Sunday February 8^th 2009. Launch -67 days.

Leaving this morning at 9am was a genuine pleasure. It was sunny, there was hardly anyone else on the road and it was a beautiful, peaceful Sunday morning, although a little fresh. And, in the evening, the haunting sound of a Barn Owl hooting greeted me as I left work. They are little details that make life enjoyable.

We now have a pretty good idea what is causing our problems, although we do not know exactly why. However, just by knowing where the problem is we are at least half way to sorting it out. Getting rid of nasty bugs in the systems is a particular pleasure: every problem solved now probably saves us two after launch. At times like this, when it’s Sunday and one has already worked a lot of hours in the week and tiredness begins to bite it is good to remember the words of the veteran British athlete, Joyce Smith, before the 1983 World Athletics Championships in Helsinki. Having taken up marathon running at an age when most people do nothing more strenuous than walking to the pub, she became the oldest ever woman Olympic athlete in Los Angeles in 1984, coming a creditable 11^th. Joyce Smith said “when the stadium comes in sight there’s pleasure even in hurting yourself”. That’s our situation now: we are approaching the entrance to the stadium and the finish line at the end of a particularly gruelling marathon and even working long hours under pressure is a pleasure when we know that we are almost there and just need one, last effort. At a rough estimate, 90% of our system works well and is thoroughly tested: the last 10% is no reason to be downhearted because we are so close now to getting everything right.

My day was spent finishing the first draft of a report on the tests from before Christmas (it is just short of 150 pages, so far), talking to the various experts looking into the iniquities of our system, writing up minutes of briefings and trying to keep up with my email. By 8:40pm I was back home and ready to enjoy what was left of the weekend. Even with an unscheduled stop to help a motorist in difficulty the bike was fairly flying home – one day maybe the radar will accuse me of breaking the speed limit of 40km/h in the built-up area, although somehow I doubt it – either it was due to the slight following wind, or what was put in our lunch in the canteen was pretty powerful.