Thankfully there is only one more week of the train disruptions to endure. Might be able to go to Manchester without it taking more than two hours.

Current things that are worth listening to are : Death Cab For Cutie's Transalanticism, Air's Talkie Walkie album is quite soundtracky and makes for good background music. There's the My Morning Jacket albums which I think are damn fine. If you go over to Digital Club Network you can watch some full length live videos. There's loads of other stuff like some great doo-wop after I watched the Channel Four documentary The Voice. Radio 1 had a good 2 hour documentary on Domino Records on the ever brilliant One World show, shame it's on so late, I keep falling asleep. They only have the current show available for listening. They really should have archives. Okay that's enough music for now. I could go on about some of the new Badly Drawn Boy tracks too.

James Lawrence obituary

Seems like I start the new year on a sad note, that's Chinese New Year by the way which was yesterday. No doubt there will be loud celebrations on Sunday like in London China Town. Wrap up with the cold snap coming.

Anyway I'm feeling much better about my new place especially having just organised my MP3 discs. Now I might be able to listen to more songs that I haven't heard in a while. Hoping that I don't have to move again soon but as always that could change in no time.

Noticed that the new series of ER has just come onto E4, can't wait for Channel Four to start showing them. The only real excuse to watch TV, that and all those diverse range of documentaries with great names being shown (I mean Pissed on the job, how did they ever get the word pissed on there?).

So a trip to to Manchester that usually takes just over an hour is going to take two hours tomorrow. The lines are being upgraded so part of the journey is by bus. Not looking forward to four hours of travelling. Although First Northwestern are often touted as being very poor for their service, they haven't been too bad on the route I take. Hopefully the upgrades will be worth it in the long term.

Regardless I know if I was living abroad I would pay. I wonder if other papers are doing the same thing? Online versions of the Sun, Star, Daily Mail, News of the World anyone?

It's probably the first time that there was no 'incidents' at home while I was there over Christmas. All quiet and pretty peaceful. I managed the usual eating too much but not drinking a lot, tidied up a little and listened to a lot of music (but no records as I couldn't be bothered setting up my record player), went to Electric Chair and saw Norman Jay DJ a storming set, gave my dad some computing lessons, made record sleeves, took lots of lomographs, started packing for my imminent move and caught up on sleep. Can't think if this is any different from my normal days off. I think I just didn't have to spend as much money.

First day back to work, it's still as quiet as ever (until the students return next week).

Best record I heard over Christmas Cody ChestnuTT's The Headphone Masterpiece, some weird and wonderful tracks that cross multiple genres recorded by himself. They are soulful and funny but maybe the album should have been cut down to one as some of the tracks did just go by me. The video to 'Look Good In Leather' is brilliant though.