I have my tickets for the Outer Hebridies. It’s going to be a busy trip. I have to check in at Stanstead at 10.45 tomorrow morning. That’s after getting back home, packing and driving to the airport - not a prospect I relish after tonight’s late night coach back from Birmingham.

I then have several hours of sitting around in Edinburgh airport, waiting for a two-hour flight to Stornoway. Quite how slow we’ll be going to make it last two hours, I don’t know. It’s not that far. Perhaps we’ll be picking up and dropping off people along the way.

From there we go to the Park Guest House for a dinner of ‘local produce’ (hmmm…). Meetings the next morning, then down to the harbour in the afternoon to see the end of the Hebridean Challenge.

I leave at 9.10 the next morning (Saturday) and get to Stanstead at lunchtime, so I’ll be back in time for Jon’s birthday (or Sandy’s, if Jon is celebrating his next week). Not that much time to see the island, though, which is a shame. I would much rather have extended it for a day and come home on Sunday.

Bumped into Phil on the train again this morning. That’s the second time in a week - not bad considering we’ve not seen each other in about two years. He told me all about his night at the Baftas and made me very jealous.

He was on the next table to the cast of EastEnders, apparently, which proves that nothing in life is entirely good.

The fish is still lingering. Feintly. The smell of smoked haddock is drifting through the hall, doing its best to make me feel guilty about skinning and eating it. It creeps up again as you come in through the front door, so I’m fighting back with more lavendar.

Hmmm…

What remains of it is in the freezer, and I was sorely tempted to get it out again this evening. I worked late and don’t have much food in. I’m in Birmingham tomorrow seeing Kylie with Epson, then the Outer Hebridies from Thursday to Saturday with One.Tel so it hardly seems worth buying stuff that’s going to go off. I’ve already frozen what’s left of my milk.

I’m finding it very difficult hunting down information about the Outer Hebridies online. Even the usually excellent Google keeps on throwing up the same three or four sites again and again and again. I guess there’s a gap in the market for good local information there.

Or perhaps they don’t have many computers.

I don’t know where I’m staying, or what time my flights are. In fact, I don’t even know how I’m getting there once I arrive in Glasgow. I know there’s a change of planes involved, but I can’t imagine they take large passenger planes to Stornoway. My PR contact sent a rather ominous email warning that I’d better like flying and changeable weather, but looking at the local forecast it certainly seems like it’s going to be a nice few days.

I’m not sure what to pack, so think I’ll take the kind of stuff I’m wearing now and hope for the best.

Saturday’s dinner went well. Trevor and Jon were a little late, but at least that way everything was ready when they arrived. I didn’t like skinning the raw fish, though. I’ve never done it before, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how they were probably swimming around quite happily less than a week ago. I think it was was worth it in the end - very tasty.

The only downside is the smell. It was smoked haddock pie and the flat still smells of fish. I’ve burnt lavendar and it still won’t go away, and just sitting around is enough to get it on your clothes. Fortunately it’s warm today, so I’ve opened the windows as far as they’ll go to get the air moving.

It could be because I left the washing up until yesterday morning. They left late and I was ready to flop straight into bed on Saturday. It didn’t take long to do, though, and once it was out of the way I sat down for a concentrated book planning session. I’m fleshing out characters at the moment, and their individual storylines are coming together quite nicely.

I worked through until seven when Paul picked me up and we drove to the gym. Friday and Sunday evenings are always quiet, so it was easy to get on all the kit I wanted. Feeling fit and springy, I went back to Paul’s for some dinner, and then we headed out again to the Army and Navy, which charged an extortionate

It’s been a kitchen day today, and everything seems to have slipped into a continental timezone. I wasn’t up much before 11, and only stepped out of the shower just after noon. Mopped up some remaining editing, a bit of AIMing with Gordon, and then got on with the hoovering (or at least the pushing around of the manual floor-sweepery type thing).

Paul had gone into town to run some jobs, but had called Jon before he left to suggest a trip to the Fox and Hounds this evening. Jon called back before he was back, but as Trevor is working until late we decided that it would probably be better to do the Army tomorrow instead and meet for dinner and a film this evening. I offered to cook. Jon said he’d bring dessert.

