Yesterday, Sunday, which felt like a Saturday on account of today being a proxy Sunday-cum-bank holiday, we finished up the night in Helen and Mike’s garden, drinking wine in little enough light for us not to be able to see who else was there.

Going on the number of voices I’m guessing it was a couple of dozen.

Ostensibly, it was to celebrate Mike’s newly completed pergola, which is very impressive, but was at the opposite end of the garden to the food and drink, so didn’t get that much of a look-in. Even so, we were the last to leave, so weren’t up until late morning.

I should really have stayed at home and done pre-holiday things, like wearing in my new shoes or playing with the zips on the new luggage, but I succumbed to the lure of the sunshine and went out for a ‘short’ walk, which lasted three hours.

It was sooooo hot. I can feel the gently nibble of burn on my legs. Serves me right for going so far; I went so far I had to get the bus home. After tramping across the fields, though, I eventually made it to Little Waltham, the next little village north of us. It’s all pristine, with neatly-pressed edges, a bridge over a clean slow river and a well-mown cricket pitch, being used by the local club. I sat on the boundary waiting for the bus, watching the batsmen slowly lolloping from one end of the pitch to the other.

Despite the slight burn, I suspect that this may be the last gasp of summer, so I’m glad that I was naughty and still haven’t unpacked my new shoes.

I’ll walk them in on a mountain.

Bank holidays always make for strange weekends, but I need to start writing this from Friday.

I took the tube out to Maida Vale at lunchtime, so I could walk around Little Venice. I’d not been there in years and had completely forgotten what it was like. Needless to day, it’s nothing like Venice.

It’s actually the point where the Regent’s Canal and Grand Union Canal meet, and manifests itself as a slightly disappointing triangular pool of water with an island in the middle. Kind of like a canal roundabout.

Nonetheless, it’s pretty, and the houses that line the banks are clearly filled with very rich inhabitants. They are but nothing, though, when compared to some of the houses fronting the canal closer to Regent’s Park. They are pillared, and built from some expensive-looking white stone, and have banked gardens with steps down to the waterside.

And there are unfriendly-looking signs about dogs on patrol.

It took ages to walk back to the office. I should have got back onto the tube to come home, but the sun was so bright and the air so still that I decided to walk the two miles back to Regent’s Park. But I hadn’t allowed for how long it would take to walk back across the park, and ended up walking a full hour, in jeans and the hot sun.

It was fantastic.

But tiring. So I didn’t do much on Friday night. Besides, Paul was working until nineish, so was home v late. We stayed in and watched The Ladykillers. The original version. No ladies were harmed in the making thereof.

We used Saturday very wisely. I worked through the morning, and then just before lunch we drove out to Freeport. After years of riding the European trains with rucksacks, we decided it was time to upgrade. Call it post-thirties sensibleness, but we were both hankering for small suitcases with wheels and handles, although when it came to it Paul ended up buying a suitcase that completely enveloped the one I picked out. And the shoes I bought. And the camping lantern. And you could still zip it closed with all that inside.

I’ve always been a lighter traveller.

Today was Sunday, but it felt like a Saturday. Should have known on account of the size of the lunch we ate. We went around to mum’s to eat with her, Andrew and Viv before Viv went back home (which will happen on Tuesday) and found ourselves presented with huge homemade quiches and all manner of salads. Perfect food for eating outside.

And then for lazing around afterwards drinking coffee while it digested.

We did, eventually, drag ourselves up from the lawn to play three rounds of Rummikub. I won one. A very poor showing.

9/11.

What’s the first image you see when you think of that day?

Now ask yourself why anyone would think www.911fly.com was a good address for cut-price airline tickets.

I’ve just finished reading Why I Write by George Orwell. I’ve always admired his writing – like many people – so it was interesting to see what he had to say about it himself.

George Orwell could perhaps be described as one of the foremost modern writers in the English-speaking world, although whether that’s because of the themes he develops or the language he evokes is difficult to say. Many would argue that it was a combination of the two, in which case this slim volume in the Penguin Great Ideas series is an essential piece of work. In three of its four sections, Orwell describes what it is that inspires him to write, his take on the changing political landscape of Britain during the Second World War, and the malaise setting in among many non-professional writers at that time.

