Monday, October 5

It felt like a bright Spring morning when I left the house, and the walk from Kalasatama was filled with cyclists in lycra shorts.

I spent the morning having chats with Fred, Nathalie and Jutta, as well as emailing back and forth with students. I got an email from Stefan to say his copy of my thesis had finally arrived in Austria, and I replied to tell him about my distinction.

I phoned Finnair to discover that my plan to fly from Helsinki to Oslo, from Oslo to London, and then from London to Helsinki could not be done – and that, bizarrely, it was entirely my fault.

Return tickets do not exist any more. All flights are sold singly and cost the same whether you book a one-way or two-way trip. If you book two (or three) tickets at the same time, with the same payment, then they become linked. They form a single ticket and failing to fly one leg invalidates the others. On the other hand, if you book a flight from Helsinki to London and pay for it, and then, two minutes later, book a flight from London to Helsinki, they will cost the same but they will have two separate booking numbers and they will not be linked at all.

I will know this in future.

I spent the afternoon writing and then left for home. On the way home I listened to my old Tim Hardin albums. I don’t care what other people say, he is not a forgotten genius. He wrote five or six very good songs and recorded them badly. He also recorded a lot of other stuff which you can safely ignore.

At home Irma showed me her Powerpoint slideshow, and I watched episode 2 of the new Doctor Who series. It was the second part of the first two-part story and was even better than the first.

Sunshine chooses the oddest positions in which to sleep and here he is doing it. I will watch him and have a shower.