Elvis Costello tells us which 500 records we absolutely must have to be happy. I have some of them, mainly his jazz and classical selections. The one I most want to listen to that I've never heard of is Agnes Bernelle: Father's Lying Dead on the Ironing Board. Eh?

A lot of the older stuff I was never a fan of in the first place -- Captain Beefheart, the Flying Burrito Brothers -- but some of the nostalgia selections make me think, yeah, I'd like to hear that again. Like the Four Tops, the Hollies, Prince ... I haven't got a single Prince album, how about that!

Yesterday was dog-day: my first day as a dog owner. It all went quite smoothly -- the dog (no name yet, see below) was ok in the car, is house-trained (or kennel-trained), enjoyed all his walks enormously and ate his dinner eventually (after first trying to "bury" it). He's bigger than I'd thought -- very tall and strong -- but that hasn't been a problem. He's ok on the lead generally, understands the word STOP. A bit nervous of cars and over-interested in anything that looks like it could possibly be a rabbit. No barking at all, though he did give a yowl when he saw the neighbour's cat in the back yard.

He had a new experience last night -- television. He happened to be standing in the doorway when I switched it on and he got a real fright. He stared at it, eyes bugging out, then backed slowly out of the room. Just an advert, nothing like Animal Hospital.

Today it's raining and when I let him out this morning he came straight back in & shook himself ostentatiously. I had to get dressed and take him out, stand over him until he went to the toilet. He's been joed out on his duvet ever since.

All Things Must Pass George Harrison's official site. "Not for the faint of bandwidth or resolution".

Everyone in New Zealand please watch out for bits of Mir. I think it's very decent of Helen to try and find those American tuna-fishers, good on her.

One more sleep and I'm a dog owner! I'm as excited as an excited person.

I still haven't done anything about tidying the house after the flooring onslaught -- why bother when it's only going to get dusty and dirty again? Next week will do. Tonight I'll set up the dog's "room" -- the wide part of the hallway by the back door. Bed on one side, food dishes on the other. I meant to get a piece of board for the stairgate but forgot. I could always cut a few bits of floorboard to size and slot them in I guess. This is to keep the dog downstairs until I'm sure he's toilet trained. But if he's lived in kennels he might not even know about stairs.

Leading suggestions for a new name: Bing (my favourite) and Kuri (Pinky's suggestion; Maori for dog). Pinky dismissed Jack and Finn McCool as too fashionable. So we're looking for something that is even MORE fashionable, ie fashionably unpopular. How awful if I called him something really great and it immediately became popular. There's this sort of trajectory to fashion, isn't there -- you start out with the situation that no-one in their right mind would name their child Mabel -- it's a granny's name, musty and mothballed. And you end up with kindie kids being Mabel C. and Mabel F. because there are so many of them. It goes rare/unpopular/uncool, uncommon/unpopular/cool, more common/more popular/still cool, common/popular/uncool, common/unpopular/uncool and back to the start. Also there's the age thing -- if your granny and her friends are all Mabel you name your baby Chantelle; if your granny's Chantelle you call your baby Mabel.

I'd better do some work.

Bad news on the floor front: it's not finished. Heavy sigh. Well, I thought Dougie was being optimistic. They're coming back next Sunday (at 8.30am! again!) to do the kitchen and finish off the beading in the rest of the downstairs. It does look better, I guess, and it certainly feels better. I can go downstairs in bare feet without risking frostbite.

I'm going to go ahead and get the dog on Thursday ... by Sunday he should be settled in enough not to freak out completely when strangers start destroying the kitchen. We'll go for a drive up to St Andrews or something, let Dougie and Bob get on with it. I went to visit him today, took a couple of photos which I'll put on the website once I get them developed. He was quite nervy but not in a snappy way, just trembling and starting at sudden movements. He is sooo tall, and elegant and beautiful. He got very excited when we left, thought he was going too, which was sad -- "see you on Thursday" means absolutely nothing to a dog!

