Whooo! I'm going back for more!

Nothing's ever simple, is it?

All I visited the hospital for was a couple of vaccinations for my summer adventures, and the visit made me need a hospital.

Burrowing through the mazelike corridors of a typical infinitely-extended and architecturally repurposed London medicentre, I find the travel clinic. (Eventually - the signs and doors saying 'Travel Health Centre' are, of course, pointing in precisely the wrong direction, and they lead to two doors marked 'Biohazard'.) I get my jabs for - well, basically everything you can catch in Africa short of AIDS - and head out to pay. Nurse takes my debit card, I sign forms. No problem.

The first digit of my PIN goes in just fine.

I don't make it to the second.

Black clouds billow into my vision. When I can no longer see and my entire optical sensorium has been replaced by an explosion in a fireworks factory, I decide it's a good idea to sit down. I don't make it there either.

One extremely intense hallucinatory experience later - which lasted subjectively two seconds and objectively over ten minutes - I come round to find a woman lying on top of me yelling my name. I get totally the wrong idea about this and spend the first few seconds of consciousness trying to remember her name and if we'd been out to dinner first or anything.

Then I realise it's the nurse, the doctor's next to her, and two other medics are holding my legs down. I'm on my back balanced across the arms of four waiting-room chairs, there are multiple icepacks scattered around, and behind me a very, very big oxygen trolley has appeared.

After some apologies to the nurse whose breasts I'd almost smooched - and some further apologies given that my first words were of four letters and began with F - I start recovering fast. Chris Worth: constitution of a bull elephant... blood sugar of a Diet Coke. Apparently with my head deprived of blood, my body had taken things into its own hands, and I'd been struggling and kicking for several minutes. Can you imagine how many medics it takes to hold down 75kg of triathlete? Dear me, how embarassing.

It's called a vaso-vagal reaction, and I can thoroughly recommend them just for the interesting son-et-lumiere that happens inside your head during the experience. If you could bottle this stuff, they'd be selling it on street corners at 3am.

But if by chance you'd prefer to avoid such things - don't neck a bottle of Rioja the night before, don't skip breakfast that morning, and don't walk half an hour to the hospital in hot dehydrating sunshine.

The other Blair blunders again

Greatly exaggerated, Ian. Greatly exaggerated.
What is it about people called Blair?

In a speech tonight, blundering overpoliticised tongue-tied never-admits-his-shortcomings Met head Ian Blair (nothing personal) said that "to paraphrase another great American Mark Twain, reports of my demise have been premature."

Ian: the quote was the report of my death was an exaggeration, improved over time to "Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated." (Thanks twainquotes.) So in 'paraphrasing' Twain's wryly understated humour this cop isn't just putting on an air of intellectualism he can never aspire to. He's murdering not just the whole meter and poetry of the line, but its essence of meaning too. Twain wasn't talking about a premature announcement; he was poking fun at broader attitudes. Of the media, the public, and of the political class. In having so little respect for words, Blair is exposing his own arrogance and contempt for Londoners.

It's time for this confused old man to go. And that's no exaggeration.

Which classic movie are you?

Trying out this fun test, I was strangely delighted to learn I'm Apocalypse Now. I mean, what if I'd been Guy Ritchie's Revolver or something?

Better than a '58 Plymouth Fury

A new laptop!

Well, not a new one, but new to me. Spotted in a secondhand shop on Tottenham Court Rd, it's one of those fire-breathing gaz-guzzlers from the early Noughties: built like a Mack truck, heavy as a brick-filled skip and heats up like an industrial furnace. I just had to have it - for the same reason, perhaps, that middle-aged men in their Hondas fantasise about gullwinged and finned V8s from the 60s.

I think laptops turned a corner in 2003: as useful performance plateau'd (there's only so much chip you need for Word) physical size started becoming an issue. Today's laptop is a Honda: sleek, slim, sensible... and devoid of personality.

Both my laptops are over three years old - yet the screen res, the max RAM, even the processor are bigger and faster than today's slimmed-down, low-fat, healthy-eating milquetoast carryalongs. There still aren't many laptops that can do full UXGA rezz - looking along shelf after shelf it seems WXGA is today's high watermark - yet both these crates handle 1600x1200 with ease. And few modern dualcores are clocked at over 3GHz; with today's mantra of low weight and high battery life, three gig processors just aren't politically correct. Yet the new box steams point oh six past the three billion cycles.

About the only thing these laptops lack is a decent hard drive... 40 and 60GB, not enough for desktop replacement. But I'll take that as the uncomfortable equivalent of bucket seats. And as I start pimping my new ride with the go-faster stripes and tailfins of new software licenses, I feel somehow seventeen again.

