Seven hours, it took, to plan September’s trip. From the end of a late breakfast that drew to a close at noon to the time I started to rumble and think about dinner, clicking forwards and backwards on the net buying tickets and booking hotels.

So, it looks like this. Leave on the 13th. London to Paris by Eurostar, then a TGV down to Provence to spend three days with dad. From there, up to Lyon, then on to Geneva where we (Paul and I) change trains and head down to Rome. It’s an overnight service, and we have beds in a private compartment. We’re going to be like Bond and Major Amassova in The Spy Who Loved Me, although hopefully the fight with Jaws won’t be a part of our journey.

Four days in Rome and one in Pompei, then a train across country, north east to Venice where we have a hotel on a canal (yeah, I know – they all are) just behind St Mark’s Square. So, basically, in the very centre, which is a Good Thing. It’s another Bond moment, of course, although I’m sure there will be no hovercraft-gondola hybrids zizzing through the square while we’re there.

After three days there we head back north to Paris again. It’s another overnight train, but this time we’re in a couchette, so as well as the two of us there will be four others all sharing the same compartment. I’m not sure what that will be like, but it’ll be an interesting experience if nothing else. Let’s hope they aren’t Inter-railing students who haven’t had a wash since Zagreb.

Back in Paris, all we need is someone to jump off the top of the Eiffel Tower and onto a passing tour boat and it’ll be three Bond moments in a row. Of course that’s not going to happen, though, is it.

That doesn’t actually give us any time in Paris at all, apart from a couple of hours each way to change trains, but that was by design rather than by accident, as I’m going to be in the city four times within the next six weeks, starting with Thursday and Friday this week when I have to be there for a meeting.

Going by train – first class, which will be nice – but I have to take a shirt and tie. It explicitly says so on the documentation. Which means I have to find a tie. And iron a shirt. I haven’t worn a tie since… I guess it must be my grandmother’s funeral, and that’s coming up on two years now.

Of course the tie isn’t for the meeting. We never wear ties to meetings. It’s for the Moulin Rouge, where they are taking us on Thursday night. I’m inclined to re-watch the film before going for ‘research’ purposes, but I suspect it’ll have changed somewhat since then.

I shall find out and report back.

How glad am I that that week is over? I’m fried. Chris brought in donuts to celebrate the end of the week and the sugar overload induced by eating two and a half of them – iced – did strange things to my mind.

I commissioned someone to write 400 pages. I meant 400 words. 400 pages would have cost

When it happened in New York just three weeks ago they warned the same could happen here. And it did. Today.

270 sets of traffic lights blink out. 250,000 people stranded. 1,000 trains stopped in/on their tracks. 400 calls to the fire brigade to free people trapped in lifts.

Kathryn called at half six. I was still in the office with Mark and she was on the verge of missing her train as the national grid collapsed, most of London was starved of electricity and the tube network shut down.

I could really have done without it. But then couldn’t we all. It had started to rain mid-afternoon, just around four as we headed out on the daily tea run. As the afternoon wore on and the heating, for some inexplicable reason, switched itself on, it got harder and harder so that by the time I left it was strong and constant and the streets were clogged by brolleys.

I fought my way through them, my hood pulled up and the rain soaking through my coat and jeans, eventually finding some open gates three stops down the line: Chancery Lane. I went down to the platform, expecting it to be ten bodies deep, but it was nigh-on desetred, the trains have only just started to run.

I was on one within a minute, rattling through closed stations with other drenched walkers. The warm carriage and our wet clothes conspired to make the air hot and humid.

It was like we were rumbling along below the crowded streets in a red and white travelling sauna.

There are three landmarks on the London skyline.

If I’d said that a century ago, they would have been Tower Bridge, the Tower of London and St Paul’s. Today it’s Canary Wharf in the east, the BT Tower in the west end, and Tower 42 in the city.

I’ve done BT Tower before, from which you get a great view of London. It bowled me over at the time, and I filled a whole memory card with pictures. Oxford Street. Baker Street. The BBC. Regents Park.

