The sod's law of deadlines...

...dictates that one's keyboard and printer will break on the same day, when one is quite pushed to have a script delivered by October 31st.

I missed out on a few hours of weekend writing time yesterday going into Brighton to replace them both. Given that surely no one, unless it's a dire emergency like this, would go to a High Street store to buy these things anymore, I expected Dixons to be empty.(I know it's not called Dixons anymore, but Currys Digital is up there with Starburst and Snickers in my list of stupid replacement names that I'll stubbornly never use.)

I expected wrong - it was packed, and miserable. And they had no keyboards, except in expensive wireless keyboard and mouse boxed sets. So, I had to go to Argos, which was even more packed and miserable. Argos now seems to have dispensed with staff behind tills, as you have to type in your code number and stick your credit card in the slot yourself. The only humans employed are those schlepping out your purchase at the end, and I'm sure they're working on a robot that'll perform this function in future. Ghastly.

Anyway, I now have a shiny new printer, and a keyboard where some keys are in ever-so-slightly different places to where I'm used to. But I'm not letting it slow me down - the first pass of my feature is done, and I'm now amending, trimming and improving before Wednesday. Latest pages have included the words gob, Catholic, and greenhouse.

On the iPod today: the new Pet Shop Boys long-player, Disco 4, with remixes of their own work, plus remixes of songs by icons: Bowie, Yoko Ono, Madonna... and, er, Atomiser, who must have won some sort of competition, I guess.