It's the first day without Alec - even though on Friday, he is not normally here, it feels different. His things are still on the other side of the desk, because he will be back when I am on vacation, but I won't see him for ages.

I am terribly tired, and struggling to stay awake, I hope I can leave by 6pm i.e. I hope there are no errors with payments, bills etc today. I really don't want to be looking for duplicate records that have caused SQL 2112 errors and have to be found so that the accounts can be billed. My personal view is that these errors should not be allowed to happen anyway i.e. put error handling on every select statement where this could potentially happen, but it's not a popular view amongst the developers. Some of whom have very hardline views on things - I recall one of them telling me that, if there was such and such a data anomaly, of course the account should not be billed! Well, I said, my client doesn't see it that way, they are a company who needs to bill their customers for the services provided and the customers actually get cross if they don't get a bill.

Today I booked to go to a hotel on the coast, only 15 minutes drive from Larnaca Airport, for the Friday and Saturday night before I leave here - this will be a nice break, with a lagoon style swimming pool, etc etc, as well as closer to the airport, so I don't have to get up at 6am on a Sunday. I am actually thinking of flying back a few days before the official end of my holiday, and doing something similar, maybe for about four days. The prices are not bad from October onwards.

Tempting to sleep in tomorrow.......... let's see how late I go to bed tonight! I just intend to stitch and listen to an audiobook, the news on tv these days is all about football, I am not joking, as last night the first half hour was about one football game, then we had ten minutes of real news, then sports news, which involved the President of Cyprus talking about the football match!