You're a beautiful woman probably...

I haven't been anywhere for fun this year except Berlin, at Easter. Unusually, I've had two trips away with work, to York and Preston, and it was nice to get a brief change of scene. I'm looking forward to a trip to London at the end of this month, though. Of course, there are lots of things to do indoors there, but it would be nice to get out and have lunch in a riverside pub, or see the wildlife at Richmond Park - that kind of thing. I can put up with cold and dull weather for another week or so, but I hope it improves by then, both there and here.

It's a bit irritating to hear BBC weather people saying on two or three days this week "The temperature at the weekend will be a good ten degrees cooler" and "weather getting much colder" when it hasn't been above 14 celsius here all week. This assessment is purely because the London area has had some nice warm weather. However, it's been about par for the course here for five days, with grey skies and a chilly north east wind. Admittedly the weekend was nice and warm, but we were plunged back into cold again on Monday. Meteorologists shouldn't need to be told that the south east of England is not the same as the entire country!

I'm seriously disappointed at the result of the London mayoral election. To me, it seemed obvious that Ken Livingstone was the best man for the job in terms of skills, experience and commitment to what was right for London. He's followed sensible economic policies, fought for social justice and improved public transport; and the congestion charge must be the way of the future for cities like London. My opinion of Ken has nothing to do with him representing the Labour Party once again. I admit I found myself unable to vote Labour for the first time in my life during Blair's latter years, on account of his unforgivable behaviour over the Iraq War. Although he seems to be an inferior politician, I see Gordon Brown as more sincere and certainly preferable to Blair in that respect and voted Labour again in the recent local elections. I concede that Labour probably did deserve to do badly in these elections. Regardless of that - to me, the battle to be Mayor of London was (or sho...

We did get to the zoo in Berlin, by the way. If you're interested, you can see some of my photos (and some from a past visit) here .

The sun came out at last for more than five minutes today, as I was on my way back from a (rare) trip out with work. I was heading back from York to Newcastle on the train, sheltered from the chilly wind. Passing sights like Durham Cathedral, it looked , at least, a beautiful evening. I was listening to music on my little Sony MP3 walkman, a nice gadget that looks like a cigarette lighter and recently survived being washed (!) in one of my shirts. This is no doubt because it's "solid state" and has no hard disc. 2GB of music is enough for me while I'm on the move, and I don't need a fragile HD device that would no doubt break if dropped, or rattled around in a washing machine! I know Sony are a nasty multinational but I've always found Apple's claims for its equipment overblown, so I wouldn't consider buying an iPod. It's just a pity that Sony now seem to have dropped this design and only make bulkier, less elegant-looking MP3 players. Anyway, to...

I'm in grumpy old man mode today, and have to ask what on Earth is the matter with the weather ? In this part of the country, we haven't had a mild day (that is, with the temperatures in double figures) for nearly a month. It's 5.30pm and, once again, my outside thermometers are showing 6 degrees celsius - yes, the sort of temperature you might expect in February, not mid-April. What's worse, the long range forecast on the BBC say's there's not much prospect of things improving in the next four weeks . In April it's not unusual for it to rain nearly every day (as it has done). But, when the temperature is stubbornly three or four degrees below the average for weeks, and you look at last year's abysmal summer, you couldn't be blamed for believing the horror stories of global warming and the prospect of the Gulf Stream failing and plunging the UK into a much colder climate...

On Wednesday I went to another Northern Sinfonia Concert at the Sage Gateshead with John. The first half (Bernstein's Three Dance Episodes from On the Town , Copland's Music for the Theatre and Barber's Adagio ) was great. To my surprise, the piece I enjoyed most was the Barber. I've tended to think of this as a bit worn out through overexposure (and, indeed, the Northern Sinfonia included it in a concert only a month ago). However, the playing was exemplary - the performers really sounded as if they meant it, and the result was genuinely moving. The second half (Dvořák's Cello Concerto) exhibited all the qualities I dislike in "classical" music - to me it was stuffy, old-fashioned, stylised and full of 19th century musical clichés. The cello can be a beautiful instrument but, here, it simply wasn't. Every time it had a chance to shine, it seemed Dvořák undermined it by adding something distracting or downright tasteless (such as a saccharine flute a...