Ahh, my first vacation since joining The Company. My queue is cleaned up, my email is forwarded, and an elaborate Sieve session has accomplished in a mere two hours what less civilized mail systems can do with a key combination: The Corporate Vacation Email.

It’s been five months now since I came ‘cross the channel and started meeting the natives, learning the lingo, and getting used to the fact that everyone here talks like Pinky. Now, I’ll be letting my hair down for the next 10 days or so. As well as putting my poor, broken foot up on the coffee table.

As soon as I get my x-rays back from the socialist medical system (they still copy them with coal rubbings on wax paper over here, apparently), I’ll post pictures of the metatarsalar breakage here for your morbid enjoyment. Don’t thank me yet.

The other half of Sistaweb will be joining us for the week. We’ll allow her to sleep here rent-free for an entire week, even though she refused to bring a carton of cigarettes as payment. Damned non-smokers and their principles. It’s like those non-smokers back in the World War II who didn’t sign up for cigarette rations. Throwing away a gold mine, that is. Our grandfathers probably had a word for those guys, and if I knew my grandfather at all, that word was sissy-boy.

The girls have rented a wheelchair for me, seeing as I won’t be too much fun doing a London pub-crawl on crutches. I’ve already had a forehead-slapping moment over this, as you probably are right now. Why haven’t I thought of taking a wheelchair with me before? That would’ve come in handy on more than one occasion, the Wreckyll in Jeckyll not least among them.