What is it with this waking up early? How am I supposed to service my dashing lifestyle of late nights when I keep on waking before the alarm goes off. This morning, awake after just six hours. Wide awake. No chance of any more sleep. The only thing to do is to sit in bed writing emails and sipping tea with the window open so the birds can sing at me.

It amazes me every time I come to stay here how loud and chattery the birds are.

I am also amazed every time at how crap dial up connections to the Internet are. Broadband very quickly turns you into a soft surfer and after having it for three years it’s a shock slamming on the breaks with a regular modem. I also can’t get my head around the idea of actually having to wait for a dial tone and a load of beeping before I can check my mails.

Hmmm… Perhaps living in the countryside isn’t so good after all.

Anyhow, that wasn’t a problem for much of the day, as after several abortive attempts over the course of the last year lunch with Ursula and Mike finally happened. We were so lucky with the weather, which was hot bright sun from my hideously early waking up until the end of the day, and we ate outside for the first time this year.

Actually, second time, but first time was just a snack. This was a proper meal.

We had yummy mushroom risotto and long cool glasses of Pimms. It was almost like being away on holiday. We even walked through the park and looked out across London. The view stretched for miles across houses before hitting the high-rise blocks of Bank and Docklands. I was surprised that from where we were, just a couple of miles in from the M25, we could even clearly make out the London Eye and BT Tower.

It was so relaxing I really didn’t want to leave. We got back and I could have flopped around on their settee with tea until bed time.

No such luck, though, unfortunately. I had stuff to prepare for tonight’s feature on Through the Night. Settled on quotable quotes from politicians, and in particular Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, the eternally Iraqi Minister of Information. Since he’s gone missing he’s gaining cult status in the British media, and he’s even got his own fan site that quotes him at length. I found his explanation of the booby-trapped pencils particularly insightful:

“The authority of the civil defense … issued a warning to the civilian population not to pick up any of those pencils because they are booby traps,” he said, adding that the British and American forces were “immoral mercenaries” and “war criminals” for such behavior. “I am not talking about the American people and the British people,” he said. “I am talking about those mercenaries. … They have started throwing those pencils, but they are not pencils, they are booby traps to kill the children.”

Mothers’ Day, today, so first stop Sainsbury’s to sort out lunch. Cruised the aisles picking up recipe bits and bobs, then zizzed home to tidy the flat and start cooking. For a while, I thought I had far longer to get things sorted than I actually did - damned clock change. Why can’t we just stay on summer time all year around and benefit from the lighter evenings.

Pubbed with Trevor and Jon (and Midnight Weatherman and Steve’s Challenge) last night, and Trevor was saying that when he gets up for his early shifts at 4am sometimes in the summer it’s already light. So, why not crank back the start of the day until then and we can have daylight until well into the night.

And do the same in winter so we don’t get confused. If it upsets the farmers, give them night vision goggles.

Anyhow, got everything cooked on time, in spite of a pan burning exercise (put it on to boil without putting any water in it) which held things up slightly, and then sat down to eat with mum and Andrew. Hadn’t done dessert - after a week of sitting around book writing I think custard is the last thing I need, so instead baked coconut haystacks with cherries on top to eat with mugs of steaming tea.

So we munched and chatted into the afternoon, and then I sat down and did some research for tonight’s Through the Night feature. Decided on web sites for pets and came up with some truly bizarre bits and bobs.

Started with Dog Island, courtesy of B3TA where you can send your pet, free of charge, for life if it’s stressed of city life. They’re split up according to size but otherwise are left free to roam at will and apparently revert to the pack mentality of choosing their own partners.

There’s a phone number on the site but it just seems to go to voicemail rather than a real person.

But of course you couldn’t possibly let your dog head off to Dog Island without some nice new clothes. Loads of appropriate pet fashion to be found over at Rag Dog. My favourite outfits from the site are this one and this one.

But of course we couldn’t forget cats. If you’re a cat owner it’s very annoying trying to find the it when you’re going out of the house and you want to make sure it’s safely locked in, which is why you need the Cat Finder. It’s like those old keyrings that beeped so you could find your keys. Shame it makes your cat look like it’s wearing a pager.

But what happens when your pet eventually dies? Most people would take it to the vet to be cremated, but this company thinks that freeze drying is ‘the comforting alternative’. Going on the photos, the results look very much like the real thing, but I don’t know that I’d want my freeze dried cat curled up in an armchair as though it was still alive.

