What a model of administrative efficiency, this time to do with the technicalities of my personal e-mail provision. First a warning that the system may soon be unreliable during some sort of upgrade, then a couple of minutes later a message saying the change has already taken place. If only that sort efficiency could be achieved by my employer's IT department - the last mail outage here lasted a day or so during which time the Exchange server was reinstalled from scratch and even queued up mail was lost when they tried to go live with it.

Yesterday evening was the six week anniversary of my inaugural visit to the local gym, and I do believe I am beginning to benefit from it. S and I had been threatening to organise ourselves properly and get more exercise for quite a while. Then a couple of months ago, whilst I was out of the country and therefore completely unable to argue, S went in and signed us up.

I'd never done the gym "thing" before and it was a whole new experience. I had previously thought that anyone could get as much exercise as they needed by just going out for a walk. However I can now see that the gym concept has a lot going for it. Firstly, because you've paid your money you are actually more likely to go, if only to ensure that the money wasn't "wasted". That little extra bit of motivation may just help you keep going long enough for other benefits to become apparent. Secondly, being in a room full of people also exercising you are less likely to slack off. Social pressures are at work here - no one really wants to be seen to be obviously lazy. And thirdly, the only damp wet conditions you have to experience are the self inflicted salty sheen of sweat and the shower afterwards. On the down side one of the points of gym life that is often quoted as a good thing, namely that of the opportunity to stare at fit attractive MOTAS for an hour or so, doesn't actually appear to be the case. The amount of quality T&A on show is sadly rather low, but maybe that's just my local gym...

This year's Christmas shopping experience has now started. It was hardly a massive shop-at-thon involving treking from retail outlet to retail outlet squeezing carrier bag handle after carrier bag handle into tired and sore hands, resulting in extreme exhaustion and a sense of worry about next months credit card bill. Instead it consisted of nothing more than a few clicks of the mouse during a break from work at lunchtime. The end result should, nevertheless, be a happy recipient who finds on Christmas morning that their present is actually something they want rather something stereotypically targetted at nothing more than their gender and approximate age.

Weekends away - you just can't get enough of them… and when you do get away they are always too short. The latest little trip S and I made was down to Cornwall for a couple of days to see my grandfather. He lives alone and I admit I don't do enough to alleviate his loneliness and boredom. I wish I had the time available to pop down more often, but trying to fit the travelling time (8 hours driving) into a weekend means that there just isn’t much time left to actually spend there. For this last trip we did at least managed to travel down on the Friday afternoon, but owing to the stinginess of annual leave allowances I can’t take that many afternoons off.