In my Little Cloud Blog I wrote of scurrying around on Ljusterö in the summer pulling plugs out of the wall when the heavens opened. And I went on to compare and contrast a Rye Storm that ‘comes wrapped in a howling gale’ with a Baltic Storm that ‘refuses to budge for an hour while discharging itself at any earthly target that takes its fancy’. ‘How sweet,’ I remarked, ‘to be a cloud…from which a gold string is dangling…floating in the blue.’ Wrong!

On Saturday night a thunder storm sat over Rye Citadel from five in the evening when we started rehearsing in St Mary’s Church and refused to budge until we had finished our concert four and a half hours later. Our final item…You’ll Never Walk Alone from Carousel…had full Sound and Light accompaniment. As we walked through the storm with our heads held high the thunder echoed down the aisle and the lightning shot across the stained glass window at the end of the nave. Our dreams were tossed and blown but we walked on…with hope in our hearts.

In the morning I had been out image gathering with my camera. Here is one from the poop deck at high tide. That is Bloggsie’s former boat Akela in the foreground….nowadays one of Ricky Goodsell’s three-boat fishing fleet. Every summer Connie was drafted in as crew for three days…and loved it…even though it took her three weeks to cough up the paint fumes she inhaled going with paint pot and brush into those parts of the vessel nobody else would reach. For her trouble she got fresh fish twice a week and the money to keep Vemara shipshape for another year.

Mozart formed the first part of the Simply Opera programme…The Magic Flute, Cosi Fan Tutte and The Marriage of Figaro with songs from West Side Story, The Sound of Music, Showboat and Carousal after the interval.

Simply Opera is unusual as it is made up of a dozen or so soloists who provide backing for each other and occasionally get together as a four-part choral ensemble. The effect is quite stunning. On three separate occasions today I was stopped on the High Street and told of hearing how wonderful the concert had been. My solo piece was in Gee Office Krupke.

Yesterday when I woke up with the light at a little after seven I found the deck was sparkling clean after the storm and by 0730 the sun was coming up into a lovely clear blue sky. So I took myself off to Rye Sports Centre for a Swim ‘n Shower and then took the quarter to nine train to Hastings.

I enjoy trips to town. The centre and seafront of Hastings have been improving ever since I arrived in Rye in 1990 and the town now compares favourably with any town on the South Coast. I spent the morning at Mahavi’s catching up on e-mails and popped out once to buy a Radio Cassette Player from Woolworths for £9.99. This is an essential tool for the Journeyman Tenor. Elspeth records my part onto tape, complete with accompaniment and tricky intros, so I can rehearse in the comfort of my own cabin…particularly well suited to The Pirates of Penzance.

It had been a good week so I was ready to treat myself to a movie. Of those on offer at the Odeon the one that appealed was Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada. The plot was the classic Hollywood Cinderella one but the acting was superb, the script and direction excellent and the insights into the Fashion Business interesting although the drugs side of the game was air-brushed out. So I enjoyed myself…which was the point of it all.

Afterwards I bumped into Malcolm at the Costa Coffee Shop in Waterman’s. He and Claire were just back from organising a gruelling three-day Accountants’ Conference in Washington DC and Dynamic Events goes from strength to strength.

It is fun remembering that we first met up as Live-Aboards moored alongside on River Brede Moorings. Connie was there because she loved living on a boat and I was there because I loved Connie. But Malcolm and Claire were there because they were down on their uppers.

Claire got caught by the house price bust in the early nineties and came south with her tail between her legs after handing back her keys…and her Negative Equity to her Manchester Apartment…to the Building Society. Malcolm was blown out of the water when the economy took a nose-dive and left him in a similar situation with regard to his insurance business. They have a humility…and a real genuine niceness about themselves and their success that only a ride on Life’s Wheel of Fortune seems able to impart.

The Russian music download site allofmp3.com has fallen foul of America’s Monstrous Regiment of White Collar Enforcers who are using it as an excuse for withholding endorsement of Russia’s efforts to join the World Trade Organisation. Theft of intellectual rights is the American claim. Poppycock! It is their Low Price Download Strategy that is upsetting the American Music Industry. I opened an account with allofmp3.com after discovering they could supply Little Cloud by the Incredible String Band for a dollar when nobody else had the track…see my 11th July blog.

