Tube Novel

I'm grateful to Going Underground for flagging up a wonderful internet novel, 253. This is a description of 253 people on board a tube train, all described in 253 words, all heading towards disaster. It was written nine years ago, and was pretty revolutionary for its time (hands up who had internet access in 1996?), but rather disturbing after recent events. It's a great piece of writing, where several of the characters are linked together in ingenious ways. The idea of being able to locate all the characters on a map on a website must have been pretty amazing back then, and it's easy to forget this when you look at the very basic graphics, and think how much more a modern web designer could add (colours, film clips, images of little details like a briefcase; a fabric; a shoe).

The writer had a piece published on the BBC website on the subject of the recent bombings which is worth reading.

Happy moment of the day: the house next door is changing tenants, and I arrived home to see a sweet little dog wagging its tail next door.

Sad moment of the day: realising that it belongs to the parents of the girl next door, who are helping her move out.