World of more

A rare conjunction of Barry's insistent nagging, an evaluation copy of Dreamweaver and some slack time in the office has let me finally get around to writing up a couple of walking trips I went on a few months back. Present, in all their winter glory, are a December weekend in the Lake District and a February ice-climbing trip to Scotland .

The audience at an Orbital gig is not a representative microcosm of modern multicultural British society. There's no young club kids, no crusties, no lager-louts and few women. Rather it's composed of old school ravers and those almost fashionable, slightly geeky guys that try just a bit hard; the bloke from the IT department that doesn't talk about Star Trek but still knows his way around a computer; the mate in the pub who is always pleased to show off the latest phone or PDA. They shop for the modern gadgets and hip t-shirts, but always carry themselves with the knowledge that no matter how hard they try, they still don't *feel* cool. People like me. That's good because the Hartnoll brothers are the same. Album covers featuring diagrams of electron orbitals , iconic on-stage headwear that is nevertheless a victory of function over form; Orbital are not a fashionable band. They've never had the shouty bandwagon success of fellow "dance" acts ...

A near permanent feature of the lounge of my parent's house was the pile of yellowing newspapers that eclipsed the radiator by the patio doors. My father, never one to miss a bargain or price saving even if that meant spending more money buying an unrequired item in a sale, had a subscription to The Times paid for almost entirely through vouchers. Every day another couple of sections would splash onto the door mat and be placed on the pile for reading at a convenient moment. Convenient moments were unfortunately rare, and over time the absence of reading eyes to convert the newspapers into tinder suitable for firestarting let the unread pile tower ever higher, and even though the low-lying strata in the stack of press were old enough to be reporting Queen Victoria's funeral, he refused to throw any of them out without first reading them. I laughed at his inability to let print go unwitnessed, and threatened to surreptitiously remove papers over the course of weeks until the...