The pieces were written towards the end of Orwell’s life, in the years 1931 to 1946. It is conceivable, then, that Why I Write, the essay that opens the collection, was penned at a time when he was working on ideas for perhaps his most important and influential novel of all, 1984. ‘I have not written a novel for seven years, but I hope to write another fairly soon,’ he writes, before continuing without irony that, ‘it is bound to be a failure, every book is a failure, but I know with some clarity what kind of book I want to write.’

Having read Why I Write, 1984 should perhaps be seen as the logical culmination of the work that went before it. ‘Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for social democracy,’ he explains. ‘It seems to me nonsense, in a period like our own, to think that one can avoid writing about such subjects… What I have most wanted to do throughout the last ten years is to make political writing into an art.’

The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius, the volume’s second essay is perhaps the most blatant embodiment of this literary campaign in favour of democratic socialism. It reads as an impassioned plea for its establishment in the British Isles, both because the war provides the ideal distraction during which it can be introduced (it was written in 1940) and because Orwell seems to have believed that it could be an effective weapon against Nazi aggression. To claim that it is not a heavy read, particularly beyond the half-way point, would be not entirely accurate, and indeed A Hanging, which immediately follows, almost feels like a piece of light relief by comparison.

Orwell may have had a short life (he died of tuberculosis aged 46 after three years spent in and out of hospital), but the importance of his work cannot be understated. This slim book, then, is an important guide to the inspiration behind what is perhaps among of the most important political works of all time.

I was awake at half five this morning. With no prospect of getting back to sleep, I instead decided to train it into London to take some photos…

The London Eye

The Millennium Bridge

Big Ben (or, more accurately, St Stephen’s Tower)

So many new things today, but the most exciting was walking a tightrope. Literally. OK, so maybe it was only two feet off the ground, but it wasn’t easy. In fact, I somehow hurt my shoulders while trying to retain my balance. I think it was because I was being too rigid – taking the instruction to imagine you have a broom handle down your back a bit too far.

So, why this sudden new-found skill? I haven’t run away to the circus; it was a press do to launch new cameras and printers. They have nothing to do with tightrope working, but who am I to complain? We had all been bussed out to Syon Park, an imposing country pile that is the home of the Duke of Northumberland. Trees, rolling gardens, peacocks… that kind of thing.

There was the usual drinks and nibbles and then some light briefing, and after some touch-and-try with the products, we were wheeled out to the rainy grounds to be taught things that felt a lot more dangerous than they probably were, starting with the tightrope.

It was fantastic. Having almost 10 stone of body weight (63kg) pressing down on a rope that was digging into your feet was not in the least comfortable, though, and it took me until the third go to be able to take three steps in a row without having to hold on to someone for support, but by then I found that just having someone there whose hand you could occasionally touch as a reference point was more or less enough, and I reckon if we’d each had a whole afternoon to practice I’d have been making it right the way across alone.

From the tightrope to juggling. I wasn’t so good. I kept on getting dangerously close to hitting people with the balls, and pretty much topped out at two. By the time we got to three, I was forgetting to re-throw the caught balls, so just ended up with the original balls in the opposite hands, which isn’t really the idea at all. From juggling to spinning the diablo on a length of string, then to magic tricks and eventually hat juggling before decamping to the Great Conservatory for dinner.

Jazz band. Contortionist. More magic. Another peacock. People juggling fire. Oh, and very good food, which was almost outclassed by everything that was going on around us.

Most impressive, though, had to be the walking trees and bushes, which showed why when your drama teacher told you at school to pretend you were a tiny acorn growing into a big strong oak you were stupid to scoff.

Here is a tree about to accost Alex.

I was very fortunate to be able to take that picture. Running into work this morning (nothing to do with being late; it was raining and I had no coat), I suddenly became away of a clatter as an iPod flew past my head and skidded across the pavement in front of me. A second later, some headphones. Then a notebook. Then a camera. It all looked strangely familiar, and with good reason. The zip on my bag had come open, leaving a gaping hole through which my belongings were being merrily ejected by the jog jog jog of my gait.

Miraculously everything still worked just fine, and there’s not a single scratch on my iPod, which is clearly stronger than it looks.

Or perhaps the Fitzrovia pavements are actually quite soft.

We were set for a trip to Coventry this weekend, for Paul’s cousin’s 21st. In light of a bad back, though (his), we found ourselves stranded at home. Not a bad thing since it meant we didn’t have to tackle the roads. Not a good thing since it’s V weekend, when most of the Chelmsford population is advised to get out of town to avoid the crowds.