Engineer Steve popped around with Chris the Midnight Weatherman at four to pick up some software I’d promised to pass on. I’d been baking blueberry scones, so we had then with mugs of tea while making fools of ourselves on the Xbox driving games. As a non-driver Steve was still better than the rest of us, even when we put him on the ice-covered courses.

Perhaps not being a real-life driver is the key to success in driving games - you identify more with the game than with the concepts of real driving.

I had intended to do some work on the book, sort out my National Insurance, buildings insurance, and washing machine repair cover and sign my contract for the next six months of The Lab, but somehow the day has been eaten up with other things. As soon as they were gone I headed out to Sainsbury to buy the bits I need for a fish pie this evening, and now it’s only an hour until Trevor and Jon arrive.

Lots to be done.

A listener comment on last night’s show:

I have never, in all my years as a techy journo, heard such outrageous geek one-upmanship in my life.

Iain: I back up all my data onto CD and then reformat my hard drive once a year.

Gordon: Well I have sooo much on my PC that I have to reformat once a month…

Iain: It’s quite a satisfying thing to do. And quick…

Perverts.

Hmmm… A strange breakfast show interview. An interesting story but not a particularly long one, so it only filled four minutes. It was the online radio stations in America that had gone on strike yesterday to protest at plans to impose new royalty fees for broadcasting music. I doubt it’ll do them much good.

This evening’s show was fun. Dr Damian from the New Scientist was excellent as usual. You can throw pretty much whatever question you like at him and he’ll take it well within his stride.

We also had a guy from BT talking about broadband. I thought when he came in that he sounded very well briefed, and when he left, forgetting to take his folder with him, I found out why. Inside it was the most impressive collection of information I have seen any PR company produce. Ever. Loads of stuff about me, some things about the show, a couple of my columns retyped from PCW, messages that he should try and get across, notes from my phone conversations with the PR company and even a few of Clive’s news pieces from PCW so he can get a feel for what other companies I work for think about BT products.

All of this, and a list of subjects the PRs suggested our gest revised, was put together in two days. Truly impressive.

It wasn’t quite as personal as the file Microsoft keeps on me. I haven’t seen it in years, but after a trip to Seattle once I asked the PR company if they would send me a copy. It went into quite a bit of detail about things I liked, including “Nik once said he would like a copy of Encarta for Christmas”. I think this must have come from a feature we do every year where we pull out our favourite products of the last twelve months and write them up as a Christmas list. I think they took it a bit too literally.

My PCW Winamp skin is going on the July cover disc.

The Police helicopter has been hovering over our office all day like the angel of death. You could hear the sound of its blades thumping through the air-con vents.

So much for the benefits of working in the west end. This year’s protests seem to have been fairly low key, by and large. There was a small gathering of people with dogs and interesting hairstyles on Broadwick Street, but the mass rally we saw last year didn’t happen this time around. There were rumours of underground stations being closed and some people went home early, but I worked through until half seven and left the office just as the sex workers were having their parade through Soho demanding better pay and conditions.

I decided to avoid Tottenham Court Road, which was one of the rumoured closed stations, so headed south to Piccadilly Circus instead. As I arrived it had started to drizzle, but the sun was shining brightly and arcing above a large group of ugly police horses and unfriendly looking would-be anarchists was a beautiful rainbow. It was a startling contast and would have made a fantastic picture.

I looked up what I wrote a year ago:

May 1st, 2001. Anarchists don’t smash doors.

Jason and I walked down Oxford Street, leaving early to avoid the riot. The shops were boarded up from the near end of the street to the far. A good day for glaziers.

‘War zone’ were the words we both used. We said them together, unprompted. McDonalds had disappeared behind wooden walls built to protect the windows. Electronics Boutique the same. But nobody covered their doors, most of which were propped open for business.

Anarchists don’t smash doors. It’s an unwritten rule.

Downloaded the latest patch for Winamp today and while clicking around the site waiting for it to complete came across the instructions for creating your own skin. A lunchtime of creativity later, the brand new PCW skin for Winamp is ready for download: