Computer:

Bread. Sliced, white. Margarine.

I wonder what Captain Picard's enviable Earl Grey dispenser would make of that? I'd imagine he might well reply that such a treat is no way to explore the Delta Quadrant, or indeed The Nether Potteries.

What of recent times and climes?

There have been no colourful trips on the 21 - it's been too long old friend. No major angst (well there was, but it was just the the product of an over-anxious mind and has been noted as such), just a fair bit of work stuff (upbeat but busy), and only the odd straggle of mildly interesting annotation in my diary. And therefore, no Sketches From Boz.

The Pittshill of Despair? Far from it. Today I abandoned our only child to Serco ... sorry... Stoke-on-Trent LEA, for the first time. He didn't love it but he didn't hate it either. And for a little while at least, there's the promise of some lonesome time on two weekdays, for the first time in what seems like forever.

I spy some room for a little dérive. Maybe riding the 6A from end to end and back again (and again), or something equally daunting / thrilling. I should probably do a course, but the chances of me abandoning learning in favour of cash or much heavier learning during the next year are too high, whatever the alleged flexibility of the colleges.

I started at Longton Library, where the extremely nice librarian helped me to find a choice volume. "Thing is," she said, "these things get sent to us, and then just disappear when they haven't been borrowed in three years or more."

But there it was, virtually unthumbed: happy days in the town where nearly-new books go to die.