Was in Slough this morning, strangely too early even for me. I pulled up at 8am at the Thames Fiat dealership on the Bath Road. Then I decided to walk into town, while my car had a winter service check. Little did I know that the journey was three miles and not the two I originally estimated. Very strange to be walking for the first a time a route you would normally cruise in your car within a few minutes. It took me a good twenty odd minutes to get to into town. Although I am not trying to say that was a bad thing. Quite the contrary, I enjoyed the time to think, the fresh air and be the chance to put into perspective the events of the past few weeks and the wonderful things to come in the coming few days and weeks. This might shock you but before I passed my driving test in October 1999, I used to do a lot of walking. I used to grab my personal stereo cassette player and ear phones and walk into my hometown and back, ignoring the frequent bus service, at that time run by the now defunct Wycombe Bus Company. It enabled me to fully appreciate the luxury of being able to jump in the car and drive almost anywhere. So, back to the present. Why had I walked all this way? When I could have waited in the waiting area, drinking fun size cans of cola, watching Soccer AM on Sky Sports? I just did not want to. I wanted to get something done. Even though it was dead early on a Saturday morning, by the time I got to the town centre, shops were slowly coming to life. I had a few things to get in preparation for Wednesday evening. Sorry, but following will sound like a girl. I apologise. Although I perhaps had the write combination of clothes to wear, I wanted something new. Something different. It was a special, once in a lifetime occasion, after all. So I headed firstly to River Island. None of their jeans really appealed to me, but I bought a smart black pin tuck shirt. I only have a silky short sleeve shirt in my wardrobe, so this would work nicely. Heading over to Topman, well technically Topshop, in the Observatory Shopping Centre, I waited for the signs pointing the menswear section upstairs, but to my shock, it was a rather small corner at the front of the store. Disappointing. Now this is why I never come shopping in Slough and always go to Reading, Milton Keynes and Uxbridge. In any case, I found a nice pair of straight cut, kryptic basic jeans by Moto. Mission accomplished. Just the long walk back to collect my car and head home. Plus, I would be home just in time for Football Focus. Result! My sister started a new job last month. Rather than go into the details, her job involves an extensive amount of traveling so my Dad decided this would be the ideal time to buy a satellite navigation device. There was only one name to go for, really. Having seen Tom Tom in action on a PDA on our trip to the Nurburgring back in April, there was no doubt this would be the brand to buy into. It was more a case of find the right product from their now quite extensive range. In the end, I opted for the 510. It had the right balance between features required, such as handsfree Bluetooth and the added benefit of iPod control. Thanks to some price comparison web sites, we placed an order late on Tuesday evening and the device arrived on Thursday. Only had a chance to connect it up to the home PC this evening, switch over to a 1 gb SD card and actually activate with the product key. What can I say? A fantastic solution, all fully working straight out of the box. Bringing truth to the magic of plug and play. I have yet to use it on a car journey, but as it is portable it can go between all our cars. Although looking forward, there are no long journeys to unknown destinations coming up in the foreseeable future, but things may change. It will be there, if I ever need it. Much better than a paper print out from MultiMap dot com.

Although I am already listed on four blog directories plus Technorati but I have submitted this blog to yet another directory last week. It was posted onto a FlickR group I subscribe to, called, yes you’ve guessed it. Bloggers The amateur blogger, is starting a directory from scratch using a similar keyword system to Technorati. My link can be found over here. It is very early days but I hoped to that as the directory grows more people will come and at least take a quick peak at my blog. Hopefully there will be a blog badge of some description I can upload in the next few weeks. I could have taken the whole day off. If I really wanted to, I could take off the whole week, but I didn’t. Instead, to the hysterics of my work colleagues, I chose to just take a half day on Wednesday. Why? Well if I took the whole day off I feel I would get overexcited. Does that make sense? (No, I bet it sounds completely irrational) I can imagine I would do very little different and I would still take my little sister to school, so as I’m within a few miles of the office I might as well head in. A full day off would be a waste. I would perhaps get involved in the online euphoria with other London based fans, gagging with excitement. Listen to HIStory back to back and then watch back to back music videos on my XBox at high volume (to the disapproval of my neighbours). I prefer the idea of earning my few hours off. I will leave the office around 1pm, knowing I have done a solid morning’s work and can then go absolutely crazy on the drive back home. By that time I will be running on pure adrenalin, and nothing will be able to stop me.