My amphibious adventure

The duck tour was certainly an experience. Everything was in walking distance of my office, so there were no amazing discoveries, but it was certainly entertaining. Before finding the actual vessel, I was greeted by a text from Lizzy exclaiming 'oh my god'. She'd spied Beatrice, our big, conspicuous yellow beast of a craft. We were the only people booked onto the tour, but fortunately a family of four were roped into joining us and the two children took some of the heat off us (it was an exceptionally intimate vessel with a lot of audience participation involved in the patter). The guide was hilarious, lying about things to set up gags and telling us how moving to container lorries had killed the river (he was particularly bitter about this and made lots of proclamations about the Thames being dead, which didn't quite make sense until he explained how he'd been arrested for illegalling picketing to protect the docks. It was nice though, as well as personalising the tour, I do enjoy people exploiting their position to propagandise about good causes). He rounded off the trip by forcing us to provide the 'hoi's to a round of Lambeth Walk, which provoked some very bemused looks and general mockery from passers-by. He also made me sit up front with his nephew, Jamie, and wear a captain's hat. I am very much looking forward to seeing the pictures of that - and finding out they haven't come out.

Otherwise, it's generally been quite a bad week. News of an earthquake in Japan is sort of exciting - I would like to experience one, but all the reports are accompanied with claims that Japan is due a big one very soon. I wish this sort of scaremongery were illegal. I'll soon be seen on CNN CCTV footage, hurtling around an office while the natives cower in fear that they could be pinned down by a piece of falling masonry or the enormous toppling Western idiot. There's also been a spate of plane crashes lately, which is obviously very tragic, but is also making me dread the 14 cramped, panic-filled hours I'll spend on my flight to Narita. I'm sure we won't crash, but I will have a long, long time to wonder just what it would be like if we did. Finally, the wonderful Mo Mowlam died today. She and Robin Cook were two of the very few decent Labour ministers employed in senior posts under our current amoral Government and both have gone within the space of two weeks. It's all too sad.