Have you ever been part of something big? Something so big, that it is bigger than you and the few thousand people around you? I never have and regret it. The long road to redemption, began on Monday morning at 8am. For the first time in over 18 months (perhaps longer) I switched on my radio to tune into the Chris Moyles Breakfast Show on BBC Radio One. The only reason I made this change was to hear the question for the Live 8 competition. I entered once in the morning and again, when I returned home in the evening. I may enter a few more times later this week, but feel uncomfortable doing so. If lady luck is to be shining down on me, I do not need to push my chances too far. If the computer is to select me, it will select me. So, the long wait until Sunday when those 70 odd thousand pairs of tickets are chosen.

My first computer arrived on Saturday 6th June 1992, yes almost thirteen years ago. So, now on my fourth computer, it is time to build again and after several months of talk, I am about to finally do some walking. The specification has been detailed and the order will be placed late next week. My demands have changed, I am not a gamer. (Never really was a gamer, I have never won a game without cheating!) My XBox sits lonely in the living room, with some twenty games, that I have never played. The PC to be born in a fortnight, will be quite basic. The main breakthrough, is having a TV tuner card installed, so I can rid of my TV / Video combi and gain back some much needed desk space. Otherwise, the only major change is much more storage, memory and a DVD burner. Light accessories, such as a new web cam and wireless headset (for Skype) will be added later, once the damage to my wallet has subsided. However, I must say that my Mesh PC has done me proud service over the past six years, taking some considerable mileage in that time. Looking back there is not many changes I made. Upgraded the CD burner, replaced the DVD drive, with an additional hard drive, to hold all my Mp3s. Upgraded the memory and added a USB 2.0 card. Apart from those few changes, the backbone of the system remains the same. To be honest, I am surprised it has lasted this long, with several journeys up and down to Leicester. The operating system has been Windows 98 from factory. In October 2000, on a late Sunday evening, I decided to load on Windows ME, which lasted a few weeks before I reverted back to Windows 98. In June, Friday 19th June 2003 to be exact, I took the major step of installing Windows XP. (Further details in the archives.) Until now, it has been very stable and never caused me any problems. In the past few months, it has been constantly rebooting. While I fixed this, instead of rebooting, the dreaded blue screen of death appears, which means that you have to reboot anyway. I know exactly what the problem is, one of my memory chips is faulty (most likely the original stick of 128mb) but I cannot be asked to fix it. Instead, I let this stupid cycle continue. The PC therefore crashes every evening at least four times, sometimes even shutting down makes it crash! I am desperately running out of space on my dedicated audio drive, which is 14GB in size, with a wafer 378mb free. Hopefully, within a week I will have a shiny new computer, which runs at super fast speeds. May help several things, but won’t make blogging any easier.

One man forever in our thoughts this week, more so than the past few months. Justice shall prevail but I know little about the court case taking place thousands of miles away. Therefore, I shall look to the future. I was never lucky enough to see Michael perform live, even though he has toured this country extensively, particularly in the early 90s. Yesterday evening, before my beloved Eastenders, Real Story investigated the pop star’s next move. What I found most interesting about this documentary, was how our fallen idol, will make his return. This will be the greatest comeback of all time. An album, a world tour, a worldwide hit song, that takes Michael straight back up to the top of the charts, where he rightly belongs. A final farewell to a career that has spend three decades and bought us some unforgettable magic moments. Sure, I hear what you are saying? Has Teg officially lost the plot? The man’s future still hangs in the balance with eight men and four women holding his fate in the hands. Sure, I do not deny the fact that there are more pressing issues to be dealt with and face. What is wrong to look to the future, to the world away from wall to wall coverage by Court TV. For do we not gain strength from knowing what we were, more than what we have become. If Peter Pan never grew up, then his magic, his dreams, never die.