I should have spent more of today out in the garden, but apart from two hours sat drinking tea in the sun with mum I have spent most of the day inside either packing, or reading about the places we’ll pass through on our trip.

We leave tomorrow. First heading for Venice and then, on Monday, on to Ljubljana. From Ljubljana we go to Zagreb, and then from Zagreb to Budapest. I can’t wait. It all sounds so exciting, and I’m feeling much better now than I did in the middle of the week. I probably shouldn’t have gone out on Thursday evening, as I felt so grim, but it was curry, which I am finding more and more difficult to resist over the years. We all ended up at Masala Zone for grand thalis and (Enid Blyton stylee) lashings of homemade lemonade.

So, now my clothes are folded and my bags are stuffed. The tickets are in my pocket, I have a little bit of currency that Gordon sent me (enough to buy a beer, he says), and my camera is full of freshly-charged batteries. This time tomorrow I should, hopefully, be drinking coffee in St Mark’s Square, my shoes and socks slowy getting soaked as the whole city sinks around me.

The last time I was there, I turned 30. Now I’m closer to 32 than 31, and the scary thing is, that 30th birthday feels like it was just three months ago.

Barbara has been mauled by a Tiger. She didn’t come off very well.

Finally, today, after months of speculation and waiting, Apple released Tiger, so I wandered down to the Store with Keith to see what happened at six when it was set for launch. As we suspected, they’d closed it up, but what we hadn’t expected was the queue of people that went – quite literally – right around the block. There was easily 1000 people there. And perhaps half that many again. We walked slowly along the line, not seeing anyone we knew, and worrying that there might not actually be any separate press arrangements.

Fortunately, as we completed our lap of the block we spotted the backs of some familiar heads, and hunched up with the other hacks, standing outside a separate door from the public.

As usual, all the Apple staff lined themselves up on the big glass staircase and clapped and cheered the new product before the doors were finally opened to much whooping and a surge of eager punters gushing in through the door to be the first to pick up their copies from where they were set out at the front. Whether the people at the very back of the queue went home empty handed or not, I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

We were scooted up to the classroom at the back to get our copies, past the TV people who were filming the madness below them, then wandered around the block once more to watch the depleting queue before heading home to install.

As I say, Barbara didn’t come off all that well.

First, it simply wouldn’t load. It said there were ‘errors’. Nothing more specific than that. So, I repaired my permissions and did the obligatory /sbin/fsck -fy and then tried again. Mysteriously, though, after that the free space on my hard drive had jumped from 13GB to 24GB, meaning that only 3GB was being used.

Now I’ve not actually counted it myself, but I’m sure you can’t store a whole operating system, plus Microsoft Office, plus Photoshop, plus iLife, plus iWork, plus Macromedia Studio MX and all the other bits and bobs you use every day in just 3GB of space. That perhaps explains why, when trying to log in to see what had gone wrong, I just got a kernel panic every time I got to the login screen.

Poo.

Fortunately I don’t actually keep any files on there – they are all stored on my server – so all I had lost was a little bit of email, but it was very annoying. After half an evening of repairing and fixing and tweaking, it seemed she was beyond repair, so I took the drastic step of a fresh erase and install, and all went well.

So, now I have a nice speedy laptop once more. Without all those surplus, messy files to slow her down Barbara positively flies, and she looks so smart in her nice new OS.

Just in time for holiday, I’m starting with a cold. I’m fighting back with Berocca, but it seems quite insistent.

If the old wives’ tale about going out in the cold and wet had a shred of truth to it, I’d blame it on the weather, which really can’t decide what it wants to do. Got caught in the middle of a teriffic storm coming back from dim sum at lunchtime, having set out in sunshine so bright and warm I actually felt stupid wearing my coat.

The post-lunch fortune cookie was strangely prophetic: ‘It is an ill chef who cannot lick his own fingers’.

