Reggie Thomson's Diary

I decided to put Itsukushima shrine on the web. First, I had do remove all the chromatic aberration. I felt like a painter going round with a paintbrush to correct all the mistaken colours. It took two hours. I got a few points, but soon I was off the first page.

I took a hot bath in the morning rather than a cold shower cycle ride to church.

Andrew and Sarah came round in the afternoon to deliver a duvet they had borrowed. The also mentioned they had charged one lodger for a missing duvet. Perhaps that explains why I had £100 in unpaid telephone bills and reconnection fees.

They drove me down to Eden, where Don Carson was preaching on Ephesians. Elaine and Jeremy’s mum were there. A few folks say hello to Andrew and Sarah, but as they pointed out later, nobody seems to have “missed” them.

Don’t seem to have done much today. Just a bit of surfing.

Hardly moved from my bed behind the sofa, to the chair, kitchen and toilet. That’s the limit of my horizons these days.

I spotted a photomontage on Photosig – quite a nice effect, but not many people spotted the Photoshop work. So, I did some research and wrote:

I like your photo montage ideas, Vinicio. They are clearly popular with photosiggers.

Hamish left in the morning. I spent the day eating junk food and browsing the web again.

In the evening, I went down to the Yokoyama’s. There were about a dozen people there. I took a box of biscuits. We chatted for a while, ate some flambéed Christmas pudding. Later we played some games – hunt the objects, the animals game. We attempted a Korean version, with two people “it”, but it was too complicated.

There was nobody in town as we drove down to King’s College, parking along the backs. The queue was already half-way down the chapel. Andrew and Sarah joined us slightly later, apologising to the folks behind for “queue jumping”. We chatted about the stonework. Hitomi walked by and said hello.

The queue had reached the opposite corner of the quadrangle by 10.40, when we were allowed in. We were right at the front of the chapel, on the sunny side. The seats nearest the choir went first. The music, of course, was superb – I was amazed that such a small choir could fill the building with purity of sound. The service was lead by a lady and was very “high church&quot – waving the incense reminded me of Japan in a way. The brief sermon mentioned the Reubens painting and the stained glass windows above it. It was a Eucharist. We trooped up to the front almost last. I wasn’t familiar with the procedure of dipping the wafer into the wine, but it makes much more sense.

Back home, we had just time for a slice of ham with some bread. Hamish insisted that I opened his present – a CD of King’s College music. He also offered to let me write the card for one of his presents to Philip. I declined. I can be “the poor uncle.”

I took my car adaptor so that I could do some computing on the journey – but I was too tired to anything more than a couple of diary entries. I had downloaded a map of Ashford to help find the route to Elspeth’s house. Miles was also there.

We were given lots of presents – tea towels, chocolates, biscuits, another pair of gloves. James and Philip had large boxes full of new toys. We played upstairs with the train set – Hamish got the soldering iron out of James’ new electronic toolset to repair the points.

I gave the CD of Japan to Miles. After tea, I took a look at the computer. I spent an hour going through all the setting on Freeserve, and looking at the Freeserve website to try and get the emails to send out. Nothing worked. Finally, I noticed a help page about using Freeserve with phone number identification blocking. By adding a code in front of the telephone number, I was able to sort out the problem.

We drove back for about 8.30, and put the Christmas pudding into the microwave. Hamish had bought some brandy butter cream which was delicious. He tried playing the CD, but my player wouldn’t accept it.

I continued to browse the web. I think I’m tiring of Photosig. I’m over the 500 points level.

The diaries are now up-to-date.

I looked at one of my recipe books for ideas for a Christmas meal. I decided to copy down two sets of ingredients – pheasant or duck. When I got to Tesco, the shelves were quite bare. I had to change my plans. Instead, I bought some gammon with apricot for £7.99. I then stocked up on some goodies for Christmas. Hamish has brought some brussel sprouts and a Christmas pudding.

Hamish returned early. Andrew and Sarah came with a Cecilia, a Chinese lady who may be interested in the room. I think she will probably find something to share with some friends, and might find herself a bit out of place here. We chatted downstairs over a cup of tea and Tesco’s cheapest apple pie.

The gammon went straight into the oven, as did the roast potatoes. I opened a packet of out-of-date apricots to make a sauce, and put the brussels on. Hamish had bought some soup, so we had that instead of my paté. It was quite tasty, and there was more than enough – I was stuffed full.

Dad had phoned earlier on, wanting to try out Netmeeting. So, later in the evening, we managed to get it going. The ils servers don’t seem to be available any more. I tried one in Japan, and though I got listed initially, I soon found that I was kicked off – maybe it’s a private directory. It was quite difficult to communicate, given the second or so round trip delays by the internet. There was quite a lot of feedback, and my mic kept self-adjusting to a higher setting. Rona and Tony and the dogs made a brief appearance.

I didn’t manage to get a Christmas letter done. Instead, I wrote some critiques in Japanese on Photosig.

I spent most of the day catching up on diaries. Hamish was down in London all day.