Any name suggestions welcome: he's called Bertie at the home but honestly does not seem Bertie-ish. I like Finn, after Finn McCool, the Irish hero who built the Giant's Causeway so his girlfriend Staffa could get home to the Western Isles. I think one-syllable names are easier for dogs to pick up. He certainly doesn't react to Bertie. The woman who took us to his kennel asked if I was keeping the name. "Errr, I'm not sure..." I said. "I named him," she said, and I was glad I'd been diplomatic. She said she really likes greyhounds, and she's adopting one herself when she has a holiday, in June. So I gather from all that that she had wanted Bertie herself.

I did get some pots and plants on Saturday: I planted some lily bulbs (stargazer) and a little daisy bush. I also got seed trays and seeds for lobelias, aquelegias (sp?), night scented stock and nicotiana. Eventually I'll plant them, and the rocket seed too. The rocket is planted directly into the ground, I need to work a bit more on the bed before it's ready for that.

Brrrr ... I just got in from planting the blackcurrants, pardon me while I brush the snow off my jersey. Yup, real snow.

Meanwhile Dougie and Bob are beavering away laying the flooring. Mess, noise, Forth FM, cheeky chat, the works. They thought I was hilarious, gardening in the snow.

I have to go in to town in a bit, to collect my camera from work. I took it into the office rather than leave it in the car, ha ha -- in the excitement of gathering up the pots of blackcurrants I left it under the desk. Completely forgot about it until I was almost asleep, don't you hate those sudden blinding revelations late at night! I got up and phoned the security guard, got him to go and get it. I imagine he found it, too bad for me if he didn't.

I went back to the Cat and Dog Home today to reserve Bertie, just in case someone else claimed him before I do next week. There was a bit of hemming and hawing -- they don't usually reserve dogs for more than a day or so. But their logic was skewed: because greyhounds aren't the most popular dogs, if someone wants one they want to be able to say yes right away. And if it's reserved they can't. But it's reserved because I want it! They relented, seeing Bertie's been there a while, and I've got until next Thursday afternoon to pick him up. I couldn't go and visit him though, because it was closing time. They gave me some leaflets produced by the Retired Greyhound Trust, lots of detailed information about diet and care, and how to train your dog not to chase cats.

Every dog will chase a cat, but greyhounds can actually catch them.

The planks, underlay etc arrived today so it's all go for Dougie and Bob tomorrow. Oh joy.

Chad brought the blackcurrant and raspberry cuttings in, so I'll plant them in the morning. If the boys seem to be getting on all right I'll go out for a mooch around gardening centres. I'm thinking of getting some big tubs and pots for the patio and around the top of the retaining wall.

The wall itself I'm considering covering in mosaic -- I asked at the tile shop about offcuts and broken tiles, and they said they'll give me a load for nothing. I'd love to try a big doodly patchwork extravaganza, and if the tiles are free, that's great. I could add in bits of mirror and broken stuff I've collected as well. Andrew once gave me a beautiful ceramic seahorse, after we'd been to Barcelona and I was thinking of Gaudi-esque tilework for the bathroom in my old flat. "You could break it and use it for that," he suggested. I kept it on the windowsill, meaning to knock a nail in and hang it properly -- and one day caught it with the towel and it smashed in a zillion bits. I've got the bits in a bag. I've also got the bits of a Waipu tile of a cat with a jug of cream. That tile's been broken three times and repaired twice I think. I bought a new one last time I was in NZ, this time in a wooden frame.

And of course now I'm a prospective dog owner I'll be checking out pet shops for all the kit: collar, lead, toys, chews, brushes, worm tablets. I've got a spare duvet he can have to sleep on. He'll be downstairs by the back door, there's a perfect dog-sized area down there. Ooo, I'm so excited!

Madness in the news: you know the Mir is coming down soon? (Of course you do if you're in the Southern Hemisphere -- you're in the crash zone!) Well the Japanese in the area the debris will pass over are going to be told to stay indoors for 40 minutes. But we're also told that the big chunks of space station will be travelling at such a speed they can penetrate 6ft of concrete. So unless your house has a concrete roof 6ft 6in thick, you're doomed if it all goes horribly wrong. At least if you're outside you can duck.

I've picked out the dog I want, and all going well he'll move in next week. He's a greyhound and is white with a brindle patch on his face. The Cat and Dog Home got him as a stray but he's an ex-racer -- he has an ID number tattoed on his ears. The home has had him on a special diet to build him up, but he's still quite bony. Very tall, quiet but alert and friendly, and apparently playful once he gets to know you. Good with other dogs but will chase cats. His name at the home is Bertie, but he doesn't reallly look like a Bertie.

