Don't ask me why

So you're obviously on the edge of your seat waiting to find out how the meeting went, after my insomniac torture last night...

You're not? I can't believe you're even reading this, then - be off with you, go and check out tmz.com or some such gutter/stars service area.

For those of you that are left - and hello to both of you - it went surprisingly okay, thanks for asking. Don't ask me why - I think grabbing just enough hours to get me to about ten past ten this morning served my brain sufficiently.

Tonight the bliss of my new pillow - and perhaps trialling it over such a key night was, in retrospect, a mistake - will be interrupted by a 6am alarm to get us to the Eurostar station at St Pancras in time for the 8am train to Brussels, where we will change onto a domestic line and hop off an hour later at Bruges. Two days of deep chocolate research lie ahead. I went for a preparatory 6-mile run this afternoon, after the big meeting: my legs didn't complain, having been carbed up on luscious fresh pasta and pesto the past few days, but the rest of me resisted like my handbrake had been left on. That's what 4 hours sleep really does to you. How do Olympians relax sufficiently the night before their competition to get the rest they need to perform to the max? Is that what all those sponsored condoms are for?

So off I go again. Maybe I'll check in more often. Maybe I won't. Maybe I'll get back to Six Wives, which has been brewing a long time now, but seems ready to hatch. Or to LDF, which is still in need of a central purpose on which I can hang all the fun stuff. Or to something new, thus ensuring that I begin more than I ever finish, and keep repeating the mistakes I've made since the mid-1970s when I first began and didn't end a story. In those days, you could bolt "And they lived happily ever after" or "And then s/he woke up" onto the last narrative beat, and still get a silver star from the primary school teacher. They were a forgiving bunch. But those days are gone.