutes’... was ignored. Meanwhile the thought struck me that I should personalise My Yahoo!

Well one thing led to another and before I knew it another couple of hours had flashed by. But at least I was successful. The weather for Carmarthen, Cambridge, Rye, Malmo and Sundbyberg is now available to me each morning at the click of a mouse...it was misty in Rye this morning. What’s more, feeds now come in from two news agencies...The Guardian...and...and...from William Shepherd...yes...you can now get my weblog fed directly to your computer each morning...just click on subscribe and do what you’re told. Amazing. And free!

Having mastered the complexities of Real Simple Syndication (RSS)...yes I know it’s easy but everything hinges on getting round to it...I focussed my attention on the William Franklin weblog. Our generation needs to reinvent the 18th and 19th century ideals of a public science...and the gentleman who took part in it. The Open Source movement has been showing us the way for two decades. Cooperation instead of greed ‘n grab. So the thought is to put my financial research and day trading in the public domain. But how? Today I started to wrap my head around the question. I ended up with two new postings. Take a look. And watch this space.

And so to work. My work plans for 2006 will be people-focussed instead of business-focussed...a natural progression from the decision I made a couple of decades ago to work with my friends and with people I like hanging out with. The old adage of never mixing friends and business seems quite wrong to me. So my work list for the week comes in two parts. One part lists technical tasks like reactivating my IG-Index online account, getting my JAK account working over the internet and getting my housing in Lund sorted out.

The other part lists four colleagues I will be working with this year: Tom Greco in Tucson Arizona, John Papworth in Purton England, Toni Pinschof in Mael-Pestivien, Bretagne and Alan Pryke in Stockholm, Sweden. John of Purton was today’s focus. By the end of the day e-mails and attachments were whizzing through cyberspace on the subject of Conference Contracts and Budgets.