Neil Hopcroft

I’ve just driven past Renton. It was dark so i’ve no idea if its as grim as my imagination makes it seem. Glasgow has rather more traffic than i was expecting. Now, stopped for the night at Luss on the shore of Loch Lomond.

This morning was a visit to the pencil museum and the ‘cars of the stars’ in Keswick. Then on to Cockermouth, where they don’t any longer have a toy museum. Despite what the signs say. Oh well.

I’d forgotten how much fun some of the lake district roads can be, drop it a cog or two, give it a bootfull and suddenly you’re staring at the exhaust of a porsche wishing he’d get out your way.

And i feel bad about seeing a hitcher and not picking him up. It’s dropped so far off my consciousness that he took a while to register.

Why are you warning me about something you’ve done for my safety?

I awoke this morning to realise that the motorway is as far from the travellodge as the m25 is from my house. There’s more green here though.

I stop for the night at lancaster services and discover i’m already north of a significant portion of the places i had been intending to visit. Oh well the lawnmowers can wait, maybe i pop in on the way back. Next stop the pencil museum.

… Deciding just who deserves to die.

I’m not a very good consumer at the best of times, but doubly so at this time of year.

Still, enough of that. I’m heading north on a tour of museums.

No plan. But you know that story already. More later.

The strongest kitty-room on the face of the earth! Let:s look with Feng Shui!

Online encyclopedia of UK motorway heritage

So i start my weeks break with a pilgrimage to the awesome space of St Pancras Station. They still haven’t finished the works there, so its a little difficult to figure out what its going to be like when its done.

Now i’m waiting for the rain to stop before heading onward to bmovie. I hope i remembered the right date.

There’s a creepy scouser in the corner shouting “i hate muslims” into his mobile phone. Some days i love being english. This isn’t one of them.

“hi, i’m an American jerk.” – Tokyo Damage Report is back.

“Let me get this straight… you’re planning a major software release, a hardware upgrade and a minor release for code that hasn’t been written yet in the next three weeks and you don’t think theres any risk in shpping for our customers to hit the shops before christmas?”

Share portfolio
1 Month change: +1.74% FTSE: +1.55%
12 Month change: +19.71% FTSE: +14.76%
12 Month yield: 1.57%
Top performer: nCipher +11%
Worst performer: Evolution -10%

The most exciting thing this month was the announcement of a special dividend by Amstrad – the price fell 12% as it went ex-dividend, but given that the payment is something of the order of 18% (of the pre-dividend price) it seems a little unfair to classify them as the worst performer. Its not paid until December, though.