Market Harborough, 0 miles, 0 locks
Back to work on the train again, only this time my host and I managed to meet up. We chatted for a while, but after the conversation fizzled out he went back to reading Motorcycle News and I back to Great Expectations. It's all getting very exciting now, with Pip having left his life as an apprentice blacksmith on the marshes to be a Gentleman in London and to follow the path of great expectation that has been laid out before him. I'm sure that there's going to be some love interest chucked into the mix any minute, as his life is far too straightforward at the moment.
Work went okay, with me deciding that if I didn't figure out why everything was broken within an hour, I'd abandon it. In the back of my mind there were some assertions I thought I better check and in doing so the root of the problem was discovered. After that it was straightforward to fix things and by not long after the end of the hour it was all working and the new functionality—which was the point of the change—was all in place.
A few more problems got knocked down during the afternoon, including one which I managed, but which is too slow to be usable. It requires a restructuring of the database schema and the reversing of some annoying datatype decisions to really fix this one. In my former life, I'd done this on a couple of occasions and each time it had made a significant difference to search performance.
We reached a convenient stopping point by the end of the afternoon and everyone seemed very pleased with what I'd achieved. There's a suggestion that they'd like me for another day either next week or the one after, so I've said that I'll work out where I'll be and let them know.
Getting home was less good. I'd just got on the Underground when they announced that—due to radio problems—all service on that line was suspended. We all got off the train and trooped out of the station, then headed for the nearest alternative. The queue there was crazy and—remembering that there was a third station nearby—I walked there instead. Unfortunately it was closed for refurbishment and rebuilding, so it was back to where the crowds were. They'd thinned a bit by now, so it was a bit less crazy, but it meant that I got back to St Pancras just in time to watch my train depart. Fortunately the next one was 25 minutes later and it was just after 10pm when I got home.
No posh dinners or leftovers for me tonight: I had fish fingers and Heinz multigrain Spaghetti, washed down with a cuppa. Need a decent night's sleep as well: boating tomorrow!
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