On a brighter note, my new camera has arrived. It came yesterday, but I was out last night with Mark and the ladies, so left it in the office to be on the safe side. We went to Porters, to re-live old times in the deserted basement, and then on for Spiga for gorgonzola bread, and pizzas the size of dustbin lids.

Again, we got caught in the pouring rain when we came out, and slowly edged our way back to the station in two clusters, sheltering beneath brollies to small for more than one person.

So, let’s hope it all clears up by the weekend. Two more days of work, then one day at home, then off and away, and I don’t want to be taking tissues and tablets in my bags.

Quite a busy few days, actually.

It started on Thursday, which feels like an age ago now. Drinks and nibs at the Glassblower, which I’d not been to for… oh, I don’t know, probably five years. Not since the fateful night when we all went there for Lorraine’s birthday, but she went to the Glasshouse Stores and assumed we’d all stood her up.

And then didn’t talk to us for three weeks.

I guess that’s why I’ve never been back. Anyhoo, it’s a nice place, and the upstairs is large and airy, which is as well, as it filled out nicely as the night went on, and I got to chat with loads of people I’d not seen in ages. Will, Spencer, Gordon… Not sure what time I left, but I vaguely remember a taxi, and I did have a pounding head on Friday morning, so I’m assuming it was good fun, although as usual I’ll be blaming the vintage of the wine, as I wasn’t the only one feeling green.

So, Friday passed without incident, fortunately, although I did buy a new camera. A lovely Canon EOS 350D. I will blame Gordon as he has been gushing about it on page and on his site, but I have played with one a fair bit – at the launch and briefly in the office – so will accept at least part of the blame. My old camera is coming up for its third birthday, and I wanted to upgrade before our trip next week, which is now all booked.

Rather excitingly, we will be following the route of just one train: the EC53, which starts in Venice at 09h00 each morning, and ends its run in Budapest two minutes shy of 12 hours later at 20h58. On the way, of course, it crosses the Italian, Slovenian, Croatian and Hungarian borders, and stops off in Ljubljana and Zagreb, where we’ll be bedding for a few nights, but it sounds like a fantastic route. I only hope the Slovenian border guards aren’t as fierce as I’ve read.

The camera will be arriving on Tuesday, but I wish I’d had it with me today. I went out for a walk, late afternoon – across the fields behind us, across the river, through the woods and on and on and on until there were no roads and you couldn’t hear anything but the singing of birds and a bit of leaf russle. All around was teeming with wildlife. At one point a fox, well fed and as big as a decent-sized house dog, came out from the undergrowth and just stood in the middle of the path; stock still, staring at me. I stood still and stared back, and we stayed like that, just looking at each other for two or three minutes until it drifted off into the bushes again.

If I saw one rabbit I saw thirty. They bounced up and down in the long grass, and stood proud with their ears sticking straight up in the air, and watched as I went by. I think the summer around here is going to be very nice, and full of wildlife. It’s started already in our garden. Apart from the foxes and rabbits, there are two birds (long tailed tits, if the Internet is to be believed) which are having a running battle with their reflections in the shed windows. They have spent the whole of the last two days fluttering beside the glass and pecking at their reflected beaks.

Anyhow, I digress…

So, Friday. After the camera buying incident, I met up with Sal outside Borders on Charring Cross Road and we went to Rupert Street Bar to meet Paul, Trevor, Jon, Andy, Rob and, later on in the evening, Dave and his friend whose name I didn’t catch.

It’s another place I’ve not been in for ages, although not for such a good reason as the one that has kept me out of the Glasshouse. It was pleasant enough, although very crowded, and we spent most of our time perched half on and half off of a step. I was glad when we moved on to Kettners to eat, and Sal came with us, despite reminding us all that she really must get home. I was glad she didn’t, though – it’s ages since we’ve properly been out anywhere.

