So I fucked up a little today.  I packed my bags, said goodbye to everyone, left the office and went to the train station.  There I phoned Anna to find out where we were going to meet, and she asked why I was so early?  I couldn't figure out what she meant, until she said that it was five past four, not five past five.  I seem to have left work early.  Oops.

There were more bombs in London today.  Nobody was hurt, but the tubes are fucked it seems.  I may have to work from home tomorrow, we'll have to wait and see.
Dave sent me what has to be the best quote about the events so far :
Sky is reporting breaking of the seventh seal, seas turning to blood, horses eating each other. Thousands dead, trillions injured.
The BBC is reporting that some tube stations have closed.
I love that, it sums up Sky perfectly.  Oh, photos of Budapest are up.  Comments to follow.

A mailing list entry promped the most wonderful memory.  I remember staying in my grandmother's house when I was about 11... circa 1982 or 83.  My aunt had left this book lying around and I picked it up because I was bored. It was Magician.  I read the first few pages, and was captivated by the story.  I read it all night long, eating crackerbread and drinking hot chocolate while I read and then discovered it was morning so I got up and had breakfast, still reading as I ate.  I think I finished the entire thing within a couple of days, and haven't looked back since.  
Magician introduced me to fantasy, and from there I started reading Eddings and Ursula LeGuin.  I'll never capture the feeling again, but I remember as a kid rushing to the book shop to pick up the latest Feist or Eddings and rushing home, reading my new treasure on the bus, and then sitting on the big leather armchairs my parents used to have and reading those books for hours. They were magical times for me :-)

Seems like an age since I've updated this, and in a way it really is.  Anna went away for her dig in Arizona, but ended up coming back ten days early because she had a shit time.  She got sick, and it was so bad that she had to come home.  So we had to cancel our holiday, and take the hit on the money we had already spent.  Luckily, my travel insurance should cover the cost of the flights, which is a good thing.  After she came back, we decided that we still needed a holiday, so we flew to Budapest for a week.  Budapest rocks!  I hadn't been expecting the kind of city that it turned out to be, and I was very pleasantly surprised.  I was thinking that it would be mostly communist era drab grey buildings, but the architecture is really nice.  The people were nice too, I guess they haven't been spoiled yet by the hen and stag party shit that happens to nice cities.  
So, London had its first suicide bombs.  We were away when it happened, but saw it on the news.  I'm not sure what to say about it really... it sucks, horribly, but I feel slightly dissociated from it because I wasn't here, and everything had pretty much returned to normal when I got back.  I saw the first spam today about it - a chain mail telling everyone to stay off the tube on Tuesday because BAD THINGS were going to happen.  Disgusting.  London had a two minute silence yesterday, and we were all out on the streets for it.  I'd love to have seen it from above - it must have looked fantastic.  Hundreds of thousands of people showing solidarity in their resistance to being terroriesd.  One thing you have to say about the English is that they refuse to be cowed by anything.