And after that we’ll finish on something cute.

It’s strange how empty the flat feels without the cat. I took her back mid-afternoon, and in spite of the fact she only arrived on Friday evening, and spent most of her time hidden neatly away behind the settee, I’m already missing her. She was none too happy about being loaded into her big purple pet voyager (probably on account of the fact it does nothing for her cat-cool), as demonstrated by putting a well-aimed claw into my chest, but other than that she was very well behaved, and all but silent all the way home.

I spent most of the day working. She spent a fair proportion of it alternating between sitting in her settee hidy-hole and brushing herself up against my legs. I drank way too much tea, then broke mid-afternoon to drink it rather more sociably with Trevor and Jon, Boris and Miss Ginny.

Oh, and cake, too, for no other reason than the fact that Trevor and Jon had been driving past a Waitrose.

Did a feature on movie mistakes on Through the Night this evening (in honour of last night’s trip out to the cinema). Was pleased to discover that Russell Crowe-fest Gladiator made one of the most foolish cock-ups of the lot, putting saddles and stirrups on the horses when in fact they weren’t invented until 185AD (the saddles and stirrups, not the horses). This has to be beaten only by the crate of oranges under the table in the market scene of The Sound of Music, which are marked up as coming from Israel. Except, of course, Israel didn’t exist back then.

Wednesday 16 January 1991
Britain is at war. It is not called war, though; it is a ‘crisis’. Most of the world is involved and the aim is to force Saddam Hussein and Iraq out of Kuwait, which they invaded five months and 12 days ago. We are expecting terrorist action, so everywhere is heavily guarded. Heathrow Airport is full of armed soldiers and tanks etc.

Thursday 17 January 1991
It is finally called a war! Allied forces have been bombing Baghdad continuously in three waves of action for 23 hours. Our prime minister went onto television this evening to tell us what is happening. The Allied forces have lost three planes and suffered one casualty. Half of Iraq’s airforce has been destroyed. Cruise missiles have been used for the first time ever in anger. The combined force of the bombing so far is equivalent to the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The French have joined in.

My diary entries from the first two days of the Gulf war, 1991. At the time, of course, we all thought that was the beginning. But perhaps it was not. Many rumours, perhaps nothing more than urban legend, have emerged since then. They tell of casualties quietly brought back to the UK before the bombing even began. Clearly forces of which we knew nothing were already at work.

Has it happened again? Even before the United Nations gets to vote on (and probably reject) a second resolution, has the war begun?

The Guardian today reports on Radio Tikrit, a mysterious radio station broadcasting to a wide area, centred on Iraq but spreading out to encompass huge swathes of Europe on 1584AM.

Broadcasts started two weeks ago, and apart from the fact they omitted to play the Iraqi national anthem before and after every news bulletin nothing seemed particularly out of the ordinary. There was plenty of praise for Saddam, and plenty of bile directed at the West, but lately things have changed.

Slowly, but surely, its output has been changing focus, becoming far more soft towards the West and outspoken against Saddam and his regime. Suspicions are that it is what is known as ‘black propaganda’ - winning around the locals through popular culture.

Perhaps more important, though, are the cryptic horoscopes. Could they really be sending out coded messages to Western operatives already on the ground inside the country?

Tonight’s Through the Night feature was on naked celebrities. Which involved being paid to search for porn. I was surprised how difficult it turned out to be. It’s dead easy to find free porn online, of course, but not of famous people. Most of it’s locked up safely and securely behind Celebticket, which seems to be the famous person’s version of Adultcheck.

Did throw up a couple of interesting facts, though. For instance:

• There seems to be a distinction - on American sites at least - between ‘naked’ and ‘nude’. Nude, from what I can tall, errs on the side of titillation, and bare-breastyness. Naked goes much further.

• It’s also better to avoid sites that have the celebrity name in their address as these are usually just portals that channel you to the same small selection of Celebticket-controlled destinations. I’m guessing that the ratio of funnels to the number of real porn pictures is about 100:1.
• You come across more annoying popup ads when searching for naked women than you do when searching for naked guys.
• It’s best to think laterally. Don’t search for ‘Jude Law naked’ - search for Jude Law gallery and you’re more likely to get closer to what you’re after.

