What a dreadful song that is. I don't care if Leonard Cohen sang it, or even if it was in Shrek, it's a bloody awful racket and needs eradicating from the airwaves. What on earth possessed anyone to record it again in such a whiny, tortured, my life is so fucking awful, angst ridden fashion? It's really not necessary and provides no new contribution to the state of British (?), or any other, musical culture. I don't care whether you won X-Factor (actually I care that anyone of the endless stream of wannabes who enter it should win X-Factor), I'd like to see this constipated drivel gone, now and for ever.

Busy eradicating the song going round my head with the Smashing Pumpkins 'Stand Inside Your Love' - always makes me think of AM this song. Some lyrics for you.

You and me
Meant to be
Immutable
Impossible
It's destiny
Pure lunacy
Incalculable
Insufferable
But for the last time
You're everything that I want and ask for
You're all that I'd dreamed
Who wouldn't be the one you love
Who wouldn't stand inside your love
Protected and the lover of
A pure soul and beautiful you
Don't understand
Don't feel me now
I will breathe
For the both of us
Travel the world
Traverse the skies
Your home is here
Within my heart
And for the first time
I feel as though I am reborn
In my mind
Recast as child and mystic sage
Who wouldn't be the one you love
Who wouldn't stand inside your love
And for the first time
I'm telling you how much I need and bleed for
Your every move and waking sound
In my time
I'll wrap my wire around your heart and your mind
You're mine forever now
Who wouldn't be the one you love and live for
Who wouldn't stand inside your love and die for
Who wouldn't be the one you love

...no actually it's an ice-cream van in the street outside! Business is business I guess, even on December 24th...

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

It's a bit like that here at the moment. All I have to listen to is the gentle whirr of the PC next to me. The shopping is done, as is a proportion of the wrapping. Outside, it's a sort of twilight world, not quite light and not yet dark. The lights on the old ICI plant are beginning to twinkle in the distance and I can still see the never ending vapour trail the place is throwing out. At least the place doesn't smell like it did in times past, or at least so I'm told.

I get the impression my body would like to shut down for a while. This often happens when there's been a bit of a build up to something, travelling, driving, shopping, wrapping etc. It feels like I'm on hold waiting for something now - in this case waiting for AM to get back from her Mum's so we can wrap the presents for my family. I'm hoping it doesn't take long, as my back really doesn't enjoy the experience of being bent over for any great length of time - hitting a golf ball doesn't seem to have quite the same effect, but then that's a rather more active form of bending over, unlike present wrapping which is rather static.

I hear the front door, must be time to go do the needful (to quote one of my Saudi colleagues)

It's the early hours of Sunday morning on 21st December. What's more, this time I have a pen! "This time" what? you might inevitably ask. I'm in an airport of course, and if I'm in an airport then I must be at a loose end and so the mind tends to occupy itself.

Actually, that's not so true this time, as I've just spent the last couple of hours in what passes for Riyadh's business/first class lounge, physically attached to the iPod, but mentally more attuned to John Irving's 'The Fourth Hand'. His books are bizarre make no mistake, but you'd only have had to have read one to know that. I've read a fair sample of them now and they never fail to entertain - other passengers must wonder what's got into me, as I'm sure I wear a permanent smirk on my face.

Not at the moment though, as I've moved out of the rather cloying lounge and into the hive of activity also known as Costa Coffee and as always, the joint is just bouncing like a regular rubber ball. There is the merest hint that passengers are shifting irresistably towards the gate, but Costa Coffee and I are not to be parted just yet.

It's a well known fact that the majority of the world's airports are not designed to accommodate the average human form - I cite in evidence the chairs. Is it possible they could have been created with the purpose of supporting a vaguely humanoid shape for in excess of two hours? The ones here are surely only an intermediate manufacturing step on the way to a particularly exotic (and no doubt expensive) brand of cheese grater. Very good for aeration though so I'm told.

I see the lines a forming, so Costa and I must part company. Another short but torrid relationship must end with a journey...

It seems I was right about the undersea cables in the Mediterranean. The news wires this morning are awash with stories of breaks in cables affecting coutries across the Middle East and India amongst others. One such sample story can be found here at Bloggernews.net. I didn't pick this one particularly for its rumour and conjecture content, but more because it has a great jpg showing where the worlds' undersea cables run - I've always loved maps - I should have been a cartographer. Given the extent of the problems at the moment, it may be considered something of a surprise that I can post this at all, but I guess it does go to show the extent of the redundancy built into the [internet] system, and potentially how difficult it would be to shut it down as some would have us believe a variety of Government agencies would like to do.

It's Friday night and that means tomorrow is another work day - unlike many other work days, this is not so bad, as it's the last one I have to do before I fly back to the UK. This evening though, is proving to be a slightly frustrating one, as the local internet feed appears to have gone completely down the toilet.

Every site I'm hitting takes what seems to be an eternity to reach, in some instances, 2 or 3 minutes per page to load completely. Now as I've got a few things to do this evening that rely on me having a usable connection that's not good. Chief amongst them is writing up a set of handover notes, which rely on me establishing a VPN link back to the office. Did I hear someone say "not gonna happen?". Yes, thought so...

Other than that, there are a few things I wanted to try with the blog with the primary aim of helping out someone across at b2evo who's having a few 'issues'.

Current issues are very reminiscent of the problems encountered (twice) this year where some muppet managed to drag their anchors through the undersea cables in the Mediterranean. This not only affected the internet feeds, but also the telephone lines into the country. By strange coincidence, call it quirk of fate, AM has had an appalling time trying to ring me this evening - no joy at all calling my mobile, and repeated attempts before finally succeeding with the land line. I do actually dream of the day when I can, on a daily basis, just click on any given link and know that the page will materialise before me almost before I've finished clicking the mouse.

Isn't it odd though that the spam has no problems reaching me though?

If I was being wholly honest, I would say that the internet is just one of a number of things that haven't behaved themselves today. If you add in an ATM that completed a 1,000 SAR transaction, but didn't give me the cash, a less than impressive round of golf and the DVD player that seems to have given up on playing audio without sounding like Norman Collier, you'll perhaps get the idea.

On the up side, at least the dishes are done. Suppose I ought to go up the ante and throw a last pile of clothes into the washing machine - domestic bliss...