It's Monday night. Caroline and Jess came to visit on Friday, and on Saturday we all went to Legoland. We saw lots of cool models, and went on a lot of the rides. Because Caroline can't go on many of the rides, I went on with Jess. On the way back, Caroline and I had a quite long talk about things. After we had got home and had tea, we talked a lot more.

I feel a whole lot better for having actually talked to her about some stuff. It might seem a long time to leave a lot of things unsaid. It's hard for me to say things to her because I'm so scared of screwing things up again. I think we've cleared the air anyhow.

On Sunday, Simon and Jess played tickle fights. Later that day, we went out to the shops. Caroline and I had another long talk together that evening, too. They left on Monday morning.

I'm now really tired 'cos I didn't get a whole lot of sleep.

Last night's dreams - there were two - were interesting. The first involved a large number of pirates who were being kicked off an island and had to take their ships away from an island. Unfortunately our ship sank and we had to swim for others. Each one we came to sank and we ended up having to get by on little bits of wood.

The second was at school. All my homework was late - for an entire year - and we'd been told that we had to get as many done as possible in the next week. I was picking and choosing those which were possible to get done in the time. I was doing this with Caroline and she was helping out by reminding me of things that I'd forgotten. At one point I went to check with a teacher something and when I came back she'd crossed out a whole paragraph except a few words on my work.

Otherwise, today's been... a little odd. I bought some things in town, and got a new telly as well.

In the shower this morning, I was thinking to myself how much nicer RISC OS was than the stuff I'm doing now. There are so many ways that that's not true, but the one that was bothering me was modularity. RISC OS is exceptionally modular. You build up a module, you know its interface, it doesn't change except under exceptional (and I mean exceptional) circumstances. It can die and be reloaded, usually with minimal impact on the rest of the system. This applies across the board (pretty much), from the highest level module down to the lowest - assuming they're not currently in use, and even sometimes if they are. There are exceptions, but still it's pretty nice. And mixing and matching versions isn't a problem.

I kinda miss that.

This afternoon, I got an email from Vanessa, who I've not heard from for ages. She's in London now, and seems quite happy.

And this evening, something from Chocky. Odd, huh ?

On the way home, I was pondering the last thing I wrote on RISC OS - that would have been about a year ago. Just before I started at Picsel I wrote a URLFetcher module and created a HTTP and FTP fetcher to go with it. At that time, I'd not written any real C code for about 4 months or so, and I thought it might be handy to try to remember how to write stuff before I start a new job and make a fool of myself.

Chatting to Chris Bazley this evening, he mentioned something about how RISC OS was a lot more structured than having a huge monolithic things. It sort of amused me by the coincidence.

There's also the random collection of dreams recently, but they're entirely predictable, so not worth going in to. There's a change for me.

Doesn't mean they don't worry me. Just that... they're predictable.

What's the use in hanging round these walls. Lamps are burning, but nobody's at home. There's a new day dawning as a cold rain falls And now's the time to walk alone. [ Man In The Rain, from Tubular Bells III, by Mike Oldfield ]

What's the point, really ?

I'm so nervous at the moment. I've got Caroline visiting next week, and it's quite scarey. It probably shouldn't be but I want to make a good impression and I probably won't. We'll see how things go, I guess.

I couldn't sleep properly at all last night. I woke up just after midnight, having gone to bed at about 11. It was one of those times when your mind runs through half thoughts and disconnected conversations and you know what it means but can't make sense of it. Hasn't been as bad as this for over a year now, though. At about 2, I decided it was probably better to get up to do something, so I went and did something distractingly interesting. Unfortunately, when I decided to go back to bed, the problem returned and I still couldn't sleep properly for more than an hour or so.

And so I had a more frustrating day than I've had recently at work because I was in a bad mood in general, and I'd not slept.

Come to think of it, I was in a bad mood before I went to bed because of general stuff, and because of things people'd said.

I should probably just accept that I'm not going to be happy. I had that in mind last year, so it shouldn't be so hard to get back to.

