Just for a change, I will not vent about what a bunch of useless tossers Orange or some other mobile operator is. No siree. Instead, I shall vent about what a bunch of useless tossers Leon Paul are. One of my first tasks as armourer at Poly was to take six spools in for repairs. That's six in one go on the Tube back home and back again after repairs. These are heavy ******s and Leon Paul charged us some £209 for the service. Because, with these six out of action, we were down to just two electric pistes, I slogged into fencing last night, despite getting home late from meetings at Sunbury.

Sure enough, as soon as we plugged a ground wire (note: no actual weapons connected yet), the hit light goes off and stays that way. How the **** did that get past quality control?!? Did someone there think maybe we wouldn't notice?!? Jeez. Anyway, as I'm off to an armourers' course end of the month, Jes suggested taking it along as an example to work on but I am so tempted to drive back down to Leon Paul and shout at them a bit. Nonetheless, whatever I do, I had to carry the ****** thing back home again last night. BASTARDS!

Gah. Got very little fencing done, between arriving late and Jes doing a presiding course. That was actually very useful: he provided a very good theoretical framework (e.g. there are only 4 types of hit: attack, riposte, counter-attack and continuation, the attack is always the first thing and the key is identifying the attack) and cleared up a lot of misconceptions. Suddenly, presiding seems a lot less scary. There is still the ability to analyse the fight but at least it seems simpler now. Actually, only fenced one bout, against Rob but, much to both our surprise, I won, albeit by the narrowest of margins - 15-14!

Anyway, been a weird day. Had to call a contact back to say I wouldn't be free for the project he had, got a call from an agent asking about a number of consulting positions (which do look neat), had a near 1-hour phone interview with a Dutch guy at an America telecoms analysis firm recruiting for a new UK office (would I mind working in the US for a bit? Huh? You got to ask?!?) and, while I was on there, got a voicemail from another recruiter. Something weird is happening...