Well, my deadline crunch has passed and I seem to be in one piece, more or less. One set of redlines are back and the developer seems largely happy. I’m slightly more nervous about the second set, but we’ll see what happens.

In other news, I went to an excellent party on Saturday night, pictures from which will be up on the web in fairly short order - no later than Friday, certainly. The highlight of the trip was my car nearly getting blown up. Lorna & I were sat in the car park of a service station off the M4, eating lunch. Lorna was on the phone to her Mum, and I was chilling out with a sandwich. A car pulled up behind us, with what appeared to be steam coming from under the bonnet. An elderly lady dashed out, grabbed her yappy little dog from the back seal and legged it.

By now, the steam was taking on a distinctly smoke-like-appearance. I prodded Lorna, who turned around, took one look and leapt out of the car. As I watched her run across the carpark, I decided that I probably had better leave, too.

Good call. By this point flames were licking out of the bottom of the car parked behind mine. About five minutes later, the front tires went as the smoke turned black. Yup, the upholstery was going. We had ten minutes at the outside before it hit the petrol tank (that’s “gas tank” for my american admirers). Lorna was quietly musing about the fate of the people who had moved closer to get a better look, and estimating how much of my car would arrive.

The service station were busy shooing people out of the area, and getting all the cars in a 10 metre radius, bar the three nearest the burning car. Yes, mine was one of those three. By now the whole of the front seat had gone. Minutes to go…

And the fire brigade arrived and put it out, just as I was rehearsing my “Ansis, you know that car you sold me a year back? Got anything similar?” speech.

What fun. Still, I’m glad I pay my taxes to pay those firemen..