A good day at work, defined as one in which I complete everything I planned to do at the start of the day, and also learn something. This time it was in the form of a report on current practices in eLearning in the USA.
In the evening, to the Priory to help with Impossible Songs gig there. Unfortunately the town was dead and the audience practically nil. At one point I was despatched to go to the pubs nearby and say there was a free band on, but I took cold feet at going into a pub and, to all intents and purposes, inviting people to leave the pub! Once we had accepted the fact that it was just us, it was an enjoyable night – they played well with their German augmented band, and we went back to theirs for cake and chat. Talked to Martin, who is originally from East Germany, about the weekend after the Berlin Wall came down. All the motorways were jammed with static queues of cars heading for the border crossings, so he got his bike out the boot and headed through little country roads to the border. Unfortunately he discovered that his maps were deliberately deceptive – a government policy to keep people away from the border. He returned to the motorway and made good progress between the rows of trapped cars until, in the midst of the chaos of a collapsing state, a policeman insisted that bicycles were not allowed on the motorway!