Was in the Rennie MacIntosh hotel in Glasgow last night. It was a little bit shabby, but not too bad. However, the toilet smelt like they cleaned it with a dead badger. They seemed to have plumbed the shower waste pipe in after the toilet U-bend and the smells came up that way. I couldn't work out why the sewage itself didn't come up also, but it didn't; we should be grateful for small blessings, I suppose.

While I am thinking about it, I've decided to release chapter 1 of my treatise on Italy following my holiday there. I was going to release everything at once, but I haven't found time to write more; so here goes the first.

Woke up this morning (duh, duh, duh, de) to the sound of scratching from outside my window. The first frost of winter was spreading it's chill fingers over Newcastle. And some sod was trying to clear their windscreen at 7 in the morning.

A short while later, I walked out of my house, got onto my bike and rode off. Didn't even have to clean my glasses.

One of my bike tyres exploded last night. Rather unusual — in fact, I've never had it happen before. The side wall was a bit knackered. It's loosened from the bead, which slipped off, and the tube went bang. At 100PSI (I haven't gone metric for pressure measures yet!) that's quite a bang. My ear took an hour or two to stop ringing.

Sadly this was just after I finished changing the tube which was, therefore, brand new. Pain.