How to get a head in journalism

"BOISE, IDAHO-A Boise woman and her four year-old daughter were killed Thursday when their car was rammed by pickup being operated by a man who had his wife's severed head in the truck." Now THAT'S the kind of topic sentence that makes journalism worthwhile.

That's what I love about American local news: it's often better researched than any big city paper, but just sometimes, you get the impression that the hacks are having just a bit of fun before they get all serious and apply for jobs at the New York Times. I mean, "...when the truck operated by Alofa Time, 50, crashed into them head on, sending the severed head of his wife airbound onto the roadway."... the way the sentence makes it sound as if Time could have gotten away with it ("Her head came off in the crash, Officer!!!") and the plausibly-deniable 'head on' insertion.

Even the headline - Man Driving With Wife's Severed Head Causes Fatal Crash - sounds just that little too horrendously funny, as if he's mistaken the severed head for the steering wheel, or that he's just taking it for a drive much as you would a pet dog. Lucky unnamed North Country Gazette journalist: when he's in his darkest moments, he's now got one of those thoughts that'll return him to cheerfulness forever.

Daryl Hannah out of her tree

Now there's a headline you don't see every day.

And they didn't even look Brazilian...

Further Met bungling: the two men who awoke to the totally-unlike-birdsong of 250 police officers coming in through their front door the hard way hold a press conference.

What's really the problem here (unless you're the shot guy) is the attitude that's making such incidents more and more common - the police all but admit they carried out the raid 'just in case'. That we have to put up with it for the greater good. Well, I'm not buying it.

That's one of the root problems in the police state Britain's turning into: 'just in case'. You're stopped in the street by police, just in case. You're encouraged to report your neighbours (the subject of a recent ad campaign) just in case. Everybody's treated as guilty until proven innocent, just in case. It's a creeping cancer in British society.

And it's all the Blair camp's fault - for politicising the police, playing up terrorist fears to get its ID card snoopers' charter through, and keeping extensive records of everything it can through means-testing and a tax system based on credits and rebates rather than allowances. All designed to give the government basically whatever they need to suspect you of anything at all.

A question of hats

I need a hat. And I've no idea how to go about buying one.

In the near-50 degree heat of the desert this summer I'm going to need some protective headgear, but I've never worn a hat in my life. And they're not easy things to pack, either. Something that folds, since I'm travelling light... but that conjures up images of beanies or floppies - too geeky. A stetson or ten-gallon - too dramatic. A straw hat - too girly. A Panama - too ironic. And a baseball cap - well, Egypt is one of the less anti-American Islamic nations, but still...

I suppose a bowler might just work, IF I adopted a false eyelash to complete the 'Clockwork Orange' effect, but the Islamic world has enough ultra-violence in it as it is.

So where does that leave me? Time to head down the adventure shop again. With some fashion expert pals in tow.

Summertime, and the living is...

28 degrees in London. The last few days have seen Summer stride fashionably late into Britain's capital, and despite the usual Tube warnings of 50 degree heat in the tunnels beneath the streets, the days are passing in dreamlike bliss. (London summers are great precisely because they're short: the brief flowering of yellow in the skies is revered, since it's never long enough to forget the grey untuned-TV-screen overhead eight months of the year.)

The Windsor Triathlon yesterday went brilliantly: I felt relaxed and unhurried, and just hit a comfortable pace in the river, road and streets, enjoyed just 'getting round' without being in a rush. Despite a thrumming thigh on the final lap of the run section - a cramp just goading me to tense up so it can pounce - I jogged across the line around 10:45am, plenty of time to head home for some protein and an afternoon nap over the Sunday Times. Simple pleasures.

First race of the season, and probably my slowest time too - but triathlon's not the driving force of my life, just a pleasant backbone to keep in shape, and my body's thanking me for it. Triathlong just makes you feel like a superhero. Your body feels like a single muscle; you can tame any environment, handle any machine, cover any distance. It's the greatest sport in the world.

Today I woke early, and hit my desk downstairs: more work than ever, but fewer in-office demands, which means I can churn out creative from home. Breezes clack my wooden blinds as the sun scorches the terrace above over breakfast. Home may be a unimaginative brick box south of the river, but in the 7am sun with a bagel and smoothie, I feel the same satisfaction as anyone in a penthouse on Fifth Avenue. (Okay, maybe a bit less.)

And the summer's got more of the same in store. Two months of long warm evenings, of chilled wine and sandwiches that make a meal, of Sunday triathlons and new ideas before my solo expedition to the Land of the Pharaohs. Life is good.

al-Zarqawi: goodbye to Bush & Blair's best pal

If it's true - and none of the news sources seem to be asking this basic question; there are a lot of people in Iraq who resemble him - the death of al-Zarqawi is both the best and worst news the fading Bush-Blair era could have in its final months.

