There are many people whom I wish actually had a blog. Then there are other people whom I wish had never stopped blogging. Hussein, or rather Mighty Mouse is in the later category, I wish he still kept an online journal today. He headed over to Edinburgh last weekend with some friends and was uploading the photographs to FlickR when I spoke to him late on Tuesday night It was the first time he had mentioned it, so it had been a bit of a last minute dash than a planned long weekend away. While it is great to have a collection of photos and strange captions to describe the wonderful antics it is not substitution for a full story in words. Never mind, I am glad Hussein and his friends had such a great time. Having only touched down in the city briefly back in early June, I planned to return one year for the Hogmany celebrations. While I am often harassed, or rather ridiculed (particularly at work) for watching the BBC soap from Albert Square, this evening came some redemption. One of the first questions people ask is, simply why? Well it is not the hard hitting gritty storylines, or the scandalous gossip of who did what, with who and when. It is in fact the comic moments from some of the losers in E20. Here was yet another prime example.

The song the guys are singing along to on the radio is Old Time Rock & Roll by the legendary Bob Seger. Classic. You could not make it up. This is the pure ingredient that makes Eastenders so great to watch. It is just a perfect mirror on real life. In how many garages across the country would you find middle aged men dancing along to rock songs? Quite a few I would imagine, and many more that would not admit to the offence. To my surprise this afternoon I received an e-mail from Arsenal football club PLC. Nothing strange in that sure. However the message had a banner for Platinum Club Membership, which I am many years (and many more salary increases) from achieving. It explained that the game against Manchester United had been moved to a Sunday (due to live television coverage) and my reservation to dine would need to be reconfirmed. My colleague Chris was adamant that I should contact the office and confirm my booking. Being more of a realistic, I knew the moment I called up the mistake would become clear and cause a large amount of embarrassment. I decided to just file the e-mail away and forget about it. Sure enough by the time I got home, a recall e-mail had gone out fully explaining the mistake. While I consider myself an organised individual, I am untidy. At times extremely so. I decided to do something about it last weekend. I bid for a CD case on eBay. While this may seem like a small step. It was actually a major step in changing a habit of a lifetime. Although I have had minor clear outs of redundant CD-roms over the past few years I have never completely moved away from stacking CDs on shelves and in cupboards. Stupid really looking back. When it comes to CD/DVD storage there is only one name. Accept no cheap imitations, there is only brand you can bank one. I bought one of their 64 capacity cases for the car, over three years ago.

On eBay I found a great case with a capacity more than double of the case that sits on my dash. 128 in the main slips, but an additional ‘currently playing’ slot in the inside cover for a further sixteen. Which meant I spent most of this evening sorting out all my CDs and making a big pile of categories: Drivers, Operating Systems, Applications and finally the most important, my Data. It is interesting how much you can uncover when you go to task to sort things out. I threw away over 25 CD cases, many of which I may donate to work as we always find a use for a case. However this does beg the question, why did I not do this years ago? Why wait until now, when I am on my fourth PC with CD drive to clear up all the clutter. I am not too sure, all I can say is I am glad I have finally got there. Really looking forward to the weekend for a couple of reasons. Usually the first weekend of December would be generally quiet but not this year. (I decided to just look back at what I was doing this time last year and two things hit me. Firstly I opened my final entry for November 2005 with a paragraph about Eastenders. The second, the fact that I went to my first concert with my sister for a-ha‘s opening night of their UK Analogue tour. Back to the present, with an early start on Saturday morning as I head over to N5 to watch Arsenal take on arch rivals Tottenham Hotspur in the first North London derby at our new home. Then I return home, clean the car (it is in a bad state, believe me) before heading over towards the south coast (guided by the TomTom) for a dinner party with some friends. Sunday, well I have not really thought that far yet, but I am sure when I do I will let you all know.