1) Satellite
2) Saddam and the mid-term elections
3) A book of the week
4) Investing
5) The Tarn

Staying in this afternoon while the chap from Cranleigh Aerials attaches the satellite dish to the side of the house. Unfortunately, we don't seem to have the Sky registration card that presumably proves that we're bona fide customers so I'm not sure that we are going to be receiving our first satellite TV this very evening.

Did I think it was junk mail and chuck it? I don't think so but can't be sure.

======================================================

This morning I've been doing more work hunting including registering myself with an agency that specialises in the third sector - worth doing - and phoning an agency about a job with a firm of headhunters - not so worthwhile. I'm not sure if I think headhunting is a good thing; it doesn't seem to be a very transparent way of matching people for jobs. I also sent off my details to a firm looking for freelancers to do indexing for them. This would be fine but it might be just slightly too technical for me.

===================================================

Not much to say about the world situation today. I'm just a little suspicious of the timing of the verdict and sentencing in Saddam Hussein's trial - coming just before the mid-term congressional elections. Unlike the government I don't really have a problem with a death penalty for Saddam (in punishments for ordinary criminals I'm opposed to the death penalty because it just seems too easy to punish the wrong man or woman).

This last week there has been an extra intense feeling of everything hanging fire as far as Iraq is concerned, just because of those mid-term elections. However, I don't think anyone in the US government is going to come up with a new, workable policy for Iraq as soon as the elections are out of the way. The response to John Kerry's non-joke about Iraq seems to demonstrate just how easy it is for Americans not to think about the real issues over there.

=================================================

I've been reading 'Winter in Madrid' by CJ Sansom - the story centres on a novice spy attached to the British Embassy there in 1940. It's great on historical detail about the Spanish Civil War and it's aftermath but also has some anachronisms and a couple of sloppy inconsistencies - the sort of things that name searches in a word processor should be able to sort.

I'm thinking of a temporary policy of abstinence as far as fiction is concerned because I've got a stack of non-fiction (mainly history) that I haven't got around to reading yet.

====================================================

Continuing my occasional items on investing, this section is about specialising in the industries you invest in. it's not original but it pays to concentrate on a few areas and get to understand them fairly well or at least to recognise areas where you know so little that you could go calamitously wrong.

Years ago I used to have to write abstracts about the oil industry in general and the meetings of OPEC in particular. Those were the days in the early to mid 1980s when Opec appeared to be calling the shots. If my memory serves the meetings used to occur roughly twice a year and were designed to reach agreement about where oil prices should be (as high as possible) and rough up any member states that produced over their quota. By this time OPEC's influence was on the wane and the chairman, Sheikh Yamani, rarely seemed to get what he wanted. I began to see myself as a bit of an OPEC buff and ever since I've been interested in oil and oil companies to the extent of reading about them in the financial pages. Recently, I've been trying to extend my interest to renewables - but I'm not sure I fully understand how many promises governments have to make about subsidising them before they become viable.

By contrast I've always been wary of pharmaceutical companies because I don't have a scientific bent. This attitude may have saved me from some grievous mistakes as I could have waded in without fully understanding all the issues around intellectual property that affect drugs companies as well as the problems they face in terms of corporate reputation. Although, who knows, now that Holby City is running episodes about the ethics of ethical drugs, I may start to show more of an interest.

A word of warning, though - again, not original - but it may be best to avoid investing in the area you know best - the one you work in. In a way you've already invested in that field (with your career); if you invest your money in the company or the industry you work in and it slumps (like the dotcom companies) you would be affected by the same setback in two different ways.

=====================================================

On the home front we've lit our first fire of the autumn. Getting the coal in presents a problem because the garage floor is dirty and wet and walking from there to the NEW CARPET with a full coal skuttle doesn't seem like a good idea. What's needed is some holes in the garage floor to allow the rain water that collects to drain away - it won't be long before I can grow mushrooms in there.

We've done some Christmas shopping in Kingston (chiefly M&S) and had a preliminary foray into choosing curtain material. First attempt was a swatch from John Lewis costing £2.80 which turns out to be too yellowy - could be put to good use for an ecclesiastical stole. More promisingly the local fabric shop let us have a whole book of swatches for a couple of days.

Yesterday we went to the fish ponds at Puttenham Common and did a circuit of the middle pond (the Tarn - the others are private). The ponds look like 'hammer' ponds but I suspect that they're not as old as that and some landowner just decided that fishing was more enjoyable that shooting and dammed up the little valley. I had a look at a reproduction of a map from the 1860s and the ponds were there then. The bottom pond is called Cut Mill so maybe there was a mill there.

There were signs up warning anglers not to put wet fishing tackle in the water for fear of spreading a deadly fish disease.

Not going for marathon hikes at the moment owing to head cold and cold weather.

===================================================

Satellite man has been and gone and Sky Freeview say the card should arrive tomorrow or Wednesday so for the time being we are limited to BBC channels and ITV1. Now pretty sure that this card didn't get accidentally recycled into compost.