Reason: when al-Zarqawi 'swore allegiance to Osama' - showing a fine understanding of brand marketing and line extension - he kicked off the al-Qaeda brand in Iraq, where it never existed before. Which provided some justification for moving the War on Terror's goalposts ("al-Qaeda's in Iraq! Wahey!") and instantly rebranding the insurgents as al-Qaeda terrorists.

(While al-Zarqawi and bin Laden apparently met some years back, the 'core' al-Qaeda goal of a restored Caliphate is a long way from the civil war between Muslims al-Zarqawi supports. And bin Laden's recent cassette broadcast was largely a response to al-Zarqawi's usurping of the al-Qaeda idea. Osama got PO'd that another guy was getting all the column inches.)

Still, at least there's one less chop-happy gunman in the world. But it's dreary just how predictably these things pan out when the US overthrows a nation, as it's done every nine years on average since 1890. First, the US creates a figurehead (as with bin Laden and his Afghanistan crew in the 80s) then it knocks him down (switching support to Russia post-Soviet era), then figurehead rises again to cause hassle. There are some smart people in the USA; why do they pay so little attention to second-order effects?

Evening Standard: headline writers of the year

Well THAT'S not going to do much for his metatarsal, is it?!!

Spanish practices at BAA

Grokking a few numbers over lunch, I think I've worked out why Ferrovial's bid for BAA (starting at 935p) succeeded while Goldman's at 940p failed, despite the former being both a) foreign and b) subsidised by about 50p per share (thanks to Spain's lenient tax treatment of goodwill acqs.)

The key seems to be in what they assumed about British airport fees.

Goldman assumed British travellers would be prepared to pay much higher fees and ticket prices - because with new runway agreements moving so slowly, the rise in air passengers alone wouldn't have justified the debt loading of their bid (forget how much they bid, but there were a lot of zeroes on the end of it).

The Spanish bidder, however, assumed lower fee increases at British airports (hooray!) - and with Spain being such a popular destination for Brits, I bet Ferrovial has an interest in keeping Brits' ticket prices cheap.

So to sum up: the regulators accepted a lower, foreign bid, thanks to the Spaniards' greater enthusiasm for keeping our air ticket prices low!

A pivot in the year

It's done. Life's been too good for a while; needed to get away, change of scene, shake my innards the way I did most of the 90s and have missed in my respectable-for-me London role. Four years since my last proper adventure out Nevada way, and even blissful holidays in surroundings like Provence haven't taken the edge off. So I've booked two flights with nearly a month between them, and what I do between those dates is now up to me.

Even better, it's somewhere new. One of the two big chunks of the globe (Africa and South America) I haven't covered. Later this summer, when all the tourists have gone home and the heat hits 42, I'll be walking in the footsteps of Pharoahs. Egypt was the first country I ever wanted to visit - I remember being five years old and thumbing a pyramid picturebook for hours - and now, finally, my time's come.

From Cairo, south to Luxor, then a desert-skimming trip to Alexandria, along Alexander's route to greatness. Just me and my tribag. (Triathlon bags are great for lightweight travel - mine unfurls into a flat T with enough hidden pockets to keep everything separate and easy to repack.) Since I land at 2am I may even head straight out to those big stone triangles, and watch the sun rise over the pointy bits.

And even pictures like this (found while idly surfing for Cairo train station) aren't damping the excitement. Lots of triathons (and lots of work to organise) before then; a business to come back to afterwards. The year's just been given structure.

Two Jags, Two Shags, but now one less home

Politics is a beautiful game. The most irrelevant man in government, John Prescott, has finally caved in - after losing his department but keeping his salary and perks, growing criticism has led him to give up his grace-and-favour mansion. (He held on tenaciously - if there's one thing a Socialist loves dearly, it's his privileges that place him above the proletariat.)

It's wonderful to see New Labour unravelling. With all the main grudges now personal, and the personalities involved getting increasingly irritated, there's now a much greater chance of Blair leaving power this year (although it's still likely he and Prescott will hang on until 2007.) I'm in two minds about this. Will Gordon Brown fare better at the next election with a shorter pre-election tenure (so British voters don't learn too much about his bad points, i.e. irascibility and poor communication) or with two years plus (giving us time to realise that he is as bad a Prime Minister as he was a Chancellor? Remember, this is the Chancellor who inherited a huge budget surplus and a growing economy, and yet even while raising taxes along the way has somehow mismanaged Britain's public finances into a massive deficit.)

Either way - with the Bush-Blair era effectively over, the New Labour project in tatters, and the Blair-Brown partnership as bad as ever, David Cameron's probably smiling more widely every day at the moment.