After chosing Bertie yesterday I went to see Best in Show, to see how demented I'll become once I'm a dog person. Yes, that'll be me in the pet shop screeching: "That's not a bee! It's a parrot!! You don't know my dog!"

Today was a completely wasted day, spent waiting for the carpet warehouse blokes to deliver the flooring. Their excuse: "The lorry isn't co-operating." They're coming at 10am tomorrow now. While waiting I ferried more stuff upstairs, so the house now looks ghastly everywhere. Every room is either horribly empty or ludicrously crammed. Except the toilet and the bathroom, they're pretty normal.

I just want it all to be over so I can relax and enjoy my home. But a chore on tomorrow's agenda is collecting some tile samples for the kitchen. I went into the shop yesterday to look at tiles and it was a nightmare. They quoted me for an average sort of price for the actual tiles, but of course I have such exquisite taste there was nothing in that price range I liked. My favourites were the Delft tiles, £13 EACH, never mind price per square metre. The small, plain, multicoloured tiles I'd admired were almost twice the quoted price. The cheaper tiles all have a tic: wobbly edges, "antiqued" effect, "artisan" finish. Ick, a tic. I spent almost an hour in the shop, which is small but jammed with display boards, and finally found a couple of candidates: thick, chunky-looking "biscuit" tiles, and a range of fairly inoffensive pastels. The biscuit tiles only come in a few colours: black, white, cream, blue and green. They were displayed in checks, and I imagine that could look good -- black and white, or cream and blue. They would be slightly retro. Hmmm.

Just to complicate matters the man said it would be ok if I got the tiles elsewhere, the quote for labour would be the same. So that widens the search to a massive number of tile emporia, including Fired Earth in Glasgow and the dreaded arty place in the High Street.

Chad says he'll bring the blackcurrant cuttings in tomorrow, and maybe a raspberry cane as well, so I'll be able to garden on Saturday while Dougie and Bob do their thing indoors. Unless it rains, of course, in which case I'll hide upstairs.

Gardening frenzy today: I moved two more hydrangea bushes to the front, where they'll probably wither and die from lack of sunlight. It's north-facing, and they're tucked in behind the fence so they won't even get all the morning sun. Hah! Take that you ... plant. I'm sure hydrangeas are lovely in some people's eyes. Not mine. They're old-lady plants (not that I have anything against old ladies of course). These ones are especially manky -- insipid not-quite-blue with a tink of pink [tink? that was meant to be tinge, but I prefer tink] and feeble spindly stalks with a few leaves. I tossed them a handful of compost, maybe that'll perk them up if the shock of being moved doesn't kill them. That leaves one still in the soon-to-be blackcurrant patch. Someone suggested I leave it in the streeet with a note: "Free to Good Home".

Had a chat with Frances next door, who tells me the bulbs coming up in the front are bluebells. I dug a load of them up during a heavy weeding session last year, damn. Anyway they reproduce themselves so probably no harm in thinning them out a bit. Everything is budding or already leafing out, you can nearly hear some plants growing they're shoving out foliage so fast. The honeysuckle is doing well after being bashed about by various tradesmen, and the rose bush out the back is coming away nicely too.

The elder at the back is also sprouting. Frances says her husband cut it down for Mrs Blacker a few years ago but it just grew back. I might cut it down too -- it only managed to squeeze out a few pathetic bunches of flowers and berries last year. I'd rather put an apple tree in there. The trouble is, you'd have to kill it stone dead, not sure how to do that without resorting to poison.

Next on the gardening agenda is reseeding the lawns -- they are both a mess of weeds and moss and crap (literally -- courtesy of the birds). Last year it was tragic looking out the upstairs window, my lawn and Jim & Rosemary's were like an advert for before and after -- guess whose was the "before". At the moment it's even worse, because I tramped around on the grass while it was frozen, a big no-no. It's all dead-looking and yellow between the steps and the bird-feeders.

Tomorrow after the windows bloke comes back with the mended window I'm going to the tile shop to drool over splashback solutions, then to see Best in Show. I need a week off, not just a day.

