Things improved somewhat towards the end of the week. Started doing stuff with Java which is painfully complicated to get working - far too many environmental variables and bits that aren't compatible and an old 6.2 Red Hat release on my PC doesn't help. Never mind, it's working now.
The Regatta down on the harbour was somewhat fun over the weekend (damp yesterday but sunny today). Spent various bits of the weekend reading documents on the UK Government GovTalk site and related documents all over the place. Good to see they're embracing the net - just the implementation is bad.