If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!Well I should be the owner of a spangly new phone, and I would have been had it not been for an unproductive lunchtime on Oxford Street. That one road, of all in Britain, must have the highest concentration [...]

Yesterday daytime was nice and relaxed. A late start after a late night, lunch in Galleywood with the cat (who is rapidly losing all of her hair) and then flopping around at home until it was time to catch the half five train to London. It’s ages since I’ve been on a weekend train, and [...]

A 9-something liaison at Waterloo for a train out to the burbs for a rehearsal of the awards. We missed it - barely - and took a stopper that went far faster than expected. I scrawled out the end of my speech sat by a window with the roads and roundabouts of south London rattling [...]

Lousy tubes this evening. The drivers have quietly gone off on strike, I think. Hunting around on the web reveals perhaps why.
This is London:
More than 50,000 Tube commuters face the prospect of strikes on their line in a row over a train driver [sacked after being caught] playing squash.
The Scotsman
[London Mayor Ken] Livingstone claimed [...]

I had my first decent night’s sleep in ages last night. I went to bed at a decent time and slept through until something equally delicious this morning. Pure luxury.
Tonight’s a different matter, though, as here I am, five to midnight, writing my speech for tomorrow’s rehearsal of next week’s awards ceremony, tapping it out [...]

Monk jumping over a Wall.
Not the Crouching Tiger sequel but a dish on the menu at lunchtime.
Sharks fin, it turned out.

From the Sydney Morning Herald, BBC News, ITV News and a whole load of others:
Police failure to call an ambulance may have delayed the Countess of Wessex’s arrival at hospital [to give birth at the weekend] by up to 30 minutes, newspapers reported yesterday. (Source: SMH)
From BBC News:
An inquest has heard that a Leicester man [...]

Ian popped up on my screen at eight or so tonight. I was still at my desk. ‘Cool pic of you in the Press Gazette today,’ he wrote. ‘Very GQ.’
I take it he meant I looked like one of the writers rather than one of the demi-clad women on the GQ cover. So anyway, I [...]

It’s the junior Eurovision song contest this weekend. I’ll miss it, but we were talking about it in the office and concensus of opinion seemed to be that the fact I even knew it was taking place simply reinforced a stereotype. Seems Amazon thinks the same. Browsing Puppets on a String, a best-of compilation of [...]

Lunch at La Tasca by that bizarre Chelmsford street sign pointing to ‘Backnang 950km’. After making everyone get up and showered and dressed earlier than anyone wanted on the assurance the place would be practically queueing out the door, it was almost empty and we were sat down with a jug of sangria in two [...]