Renovation update: The windows bloke came, as arranged, to take away the defective unit. The piece of Very Strong plywood he'd brought to leave in its place was a foot too short. He'd done the meauring, someone else had done the cutting. Luckily I have plenty of top quality laminate offcuts in the shed, so he used one of them to bodge a solution. Burglars note: it is Very Secure.

I was watching the bloke (forgot to ask his name again) taking out the unit and noticed a sudden shower of the tiny beads inside it. Peering closer I saw they were pouring out of a hole in the inside of the frame. The bloke said someone had driven a screw through it.

"I'm surprised the chaps who installed it didn't notice," I said.

The look he gave me spoke volumes. It said: "Nothing surprises me, I've seen it all. They probably did notice and didn't say anything to save themselves the hassle of replacing it. They might even have done the damage themselves." He didn't say a word. Extremely eloquent though.

After that I faddled around carrying furniture and pot plants upstairs, had lunch and did some gardening -- inspired by the Marshalls Kitchen Gardener's catalogue that came through the post this morning. I weeded the beds out the back and sprinkled round a bit of stinky compost I bought last year. It's a concentrated manure and seaweed blend, so it's foul. I also shifted one of the hydrangeas from its prime position to the back of the back yard. I thought there was just one big plant, but there are four of them, bunched together. I don't know what to do with the others, I might put them out the front. I don't like hydrangeas much. I'm going to plant blackcurrants in their place, and possibly raspberries.

In the next week or so, weather permitting, I'll extend the bed I've been digging along the fence, ready for rocket and runner beans. I've already got the rocket seed. I'm going to get Red Rum beans, "an amazing development", according to the catalogue. "It can set beans under all sorts of conditions by self-polliination so that it outcrops all the standard varieties." There's even a testimonial from Mr S. Freeman in Essex. I just like the way they look, twining up a wigwam of poles, covered in scarlet flowers. Also pondering courgettes (Kojac, a compact, spineless variety you can grow in the patio) and strawberries (Marshmello -- "combines a wonderful old-fashioned flavour and aroma with reliability in varied conditions"). I'd like to grow tomatoes in the tiny patio bit out the back, it gets really hot out there and is sheltered too. Carefree appeals: "Plant it, forget it -- well, almost! -- until you start to pick the masses of fruits."

The catalogue is so seductive, everything looks delicious. All kinds of unusual things too -- salsify, seakale, chinese water convolvulus. Argh! I've just seen something called Land Cress, which looks just like what I weeded out of the garden this afternoon! Hmmm, maybe not...

Mushrooms too. That would be a little creepy though, "pre-spawned compost" cooking away in a cupboard. Also they present the same problem as the rest of the catalogue: vast quantities. Raspberries: 12 canes. Rhubarb: 3 crowns. Mangetout: 18ft row. I'd open the door and the cupboard would be full of glowing white fungi. Mushroom omlette, anyone? Spaghetti sauce? I could always freeze stuff, I guess. Yeah right.

The tile guy rang with a quote, quite reasonable. I need three square metres of tiles, he says. So I'll go in to the shop tomorrow and get some samples to take home and try against the decor. Deciding on colours should only take six months or so.

I had an offline day off yesterday, bliss. I didn't answer the phone, didn't check my email. Just sloped around in my painting clothes, painting. I did the woodwork round the french doors -- two coats of primer and a coat of gloss white. Also washed the car, and did some extremely light housework. The living room is a bomb site. Tomorrow I'll continue moving stuff upstairs ready for Dougie next weekend. So the upstairs will be a bomb site as well. Maybe I should go and live in the shed, it's marginally tidier than anywhere else, with the added bonus that it doesn't matter if I drip paint/varnish on anything.

This morning I did some quality loafing with the paper, a big mistake -- the glorious sunshine had become heavy rain by the time I was washed and dressed.

I've turned a non-smoking corner (if you get my drift...) -- my sense of smell is back. I went to the supermarket on my way home on Friday and was blown away by how good everything smelled. Mmmmm fresh basil! And the broccoli! Yum! The fish section smelled so deliciously of Arbroath smokies I suspected Tesco of installing some kind of automatic scent machinery, like the ghastly air-freshener in the toilets at work (there's a strange little hum, and suddenly you're choking on concentrated Spring Breeze) but nicer. I did have a cigar in the pub during the break on Friday, one of the little skinny ones. But the return of lovely smells is a real incentive not to go back to my peak consumption of 10 a day. Cigarettes, not packets, I never was a heavy smoker.

