On Saturdays, I permit myself a small insult as reward for all the hard work during the week. Here’s today’s juicy snippet.

A U.S Congressman is reported to have said of another :

“Like a rotten mackerel in the moonlight, he shines and stinks.”

Thanks to Matthew Parris in today’s Times (London) for that great one-liner.

The question then arises, who does that remind you of over here in Britain? Answers on a postcard, please, to : 10 Downing Street, London, SW1.

It must be a quiet day for news when people start showing you pictures of their desks. It could be a lot worse, of course, so we shouldn’t complain. Duncan Riley did it yesterday, and I’ve seen any number around the blogosphere.

My excuse is that it’s been raining here for days so I can’t fulfil last week’s promise of pics taken along the Devon coast. I also get a bit twitchy when I can’t photograph anything. I know that sounds like an addiction but I call it Window-On-The-World Syndrome.

So, yes, here’s a snap of my desk in the Syntagma Towers’ office :

The box on the left is a Windows Vista machine, which I use nearly all the time now. On the right, is the old XP box. There’s still a lot of stuff left on it which I can’t move over : programs incompatible with Vista and mountains of Word and Excel documents.

Incidentally, I’ve discovered a good way of transferring material between computers without fitting a cable between them or burning a disk. Just put it in a Gmail attachment — you’re allowed up to 20MB now — and email it to yourself. Switch on the other computer, and there it is waiting for you. But I expect you knew that.

The boiling question of the day is, what does your desk say about you? Is it cluttered or uncluttered? And if you think that’s a silly inquiry, one business guru wrote an entire book about cluttered desks. I suppose it was a gap in the market.

In case you missed the first pic, here’s a wider shot showing a bit of context. Not much, but you can’t have everything :

But I’ve entertained you long enough …

Idly examining the potential of Rougemont Castle as the next Syntagma Towers (see previous post), I’ve discovered it has now been sold.

It has apparently been flogged to a property company which wants to use it as an entertainment venue — very 20th century.

Intriguingly, it was sold by the Department of Constitutional Affairs, a tinpot Ministry in the Blair government that replaced the 1300-year-old Office of the Lord Chancellor, and which will soon morph again into the Napoleonic Ministry of Justice. Heaven forfend!

Worse, the Department is run by Charlie Falconer, whose only claim to fame is that he once shared a flat with Tony Blair and gave us the delights of the Millennium Dome.

Here’s another memorable view of this glorious pile, taken this morning.

Soon, maybe, the ghost of Elvis will walk the battements. Thanks a bunch, Charlie.

Just down the road from Syntagma Towers stands the oldest surviving castle in the UK. It’s called Rougemont, which means Red Hill after the iron-rich Devon soil. The French name indicates it was built by the Normans around 1070. Here’s a picture of the old entrance gate I took this morning :

Don’t you love those cannons?

The interesting thing about it, and why I’m inflicting this on you on a Sunday, is that it’s up for sale.

As regular readers may know, we’ve been contemplating the purchase of a new Syntagma Towers later this year. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

It would be the office address to die for :

Syntagma Towers
Rougemont Castle
England.

And can you imagine the business card?

So, what about the internet connection? Does that date back to 1070 too? Knights on horseback maybe? Think again. It has some very smart modern administrative buildings where the keep used to be.

I’m warming to the idea already.

News hot off the presses of three new series starting on Syntagma inventory :

1. If you’re an aficionado of the BBC’s top-notch, mega-hit TV series, Life on Mars, you’ll be interested to know that Syntagma author, Guy Adams wrote the BBC book of the show, and is just beginning on the second volume, which covers the second series.

Read Guy’s story over on The Hack’s Progress.

2. As it’s Edward Elgar’s 150th anniversary in June, Steve Newman is publishing his play : A Summer Garden, over on Classy Classical in eight parts.

Start reading here.

3. The fourth in our Zen Masters series has begun over at Spiritual Nirvana. Catch the biography of Hui Neng, the sixth Chinese Patriarch of Zen, here.