Today, though, I did Tower 42 and it all paled in comparison It even beats the London Eye, hands down. Absolutely no question about it, even though I was only on the 24th floor – just above half way to the 42nd floor penthouse seafood bar.

With 20 lifts, it was the tallest building in the UK for ten years until the buildings on Canary Wharf stole its crown. It took nine years to build, between 1971 and 1980 was was finally opened a year later by the Queen. The shape, nonsensical when seen from street level, is the Nat West logo when seen from the air, for it was built as the bank’s HQ. They may have sold it, but most Londoners still call it the Nat West Tower.

The entrance hall is a three-level greenhouse, on the upper floor of which a long reception desk stretches out towards some airport-worthy security measures. X-ray machines for your bag. Metal detectors for your body and clothes.

Then they give you a funny swipe card they never took back. I wonder what it does.

I rode the express lift to the 24th floor, where the doors open out into the marble-floored core of the building – a curved triangle from which the floor sections open up. I’ve always wondered what it was like on the inside.

And so, of course, I took a seat by one of the floor-to-ceiling windows for the meeting, the capital stretching out a couple of hundred feet below, as far as the eye could see. The BT Tower looked very lonely, standing on its own in the middle of the metropolis.

As the afternoon wore on, the sun moved around so that it was warming the side of the building on which we were sitting. The steel trimmings that run up and down its outer shell and gleam as the light falls upon them, creaked and cracked as they were gently heated, then did the same again as they cooled and we filed out, casting glances back across our shoulders at the view.

Shouldn’t all meetings have a backdrop like that?

Ugh! What a hideous day. First one back after a holiday and a bank holiday Monday. It was inevitable really, wasn’t it. So, problem solving and firefighting from start to end. And delays on the trains, of course – I’d almost forgotten the trains run late.

I’ve brought home 80-odd pages of proofs that need reading by tomorrow. It’s going to be a late night. It’s as well I have a cat for company. Although he goes home tomorrow.

Yesterday was a far better day. A slow, relaxing start, even if it was a bit early thanks to a phone full of computer enquiries ringing at 08h45. Mooched around the flat all day messing with my photos from last week, tidying, squaring and being useful, all the while being watched by Oscar from the chair he has made his home these last four days.

The pics didn’t go so well. Five or six of them I’m very happy with, but about the same number again will need a fair bit of work before I’m satisfied. I took close-on 300 over the five days of being away though, so there are plenty to choose from. It’s a good job digital shots cost nothing.

Slouched in front of The Italian Job in the evening. I hadn’t intended to, but it turns out it’s actually quite good. I think it’s been tainted by my general perception of Michael Caine, which is a shame.

Oscar was perfectly behaved. He always is, I guess, but I was impressed that he let me sleep until the alarm went off at ten. I needed the rest. I was up until two this morning filling in forms that need posting, and sorting out the washing from holiday. All the time, he was miowing, demanding that I go to bed so he could get some rest.

Anyhow, ten this morning he heard the radio click on then came snuffling at the bottom of the duvet to get me up and out of bed. He knew I had a busy schedule.

Or perhaps he was just hungry.

Whatever, I was in Asda half an hour later, then back home in time for heading out to Halsted for an early lunch for Paul’s grandfather’s birthday. It was a long way to go to eat a meal, but the food was excellent, and the surroundings pleasant, which made it all worthwhile.

While the rest of them headed off in various random directions to look at castles, the nuclear bunker or a concert, depending on preference, I drove on to Colchester for Mark’s ‘summer gatherette’ in his parents’ back garden.

I hadn’t known his mum was going to be cooking so much food. I should have guessed – she is a great cook and always caters for the CD recording sessions – but had to sit by the sidelines and apologise for feeling so stuffed.

The weather was perfect. We sat around on benches, swings and garden furniture chatting about all manner of things. The three Marks and two Nicks discussed TV while at the other end of the garden a paramedic was explaining what happens to a body when it goes under a train. He knows: he’s had to pick up the pieces several times.