The Sims extension pack is slightly disappointing. The llama topiary was exciting for a minute, but there doesn't see to be much in the way of architectural extras.

The windows blokes came at 10am, not noon, waking me out of a sound sleep. Most embarrassing to answer the door in dressing gown with my hair upside down. I must have looked a fright, because they looked frightened.

Anyway they (two new fellows) went to work with a will. Good news: it's mostly finished. Bad news: one of the "units" in the french doors has to be replaced. I'd noticed these little tiny beads of something between the two panes of glass, and they said that meant it was defective. It's toughened glass so would normally take a fortnight, but through some jiggery pokery they're fixing it next week. On Monday they come and take out the unit and put in a sheet of plywood. Then on Wednesday they come back with the fixed unit. Any burglars reading please note: I'm assured the plywood is Very Strong.

Once they finally finished I went to PC World to convince myself once and for all that I cannot afford to upgrade my creaking computer. No, no, no. And came away with an upgrade ... for the Sims. Oh dear. I hadn't played Sims for ages but then Anthea was talking about her Sims and how well they're doing etc and I started playing it again. It's horribly addictive once you get started.

Speaking of addiction, I've stopped smoking yet again. I had one on Saturday afternoon, but apart from that it's been about ten days. I thought I might start again on Saturday night, but not many people were smoking at the pub. And then last night (this counts as Thursday because I haven't been to bed yet, so we're talking about Wednesday -- like you care!) I was at the pub with smoking people and didn't scrounge one. The worst craving I've had so far was while listening to a radio discussion last week about lung cancer. Yap yap yap about smoking. I was gasping for a cig.

I remember once I had been off smokes for months & then watched Silkwood, the Meryl Streep movie about Karen Silkwood, the anti-nuke whistle-blower. Everyone in that movie chain-smoked. During an ad break I rushed to the chippie for a pack of ten -- part funded by my flatmate, who also fell off the tobacco wagon during the movie. In one scene Karen's husband walks out, bangs the door dramatically behind him. Seconds later he bursts back in, grabs a carton of cigarettes from a cupboard, then leaves again. CARTONS of cigarettes, remember that? What extravagant risks we took back then. Ah, those were the days.

I was supposed to have gone home ten minutes ago but I've been emailing etc; so I may as well throw in an entry here. There's been a flurry of emails from hither and yon, forcing me to look up things like Idiopathic Thrombocytopaenic Purpura (not as bad as it sounds, apparently & Daniel's getting better) and Clarendon (not far from Waihola, phew).

I had a soporific couple of days off, did a lot of housework and a spot of gardening but not a lot else. But it's just the lull before the storm.

Tomorrow the window blokes are coming, and on Friday a man's coming to measure up the kitchen for the splashback tiles. I thought about doing it myself, but it's quite complicated. I'll watch the professionals closely then maybe try my hand in the bathroom. I'd love to do something mad in there with mosaic: a Gaudi knock-off with bits of broken crockery and mirror and whatnot. But the kitchen needs to be reasonably sensible, I think.

The big challenge is chosing something. I thought I'd more or less decided (smallish tiles, patchwork of lightish, brightish colours), but the tile shop was a phantasmogoric wonderland of colour, texture, glaze and size. 3-D yachts! Sweet! How about this gorgeous little number with a goldfish leaping next to a waterlily! Ooooh, art deco ... glass mosaic ... metallic effect fossils ... Get me out of here. The man kept showing me more boards: Victorian borders, inset feature tiles, matt, gloss, rustic, vegetable themes, frogs, aiee!

Then there is the tile shop I'm afraid to go into. It has a wonderful selection of hand-made tiles, including stylish-yet-earthy ones with Pictish symbols. Ruinously expensive though. Sigh.

