Tea. Ingredients: tea. Warning: contains tea.

Today's listening: The Complete BBC Recordings by Joy Division. Two Peel sessions, two Something Else tracks and an interview. The Peel sessions are remarkable takes of our favourite literary punk band delivering on the spot, particularly "Twenty-Four Hours", "Insight" and "Exercise One".

arkady just got sound working in Flash on her Ubuntu laptop by uninstalling and reinstalling anything Flash-related and is now hitting YouTube hard. Proving Linux is ready to compete with Windows on the desktop! Now Ubuntu just needs viruses and self-installing spyware.

I should mention: I emailed Maplin about the crappy headphones, saying they were not fit for purpose (that's the UK legal phrase for "it's crap and doesn't work" as opposed to "it's broken") and that I wanted to arrange a return. They promptly replied with a return authorisation number and Freepost address, and I sent the headphones back and the money showed up in my account a few days later. So I shall continue to buy in confidence, even dancing on the line between "cheap and cheerful" and "cheap and crappy," because they addressed a problem promptly and properly. And I should stop fucking around and just buy Etymotics.

We are very disappointed and pissed off about the house rubbish, and worried we'll be left in the lurch and have to take a crappy flat in desperation again. But redcountess and Arkady have one viewing booked tomorrow and will be pursuing more assiduously. It's a nice day and Liz and I are sitting together window-shopping for 11g access points and Arkady is baking muffins.