Friday

The volcano ash misery continues for lots of people across Europe. Everyone now seems to know someone affected by it; brothers, sisters, boyfriends, girlfriends - it really surprises me how much people actually fly. Alice is over from her Eurocamp work in France for a training weekend in Liverpool - she's now ended up having to get an overnight coach from Manchester to Paris and then get a train onwards.

In terms of work, with London Book Fair starting on Monday, this couldn't have really happened at a worse time. Most of today in the office sees the bosses taking phone calls and cancelling meetings with clients travelling from the US, Canada, Italy and Asia. The fair looks in danger of being almost totally deserted - a Bookseller email alerts informs us that 54% of the exhibitors at Earls Court next week are from companies based outside the UK. With this little island rendered virtually inaccessible to the rest of the world, we could be looking at a very quiet few days rattling around the exhibition centre.

In the evening Alex and I head into town to meet K, Ant, Belinda, Ellie and some others at the Princess Louise near Holborn. Absolutely rammed as it usually is on a Friday, the situation is exacerbated by the fact that it's a beautiful evening and everyone wants to stand outside the pub with their pint in that peculiarly London way. No matter - we squeeze inside and I get on the Alpines while K and Alex stick to summery cider. At one point a man approaches Alex and I and asks, quite simply, whether we are members of the intelligence services. A slightly shambolic older guy, we decide to have a bit of fun with him - answering that yes, we are in fact spies and I mime some finger-to-the-ear receiving messages stuff, expecting him to chuckle along with us. Instead he launches into an instantly-tedious tirade about conspiracies and whatnot - and shortly Alex and I realise that he might in fact be the bad kind of unstable.

We take the decision to ignore him and rejoin the group, but he hovers around for a while whispering numbers and showing Alex photos of obscure graffiti on his phone. Realising that we're not playing along any more, he announces that he is leaving and rushes out of the door. Part of this is fun - but there's always that nagging thought that he might come back in with a gun or a bomb strapped to his chest or something. It's nice to be reminded, though, that London is still full of absolute nutters.