From Woman's skeleton found by workmen on the BBC News website today:

Det Ch Insp Jeff McMahon, of Greater Manchester Police, said: "This woman's death is highly suspicious and we have a team of trained detectives trying to establish who she is and what has happened to her."

Thank heavens they've stopped employing those pesky untrained detectives. Though don't Poirot, Miss Marple and the rest usually do better than the Plods?

And it seems from this preview of the upcoming film "The Wolf Man" that we all got one of last year's movies wrong:

Last year Taylor Lautner revealed his true colours in The Twilight Saga: New Moon, assisted by CGI effects that instantaneously transformed the teenage hunk into a vulpine beast.

Yes, the BBC has discovered the existence of werefoxes...

Bloody laptop's still partly borked. Something on it objects to returning from stand-by, suspend, or whatever, and all it gives back by way of a clue is those stupidly incomprehensible Windoze error messages that blithely tell you to remove whatever it was you just installed, and aren't much help if what you just (re)installed was the entire bloody operating system and all its attendant driver and MS-Update crud.

The amount of time and energy I've wasted on this is just stupid. I think it might be time for something I was considering the other day, but put off because of the issues of getting my few remaining Windoze-only apps running again: where's my Ubuntu boot CD...?

It was probably the highest tide of the season yesterday afternoon, forecast as 7.5m at London Bridge. It must've been a bit early though - I think the weather can do that when you're uite a long way up a tidal river. So although it was expected at 16:27, it had already turned and was a few cm down when I got there to have a look at 16:15 or so.

It was still quite impressive though - there's an island under here, for instance:



And normally you can look down onto the decks and roofs (do boats have roofs?) of these houseboats:

So yesterday, with the snow mostly gone, I decided for the first time in a couple of weeks to get my bike out and give the dog a run around Gunnersbury Park. All went well - we did a circuit, with a stop at the café, then I thought I'd do one last loop of the lake.

At one point on the path, there is a disused water channel with a little bridge over it made of two concrete slabs. Here it is today:



I'm sure that once upon a time, these slabs fitted snugly together - but not any more. Years of use and (I guess) winter snow and ice mean there's now maybe an inch-and-a-half (35mm) gap. Just big enough to take a bicycle wheel - and tapering too...

So in went the wheel, then it locked, and over the handlebars went I. I'm pretty sure I didn't black out, but I know I was cursing, I even apologised for my language mid-curse to the fellow dog-walker to came to see if I was OK! She warned me I was about to start dripping blood (I did a fair bit of this in the minutes following) and tried to help get the bike free. The dog on the other hand was bloody useless - I clearly could never rely on sending him for help if I was stuck down a well or something!

And no, I wasn't wearing my cycle helmet, the rationale being that while I wear usually it for anything vaguely speedy, such as commuting, I was only pootling around the park. I won't make that mistake again... Then again, had I been going any faster than I was, I'd probably still be in hospital.

I managed to walk home, pausing to thank a park maintenance chap who offered sticking plasters from his first aid kit - I figured it would be better if I cleaned the injury and checked it out before trying to patch it up. Plus the plasters probably wouldn't have stuck to the blood.

Luckily, Helma was able to get out of work and speed home to drive me to the minor injuries unit at Roehampton hospital, and about 15 minutes after arriving I was being treated by two specialist nurses. We were out again less than an hour after reaching the hospital - I think it took longer than that to drive there in the Friday afternoon traffic. Total cost so far, apart from my taxes, is £1.60 for parking. Hurrah for what the ignorant and stupid call "socialized medicine"!

Managed to sleep reasonably well, thanks in part to plenty of ibuprofen. Today my head feels puffy and swollen, and I look like half a rather beaten-up hamster.



I've done something annoying to my right shoulder as well - pulled or sprained a muscle, I guess, and every so often I'll try to do something such as pull on a jacket and get a stabbing pain. One of the nurses checked this yesterday, and it doesn't seem too bad. It just needs time and rest, I hope.

Overall, I'm feeling grateful for the NHS, grateful for my wonderful ministering angel Helma, and very grateful that it wasn't worse........

Walking the dog in the park this morning, I saw a guy apparently erecting a six-man tent. Going camping in the park is odd enough, I thought, but in this weather?

Then he flipped it over to show it was actually a huge parafoil kite - and then I noticed he was wearing skis....



Neat! There wasn't a lot of wind, but maybe that's just as well given that the field's surrounded by trees and houses.

So last night, we climbed up to the high ground by the lake here in Lüneburg, from where we could look across the city and see the midnight fireworks - not so much a display as a whole load of people all letting off rockets, mortars, Roman candles and just about everything else, all more or less randomly:



30 minutes later, it was still going on!



