Spot the slightly obscure lyric reference there. I was assaulted on the train on Monday evening. I had the temerity to try and sit down on a seat onto which a chappy was spilling over. After generally mouthing off at me, which I responded to with calm pleading, when I just plonked my bottom on the chair and suggested he move up he swung around and punched me full in the face. Police reports, a trip to Accident & Emergency and a second hospital visit later and I have a fractured orbital bone (the bottom-of-the-eye-socket one), a lovely ripe bruise and a couple of days off work to recover.

It's not the first time my fair features have been tested, I was mugged at knifepoint a few years ago in Reading. Thankfully that just resulted in the loss of birthday presents in my wallet and a huge welt on my chin, though I found it difficult to go out alone at night for a surprisingly long period after it happened. I hope I can face the trains over the next few months since they're rather central to me reaching work!

The best bit was that after the thug, whose mentality I can't begin to understand, left the train everyone was lovely. My friends from work helped me off the train, gave me tissues to stop the bleeding and called the police. I went back to Helen's house and she looked after me, went with me to A&E, sat there the whole time rabitting away to keep me company and then gave up her bed so I could get some sleep. The hospital staff were also really friendly -- god how I love the NHS, how can people stand living in a country without free healthcare, paid through taxation out of solidarity?

Another thing to brighten me up -- the huge volume of press coverage from the recent Vista story we (The Green Party) raised. We even got some quotes in the Saturday edition of The Guardian. This article is quite funny, this one rather interesting. Despite a predictable outcome on Slashdot -- nobody reads the press release, researches the likely hardware upgrades and DRM technologies ("a recent report from the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency found that... 55% of current computers could not even run Vista with Aero tuned off"), but they post anyway slagging off those crazy Greens -- despite that I'm pretty pleased with the coverage.