Miow.

A tiny little squeak as I stepped out this morning.

Miow.

Walking around the corner, I saw it. A tiny kitten, no larger than the palm of my hand, balancing on the top of a privet hedge. Big blue eyes looked at me from amid salt and pepper hair, and then it jumped up at the open window above it. It hit the glass and fell down again onto the bush, too light to fall beneath the uppermost leaves. It looked across at me again, and as I stepped over it tried again, jumping up and smacking its face on the glass, unable to understand why it could not get through.

Jess had been just the same the first time we let her out. We’d carried her down into the garden and settled her on the grass, but the moment we let go of her silky black coat she shot away, back into the house. An hour later, wondering whether she had perhaps done the wrong thing and missed out on some fun, she had run full pelt through the kitchen towards the door that led to the garden. It was glass from top to bottom.

And it was closed.

She hit the glass at full speed and bounced off, clearly confused. But then, as is the way of the cat, stalked off shaking her feet pretending it was what she’d intended all along.

So, seeing a repeat of the whole episode this morning, I crouched down at the edge of the bush until the little kitten trusted me enough to come across and I could pick her up, and knocked on the door of my downstairs neighbour. We looked at each other as we waited for the door to be answered, and had it not been for the feel of her coat on my skin I might never have known she was in my hand. She weighed no more than a box of matches.

Several feint voices later the door swung open, and there stood my neighbour. I passed him the cat and we exchanged no more than three or four words, most of which were ‘thank you’. It was the first time we had met, and the first time we had spoken, in spite of the fact I’d emailed a hello to his flatmate when I found his site on the net.

It set me wondering why it takes something like a little stranded cat for us to make the effort to meet one another in this country where everyone is suspicious of the unfamiliar face. In the five years I have lived here I’ve only known two of my neighbours, and they both moved out some time ago.

So, wondering what would be the best way to change things I set off for London. The daily theme of crap trains continued in the form of broken signals knocking out the information screens, so it was a matter of looking up times on a poster on the wall.

Perhaps it was something to do with the heat.

Anyhow, I got there on time and spent the morning sitting through a briefing in the basement of a hotel, which was a good opportunity to catch up with Jon, whom I’ve not seen in… oh, two years, I guess. His great uncle, or grandfather or something, had been the one who had designed the Army and Navy, so I filled him in on the news of it shutting down and the sticky carpet being pulled up. I wonder if they ever found any bit of it where you could still see the pattern.

That was pretty much the easiest part of the day, as it was the end of the production cycle, and all the pages had to be sent off for printing by six. As ever, that made for a hectic afternoon, at the end of which pilates was a welcome relief.

Network Rail imposed the limits on most of Britain’s busiest lines, amid fears of rails buckling in temperatures of up to 33C… The limit brought trains which normally travel at up to 110 miles an hour, down to 60. (Source: BBC)

Forgive me if I’m wrong, but don’t train lines run across the Equator? And through central and southern America, where the temperatures soar sky high, and make our measly 30-odd degrees feel comparatively Antarctic.

What is it about travel in this country? Petrol prices are second highest in Europe, designed to get us out of our cars. Congestion charges in London and council car parks getting more expensive every year are destined to do the same. But while all this is happening the rail network is falling to bits, the price of tickets is reaching unaffordable levels and the bus service around here shuts up shop at 19h00. So, no chance of me getting home without either a car or a long walk.

You’d almost think the government had decided we’d all be far less trouble if we were all kept at home, out of harm and out of sight.

Oh, I had been determined not to moan about the heat. And really I’m not - it’s the crappy trains again. It is fantastic going to work in shorts and a t-shirt, with no thought of a coat or jumper. In the winter it gets so cold I can never believe such a thing would be possible. I spent lunchtime walking through the hot streets, dodging from one pool of shade to another on my way to Borders to find a book on Italy, and clambering into and out of tents with Emilie who’s off camping at the weekend.

It’s put me in mind of some nights under canvas myself. It’s years since I’ve last been and I have booked off a week’s holiday later in the month.

Dinner at Mildreds tonight with David, Paul and Paul. The veg burger was, as ever, fantastic. It’s rapidly turning into one of my favourite London eateries.