A couple of the sites we used on the show:

Jonathan Kerrigan gallery leading to…
…naked on bed
…in the shower

Brad Pitt gallery leading to…
…Brad Pitt naked
…Brad Pitt naked
…Brad Pitt naked

But we never got around to discussing this grubby picture of the rather lovely Morten Harket.

Tonight

Woke up feeling strangely dreamy. All kind of floaty and light. Then I tried to stand up and found myself in agony. What I have done to my legs, I don’t know, but a night of clambering around on chairs and the sides of the bath have left the backs of my thighs feeling about as chiselled as Mount Rushmore. All that scraping seems to have done little for my biceps, unfortunately, and it’s left me with a nose full of solidified artex dust.

So, not a good day for having to walk very far. Every time I sat down I siezed up again - when putting on my shoes, driving, riding the train. Not a good day for a broken Central Line, then, still out of service since Saturday’s crash. Hobbled along towards Bank to find a bus, which I rode as far as Trafalgar Square, then stumbled the west of the way to the office and flopped, relieved, into my chair.

Spent as much of the day as I could sitting down, and avoiding the short walk to the drinks’ machine whenever necessary. Booked myself onto a trip to Berlin with Sony in early March. Another good chance to practice my German, and take some more pictures to add to the collection. My existing Berlin set is distinctly pedestrian.

I definately need to spend more time listening to those language tapes.

Rode home with Spencer, then ate a speedy dinner before doing a recording with Clive. Kept on wanting to call him Bob, for some reason. Very confusing. I guess it’s because Bob hands you over and then takes you back at the end. The hold track is deafeningly loud when you’re hanging on the phone, lost in the switchboard somewhere between production and the studio.

It wasn’t a long one. Ten minutes or so, I’d guess - I didn’t time it - and then it was back to the scraping. I got it all done, in spite of the fact it was the most stubborn section - furthest away from the bath, so least damaged by the damp, and pretty much in pristine condition.

Only really equated artex with plaster late on, at which point I tried washing it down. That seemed to loosen things up considerably. Must remember that tip for the future.

D-I-Y. Three letters that sum up the day. Built my shelves late morning, leaving the hammering until there was a fair chance the neighbours would be up (or awake at least). It was surprisingly easy - but then it was Ikea - and within half an hour I had the CDs neatly lined up in their new compartments and the rickety shelves on the wall were breathing a sigh of relief.

This afternoon’s work, though, was more or less unintentional. I set out with a scouring pad on the bathroom ceiling to smooth down the edges of the curling up paint so I could slap on a new coat over the top (or underneath, I suppose, as technically what’s already there would be physically above it).

All was going well until a little bit of artex fell off and I picked away at the edges of the empty scar it left behind. This made it a bit bigger, but still little bits were falling off the edge. So, I picked a bit more. And then a bit more. And then some more, until there was about a foot square missing.

It was only then I realised I was pretty much committed to taking down the whole lot, so set at it with the only thing to hand - a penknife. Half an hour later I switched to a screwdriver (I have a pitiful tool cache). Going was painfully slow, and the sweat was running off me - so much so that the new extractor fan, which senses humidity, switched on all buy itself.

I’d started some time around half four, and made coffee at seven, with still about three-quarters of the room to go. The whole thing was rapidly turning into that episode of Father Ted where they try and hammer a little dent out of their car and several hours later, after more and more knocking, end up with a battered wreck.

So, while the kettle was boiling I had a dig around in the drawers to see what I could come up with to speed the scraping and found a pie slice. It wasn’t much wider than the screwdriver but it did at least have a better handle, so I took it back to the bathroom, not a mistral of swirling dust kicked around by the extractor, and started hacking away. Things started going much better, but I’d already cut my fingers and my palm was developing a nice red blister.

By nine I was having difficulty breathing through the dust and had to lie down for a moment. I picked the lounge rug, which was stupid - standing up ten minutes later I’d left a ghostly white print of my back and head on its blue weave.

By half ten I’d done all but about a square foot in one corner of the room, and a small channel running up along a wall, both of which were proving particularly stubborn. But I had no strength left in my arms and it was enough effort to keep balancing on the edge of the bath on tip-toe. So, I called it a day and retirieved the hoover, which jammed itself on the sheer weight of artex smothering the carpet. It took half an hour to get it all cleared away - excluding the edges, which have stayed as they are - leaving fifteen minutes for a quick shower.

I’d arranged with Mandy to do a slot on Through the Night with Steve Allen and quarter past eleven, so flopped in front of the ISDN in my dressing gown, a hit drink hugged in my aching hands, and waited for the call.