‘How many bits are there?’ I asked him.

‘Lots,’ he replied. ‘But we only pick up the big bits. We leave the rest of it for the foxes.’

Ugh.

It’s not a job I could do.

I came home as it started to turn chilly. A wind picked up so I said my goodbyes and gave one of the Marks a lift to the station, then drove home along an A12 clogged by roadwords (or more accurately clogged by cones and speed limits but no sign of any actual roadworkers doing any work).

I was right – it did feel good to sleep in a bed last night. The hard matteress felt so wonderfully soft after a roll mat on the floor of a tent. It was wonderful to be able top pull a duvet up around my neck rather than lay with the open end of a sleeping bag flapping around me like the overgrown gill of a suffocating fish.

So, the day started with unpacking and putting things either back on shelves or into the wash, depending on whether or not they were clothes. Oh, and catching up on the programmes missed and videod last week. The first episode of series three of Six Feet Under certainly is confusing. I’m still not sure whether what we watched was ‘reality’ or the dreams of a anaesthetised man. Still, it was entertaining enough, at the end of which I drove across to mum’s to fiddle with her network again and eat lunch on the patio.

Cat was hiding in the bushes trying to keep herself cool. I don’t know how successful she was, but we did pretty well with the network, setting up shared printers, folders and broadband access, almost entirely without wires.

I’m quite tempted to go wireless at home, but then if I have broadband access in the lounge as well as the study I’m going to spend all my time on the settee browsing the net when I should be doing something more productive. Like writing the book.

I could have stayed for dinner, I suppose, as we didn’t get finished until early evening. By that time, though, the list of jobs I had to do back home was rapidly looking like it was going to take longer than what part of the day remained, so I said my goodbyes and headed home.

I looks like it’s going to be a late night, then, getting things done. Going away for a week is great. Catching up when you get back… isn’t.

It will be good to sleep in a bed tonight. It’s been good to spend a week away from it. We made Wales in four hours, crossing the border some time around threeish on Monday. The names were all pretty familiar, and after a short stop at Swallow Falls (disappointing from lack of rainfall) we headed west through the Llanberis Pass to the foot of Snowdon. Its head was lost in the clouds.

The site I wanted was full. For tents at least. So we drove on down the road a field behind a pub that had a picture of a shower on the gate and a camper van with the words ‘Kon Tiki’ written on its awning parked nearby.

We pitched at the far end of the otherwise empty field, within view of a wide shallow river and close by the trees to keep out the wind.

It might not have been flash and the showers may have been distinctly poky (and a little brown in the corners) but it had its benefits: it was quiet, it was close to deserted, the only sounds at night beyond the odd distant car were the hooting of owls and the scurrying of small animals. The closest building was a pub.

So, we cooked food on our wobbly gas stove in thin aluminium pots and settled down for the night, the wind gently rippling the canvas of the tent.

Tuesday made up for a week away from the gym. We climbed Snowdon.

We hadn’t intended to. The trains were full, though, and so after reading the signs that it should take three hours on the ‘easiest’ and ‘most popular’ path we set off to see how far we got.

To be honest, I was ready to stop after the first two hills and it was only Paul’s encouragement that kept me going. The view from the top was well worth it, though. I’ve been three quarters of the way up on the train before, but we got stopped by the low clouds, so it was the first time I’d made it all the way. The peak is a platform of granite or slate with steps leading up from each side. A dozen or so climbers, most of whom probably used the train and so whose legs weren’t screaming like ours, were clustered around it, reading the place names being pointed out on a brass plaque on the top.

I sat down on the edge, my feet dangling as I looked out across the miles of view that stretched as far as England in one direction and Ireland in another. The wind whipped around and my breath clouded in the air.

When you’ve sat there for ten minutes and texted everyone in your phonebook (full signal on the mobile, even at 3,500ft) there’s not much to do but use the toilets and buy coffee in the slimy cafe. It’s not a nice place. It plays on the fact that there is nothing else up there and you’ll probably be desperate for something to eat, or at least to drink.

