Anniversary of the London bombs. I remember I was working in a contact lens warehouse, scanning bar codes on packs returned by shops around Europe. Quite a bit of panic amongst my dafter colleagues, but my mother was the same at the time of the IRA bombs in London. She lived in Lincolnshire. I lived in North West London. She was convinced I was in danger. Legs Larry did turn out to be in danger, but the odds were much against.

Olly continues to get friendlier. I’m spending time after work on a sun lounger. He comes and sits on my lap, then goes on his rounds etc. Tonight it was a bit wet out, so I lounged upstairs and he dozed in the crook of my arm, with the odd demand for a bit of fuss. We have played chase games tonight. He was a bit fixed on the bit where I would throw cat treats for him to chase. Much better this time.

Work carries on. I really don’t like turning up on a Monday. There is always something to clear up. The new servers are functioning, but the DNS move had problems and had to be reverted. On Weds we are due to have a Windows 8 workshop, but I don’t have confirmation from the person supposed to run it.

I am winding up to Battle Mountain. I have my flights, car and motels. I’m staying a few days after and had hoped to see my cousin Laura Floom Manning. She lives in Pasadena. I’ve made some attempts to contact her with no result. Maybe Al and Alice will tolerate me for a while, or I could ‘do’ The Grand Canyon or Yellowstone.

I’ve just ordered a Swann OutbackCam, which should record bikes and chase vehicles as they go past the finish post, with time stamps to match with the weather recorder.

I have been thinking about the colourful stones I pick up at Battle mountain. Here are some unwashed stones.

There are olive, green, blue and quartz stones and some sedimentaries. I just scanned these on the copier/scanner. There are also jaspers and a variety of sparkly stones. I have found rose quartz. The round white one shines like a cat’s eye if you get the angle right. I am in the process of buying a small macro rig to do them justice.