Then sanding and varnishing the french doors as mentioned previously. Next week I have to move most of the furniture upstairs, and the flooring is delivered. I got all that sorted on Monday -- the bloke in the warehouse said, "You'll be able to remember what day they're delivering, because it's my birthday!" I have to also climb up to the loft and retrieve the packet of planks I stored up there. Hope I don't kill myself in the process, that would be a shame. Dougie and Bob are coming the following weekend to lay the floor, Dougie reckons they'll just take two days. Please let that be true. It felt as though they were there for a week the first time round, they made such a racket and a mess.

I really must go home.

Two days off coming up, not a moment too soon. Last week was exhausting. Even yesterday was tiring, and that was a day off. I haven't got a lot planned for my days off, hurrah!

Today I went for a great walk, over an hour of brisk healthy striding. The roads were thronging with other brisk walkers -- the cross-country footpaths are pretty much all shut down because of the foot and mouth outbreak. The Dalmeny estate is on a war footing: the main estate entrance and the estate farm entrance were covered in straw and guards had been posted to make sure visitors used the disinfectant footbath.

The more I learn about foot and mouth, the more baffled I am. I'd always thought it was a dread disease, on a par with leprosy or bubonic plague -- in fact it's been called a plague in headlines in A Certain Newspaper. But it turns out it's about as serious as a bout of the flu. If you leave the sick pigs and cows alone they get better. One writer said the wholesale slaughter was an economic thing: infected livestock lose condition & weight and aren't worth as much. And because it spreads so fast it's better to kill all the animals in an infected herd than risk gazillions more animals getting it and being worth less. Apparently.

The other thing, of course, is that you can vaccinate livestock against foot and mouth disease. But that costs money, and again, apparently it's cheaper to risk having to slaughter all your animals than to make sure they don't get sick in the first place.

Meanwhile, back in my disease-free habitat, Dougie and Bob are coming in a fortnight's time to do the floors. He reckons it will take two days: Saturday and Sunday. I have to go in to the warehouse tomorrow and make sure they've got all the right stuff, which they'll then deliver. In the week before Dougie arrives, I'll have to move as much furniture upstairs as possible. The windows blokes are coming on Thursday. If they fix the boards around the french doors then, I can sand and varnish them over the following few days, so they'll be finished before Dougie and Bob get stuck in.

I have fantasies of painting the livingroom before the floors are done, but I have to stamp them down. I would have to scrape off all the embossed wallpaper first, ghastly business, then no doubt plaster over various holes and cracks before painting, or put up lining paper. Just too complicated, messy, time-consuming and tiring. Same with the dining room. I've more or less decided on colours -- darkish green for the dining room, perhaps with dark red velvet curtains and a lightshade with some kind of crystals or sparkles; and my favourite pale adam green for the living room with white dotted muslin curtains. I'd like to recover the sofa and chairs in lighter shades too, cream and pink maybe.

This just in on the foreign wire:

PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) – Passengers arriving at Prague’s Ruzyne airport from Britain and Ireland will in future be asked to clean their shoes on specially laid rugs to prevent the possible spread of hoof-and-mouse disease to the Czech Republic.

Hoof and mouse! It sounds so sweet. Please wipe your feet to avoid infecting Czech mice with your vile British disease.

More tooth-grinding over insurance. It's gotten so complicated I can hardly follow it myself, so I hope the insurance company can grasp the fact that they still owe me £100. I got two cheques in the mail today, both £50 short. And no, it's not a coincidence: £50 is the policy excess, which they've already taken off.

I tried phoning but it was constantly engaged, so I sat down and wrote them a letter. I enclosed a copy of the letter I sent the inspection firm, and photocopies of the tear-off bits that came with the relevant cheques. The whole time I was doing this my irritation levels were rising. Why is this so HARD? Where's the good karma payoff from not cheating them over the rug? Why am I even bothering? If it had been just £50 I wouldn't have, probably. But the second extra £50 really got my goat.

At least I can go ahead and get the new flooring laid, that's something. Dougie's phoning me tomorrow with a date, and I have to pop in to the warehouse to check they've got the right laminate.

After all that -- and given that I was going in to work early -- there wasn't time for the gym. Oh, what a shame! I'm so stunningly lazy I'm almost ashamed of myself.

The weather this morning was stunning. There was a thick river fog that we get now and then, a freezing fog that left some hedges up on higher ground frosted all over. After it cleared it was brilliantly sunny, eye-achingly so. I feel as though I've been hibernating on days like this.

