In which I reflect on how bloody lucky I am

I grieve at the moment due to unspeakable horrors blighting the existences of close friends and family. I won't go into the horrors in question because they are other people's business. And so I choose instead today to reflect instead on one of the positive pieces of news I have had this weekend. I also wish to thank the powers that be that my own existence is currently fairly blessed, for which I am tonight trying not to feel guilty.

My beloved cousin C. has emerged from an epic battle involving his nose, a chisel, probably assorted other (hopefully) sharper instruments, and a rowdy horde of recalcitrant but now defunct polyps. He is apparently still quite himself, although morphined up to the eyeballs and sounding a bit like Kenneth Williams (see below) until they take several hundred meters of cotton wool back out of his sinuses. I wonder what will have happened to his previously honourably rugby-bashed nose. I was quite fond of it the way it was.

And now for some Kenneth Williams. They don't do gentleman comedians like this any more.

Expo Da Vinci

Back in Brussels, and with the town empty, what to do of a Saturday? The Expo Da Vinci, that's what, at the infamously ugly sixth largest building in Christendom, the carbuncular Koekelique de Basilberg with its throbbing neon cross on top. (You can visit it interactively, if you must.) A cross between the Battersea Power Station and a London Underground urinal, it lowers on the northern Brussels skyline like a boil. It is a testament to the architectural horrors of the industrial age, Art Deco en masse as its tiled fluted concrete pillars between brick vaulting mimic the fluted columns of its medieval forebears. It's worth a visit in itself. Every Gotham should have one.

However, at the year ends the Basilberg generally hosts an exhibition of quality. On the Millenium, my mother and I went to see a prospective exhibition on what life might be like in a thousand years' time. It tackled biology, society, religion and lots of other aspects that didn't only involve trying to predict what gadgetry might be invented in the next thousand years. But the highlight of this year's exhibition, for me, was gadgetry itself. Several of Leonardo's machines had been built in scale models. We saw an excavator, a multiple cannon array, two or three of the flying machines including the 'aerial screw' or ornithoper, the balista, a bicycle, and two types of tank. Somehow seeing them built was much clearer than reading Leonardo's sketches. An initial biographical timeline, was followed by thematic sections on several of his foci, including anatomy which forcibly recalled the Bodyworlds poses Gunter von Hagen took from illustrations of the time, and a further dissection of the cartoons and studies for some of his best-known paintings.

If you get a chance to see this exhibition, do.

Below; turn it upside down and it won't be able to right itself. You'd think da Vinci would have spotted that flaw, wouldn't you?

Cecilia goes shopping

I've been offline a while, not because of the disappointment of the rugby (to tell you the truth, I didn't think we'd get out of the pool, so I was dead chuffed just to see us reach the final) but because I've been brought low by an 'angine blanche'. This illness has recently had a political outing, because according to the Elysée's press machine, the reason Cecilia Sarkozy, ex-First Lady of France, could not attend a picnic with the Bushes, was because she too had an 'angine blanche'.

Now none of us would want to attend a picnic with the Bushes. There'd be the obligatory ants, there'd be far too much toe-curling small talk, laboriously relayed through interpreters (although I have it on good authority that Sarkozy is merely feigning incompetence in English) but most of all it would be teetotal. One shudders at the white-gloved, forced-pleasantries social awkwardness of the thing. I would probably be forced to commandeer a tray of sandwiches from a passing waiter just to allow me to get away from the hosts.

What is just plain stupid, if you're going to use 'angine blanche' as an excuse, is to be caught out shopping the next day. I can tell you that when you have an 'angine blanche' the bug in question eats away through the back of your throat and launches itself down into your glands in a bid for general mastery and domination of the lymphatic system. It takes three days for the antibiotics to kick in. You can't swallow, you are exhausted, you can't sleep for snuffling snot that is maddeningly lurking just between the sniff and hawk ranges and you can't get up even to feed yourself. Between that (although Scouse Doris tried her best, bless her) and the fever, in three days I lost three kilos, (there's always a silver lining). You are in any case in no condition to slip on your high heels and have a quick blast around the shopping centre with the girls.

There must be plenty of plausible excuses for not having to attend a picnic with the Bushes. Having a 'family' prior appointment (i.e. to rearrange your sock drawer), for instance, or being virulently allergic to Chicago School economics. What amazes me is that no-one ever seems to have the courage to tell the Bushes straight that they've got better, more useful, more fun things to do than waste an entire afternoon on diplomatic niceties over ant-filled obesity-inducing American stodge. Like governing another country, for instance. No wonder Cecilia went shopping.

So what would your excuse be?

Christmas shopping recommendation

Zoe's book is out. It's a very cute little hardback with an alarmingly accurate, as far as I can tell, Lucy Pepper cartoon of Q and Z on the front. Buy it here.

I'm an environmental villain

I was driving through Colyton, "the most rebellious town in Devon", on Saturday when along the narrowest part of the road, just where that little hexagonal turret is, I came upon a large piece of agricultural machinery coming the other way. It was a terrifying piece of equipment. Circular scythes and scarifyers bristled all over it. It was exactly the sort of thing I'd want to be driving if I'd ever have to join an angry mob rushing to sack a castle or kill an ogre. Anyway, I didn't like the look of it nor how close it was going to get to my little car, and so that's why, as I swerved out of the way of its blades, I ran over the large, crunchy hedgehog that was right in front of me.

I felt awful. I'm very fond of hedgehogs, and besides, it hadn't popped in crisp-packet fashion like the pheasant I took out as a learner driver with my parents' Volvo estate. No, old Tiggywinkle, being a large adult, was quite sturdy, and had taken quite a lot of the car's weight before it collapsed with an audible kerrr-unch. I could still hear that crunch all night.

I have spent the best part of the last three days trying to shake the guilt of running over the hedgehog. And now I find I've killed a protected species.

So I'm asking you, what form of mental self-flagellation do you suggest that might scourge this environmental guilt from my mind?

2.50 Monday morning

and I've just finished The Time Traveler's Wife and I'm sobbing salt with the loneliness of it all, the Gobi of my own emotional life that stretches back from now and, in all probability, for the next 40-50 years. I've, sporadically at best, dated nothing but alcoholics and depressives for the last twelve years, who clutch at me like drowning men but I'm never enough to fill the void within them. I'm so fed up with sticking my heart back together with lipstick and a sense of humour. What an appalling waste.

My mother says there are lives of chocolate and lives of love, and I don't think this one is either. There are times when I wish I was able to drink myself numb, but my control's too strong. And in this cold wet country my hip hurts at night, and it's hard to sleep, and even with two duvets I feel cold and alone.

Everything will look better in the morning. I hope. But sometimes it's very hard to keep the faith.