We all ate more than we should, but it was Paul and Rob’s birthdays, so it didn’t really matter, and we managed to disastrously time leaving with chuck out time from the theatres, so found ourselves drowning in a sea of well-dressed watchers as we made it back out onto the street.

I’m told that Kettners is where Oscar Wilde used to take rent boys.

We got home lateish, and slept in later, then I worked most of Saturday while Paul moved around the furniture so we could accommodate a party on Saturday evening. As ever, though, most people spent most of their time in the kitchen, so the lounge looked rather arena-like with all the furniture pushed to the walls, and nothing going on in the middle.

It was kind of a birthday-come-housewarming, so there was the obligatory showing around, which had been preceded by the obligatory tidying up of the rooms not usually seen. As ever with a party, we ended up buying too much food, and are now left with a fridge full of sausage rolls and pork pies and, more usefully, a rack full of wine as everyone, of course, bought a bottle with them.

Still, everyone seemed to have a good time and the last few drifted off at about 02h30, which felt shockingly decent, and at least didn’t disturb the neighbours. All in all, it went very well, and we didn’t need to rent one of these to get the party started. At such short notice I’m sure they’d already all be fully booked.

So, as I say, a few busy days, and already the details are sufficiently obscured in my mind not to be able to write anything more than this sketchy outline about them. I really ought to make sure I write these entries day by day by day.

But I know that won’t happen.

There was a time when Ireland won about three Eurovisions in a row, and there was talk of it being on the verge of bankrupting RTE, the national broadcaster. How times have changed. This year’s entry from Donna and Joseph is abysmal. Really, really bad. So bad, in fact, that I don’t even think it will quality in the semis and make it to the final.

Even Paddy Power is only giving them odds of 20:1 of getting absolutely no points at all, 25:1 of forgetting their words (surely impossible considering how bad and repetitive they are) and 33:1 or one or other of them falling over while performing their song. The full set of odds, grabbed from their site, runs like this:

The betting to win stakes are interesting, though. They’ve put Greece up the top with odds of 5:2, which I find very surprising. It’s a decidedly ordinary song. Nothing special at all. Not even very tuneful. And Norway in second place at 4:1 is a curious choice, too. In the preview tapes they are dressed in skin-tight silver jumpsuits that show every wrinkle and pimple and way too much detail in the pant zone for seven o’clock at night. My tip for the top, Hungary, is in third place at 8:1, but poor Omar Naber, Slovenia, finds himself languishing in the bottom third with very long odds of 50:1. He was my joint second, along with Iceland (10:1).

Enjoy him while he lasts. This could be the last we ever hear of him.

I am actually quite speechless after reading this story on the BBC News site about the BNP’s election manifesto, which includes:

Mr Griffin also wants the reintroduction of national service and said everyone who had undergone it should be required to keep a modern assault rifle at home.

“It’s there to shoot burglars with if they want, it’s there to shoot people who invade this country if they want, and if in the end a tyrannical government wants to usurp the rights and freedoms of the people it is there to use against the government as well,” he said.

It’s not so much the guns in houses thing that bothers me: it’s the ‘if they want’ attitude.

As for using your weapons against the government… that sounds like a very strange strain of democracy to me. Would one loner have the right to gun down the cabinet because he believed his freedoms had been usurped in some way?

Since they announced Casino Royale would be the next Bond film, I decided I ought to read it. The films and books usually don’t correlate all that closely, but I was interested to see what might be in store on the offchance they really do keep to their word and take it back to traditional Bond.

Hmmm….

Well, it could be a long and rather dull film if they do. You see, not much happens. I’m going to spoil the story here – the story of the book, at least, although in all likelihood not the story of the film.

Our hero finds himself in Royale, a small French town famed for its casino (you can guess its name). He has been sent there by M to play the mother of all Baccara matches against Le Chiffre, a Russian spy who is being hunted down by SMERSH, the Soviet Agency that knocks off the Union’s own rogue agents before they become an embarassement. It was alluded to in the film version of The Living Daylights, the plot of which revolved around the supposed revival of Smyert Shpionam (translation: death to spies, and the derivative of the contraction SMERSH).

