Quit your day job. Go on. I dare you.

I went flying with Summits again this afternoon. There was a group of students flying solo and they invited me down to fly a canopy that I’m thinking of buying from them. We flew at Plaine Joux, about half an hour down the valley from Chamonix.

So I flew my own canopy, pretty much solo (I was still in contact with the instructors by radio on this flight), which was very exciting. It wasn’t frightening at all, just a really fun flight with an easy takeoff and landing.

It’s not a cheap sport this, the kit is going to set me back probably a thousand pounds or so, but I can feel how addictive it’s going to be. The only thing at the moment is that I still feel like there’s so much knowledge and experience to gain before I can make a good, informed choice about whether the conditions are good enough before I fly but already I’m confident in the air and starting to look for ridges and thermals to soar off.

This time, I actually did take my camera and here’s a few of the shots up on flickr to make you jealous.

I’ve suddenly got into podcasts again after about a year or so without listening to them. I’ve got no internet radio at home, just an ipod connection to my stereo, so podcasting is the perfect way to get a bit of news in the flat in the morning while I’m having my coffee.

The quality of podcasting has gone up hugely in the last year. The BBC, guardian and other big players have really started to consider the medium as a valid, mainstream medium. Which is great. The problem with podcasting before was that the content was made by numpties. It was all part of the lure of the technology, the fact that the people could broadcast to the people. Unfortunately, I don’t want to hear the views of plebs in their spare rooms. I want to listen to the most highly paid, most professionally edited, and best content available. If the indie podcasters haven’t got a proper job in the broadcasting industry, then there’s probably a good reason for that. They’re not very good.

So every morning there’s a vaguely up to date BBC news show stored on the ipod ready for me to listen to before work. I don’t care if it’s a day old. It’s not like the people I hang out with in Chamonix are news hounds. In fact, you’d be hard pushed to find anyone who knows that there was a coup in Thailand recently. Still harder pushed to find anyone who cares.

The sun’s out in the valley today, a crisp autumn day. The garage rang to tell me the golf was ready just as I was about to wander up to the bus stop to go into town. I stopped into the bank on the way to collect the car and deposited a big check into my account from some dopey yank who has paid 6 months up front to live in my flat in Deptford. My lovely bank manager, Beatrice had my new bank card ready for me which I lost last week.

Leaving the bank I ran into a friend who I had thought was out of town and she invited me to dinner. Shhhhhh-veet.

Then down to the garage to pick up the golf. I like the guys at the garage. They’re good mechanics and I trust them. It’s one of the many things you really need to have sorted in life, that. A garage you can trust. So they’ve refitted the steering completely, and also a few nice little touches like tightening up the handbrake and fixing the flashing heather light that they saw were broken. OK, so it cost more than the car is worth, but that golf is 20 years old and has done nearly 300,000km. You need to replace things like the steering parts now and again. It runs like a dream, now, though and feels really solid. I reckon it’ll do another 100,000km easy.

So all these things have combined to make today sweet as. I’m sat in the office watching some Simpsons and tinkering with the Chamonix Valley website, trying to avoid doing anything that might piss me off and ruin it.

Dell computers have always been a favorite of mine. Mainly because they’re just such great value. The first laptop I ever owned back was made by Dell, although I’d bought it second hand. It’s amazing to think that I paid around £800 for that computer, whereas you can now get an Inspiron 1501 direct from the company starting at £349. My friends in Chamonix were equally impressed with the prices, but forgot that ordering a computer from desktops would mean that they ended up with a French operating system, and a French keyboard layout. In the end they got used to it, though and even said that it helped them to learn to speak French a bit better.