It’s scary how far ahead of yourself you can get if you’re not careful. I spent the whole day editing a feature that won’t appear in print until the December issue. Admittedly December comes out on 26th October, but that’s still three and a half months away.

I sometimes feel like I live the year twice in this job; it’s difficult to remember which month you’re in. It’s July now, but the issue on the shelves is dated August and it came out at the end of June. We’ve finished working on September, and that’s being printed. We’re proofing October and I’ve just been editing copy for December. That’s every month between now and the end of the year bar November, and I’ve already finished a big chunk of that.

I took the lunch hour I promised I would have and walked down to Trafalgar Square, where I’m sure the Canadian railway people used to have an office. I couldn’t find it, though. Perhaps it’s shut down, but I remember a big CN sign on top of one of the buildings a couple of years ago. I suppose it could have moved into the embassy.

Paul and I were planning on travelling across Canada by train last year and it never happened. I think it was something to do with the flights, but we ended up in Jersey, which couldn’t possibly be much smaller than Canada even if it tried. We were talking about doing it again this year, but haven’t got anything booked yet. I’m terrible about planning ahead for holidays. Most of my business travel is last minute and I can’t quite get my head around planning flights months in advance.

Come to think of it, I think CN is the wrong bit of the rail anyway. I’m pretty sure I should be looking for Via instead.

The trouble with trying to do what we want to do is that you either have to go all the way across the country twice - once in each direction - or fly in on one side of the country and out of the other. Either way it’s prohibitively expensive. I’ve just been looking on the ViaRail site and it’s almost $3,000 Canadian just for some of the trips up one of the coasts.

If Canada turns out to be a no-go again, I’d love to go back to the Far East and spend some more time in Kyoto and Hong Kong, and perhaps a couple of days in Singapore.

Paul was out with friends from work, so I spent the evening blitzing the flat for my sister’s arrival on Monday. It’s a sad state of affairs when you spend Friday night at home, tidying…

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