So, as tradition dictates, we drank, and then headed off back down the mountain as the clouds closed in.

It took an hour and three quarters to get back to the bottom. Not bad considering it was a four hour climb. I’m not sure what was more painful, though; pushing up against gravity, or trying to slam on the brakes as it pushed you down.

I really felt it the next day.

We stayed a second night in our field then the next morning, barely able to walk, we packed up the camp and drove north to Llandudno. I’d been there twice before, but only ever out of season, and I think I prefer it that way. There were too many people this time around. The beach was cluttered. The streets were crowded. The pier was swaying, perhaps with the weight of all the people.

We didn’t stay long. We ate, then drove to Caernarvon, by way of Bangor, in honour of the song. Pleasant enough, but nothing going on. So, we moved on to Caernarvon, where the huge, well preserved castle is the place where the monarch crowns the first-born son as Price of Wales. We drank coffee, took pictures and looked at the flashy camping stoves in the out-bounds shop but left them on the shelves. The guy behind the counter admitted that the gas for them was pretty non-standard and pretty hard to find.

I think our two nights in a field had rather spoilt us, though, as we set out south towards Shell Island. In reality this is more of a spit of land than an island, and it was slightly disappointing to find that the causeway wouldn’t even be covered until the end of the week. It was also right beside an RAF air base, so we had the questionable benefit of warplanes buzzing the tops of our tent poles from early in the morning until early in the evening. They would scream off across the sea then slam on the brakes for a sharp turn, a second pass and then a burst of reverse thrust or whatever it is they have as they dropped towards the land for the runway.

Interesting the first few times, but you tire of it.

The whole thing was far too… well, organised, I suppose. There was a shower block for which you had to queue. There was a canteen. There was a pub, which was jam packed the one time we tried to get in. The crowd around the bar was eight or nine deep right the way along. We walked right out again and thought back to our nice big, nice empty inn beside the field of the two nights before.

It was also a bit too family oriented, really. Shell Island is a big place with room for 800 family sized tents and although you aren’t allowed to pitch within 20 metres of the next tent and it was nice to be camped among bracken and sand dunes, the peace and quite of the child-free field was sorely missed.

That said, we slept well, and woke the next morning to grey skies and an empty fuel tank. This need for petrol determined our direction, and so we headed out across the causeway again and north into Harlech to find a garage. We were ripped off, but had no choice – if we didn’t fill there we’d run dry somewhere on a deserted road.

So, as we were going that way anyway we continued in the same direction and ended up at Port Meirion, the Italianate town on the misty Welsh coast in which they filmed The Prisoner back in the 60s. I was surprised you had to pay to get in – I had thought it would just be a regular town, albeit prettier than most, that you could enter and leave at will. Turns out, though, that the whole thing is a big hotel, run by a charity to keep it maintained.

It kept us entertained for the full day, though, in spite of the fact we thought we’d be in there and out again in under two hours, and the fact that neither of us had seen The Prisoner when it was on TV.

And that was our last day. We spent today on the road, alternately driving through rain and brilliant sunshine. Some of the time we sat in traffic jams, which is only to be expected on the Friday before a bank holiday weekend, but by and large all went well.

Arrived home to plaintive miows from Oscar, who arrived earlier and will be staying until Wednesday while Sal’s away in Cornwall. He’s so snuggly friendly he makes coming back from holiday not nearly so hard as it might have been.

There’s a gallery of seven pictures from the week online here.

Yesterday morning. 08h00: get up. 09h30: vet, to give the cat its booster jabs. She was very well behaved and endured three needles, a general poking around, an inspection of her back legs and a weighing before she crept back into her carry box and sat, curled tight, on the blanket at the back. All over the vet’s black rubber table top there were little sweaty paw prints.