Policing the internet is a growth business for the Enforcement Industry. On a cross-channel ferry three years ago I chatted with a teacher from Essex in the brief moments between the shepherding of her young flock around the upper deck. It was a fleeting encounter…part way between a chat and a flirt. ‘You were in there!’ was the predictable male chauvinistic reaction of my Fellow Smuggler. ‘Naa,’ was my response, ‘actresses, nurses and teachers are bad news.’

I should have left it at that but added with typical male bravado, ‘…but…yeah…maybe I should follow up. I can get her details from Google.’ Such is the boredom of a Dover-Calais Crossing that this remark evoked a challenge and a ten pound bet. We had a few drinks at The Ship on my winnings a few days later. I cheated a little by asking one of the kids the name of his school before disembarking. But with that information in my top pocket the rest was clear sailing. My Fellow Smuggler has a picture of the fair damsel on his hard-drive…courtesy of her school’s website.

Google has improved by leaps and bounds over the past three years. So it came as no surprise to discover that ethical dilemmas are starting to surface. Recently a friend googled the name of his daughter’s new boyfriend and discovered a daily internet blog expressing his intimate feelings about her and his relationship. My friend’s ethical compass went into a spin so he turned to me as his Blog Therapist. What should he do? It felt like snooping. But the young man must realise his blog could be read by colleagues and friends…and not just some anonymous global audience. Was he wrong to read it? If he read it should he let his prospective son-in-law know? What was he to say to his daughter?

Policies are Good Things. One decision and then Peter Drucker-style Management by Exception…with Common Sense overruling General Policy in Particular Circumstances. Those mentioned in my blogs are given three choices: like it or lump it, choose a pseudonym, or negotiate. Administering the policy is the hardest part. Heidi and Nicholas have said OK…but I wish they would use the Blog Search Engine from time to time...and Magdalena and Françoise are pseudonyms. So far this year two Wickham Assessments have been made. In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice Jane and Elizabeth Bennett agreed to remain silent. But I exposed…though I am always open to negotiation. However this begs the question of what happens when negotiations break down. The law after all is an ass.

Mumsnet is a lifeline for 60 000 mothers looking for advice on everything from how to deal with a miscarriage to childcare and going back to work. But a furious battle has been raging ever since lawyers for the childcare guru Gina Ford demanded that Justine Roberts…who runs the website…should ‘disassociate from the comments; delete derogatory ones; ensure they were not accessible through search engines; implement a procedure to monitor posts and pay Ms Ford damages and legal costs’. Ouch! What to do?

The debates on the Mumsnet Discussion Forum are healthy. The Queen of Routine’s strict style of child rearing as advocated in her top-selling Contented Little Baby Book needs to be challenged. But while Mumsnet’s Anonymity Policy allowed frank discussions on embarrassing issues between the likes of anorak and gothicmamma, it also permits personal attacks. Justine can hardly take on the well-funded Ms Ford but is naturally reluctant to meekly submit to the demands of Ms. Ford’s lawyers. ‘We don’t deny there are occasions where it gets personal...jokes no one would like to be the butt of…but we have an Abuse Policy and remove comments that contravene it when they are pointed out to us. But with ten thousand postings a day we need our members to be self-policing.’

Recently Goldman Sachs took time out from fleecing the universe and screwing the planet to command the US National Arbitration Forum to give them the internet domain name of an adult entertainment website. It might have given the Supreme Court an opportunity to widen the definition of pornography to include Trading in Derivatives and Fixing the Gold Price. But the Big Beast won at the first hurdle and Goldmansex.com was snatched away from its owner Rob Muller. Muller promptly responded to his grievous loss by registering his ownership of the Goldmensex.com domain name. But this time he took the precaution of informing the media that his new venture was not a pornography site. Goldman Sachs have launched new proceedings. Any takers for Goldmansax.com?

The Home Secretary John Reid has warned parents to be vigilant and look for signs that their children may be about to commit atrocities because they have been recruited into the army. ‘Once recruited these young men may end up travelling to the Middle East where they will be egged on by fellow squaddies to torture and beat Iraqi prisoners to death,’ warned the Home Secretary. John Reid said that warning signs are a sudden change to a crew-cut haircut or an unfamiliar Khaki uniform in the laundry basket. John Reid is a former member of a foreign Communist Party.