You can pretty much guess who wins and what eventually happens to Le Chiffre, and to be honest the whole casino gambling stuff is so well written that reading about a bunch of people sitting around playing cards turns out to be quite exciting. Bond, though, is more or less unrecognisable as the character we see in the films.

There is a long, dwindling, slow wind-down of the storyline after the plot climax, in which Bond comes across as a desperate, love-sick teenager. In fact, no – more like a sad old man who is so desperate to cling to the woman who he might possible, perhaps get further with that he will put up with pretty much anything. This isn’t the love-em and leave-em love-villain we know from the films. He is a flawed, insecure character who seems suddenly to fear being left on his own.

Perhaps it was done to establish the character. This is the first book of the series, after all, and the dwindling ending does go on to explain why he lives his life the way he is, and why he is so driven from here on in (before this book, he had only killed two men, and he doesn’t kill anyone – even Le Chiffre – in these 189 pages). If that’s the case, then I can excuse it but, well, as I say, hmmm…

I bought the book on eBay for 99p, along with three others, so I’ll read through some more of the series before casting my final judgement.

It took almost four hours to watch all 39 entries. No wonder they split them up into two halves. There’s only about three or four real trashy entries. Notably Portugal, Belgium and Monaco, which were particularly bad, and respectively polled only five, two and two points out of twenty.

So, our winners, and our tips for the top this year are:

1. Hungary: Nox with Spin, World. In some ways, quite reminiscent of Wild Dance, last year’s winner, but then at the same time a strange mix of Irish and Middle Eastern influences. We actually listened to this one three times through, and each time we were more convinced it was this year’s winner. The video is quite bizarre in a lot of ways, so it will be interesting to see how they actually perform on stage, which could be what swings it either way for them. (19 out of 20)

2. Iceland: Selma Björnsdóttir with If I Had Your Love. What the hell is going on here? Its video is just plain bizarre. Is she cupid trying to shoot the guy with an arrow of love, or is she really some crazed assassin stalking the streets of Reykjavik. A song that goes everywhere, with some slow bits, some dance bits… And she’s a mix of Leena Philipsson and Carrie Bradshaw. Still, entertaining stuff, and I’d put it up there in the top five. I don’t think we’ll be seeing an Icelandic Eurovision in 2006, though. (17 out of 20)

3. Slovenia: Omar Naber with Stop. There are two versions of this song, so it’ll be interesting to see which one he performs on the night. The one on all the press tapes is a more finished and jazzed up version of what was floating around the net some weeks ago, so that’s probably what we’ll hear on the night, so expect a slow build up and a powerful middle and end. He should get extra points for his looks, but will be able to stand on the strength of his song alone. I can’t really rank this one and Iceland above one another, so they sit together in joint second place to my mind. (17 out of 20)

4. France: Ortal with Chacun Pense à Soi. It’s a bit of a grower, this one. Not much to start with, but once it gets going it’s very catchy. Not particularly speedy, but accomplished, and sure of itself. France generally does do nice songs (always in French) that are quickly forgotten, but this is a good step up from last year’s entry, and would be greatly improved if they got rid of the semi-rap break out two thirds of the way through. (17 out of 20)

5. Latvia: Walters and Kazha with The War is Not Over. This is a surprise. It’s nothing like the other songs in our top five. Largely acoustic, and just two guys sitting on stools playing their guitars. The words are quite poiniant. Stuff about people jumping out of tall buildings and hitting the floor and war not being over. September 11th? War on Terror? Perhaps… (16 out of 20)

An honourable mention also goes to Lithuania for an entertaining ditty but overall, in spite of being sure Hungary is on for top spot, my personal favourite is Slovenian Omar Naber, and Stop.

