David Gillon

.... at least five are currently parked outside the electricity substation on the opposite side of the main road. I'd say that definitely points to it being the smoking gun for Wednesday's powercut given that undoubtedly adds up to a tidy chunk of Saturday overtime. It could even be more than five as there's a chunk of road I can't see for my neighbour's huge shed that's big enough to take a couple more (he works for them as well, but his van is still on his drive)

Actually I tell a lie, they've all gone now I look again, and they've been replaced by a big black BMW, which I think I saw outside on Wednesday night moments before the power came back up - must be the boss.

In unwelcome news I seem to be working through the first cold of the year. I felt a bit off on Wednesday, okay on Thursday, and definitely iffy from about 2PM yesterday with a rapidly escalating headache and a touch of chills.In a clear sign of how bad it was, Amazon delivered a book I've wanted for ages and I didn't even have sufficient brain to flick through it and look at the pictures.

I ended up unable to sleep, so booted-up Warhammer on the computer and played some more of the Dwarf campaign I started over Christmas. This may not have been a good idea because as a bear of little brain as I was getting comprehensively hammered by the Orks. I've just been playing the strategic game and auto-resolving battles, rather than waiting 15 minutes each time for it to boot into the tactical game, but when the Orks besieged my capital and ambushed the relief force outside the walls and the game announced it was going to be a decisive defeat if I auto-resolved it I decided I might as well play it out as my campaign was doomed either way. OTOH I wasn't prepared to wait for it to organise itself so I turned the sound off and went to bed with the intention of playing out my inevitable doom in the morning.

Twenty minutes later I realised that there's a near sub-audible rhythmic thud leaking through into my speakers from the background audio of the now-running tactical game, So up again and go take a look at what's going on (I think it's an imperfect cut-out on the off-switch for the external speakers), and the simplest way to get rid of it (because I don't want to be fiddling with audio levels with half a brain) is to play it out. So there I am, half-dressed, no glasses, at 4:30AM, looking at the climactic battle of the campaign so far, and it's the first time recently I've seen the forecast auto-resolve results look completely unrelated to reality. Not only did I have the definite advantage of numbers, but I was fighting from behind city walls, The only advantage the Orks had was their leader, and I could just swarm him.

And that's precisely what happened. They made it onto the top of the wall, and got comprehensively hammered, About a third of their force survived to retreat, and I then sortied and wiped them out. This thing may yet be salvageable, And then I saved game and finally got to bed.

Unsurprisingly I slept late, and I'm still only firing on about six cylinders out of eight, but that's better than yesterday,

ETA: Back up to 4 vans, plus the boss's Beemer. That's not ominous or anything. Glad I bought those camping lanterns!