In fairness, we barely ever go into town, so it’s had very little effect, but one year they were using sniffer dogs to hunt for drugs at the station, trapping me and two friends on the back staircase as they sniffed everyone going past. Old people were allowed down the main staircase, because they were apparently above the law. It wasn’t a good introduction to the town for the friends who were with me. It was their first time here, and after fifteen minutes spent standing on a grubby concrete staircase the dog sat down after sniffing the person in front of us. This was clearly a sign, as the policemen roughly grabbed him and threw him in the back of a police van, clearly with no concern for how he may be injured. I guess the dogs have to have a rest when they’ve found one, as the woman holding its lead looked up at us and said ‘consider yourselves lucky. Very lucky.’

Rude rude rude. If we had had drugs on us, perhaps I would have considered us lucky. As it was, though, it was just a major inconvenience.

So anyway, we had dinner with Andrew, mum and Viv last night. Viv paid, and took us all out to The Angel. Very yummy. Lots of goats’ cheese and Mediterranean vegetables, then back here for coffee and a repeat of the wedding photos. Inspired by a talk of fresh peas at the table (don’t ask why), I bought some on a trip to Somerfield this morning and so spent half an hour this evening shelling them.

It’s quite therapeutic, and really, the way peas grow is very clever. As you pop open the end (it looks like the mouth of a gasping dolphin when it’s open), you can split it down its length with your nail and open it out. Inside, the peas are more like little drums than perfect spheres, and as you pop them off they pull little root-like stalks with them, which you don’t see on the frozen ones you get out of a bag. They are interleaved, like interlocked fingers, so that as you pull apart the two halves of the pod, they unfold from one another. It’s a work of genius.

They don’t taste any different to the frozen ones, but they do seem to be far more substantial.

It was a day spent working, mostly, but by evening I was twitchy from sitting at my desk all day, so went out for a long walk across the fields. It may have been gone seven, but there was enough summer left in the air for the crickets to still be singing to one another, but the birds were circling ominously, as though they were doing flight-checks on their wings before the long journey off to a warmer winter in the south.

Batten down the hatches.

The view from Primrose Hill

I walked to Chalk Farm at lunchtime. It’s quite a way; up to Regent’s Park, right across the park, across the Regent’s Canal, over Primrose Hill, down the other side and through the streets to the station. Tomorrow they’re promising rain, though, so I wanted to make the most of what remained of the sun.

It was another scorcher, and again the park was filled with barely-dressed bathers, soaking up the rays. The zoo was very quiet; the animals no doubt sheltering inside from the heat.

I’ve never been up Primrose Hill before, but you get a fantastic view from the top. You can see Canary Wharf in the east, Battersea Power Station to the west, and Crystal Palace television mast way down south. In between are the finer details of the city, like the top of the London Eye, the towers of Parliament, the church spire in Marylebone, the dome of St Paul’s, the aviary and elephant house in the zoo… It’s like every highlight of the city has been laid out for you to survey, staked through the middle by the BT Tower, just one block away from the office.

I sat there for a good fifteen minutes, enjoying the sun with the crowd that covered the south-facing bank, before walking on to Chalk Farm, which looks like a rather nice place to live, or it would be if the tube wasn’t so picky about which branch of the line it was going to take. Allowing for the change at Camden, to zizz down through Mornington Crescent to Goodge Street, it took half an hour all told; not much less time than it has taken to walk to the top of the hill.

Regent’s Canal

I was lucky enough to be on a delayed tube last night. Normally this wouldn’t be a good thing, but as it forced me off the train at Farringdon, it gave me a chance to walk through the upper walkways of the Barbican.

It’s ages since I’ve done that. Usually, I walk through the grim tunnel underneath as it’s the most direct route to Liverpool Street, but staying above ground – indeed, a couple of levels above ground – I was struck by the sheer size of the place; an enormity about which I’d quite forgotten.

The word ‘barbican’ describes a fortified outpost of gateway, and it is a good fit for the angular, sharp architecture of this London development. It was opened in 1969, built on the site of the heavily bombed Cripplegate, increasing the number of residents in that area from a pre-WW2 total of 50 to a staggering 4,000 in 2,000 flats inside three of London’s tallest buildings. It is also home to a large arts centre.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the whole development, though, is that you can walk from one end to the next, following the lines and arrows painted on the floor, and never once see or hear a road.