One thing I never grow out of -

- despite the recent and entertainingly screechy U-turns on my motorway to ethical maturity - here I sit, half-way through yet another 'nuit blanche', the night before a trip. Why oh why oh why do I never learn to time things so that I don't have exactly 4 thankless tasks to finish before leaving for the airport (or, more usually, in the interests of minimising the old ecological footprint, sleeper?). Why does Prestigious Metropolitan University not issue lists of dissertation supervisors so that feckless MA students don't come out of the woodwork expecting commentary on drafts a week before the submission deadline? Say what you like about University of the Soggy Provinces, at least there we had LISTS! And, by heck, did we know how to wield, disseminate and display them.

So, I'm off to my Northern European capital of choice to strip the library bare of any reference to Peter Høeg (I imagine this process resembling the scene where Evil Willow absorbs the ink from a big pile of powerful tomes), leaving the B&B in the manicured hands of Diaphanous Flatmate. (Can we make up these pseudonyms for all the bit-part players in our lives?)