We had quite a lot of people letting stuff off not far from our toes, too:



Thankfully the dog's not scared of bangs, though last night they were so many, random and close that he started madly barking at them.

I went back there for a walk with him this morning, hence my FB post about the debris:

The city lies quiet now, under a grey sky and a blanket of snow, but everywhere the evidence of the New Year's violent awakening is there - the streets and parks littered with spent rockets and mortar casings, the snow blackened with charcoal, littered with burnt-out fuses and bangers. Meanwhile the city sleeps on into a new dawn. Happy New Year, everyone...

On the way back, we came across this odd sight, a long parade of waterfowls heading for this woman and her pushchair - I couldn't see her feeding them, but I guess that's what it was about:



And then I met this little chap(ette?)



Another night short of sleep. Maybe I can catch up next week...

Spent the morning shopping for Yule stuff in Kingston. Stupid dog chased a herd of deer in Richmond Park (1). Got the dog back. Scolded dog but were more relieved that he hadn't got himself run over or shot. More shopping. Came home. Cooked, served and ate a tuna marinara sauce with green beans. Watched Bladerunner, the Director's Cut for the first time (2). Did all the washing up - how did that happen?! - and finally sat down with the last of the Macallan Fine Oak.

Blimey, long day...

1. The even-stupider deer didn't turn around and give him the kicking he deserved, they simply ran off.

2. I'm not sure yet which I prefer - this or the original.

I try not to walk Freki-dog after dark, as he sees cats and foxes in every shadow. The vast majority of them are imaginary, of course, and it makes walkies tedious and fretsome to say the least. Today though I didn't get back until a bit after 4.30, so I had no choice.

To start with it was fine: we went to the park by the river - it's fairly well lit by the adjacent streetlights, so he can see his ball and I can see him. As we walked back through the park though I became aware of a dodgy-looking woman with a dog on a lead lurking by the children's playground. She was so obviously skulking that I thought I'd better chuck the ball in the opposite direction, but eventually Freki spotted the other dog and started trotting over to say hello. As I called him back, madwoman rattled a stick on the fence and screeched "Take your dog away!" or somesuch.

I picked up his ball and headed around the side of the playground. Freki was fixated on me and the ball of course, and hardly noticed the man coming towards us with a bull-terrier type on a lead. "Can you hold your dog?" he said. Well, no actually - if he's fixated on his ball, he won't come close enough to grab if he can avoid it, just in case I throw the ball. So I said as much, and hurried him by with a combination of calls and ball. Even so, the other dog lunged, snarled and barked at him as we passed.

Do these nutters only take their psycho-dogs out after dark because they think no-one else (or no-one normal) will walk their dogs then, or is it - as Helma suggested - that these dogs are surly because they only get taken out at night, after their owners get home from work? It's all quite odd, and a bit disturbing.

Seagate's announced its first solid-state drives this morning - yes, just a tad behind the herd - and at 3pm is holding a briefing phone call to discuss it.

Hmm, do I want to spend 30 minutes listening to Seagate execs state the obvious?

Usefully, they've sent me the presentation slides ahead of time - plus its a Webex, which means downloading a 9.4MB installer, yes really!! - and the audio requires a separate phone call to Paris (WTF is that about?!), so I strongly suspect not...

Why is Nokia still so crap at developing backup software for its phones?

I just backed up my E66 twice, once to SD-card and once to the PC, installed today's firmware update, restored from backup - and then had to spend an hour or so hunting out and reinstalling almost all my apps, because the &*^%^&% Nokia backup software is unable to find its arse with its own hands.

OK, so PC Sync is reasonably good software now, but really, backup software that doesn't backup everything?

Idiots.

My watch stopped. Usefully, it said on the back what battery type it took, so I ordered some via the Web and when they arrived I went to fit one. Fifteen minutes later I had only gouged myself slightly in levering the back off - there is a little slot for levering, but it is so small that nothing larger than a knife-tip will fit, and they ain't good for levering with.

So I fitted a new battery, saw that the second hand was now ticking, and went to replace the back. Of course it is such a tight fit that there was no chance of getting it to clip in place with bare hands, so I did what I've done before - sandwich it with something protective and then clamp it together in the vice.

That worked fine, except that somewhere in the process the watch stopped ticking, and even after removing the back again and trying two different batteries it doesn't want to work again. Sigh.

Fortunately it's not my only watch, but... Argh!!

Finally I’ve got connected to the free Wi-Fi in JD Wetherspoon - for half the afternoon all I could get was the standard Cloud landing page, with the “Buy airtime” link.

The last time this happened, I emailed JDW to ask why the sponsored Wi-Fi no longer worked. The reply was:

I can confirm that during September all our pubs had a new WiFi connection. To connect a customer will need to create his own username and password and this can be used anywhere, not just in Wetherspoons.