Arriving back home, she spent the first five minutes sniffing the carpet. I thought perhaps there was something wrong with one of the jabs and it had turned her mad. Around and around and around she went, her nose sniff sniff sniffing, rubbing up and down the green prickly weave until suddenly she realises the smell is on her tail. She jumps, as though she has been starled by an unfamiliar dog then sets about the fur around her bum with her tongue, licking off every last remnant of the smell of that black rubber table.

It was about ten by then. We were round at mum’s, so ate breakfast in the garden and then mooched upstairs to install her new wireless network. She’d bought it in kit form from BT and already had been on to the tech support line with questions about two conflicting bits of advice in the instructions.

‘Well just do it,’ said the man at the other end. ‘Just plug it in. A man wouldn’t read the instructions.’

Gee. Thanks.

So we did. We plugged it in. A dongle in the desktop machine, a card in the laptop and the hub on the desk and within ten minutes all was running smoothly. They could all see one another. They could create files and directories on each others’ drives, and with a sense of triumph we carried the laptop out into the garden to perform our first real demonstration.

And in the tradition of all live demos… it fell flat on its face. Just ten metres from the hub, the notebook could find not even a hint of a network in the air.

We moved the hub onto a windowsill so that it was hanging out above the patio. Still, the signal was weak, and there was do much lost data flying about we’d probably irradiated the whole neighbourhood with the contents of the hard drive.

An hour later, things were no better, and so we called BT. I did the ringing this time. And to be fair, the guy on the other end was as helpful as could be. He even asked whether we were trying to connect two computers on opposite sides of a wall. ‘Yes,’ I told him.

‘Aah,’ he said, then explained that that was out problem. You see, the instructions may claim that the service works within 50 metres of the base station inside a house, but that’s only if the house has paper-thin walls. What we needed, he assured us, was a card with a vertical aerial, not a horizontal one as comes with the BT kit.

Does BT sell one, I asked. No. It does not.

And so this marvellous wireless networking kit that we have been sold, which will solve all our broadband problems and wire up the house without any wires, if effectively useless in any house more sturdy than a shed.

A whole day we spent getting it sorted out, and then disassembled again.

Today, I’m glad to say, went far, far better. It started with a trip to Sainsbury’s to buy supplies for next week, when I’ll be camping with Paul. Canned stuff, packet stuff, drinks. Little bottles of shampoo. Tubes of toothpaste. Tea bags. Took it all home then blitzed tge flat in time for Mark and Ja coming around for a late lunch around the telly as we watched Amelie.

It’s the second time I’ve seen it, and it’s still as pretty and enchanting as it was the first time. Mark was able to analyse it with his film-maker’s mind and we all had a good chat when it was over about how the storyline flowed through, the imagery, and the characters. It’s good to be able to get another, more qualified view on things. I’d not spotted, until he mentioned it, how the tall bars on the father’s garden are like the bars of a self-imposed prison cell.

So, we ate pizza while we watched, and then had chocolate cake while we discussed, and by the time they left the kitchen was so full of washing up there were barely any cups and plates to do dinner.

I’ve not packed anything for going away yet, and it’s fast approaching midnight and time to do my slot on Through the Night. Perhaps that’s because we’ll be camping in Wales, so the language and the currenc are the same as at home.

It makes you blase, does things like that. Is that a good thing? Or not?

Wooo – last day in the office before a week on holiday. And what a strange day. Clive’s birthday presentation, and Emilie’s leaving speech and gift back-to-back. It felt quite momentous, even though they’ll both still be working in the same office this time next week.

Still, it’s always nice to give presents.

I worked late, as is custom for the day before you go away, then did an interview on BBC London about this Blaster worm that’s doing the rounds. All told, I ended up trooping out of the office some time around half seven, up to Jerusalem to say goodbye to Mark for the week, then weaving my way back across Soho to find Scott and his stag do.

He had a Pub Crawl Passport on the table, and there were already seven ‘pint’ stamps in it by the time I arrive, which perhaps explains the semi-lucid conversation about ‘bum sex’ (his quaint words).

Mindful of the fact it’s V2003 this weekend, I left just after nine. I didn’t fancy an hour on a train full of rucksacks.