Hmm, feeling a bit dangerously crazy these days...have caught myself buying all kinds of weird things, like the Collins Complete DIY Manual and a book about how to make cushions (if anyone thinks that doesn't really sound crazy, be aware that I have never made anything with my hands in my entire life, unless you count a yellow blanket for a doll's bed that I knitted when I was nine). Earlier on I found myself bidding for a power drill on ebay and even earlier I was on the Ford site configuring a dark blue short wheelbase medium-roofed Transit van. What's going on? Why have my hands gone numb? The thrill of imminent freedom is making me light-headed, have hatched all kinds of crazy plans about setting up a furniture shop in the cellar of my French house in which I will not only sell *lovely things* I picked up for next to nothing in the local depot-vente, but also beautiful cushions that I will have made with my fair hands (yeah right) from the bargain designer fabrics I've been buying by the bucketload on ebay. It all seems perfectly reasonable to me, but whenever I try and tell H. this is what I'm going to do, he looks at me like I'm a nutcase. Maybe it's the dilated pupils, wildly unbrushed hair and complete lack of make-up that I'm fetchingly sporting these days.

Meanwhile, back at work, my boss has apparently been telling everyone I'm leaving because I can't handle the stress. Thanks for that. Actually I'm leaving because I think that spending 15 hours a day either at work or travelling to and from work is inhumane. And dealing with the corporate politics of a company with 42,000 employees and several thousand battling egos is something that no decent adult should be required to do. Not to mention the fact that I've got just a mite fed up of the explicit Gulf War metaphors the company uses to describe its marketing strategy. Plus has anyone noticed how fantastically boring the corporate software industry is these days? Although rumour does have it that we're on the cusp of the Second Dotcom Boom - a rumour that, I'd like to point out in anticipation of future finger-pointing and recriminations when it all crashes again, was single-handedly started last week by Timothy J. Mullaney in Business Week. Hope he's right, I have high hopes for online sales of my rustic French furniture, Art Deco stoves and exquisite cushionry. Vive la révolution!