Just call me Alex

I'm having an agreeable yuppie fantasy today.

That probably sounds contradictory. What it involves is a little window in the corner of my second monitor that shows me the exchange rate between the UK pound and the NZ dollar, and -- and this is the nifty bit -- updates itself once per minute. This window is provided courtesy xe.com, a lovely little site that epitomises the service industry ideal of doing one thing and doing it well. And, most importantly, for free.

This rate is of interest to me because I still have a noticeable amount of money in the UK, and I've been meaning to bring it over, for house-buying purposes, when the rate looks good. As I type this, 1GBP would buy me NZ$2.68159, up from $2.67496 when I first checked this morning.

Over the day, the pound has been trending slightly upwards. But every time I watch it actually make its update, the pound weakens (which is bad). It's almost touched 2.686, before dropping back again when I got too excited and began watching too closely.

This is, of course, entirely in keeping with the known laws of economics, and will come as no surprise to anyone.

When the rate hits 2.71 -- which, for the record, I don't think is going to happen this week -- I'll call my trader and finally switch over my millions from sterling. That's the agreeable fantasy part, anyway. In the meantime, however, it really is pretty exciting to watch it out of the corner of my eye.

(D'oh! Just lost another $200.)

So here's this information that, when I was entering the job market, would have been available only to braying young wine-bar-haunting gits with bicycle clips on their sleeves, whose employers paid more for the service than for the people to watch it... and today, it's freely available to anyone with a broadband connection. Today, a mere twenty years too late to make my fortune, I get to play at being a yuppie for free, without even having to take time out from my real job.

That's so cool.

Addendum (added Thursday lunchtime): So much for my powers of prediction. Today the pound is over $2.72. I'm not pushing my luck any further.

He came down from tumpty tumpty

The BBC is ridiculously proud of its oldest Christmas tradition: Carols from King's, a highest-of-high-church festival of carols and bible readings. For 80 years, the Beeb has been broadcasting it every Christmas Eve.

I heard it circa 1993, at 3p.m. on Christmas Eve when driving home, and for the first time, I understood the appeal of church choirs. As soon as the first soloist struck up, the pure countertenor voice seemed to take me back to a time when Christmas wasn't a matter of preparation and panic, but anticipation and peace. Ever since, I've tried to time my Christmas Eve journeys to catch that broadcast. When the service begins, I can feel once again the peace that comes with knowing that -- Christmas is come, my deadline is passed, there is nothing more to do save drive through the gathering dusk, on fast-emptying roads, to journey's end, warmth and welcome. Home.

That's what "Carols from King's" means to me. Or rather, meant. (I have no interest in the TV broadcast. You listen while you're doing something else -- that's the whole point.)

Because the BBC, with its astonishingly lopsided sense of priorities, doesn't podcast it.

Of course there may be sound business reasons for that. It might worry that a podcast would damage its CD sales, but the poxy CD versions only offer the carols, not the readings, otherwise I'd buy it with pleasure. It's broadcast on the World Service, but -- well, if you can find a schedule and frequency details for that in New Zealand, let me know. ("Asia-Pacific" forsooth.)

This Christmas I tried to look at the New Zealand equivalent. The choir sang carols, for want of a better word, that I've never heard (and frankly never want to hear again), and the "lessons" were delivered by moralising clerics talking about doing good in the Real World. Very worthy, and tortuously dull.

This morning I was dreaming about setting up an equivalent carol service in New Zealand. We were rehearsing the traditional processional carol, "Once in Royal David's City", and I was following the words on a hymn sheet, when I found myself reading a verse I'd never heard. It was beautiful: it fit the meaning, rhythm and rhyme of the carol, it was haunting and lovely and perfect, and when I woke I couldn't remember a word of it.

All I know now is that my subconscious can write better poetry than I can.

Happy New Year, everyone.