In the early years of this decade I worked for the now defunct Internet arm of the major telecoms company I still work for. Heady, glorious days. I worked amongst crackpots. Edgy, zany, talented people from all over the world, overflowing with with all sorts of notions and ideas to drive home the Internet revolution.

Even the kindest, most well-meaning of my friends would n't say I'm edgy, or zany, or especially talented; all I really did there was the high tech equivalent of push a broom and mop bucket around, but I do have a magpie like tendency to pick things up, throwaway sayings, conversational offcuts, clippings that have fallen from the mouths of others, and at that time of my life, they were falling around my feet like leaves during a storm in a forest.

I'm thinking of one right now, it's this: " What's been designed won't work...". I've forgotten the original context now, but the words live on, the sentiment certainly does.

My December 26 post bears that maxim out. What I had in mind there was a touch of comic irony, to lead people astray at first that Xmas had been an altogether wretched affair, when all it was I was describing was the faux anxiety of playing charades. It did n't work; several people saw that post as being I loathed the whole day. I did n't; it was fantastic fun, not laughed as much as that in years...but when an idea is as poorly expressed as mine, or put it another way: "....what's been designed etc..." the message gets lost. Shoot me, I was the piano player... I was playing the wrong tune.

What does it mean in regards to me now? Basically this, think what it is I'm going to write, followed by how I want to express it, then make sure these two meet and not grind over each other like two tectonic plates going in different directions.