Wednesday

Any sort of plan I had for today, work wise, is scuppered by the catalogue I find on my desk when I arrive this morning. It's a catalogue, presumably aimed at amateur and professional mechanics, exclusively advertising books advising the reader on how to rebuild small-block Chevy engines, set up the suspension on their stock car, evaluate the performance of their 1983-1996 Porsche 911 - and, of course, the seminal work, 'Fastening and Plumbing'. It seems we're taking on this collection of handbooks for American cars and engines - so my job today is to look through all 40+ of them and get them enrolled on our system. I'm only really looking at the titles and the authors - but I swear I'd be much more confident when presented with a faulty Mustang engine by the end of the day than I was yesterday.

I get home, completely weary of the intricacies of classic American engineering, and get myself some dinner as K is at another gig. I then spend the next four hours or so catching up with this blog - on which I have been behind by at least a week since going to Berlin. Using the hastily scrawled notes I've found time for over the last 2 weeks, I write 9 days' worth of entries - which leaves me incredibly tired and thoroughly sick of the minutiae of my own life.

I am pleased I've kept this blog up though - with an entry for 123 consecutive days as of this one - as it has meant I've been writing, if only self-indulgent accounts of my life from day to day. And I think I can continue to keep it up, as long as I don't stop for a few days again and force myself into a belated, marathon session of typing.

As a reward for covering a week and a half of my life online, I allow myself to carry on with my XBox World Cup qualifying campaign, in which I am valiantly attempting to take a woeful Scotland side to South Africa. After a defeat to Macedonia and disappointing draws with Iceland and Norway, it's not looking good; or at least it wasn't until a historic 1-0 win over Argentina in a friendly at Hampden Park. Friendly or not, it's a result which, upsettingly for some to consider, has me dancing round the living room like I was Siphiwe Tshabalala.