It’s a fair while since I’ve used the ISDN. I normally do Clive Bull by phone, so it was good to be sitting there with a proper mic and headphones again. Not a long piece as it was the first one of what’s slated for a weekly slot - more just an intro and a pointer to what’s coming in future weeks, although we did run through some email questions and fun sites.

The quality over the ISDN line from the new studios is fantastic - even better than it used to be from the ITN building. Perhaps it’s the new digital mics. Whatever. Anyhow, it was even more of a ‘really there’ experience than usual.

I can smell artex dust everywhere, and the carpet is full of footprints.

Long, long chat with Duncan on the messenger. We’ve not properly spoken in years, and now he’s in New York, so keyboard chats are the best we can manage. Truncated when he got called away, so I spent the time upgrading Movable Type to 2.51. Some useful extras hidden under the surface, but nothing radical. Was vaguely baffled for a while when nothing seemed to work, but it turned out there was a line missing from the documentation. Worked it out by cobbling together some of the instructions for the earlier versions and all went smooth enough.

Bumped into the Midnight Weatherman on the train for a half-hour gossip. We have a tendency to meet on nights I’m doing bits and bobs for the Clive Bull show. It was a chat about music piracy in the face of Robbie Williams’ proclaimed support for copying CDs. It went well, but it’s a difficult subject to handle without incriminating yourself.

Am wondering what I should do with my hair. I’m having a new pic taken on Friday morning for the top of my column. The one we use at the moment makes me look more like a Smash Hits writer. Then again, perhaps that’s not such a bad deal.

So, painfully short, or kind of overgrown as it is at the moment.

Hmmm…

So, the last edition of The Lab on Thursday, and the final London This Week today. As usual, it was raining outside, as it does every Sunday I have to be in Grays Inn Road, and as usual the show went far too fast to think about anything other than what the next question would be, so by the time it came to an end the significance didn’t really strike me.

There was no time for a long, fond look back at the studio, which will probably be dismantled over Christmas in the move to west London, as Jacqui King was on her way in for her last show, too.

I thanked Sam and Rupert for all they had done to make the show work over the last three or four months, then mooched around the newsroom for a while, leafing through the Sunday supplements and reading about the reindeer eaters in northern Siberia. I’d love to visit but somehow suspect I’d not get on well with the food.

So, wandered back towards Holborn, chatting with Sam. He hugged at the crossing and then she went back to work on Marcus Churchill’s show and I went to Sainsbury’s to grab a sandwich. I’m glad I did. I’d been considering skipping lunch until I got home, but a poor diabetic woman collapsed on the train. We were turfed off at Shenfield and crammed onto another train on its way in from London.

This, though, was only after a 20-minute wait that left me stranded amid the most vile family in Essex. Two fat women and half a dozen dirty-faced children. Honestly, this kid who insisted on bouncing up and down on the seat opposite - in his shoes - as though it were a trampoline had a face like Father Jack, with some thick jellow substance, like broken corn flakes caught in a smear of lemon curd, right around his mouth. Another vacant looking kid stood in front of me repeating ‘what’s your name, what’s your name, what’s your name, what’s your name’ over and over and over again.

I did my best to ignore him. So did his mother. She screamed at her other kids, and stood at the door for a cigarette, persumably so the smoke could blow back into the carriage and her kids could share it (along with the rest of us) without getting cold.

Finally made my paper chains when I got home, so at least there’s some evidence Christmas is on the way. Other evidence is a sparkling bathroom and tidy flat, ready for dad’s arrival tomorrow (still not got the muddy footprint off the yellow rug from when here was here last month). It was a good excuse for avoiding the online tax return, the login screen of which so comprehensively baffled me that it’s now locked me out before I’ve even got as far as entering my name.

The instructions are written in some kind of governmental code. I have two passwords and one User ID. It’s never clear which password you’re supposed to use. I also have to ‘activate’ my PIN, apparently, although the instructions in the letter that came with it don’t bear any relevance to the layout of the pages online and I could never find the necessary link - perhaps why I’m now locked out of the so-called ‘open’ government.

After that I got the cleaning bug, so scoured the freezer and switched it back on again, ready for shopping tomorrow evening. Or perhaps tonight at midnight, when Tesco opens for the last long run into Christmas.

I wonder if the shelves will be stocked?