Either this sunshine stops – now – or we have a hosepipe ban this summer. It’s your choice. I don’t care either way, but you can’t have both. So. What’s it going to be?

I’m just on my way out, actually – off to have lunch with Mark and watch this year’s Eurovision preview tape. Of the entries I’ve heard so far, my money’s on Hungary for a top three spot, perhaps alongside Slovenia, which will be interesting, as Paul and I will be visiting both of those countries in a couple of weeks, so we’ll be able to see what they are like before the contest.

We have booked into a prison in Slovenia. One cell for two nights. It’s been converted, of course, but when you go to bed at night you still close the barred gate on the front of your cell and bunk down. Only now, each cell is unique and has been decorated by a different local artist. It all looks quite quirky.

From there we go by train to Zagreb and then on to Budapest to meet up with Trevor and Jon and spend the weekend straddling a geological fault and sitting in hot springs. Hopefully.

We met up with them – and Graham and Roger – for dinner last night. Very yummy. Lovely pink trout to start, meat-free roast for mains and Christmas pudding, mince pies and trifle to finish. I’m still full this morning. A gym trip is definately in order later on.

I do love Paris. It gets better every time. I could happily live there. Maybe not forever, but a year of teaching English is very appealing.

We took the Eurostar, first class, leaving late like I have done the last three times I’ve used it, and ate a fantastic lunch. It’s so much better than flying. It’s proper food on proper plates, and with as much as you want to drink all the way to France. It’s a good job it’s all free. I had just €4 to my name, and no English money in my pockets.

We made up lost time and arrived at Gare du Nord on time, to be loaded into taxis and driven to our hotel for baths and showers and drinks before dinner. The excitement started when we headed out for dinner in our coach. All was going well until we got to the Louvre, and our driver rather ambitiously tried to squeeze through a very narrow archway. Of course, there’s not much give in either a coach or an arch and, ultimately, the arch won. It smashed out windscreen and we found ourselves briefly wedged between the two stone pillars. We had no choice but to breathe in and push on, accompanied by a nasty grating scrape.

We eventually made it to the banks of the Seine without any further incident, despite the best efforts of the crazy French drivers who zipped around us like moths around a candle.

We spent the night on a big wooden yacht cruising backwards and forwards along the river, eating good food and cooing over the illuminated sights. We passed the Eiffel Tower just after ten when it was doing its schizophrenic flashing madness and everyone dashed out on deck to take pictures. Apparently that’s a very naughty thing indeed, as the whole lights-on-tower arrangement has been copyrighted by the lighting designer.

Today started at a very respectable 10am with a post-breakfast coach trip to the Institute of the Arab World (Institut du Monde Arab), a tall wedge-shaped building with the most extraordinary windows.

To control the lighting, each is fitted with a series of irises, like those you would find in a camera, which react to the ambient lighting, opening and closing to regulate the illumination. The overall effect is very impressive – doubly so from the inside – and we all stopped to take pictures from the outside before wandering in through the metal detector, that beeped at us all and was thoroughly ignored by the guards.

We went straight up to the roof terrace for more drinks and a second breakfast, and then sat through just an hour of briefings before breaking for some lunch and drinks and then a wander through the streets of Paris. All very agreeable, and apart from the fact the Louvre is closed on Tuesdays, which we only discovered after walking half an hour to get there, very interesting.

I counted the number of panes of glass in the pyramid at the front of the gallery but couldn’t get the number to match up with the 666 Dan Brown reckons there are in there. 684ish was the closest I got.

Our train home was delayed. That’ll be the fourth Eurostar journey mucked up, then. This time it was technical problems that had scuppered us, and our train was cancelled entirely, so we were slipped into the next one, 35 minutes later, then got delayed leaving Paris and delayed before entering the tunnel.

Still, the food was once again nothing short of excellent, although the only distinction between the fish and vegetarian options was that the fish course was salmon and pasta (no sauce) whereas the vegetarian alternative was salmon and rice.

Hmmm??