Weekend - good in parts

As the title may suggest to the observant and alert reader, I felt that the weekend was good in parts. As I have 9 minutes, max, to tell you why (as if you were interested ...) I had better try to be brief.

• Made some progress with the AccursedBugleNews™ but not as much as I would like and I am still feeling quite stuck with my ****** ******* ******* ******** Proms story. Why this should be so I do not know. A better person would simply have stuck down something, almost anything, on paper and finished it by now. It's really getting quite annoying.
• Corresponded with another possible AccursedBugleNews™ successor. Worried about whether answering their questions too truthfully would put them off, but cannot avoid it. Have tried to emphasize that my superb ability to get into a mess does not mean that any normal and well-organized person should have the same problems.
• I spent parts of the weekend feeling concerned about people leaving things. It is selfish and conservative of me and reflects my dreadful inability to cope with change. I mind it, because of its effect on my cosy little world, when I should be thinking of them and saying great, well done, congratulations on deciding to make a change. I may be losing up to two brilliant colleagues (no names, no packdrill) plus I know that someone whom I value extremely highly elsewhere is going next year. In all of these cases I could do with discovering in myself more generosity of spirit and a little less self-interest. Amusingly enough, one possible leaver has asked if I would do a reference for them (answer = yes, and they will get an exceedingly good one as they are a superb colleague). The other leavers are somewhat less likely to require my support in finding new posts! Ho hum.
• Failed to go orienteering at all this weekend. I am cheesed off by this. The only strong possibility was one on Sunday a fair bit south of London which would have been difficult, but I still wish I had made the effort and gone. And if I had I would have bumped into my mother, brother, sister-in-law and niece there, which makes me even crosser. Gah! I have really, really got to get less pathetic about orienteering. Being this pathetic is just, well, pathetic.
• My Dear-Wife-Bless-Her is still not all that well. It's getting to be a bit of a ludicrous length of time to have such an alarming-sounding cough and I think it is high time some doctorial-type person did something brilliantly dynamic and far-sighted, like making her better.
• We went to the utterly fantastic film Die Fälscher (The Counterfeiters) at the Phoenix. Strongly recommended. Also, the Phoenix is so wonderful that it makes me want to swear a solemn oath never again to go to a Horrid Modern Fleapit-type Thing.
• We also went out for lovely meal afterwards (no irony intended) at the New Happy Swan.
• Nice Sunday lunch "up Millf" and sorted out a couple of problems on Granny's PC. It is such a joy to be working with Windows Vista. (Goak here.)

And that concludes the voting of the von Neustadt jury...