Tomorrow I'm taking the cat to the airport to meet her baldcat, who's been in Paris for a week. I haven't minded minding her, but I won't miss her litter tray. This is a cat who goes outside for half an hour then comes back inside to go to the toilet.

In the evening there's a farewell party at a pub in town for Davie, who plays Irish and Scottish music on the fiddle. That should be fun. He's off to New Zealand.

I feel slightly guilty about this, but my life feels pretty normal. According to reports from the other side of the world, where I live is in the grip of apocalypse -- plague, blizzards, terrible accidents. You'd think I'd be suffering. But no. I was slightly annoyed by the fact that my newspaper wasn't delivered two days in a row, and the rubbish was collected a day late. Oh, and the deadlines at work have been moved forward. But that's it. Hardly chaotic.

Joking aside, it's very nerve-wracking for my farming friends -- there are two suspected cases of foot & mouth disease in Scotland, one in Dumfries and one in Grangemouth, near Edinburgh. There was one suspected case at a pig farm in Aberdeenshire, but it turned out to be frostbite. Yes, it's very, very cold in the north, and the poor pigs live outside. I was surprised that the virus can survive such intense cold, but apparently it thrives in winter conditions, it's heat that kills it, even sunlight. The last outbreak lasted from November to April.

The snow is still lying and a little more fell this morning. Just a powdery sprinkling, nothing serious. It's bitterly cold, so nothing is melting. Apparently the main road between Glasgow and Edinburgh is bordered by tall icy drifts. When I came in to work today the city looked magnificent: Arthur's Seat was brilliant white and bathed in sunshine, and the dark crags of the Castle looked dramatic silhouetted against it. I always get a thrill from the beauty of Edinburgh, even after 10 years.

Ten years ... good grief ... that fairly flew by. In fact it's nearly 11 years. Jings.

I dragged my sorry carcase to the gym today and took a little light exercise. I'm trying to get into running, with the eventual aim of jogging in the outdoors. For now what I do is brisk walking (on the treadmill) for a few minutes, then running for one minute, then go back to brisk walking. I am severely unfit due to joyfully embracing car ownership, so a minute's running is a much bigger achievement than you can imagine. There were other people in the gym, so it was an even braver deed. The good thing about the little village gym though is that the clientele aren't as scary as at the gyms I used to go to in town -- more baggy trackies and t-shirts, less lycra.

Ha! We won the net-nanny battle -- we now have unlimited access. My boss is really good at angry phone calls to IT. We also flooded them with demands to be allowed to visit websites like The Onion (satirical US news site) and the American Nazi Party. What really did it was when a colleague doing research discovered he was locked out of just about every site about Switzerland. Can't be too careful!

Home front: the windows blokes couldn't get to my place today because of snow. Apparently it's really thick in the Borders where they are. At my place it was blazingly sunny but cold. There's still snow in my back yard, a frozen crust.

The windows advisory man made it from Currie: his car had a good six inches of snow on the roof. He checked everything, made a note of all the problems and went off to make a report. It's a very good deal, this firm, Dougie-the-floor put me on to them. They charge a £20 fee and for that they get you 10 quotes, check the finished job before you pay for it and organise the paperwork for the guarantee. I assume they get a cut from the windows firms. Today Ross did what I should have -- he went round and opened, shut, locked and unlocked every single window. Very efficient.

I was going to go to the gym then but ... um .... well I had to go in to work early and ... there might be snow between home and the gym and .... oh, I'd better just put that washing away, and clean the bath ... oops! it's too late to go to the gym now anyway! What a shame!

Tomorrow I'll definitely go to the gym. I don't know why I'm so reluctant, I actually enjoy it when I'm there.

Today at work we got the following memo: "As from Monday 26 February 2001 our company access to undesirable internet sites will be removed. If for research or company business purposes access to a restricted site is required, a form must be obtained from the IT intranet web page, or directly from the IT Helpdesk. Authorisation is required by your department manager. Under normal circumstances 24 hours notice is required to enable access."

A week is a long time in politics; 24 hours is a very long time indeed in daily newspaper journalism.

And it's a finely-tuned censorship: Sandy was barred from the BBC's weather site tonight. Ooo, err, must be those saucy isobars! Stark naked statistics!