Contributing to yet another collection today - in such a big company it’s only logical there should be at least one each week - it struck me that there must be a breakeven point somewhere at which it is most profitable to leave a job.

I drew a graph on the back of an envelope:

The red line (C) is the amount of money you give over the years, as a cumulative total, so the peak at the end of year seven is the total you have given over all of the years you’ve been in the job.

The blue line (D) shows the value of the collection you can expect to have gathered up for you should you choose to leave at any particular time.

So, my theory goes like this. You start in the job at year zero with very little chance of getting anything more than a few pounds from the people on your immediate team. The longer you stay, though, the more you get yourself known throughout the building, and the more guilty people would feel if they didn’t drop some coins in the communal envelope on your behalf. So, the blue line creeps up as the value of your gift increases.

At the same time, though, the amount of money you have given since starting on the job is creeping up, too. Now, let’s imagine the company hits some financial hard times in years two and three and lays people off. You’ll end up contributing to more people than ever before, and your red line shoots up. The blue line drops, though, as the number of people left there to contribute to your own gift diminishes. At this point, you’ll probably find the red and blue lines reach equilibrium (green line B) where the amount of money you have given outnumbers the amount you’re ever likely to get back in the value of your leaving gift. From this point on, you have to get out as quick as you can, as everything that follows has you in deficit, regardless of how many people are re-hired.

Of course, you should have left at year two, where green line A intersects the red and blue lines with the greatest difference. At this point you were the most in credit to the company, and so the difference between the value of your leaving gift, and the amount of money you have contributed to other people’s envelopes is the greatest.

The trick, then, is to know how to spot point A - the tipping point - where the lines begin to converge and you head for equilibrium.

That, or find yourself a job where you’re happy to pay this loyalty tax for time immemorial.

I want to see Mother Russia. She is taller than the Statue of Liberty, and holds her 29-metre long, 14-ton sword high above her head in the middle of Volvograd, the city once known as Stalingrad. She weighs 8,000 tons and stands proud on a plinth on the top of a grassy hill, kept there by nothing more than her weight. It would have to be an impressive gust of to blow her over, but still her designers left an apeture in its length to let it blow through.

She is nothing, though, compared to the Spirit of Houston. When built she will be over a kilometre tall. A spectacle of shimmering chrome, reflecting the light of the sun onto the city and water. Her eyes will be high enough to look in through the top-floor windows of the skyscrapers in downtown Houston and she will be visible from miles and miles and miles around.

Links to the sites of five of the competitors in yesterday’s Flugtag. The first one was my favourite entry, but it didn’t win.

1. The Pink Flamingo
2. The Flying Pub
3. The Red Barrows
4. Flying Elvis
5. Grande Design

Flugtag means flying day, apparently. It’s German, or Austrian. The idea is that lots of bizarre people build bizarre flying machines, none of which have engines, and some of which don’t even have wings. The nice Red Bull people, who are paying for the day, build a big long take-off ramp in the middle of the Serpentine in Hyde Park, gather together a batch of celebs to act as a judging panel and invite along 400,000 people to watch. Oh, and ITV, who were filming it for next Saturday lunchtime.

Then the competitors get 30 seconds to do a little dance (all very well choreographed), load themselves into their flying ‘machines’ and run full pelt along the runway ramp, launching themselves off the end over a six-metre drop down into the water. The crowd, rapidly turning into crispy strips of flesh as it sits on the scorched grass, goes wild with cheers and screams and applause and monster screens all around the park tot up the scores.

So, that was how I spent today. And now my head throbs. I got too much sun, in spite of the fact I was careful to drink plenty of water and slap on the oil. For some bizarre reason, on what was probably the hottest day of the year, though, I wore thick jeans and my heaviest, clumpiest shoes, which was definately a mistake.

Anyhow, it seems half of the south east was up there. Chelmsford station was buzzing as we arrived and the 11h07 train was packed. We were lucky to get seats. Even the people who weren’t going along seemed to be asking each other if they’d heard about the event, so the advertising clearly worked.

The tube was the same. Crammed full, with long slow queues as we walked through the subways into Hyde Park. Once there we pushed our way through the crowds and I called Kathryn to see where she was. We eventually met up around the lost children tent - which rather summed up how I felt - and battled through the surging hordes to find a patch on the grass where there was room to sit down with her friends.

