August 24th. The summer, and silly season, draw once again to their inevitable death throes, and we all prepare to begin real life again. We had the usual round of nonsense surrounding A-Levels, and shortly we will have the usual round of nonsense surrounding GCSEs. Though so far there have not been any riots due to the omnipresence of deviant paediatricians.

The choir completed the services at Manchester Cathedral quite successfully. The welcome we received was so encouraging; after initial apprehension about how well our musical offerings would be taken, it was a great joy to have such warm sentiments from the Precentor. It has been a nice finish to a busy summer of music.

I apologise for the long-term prosaic complexion of this web log. I am looking for ways to make it more appealing. Tomorrow, there will be porn, and then, the day after, there will be a story about how a donkey fell into some sewers when I was six.

This summer has gone so quickly. One minute we're doing the Easter services, then revising for exams, then finishing term; then next, it's nearly the end of August and the next thing on the cards is beginning university again.

Decision time about what to do next is more inescapable by the day. I've ordered an application pack from the GTTR, and, failing all else, I'll be doing a PGCE. The last few weeks though, I've been feeling that I need to broaden my horizons. Perhaps it's the claustrophobia of my room in this city - which is so cosmopolitan, so European, urban/slum-chic - or maybe it's just time for a change. I know that I'm going to spend this year with a genuine interest in what I'm studying, but feeling that I can give no real insight because I have no first-hand experience of what I'm talking about. You could say that writing about contemporary religion having never left Europe is about as credible as an English cricketer discussing the finer points of Vietnamese table-tennis.

There will be a time for all of us to come back to our homes, I suspect. But for now I feel like home should soon be a long way away, and the time is ready for some travelling in the name of research. There is no room for muddling in the ivory tower.

Though thankfully, there is a fairly plentiful reserve of beer in this fine city. In the absence of T. V., however, I have taken in the last few days to listening to unheard of amounts of Radio 4. In fact, I have, in the last two days, surely listened to at least a whole day's programming, which cannot be healthy, but is, failing all other, entirely free.

• I wonder if Mister Bush will take any theological messages from the hurricane in Florida? I thought not. (BBC News)

I'm back in Manchester again. Heaven knows how many miles I will have covered by the end of this summer. So far, it's been Manchester to Leicester to Wells to Leicester to Manchester to Leicester to Canterbury to Leicester to Manchester, and next it'll be to Oxford to Manchester to Leicester to Manchester. I think it's a good job I bought that car.

We had a good rehearsal last night. Having rung the cathedral to find out what psalms we had to do, I was horrified to find the number of verses was, in total, over fifty. However, one of the singers from St Paul's seems to be quite versed in psalm singing, so to speak, so it went much better than I thought. Hopefully it's now just going to be a polishing-up exercise over the next ten days before the services.

Anyway, I'm off to the pub, because that always seems like an attractive option. I am not an alcholoholric.

This being the day off from covering cathedral services, I have taken the opportunity to escape the squealing of small children and to withdraw to a cafe in the centre of the city. It has been very hot all week so far, so much so that, in a move which is relatively unheard of these days, I took to the cricket field and involved myself in some physical exercise. However, in an incident which is rather more regular, given the experiences of at least three pairs of jeans, I thereby succeeded in ripping one of my shirts to shreds. Meh, easy come, easy go.

The cathedral is a fabuliminious buildings, and it is even larger than it at first appears, what with the huge undercroft and crypt, and great ascension to St Augustine's chair and the demolished shrine of St Thomas of Canterbury. Nevertheless, I have to say that architecturally I prefer the intimacy of Wells; Canterbury is ideally suited to its purpose, but its purpose is much broader than that of most cathedrals. It has been a great refreshment to be singing to between 150 and 250 people all week, rather than the three-women-and-a-lawnmower affair, which is the case in many cities. It goes without saying that many of the congregations have been chiefly constituted by tourists and visitors, but to me that just shows how important the church still is, particularly in France and Germany. Of course, importance does not automatically equal bums on seats. But how many British school parties would actually take the kids to a service of choral evensong and sit in perfect stillness listening to it?

The Dean is your standard, archetypal, rah rah, effeminate though not gay, Dean. Although there's been about eight clergy at each service so far (and no doubt there are many more to be wheeled out of their proverbial closets for the weekend), they've not been very welcoming. I think the Dean could have chatted to us a bit more. I suppose I'm still coming down to earth from Wells, where everything seemed just right. Even the necessarily obnoxious verger there did not dampen the real and genuine reception we were given.

At the weekend we are singing William Lloyd Webber's Missa Princeps Pacis, Wood in D, Locus Iste (Bruckner), and O For a Thousand Tongues by Richard Shephard. I will let you know how everything goes when I get back to Leicester.

I'm feeling good tonight: better than I've felt for quite some time. I have spent much of the day throwing out a load of old crap which should have gone years ago. For instance, I had about forty back issues of Personal Computer World, going back to 1993, which were loitering menacingly on the landing. I also threw out a load of old Loughborough stuff - that is, secondary school stuff - which was doing no good and I've no mind to see ever again. Amusingly, I found an empty exercise book, save for the inscription on the front: 'Molière'. You can guess how much work we did on that.

Anyway, so all this sorting provoked me to sort out my PC which, given that I've had a Mac for the last 18 months, has not been a top priority. But I wanted to get it sorted to rescue some old files, so started tinkering. Two hours later, and without spending a single English pound, I had restored the computer to its former glory. Although it struggles along on Windows 98 with only 64mb of RAM, it does the job OK. Furthermore, I even fixed the mouse port by playing with some drivers. Last year, although I'm sure I tried all the same things, none of the 948 mouses that I have would work.

So this reminds me of the end of a programme I watched on Channel 5 last night, where a bloke pushed a G4 and a PC off of a bridge on to a concrete floor in order to break them and then see: a) how much damage had been caused, and b) how much it would cost in each instance to fix. He sorted out the PC with just a new motherboard, from PC World, did it himself and it cost him £65 and three hours. The Mac, of course, would have to go back to a dealer for repair, and all told, would probably take at least several days and more like £400. This led the presenter to conclude that in terms of cost-effectiveness, ease of upgrade, and general value, the PC was the winner by far. I agree. Apple have a service record which is no better or worse than any PC supplier, but there is not the option, because of the way Apple do business, to sort out your own hardware problems.

This is a serious issue for Apple if it wishes to make a dent on the mainstream market. It could easily make this impression if it would be a little more liberal with its supply of parts. But, in an age of consumer choice, Apple has taken backward steps since the 1980s in this regard. It is much harder to upgrade modern Apple computers than it used to be in the days of the Power Mac etc. This is presumably in aid of keeping its products aesthetically unified and performatively consistent, but I can't help feeling it's costing them unnecessary market share. What's more, die-hard Apple addicts wouldn't miss the opportunity to tinker with their Macs and personalise them more than they can now.

Nevertheless, using my PC again today has proved that, in terms of software performance, the Apple platform wins hands-down. Its Unix-based O. S. is much more stable than Windows, and it has the processor architecture to support it. At the moment, even though I'm not a professional computer user, I'm much keener to use an expensive product which functions well than my PC, which has crashed four times today already. And that's when it's running better than it has for years.