I had an email today from Martin, asking if I had any contact details for the other people who left as they might want to keep in touch. If anyone wants to let me know their email addresses I can pass on details to others. I'll check if anyone else has contact details.

So this weekend was odd. Firstly I couldn't sleep all that well on Friday night, partly because of generally not sleeping well, partly because of being excited at going to see Caroline, and mostly because of what'd happened earlier in the day. That didn't set me off to a good start. The alarm went off at 6am - which is a little earlier than I'm used to, but I needed to catch the 7:32 train, so I needed to be up reasonably early. After I'd got about half way to the train station I realised I'd left the easter eggs behind, too, so I had to go back for them.

I finally got off the train at about 10:10 and got a taxi to Caroline's. It's all great fun. But that's a whole lot earlier than I'd usually be there, so hopefully I could spend a bit more time with her and Jess. In any case, I had a lovely day with them both, and Elly and Ben, their friends who came around.

Caroline and I watched "Stardust (2007)Adventure, Family, Fantasy, RomanceThe passage from this world to the fantasy kingdom of Stormhold is through a breech in a wall beside an English village. In the 1800s, a boy becomes a man when he ventures through the breech in pursuit of a fallen star, to prove his love for the village beauty. The star is no lump of rock, it's a maiden, Yvaine. Tristan, the youth, is not the only one looking for her: three witches, led by Lamia, want her heart to make them young; and, the sons of the dead king of Stormhold want her because she holds a ruby that will give one of them title to the throne. Assisting Tristan are his mother, the victim of a spell, and a transvestite pirate of the skies. Will Tristan win his true love?Stardust" in the evening, which was really fun - I knew very little about it, but it was great. We both put off my leaving until a little late, and I realised that I'd actually be getting back home around 2am. I asked if it'd be possible to stop the night, although I feel really awful about that. Fortunately Caroline was ok about it, but I'll have to pay more attention to the time in future. We played yahtzee and dominos .

I didn't sleep so well, partly because I don't have Sam, partly because I'm was in Caroline's house, and partly because of Friday. All of which made me a little upset, so I was waking up every couple of hours. I woke up at about 6:50 to see Jess looking down at me. We played for a bit, then made Caroline a cup of tea and gave it to her.

Eventually we got dressed and I got a lift to the bus station. I was a little upset going back home as well .

All in all, it was a pretty good weekend marred only by regularly being reminded that there won't be so many people next week and - more personally - being mistaken for Andrew twice .

Now, though, I've got to go to sleep, 'cos I'm really tired, having not slept so well for two days, and hopefully I won't worry too much about tomorrow.

I've had an awful day today. Goodbyes to my friends; Ian, Jim, Robinson, Paul, Paul, Dave, Meena, Santhi, Shakuntala, Mihai, Richard, Martin. We'll miss you. If anyone wants to stay in touch, I'm 'gerphlet' on Skype, and my email address is on the bottom of all the pages on this site.

Today's been really crappy. Just haven't really been able to do much. But, Caroline's mum rang me to say that she was a whole lot better today, and I spoke to Caroline herself this evening as well. Which has made the day quite a bit better.

Caroline's been admitted to Hospital today. I've been incredibly worried about her, but I got a call from her mum and she's a little groggy, but ok. I'll hear more tomorrow, but now that I know she's fine I'm feeling really tired, so I'm going to bed.

There was also some dream last night about a boat, but it's all paled into nothing with the events of the day.

Today was quite fun. I got to watch Julian and Simon finish their Half-Marathon, which was pretty impressive. I'm clearly not up to their standard, as I was tired just going to the finish line . We walked home, and went via Morrisons, as a cup of tea sounded an excellent plan. There, I discovered they still have Nesquik Banana mix, so bought a few tubs. Should last me a little while. And then we all went home.

Rang mum briefly tonight and managed to say 'Happy Mother's Day' before handing over to Simon. So that was fine.

Only thing is that now I've realised that I've not had much to eat today, because I couldn't be bothered. So... that's not great. Oh well.

Julian and Simon are running in the Reading Half Marathon tomorrow. Wish them all the best. Just thinking about it makes me tired .