Sandlander

If I had been at home in the Sandlands, in my flat of Khalifa Street in Abu Dhabi I wouldn't have needed to set the alarm; at eight in the morning I always watched BBC World and/or CNN. But last night in Munich I did set the alarm to wake me in pitch darkness just before six... and so I saw the speech live.

I felt that a curse upon us had been lifted! There is a new hope and, possibly, mature refection on the past. It's not just the last eight years which were purgatory... I've selected as an appropriate video not something anthemic by Springsteen but a track which is directly related to Grant Park, Chicago.

By coincidence and on a purely personal level another curse has been lifted... it has been over eight years since I had web connectivity at home. Now, for the past couple of days, I have given an ancient Sony Vaio laptop (not a new MacBook, alas) a fresh cell cure with a modest OS upgrade and a USB dongle giving web access via a pay-as-you-go Vodafone SIM card. It's probably not the cheapest solution, but it's way better than nothing. So my next post can be uploaded from home by a bathrobed blogger!