Birthday. A dribble of e-mails bounce to me towards the day. Towards each, I reply with a typically cheerless protestation of my own doom, that all life ends in the grave and so on and so goth. Eventually, Johnny Panic (Ex-Hair from Team 4.5, currently introducing Nth generation viruses in the root-directories of Big-City Webservers) cuts me down, with a motto from that old-skool Stafford piece of Self-eulogisation.

(And God only knows, if you live in a town like Stafford, you need all the fake, delusional glamour you can muster)

"We are immortal and lords amongst men"," he reminds me, "Death is not an option..."

He's got a point.

The Ghost of C-monster stirs, and I find myself hailing the NU-21C Egotism. Panic agrees, reminding me of another motto: "If you've got it, flaunt it. If you haven't got it, flaunt it even more".

We may have been provincial geeks, but we were the provincial geeks with class.

Hello future. Charmed, I'm sure.

********

Meanwhile: This is a really great review. And it isn't even by me.