However, all I was seeing was the opportunity to pay The Cloud several quid for an hour or three’s use - its website does not offer proper name-and-password subscriptions, only the usual time-limited rip-offs.

Oh, and the landing page doesn’t half make The Cloud look incompetent. The “free content” link to music.nokia.co.uk doesn’t work, the “Win a netbook, complete our survey” link results in “Thanks for trying! Unfortunately the survey is no longer available”, and the link behind the ad for Frost/Nixon is broken.

Anyway, I dug a bit more deeply through The Cloud help pages, finding a page that told me the URL I needed was “servcie.thecloud.net”. A tired smile later, I’d corrected the spelling - and got “Oops! Something odd just happened. Let's go back to the Homepage.” Argh!

Still, I clicked the Home button - and at last I’d found my way to the right login page. And yes, all you need to do is log in with an email address and password for free access.

But, dear gods... Why did it have to be so awkward?!

We got back from the honeymoon - which was wonderful, even the massive thunderstorms were spectacular! - to find both tricks and treats waiting for us. The tricks were courtesy of my new in-laws, who had obviously taken great delight in booby-trapping and generally untidying the house while we were away.

Pride of place went to my air-soft rifle, which had been taped to the banisters and rigged with string to the trigger so it fired when the front door was opened. Once past that there was - still is - confetti on every carpet, the bedroom was full of balloons and the beds were full of blacy-eyed beans, thankfully they're dried ones... Oh, and pretty much every mirror and picture frame has either lipstick or marker pen on it. Hmm.

On the treat side, we still have lots of presents to open, far more than we ever expected. (-:

...or Santorini, as the blasted Crusaders renamed it.







The first four are from Ia, the fifth from near Fira - if you click through you can just make out the four-masted super-yacht Windstar tacking into the setting sun. All taken last week.

If we already told you, perhaps because you caught us in a tipsy moment, please don't spoil it. :-)

Shred and steam (=microwave) a chunk of white cabbage, chop and fry some onions and bacon in a big hunk of butter, drain the cabbage and add it to the pan along with a couple of big spoonfuls of sauerkraut. Fry the lot together until the cabbage is just browning at the edges here and there. Serve. Eat - in our case, with a couple of grilled bratwurst and a dunkelweiss.

Oof, full now....

So the other week I was flown to Munich and then driven out to the former Benedictine abbey of Kloster Seeon, not far from the Austrian border. It's not had any monks for two centuries but somehow my room still felt like a monastic cell, tucked away as it was under the eaves:



The view was great, however day one was a little grey:



On a good day though, the area is gorgeous. This being Bavaria, it is notably Roman Catholic with rather a lot of churches - here's the parish church:



Sadly the abbey brewery has gone along with the monks, and the beer now comes from a small commercial brewery nearby. Nice though! The place has had a varied history since the monks left - a stately home for a while, and then in the 1930s a training school for the Nazi SA - though I've no idea what sort of schooling a brownshirt thug needed. It's all a lot more peaceful now as a cultural centre, art gallery and hotel/conference centre.

The abbey church has been restored, and is really quite beautiful inside:





What is it though with Roman Catholics and dead dudes in glass cases??? They really are quite bizarre.

Our pet spider is back, this time outside the kitchen window where I hope s/he (probably she) will catch and eat a goodly number of the flies that'd otherwise head indoors. I'll hide the pic ( behind the cut )

Just lately, whenever I'm on a plane I always seem to get one of those bastards sitting in front of me who tries to put his bastard head in my lap one minute after the captain switches the seatbelt sign off. And 30 seconds after I unfold my laptop and manage -just- to get it far enough away on my lap that I can actually type. How the hell is that - is there a gang of these bastards following me around?? Bah.

At least the experience of being the very first passenger aboard LH4762 from Munich to Heathrow was merely odd. I'm not quite sure how it happened - I wandered up to the gate a few minutes after boarding was due to have started, there was no queue and just one bloke at the gate trying to figure out how the 2D barcode scanner worked. I quickly scanned my boarding pass and overtook him on the walkway without even trying - and then realised the staff must've only just opened the gate and presumably hadn't yet have announced the fact!

Of course, I'd stupidly forgotten to check in online from the hotel that morning, which meant that - just as on the flight out - I not only had that bastard in front trying to recline his head into my lap, but I was wedged into a middle seat with minimal elbow-room. At least my fellow passengers were friendly, and one was even chatty, which hasn't happened for a while.

How very odd. I zeroed my cycle speedo as I was starting the 6-mile round trip to Richmond, but half-way home it was telling me I'd cycled 34 miles at an average speed of 40mph.

Please don't anyone tell the traffic preventers - sorry, I mean planners at TfL, or they might drop even more badly-phased lights, poorly laid-out junctions and other pointless impedimenta on my route.