Firstly, for those that by pass the site - Ms Verde has updated her stories page.

Secondly - Tripod hates me. We're still trying to sort the website out. I've now got it to accept my new payment details - it just won't give me my Pro account back again; it seems to think I already have one although the other part say's I'm still on the free account. So it's back over to Arnold .....

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The pressure at work has been off the scale just lately, so much so that it’s really starting to affect my health. Yesterday all I did was sleep; partly from being totally worn out, partly from ill health - my asthma is really bad at the moment and partly from feeling very low in myself; which I’ve been fighting for the past fortnight. I don’t think of these mood swings as depression, that is something a lot worse than this. And no, I won’t let the bastard win. It’s controlled enough of my life already – this time I’m not going down without a fight – but that’s often easier said than done, it’s part of my make up after all and the asthma has without a doubt not helped the situation. Trouble is, it’s not any one thing – never is I suppose – all a thousand and one little things throw you over the edge. Mind you talking to Pooks this afternoon helped, just having someone to listen to me about nothing in particularly and all of a sudden I could admit how I was feeling. Which is half the battle - even through Himself has known for a while and has been trying his very best to help - I wasn’t prepared to listen let alone admit that all was far from well in my world.

So I really didn’t need to be greeted today, when I arrived at work, with not one but two people moaning at me that the server was down. I bit back on the ‘so what do you want me to do about it, throw a party?’ My temper isn’t at its best either at the moment – wouldn’t take too much to blow a gasket and tell them exactly where they could stick the server. Surely to God someone could have just restarted it.

Well no as it happens, they couldn’t and why couldn’t they? Because there was no power going to it, that’s why. I changed the lead, I checked the fuse – it was a dead as the preverbal Dodo. Oh go on – just pile that pressure on. Kick me when I'm down. No server and the world just grinds to a halt. We’ve the company AGM on Wednesday, the company Self Assessment to finish too, as well as all the everyday jobs that are on deadlines. Anyone would think it was my personal fault – that I had arranged it. I got moaned at by every man and his dog although what the feck they thought I could do about it, I don’t know. I'm not a bleeding electrician.

We have a company that looks after our computers when they go wrong, so I called out Kev; who arrived, took one look at it and told me there was no power going into it. You don’t say. He took it away with him and told me he’d ring when he knew what it was, he thought it was the power supply but didn’t know if anything else wasn’t working until he sorted that bit out.

Great – 9.45am and no server. Worse than that NO INTERNET. I found plenty to do for a while until I noticed that everyone else was doing bugger all and then rebellion set in. You know that 'I'm so pissed off' feeling? My computer is situated next to the server and router and a long, long, time ago I used to get my internet access direct from that router – bypassing the server altogether. All I had to do was remember the settings – actually that isn’t as easy as it sounds. But I can be amazingly stubborn at times, which in this case paid off towards lunchtime when I hit jackpot and connected myself to the internet. I very nearly Woo Hoo-ed in my excitement. As no one knew I'd got an internet connection that wouldn't have been a good idea.

I then spent the remainder of the afternoon IM-ing Pooks, probably driving her mad with my moaning but what the heck – she can give as good as she gets and she managed to make me smile, something that hasn’t happened a lot just lately - all emotions feel forced. She was at home ill by the way, someone up above must have been watching over me and arranged that, although I don't think she would be very pleased if that was the case.

So I haven’t achieved a bit of work other than the meeting timetable for next year and to be honest, I don’t give a flying f**k - for once in my life I was only thinking about myself - maybe I should do that more often. If I don't look out for me no one else is going to - so I took the afternoon off!