Whale!

I'm sure that you were all as moved as I was about the sad tale of the bottlenose whale that misguidedly attempted to sightsee down the Thames, also known as one of the most toxic and poisonous rivers in Europe. It must have had a very hardy blowhole. But said story ended in tragedy when rescue workers attempted to ship it back to open sea and it died from trauma and shock. And multiple camera shots. And people cheering at it to 'Turn around!'. For an intelligent creature with a slightly off centre internal compass, it might be better that it never got to relate such horrendous scenes to its fellow pod members. May he rest in peace.

I had a busy week of pub quizzing where, rather bizarrely, I came emphatically last in one and then was kind of a member of a winning team in another. The music quiz bore questions such as - 'Name Mike's back up band'. This, unfortunately, was one of thirty questions that Derek and I answered correctly. Out of sixty.

I also saw Brokeback Mountain and as stimulating as all the man-sex was (although not for my increasingly uncomfortable looking male companion), I went expecting to cry like a small ice-cream deprived child when inevitable tragedy struck. This expectation, however, was borne from a rather camp friend of a friend who apparently wept inconsolably during the final fifteen minutes, so I shouldn't have been shocked when I remained dry-eyed. Heath Ledger is fantastic in it, though.

I am currently trying to plan a round the world trip and have narrowed down my wish list to Australia, New Zealand, Peru, North America, China, Cambodia, India and South Africa. This might sound a little ambitious for a year but if any of you have any advice on how to make it viable, then I am all ears and wide-eyed attention. I have bought the obligatory hiking boots and hard wearing jacket, and I now have to work on how to a) stay calm under any kind of unexpected pressure and b) how to look slightly more hard, so that I can level down people with one imperious icy glare. If all else fails, then Freeman can do the last one for me.