We had a good view of the screens, and of the edge of the lake, and could watch the people going by. The Red Bull staff were dressed up as air hostesses, and rather than ‘competitor’ labels the people taking part are badged up as ‘pilot’ or ‘ground crew’. Even the area where the flying machines queue up for their turn to plumet like a stone and sink in the water is called the holding pattern, and they are directed up onto the runway by a man with those luminous wands they use for guiding planes around airport tarmac. It was all very well organised.

Shame the same couldn’t be said for the shops around Marble Arch, which were having serious problems dealing with the number of people who wanted to buy food and drink. Around half three we had wandered off through the mad people standing up on milk crates and yelling at speakers’ corner where Marx and Lenin both once spoke. I am sure there would have been mad ones then, too, but they are long since forgotten.

We broke through the crowds standing around to listen to the speakers and made our way across to Sainsbury’s where the staff were jamming the automatic doors in an effort to close them. The doors’ magic eye was seeing all the people milling around outside and fighting back, trying to keep them open.

We gave up and walked to McDonalds, but seeing the queues there, gave up a second time. We gave up several more times in several other places before heading back into the park and standing in a long queue at a small cafe that had run out of food but had just a few bottles of warm water left. We bought them gladly and walked back to the water’s edge.

It was a fun way to spend an afternoon, regardless of the crowds and the excessive heat. I’m glad of the weather, too, as a repeat of last weekend’s rain would have been a disaster.

After a long walk back to Piccadilly Circus and a stuffy train journey home during which I dozed off, I was glad of a soak in a cool, deep bath. It woke me up, and I felt far better not to be wearing heavy, sticky clothes, but I’ll certainly return next year.

It gets just a brief mention on the BBC.

We’ve swapped a couple of emails, but I’ve not chatted to producer Sam since the last edition of London This Week when I signed off, hung up my ITN headphones for the last time and we walked to the Grays Inn crossroads together to say goodbye. So, it was a lovely surprise to hear her voice on my mobile in the middle of yesterday morning.

She was lining up guests for LBC drivetime, so after a chat about this and that and nothing in particular I agreed to sit by my phone at 16h35 and talk about spam.

I’d been listening to the show on the net, so it was most bizarre switching it on again after the interview to hear myself carry on talking for a couple of minutes. There was quite a delay. No sooner had it finished than Kev sent a quick mail to say he’d heard it and correctly spotting it hadn’t been the ISDN. It felt strange going back to doing radio by phone.

Anyhow, that reminded me to dig out a new batch of sites for Sunday night’s slot on Through the Night, and I came up with some good stuff that I think we’ll have fun playing with, and they went down well in the office.

Spent the whole of this monrning blitzing the flat. It looks all neat and scrubbed now, with straight edges, and carpet that stands to attention. I’d only been intending to do a quick hoover, but got carried away. It was probably a work avoidance tactic - avoiding thinking about holidays, which are starting to get very complicated.

Russia is a no-no. Once again I’ve left it a bit too late to get it properly sorted out, and Norway is looking less likely since I discovered that the tourist season comes to an abrupt end on September 1st - less than a month from now. That would make getting north of the Arctic Circle decidedly tricky, so perhaps both of those projects will have to be pushed back until next year.

Plan C, overland to Italy, which looks a lot easier than I’d thought it might be. There’s a pretty fast rail corridor from London right down to Milan, which is a hub, so I sat down with the German Rail site again and planned some connections.

Chelmsford - London - Paris - Milan - Rome - Pompei (via Napoli) - Venice - Ljubljana (Slovenia) - Paris (via Saltzburg) - London - Chelmsford

All of that in two weeks, with time for a day in Milan (been there before), 4 in Rome, 2 in Pompei and 3 in Ljubljana. I always did want to see Europe by train, so assuming that all comes off (no doubt it will actually go through some serious tweaking) I’ll have done a fair bit of it over the years.

I’ve given up on it for the rest of the day. Tonight it’s curry with Mark T and Ja and tomorrow, hopefully, the Flugtag - assuming the weather holds out.