Tomorrow promises to be a beautiful sunny, Spring day in London - and what better way to spend it than by joining thousands of other lovely people in protesting the devastation of Baghdad. Assemble at 1200 midday at either Gower Street or Embankment: further details here.

Troops Poised To Attack Iraq

The trouble with newsfeed services like the mighty NewsNow is that in this time of crisis, you find yourself constantly gaping at the screen, watching the countdown to war unfold minute by painful minute, until you CAN'T TAKE IT ANY LONGER...

07:54GMT: BBC reports troops poised to attack Iraq.

12:52GMT: Troops poised on brink of war, affirms Reuters.

14:00GMT: The Islamic Republic News Agency says Tariq Aziz has been killed, according to a bloke in Bulgaria with the gift of second sight.

15:00GMT: The Sun claims that Tariq Aziz has defected to Kurdistan, according to a bloke in Bulgaria with a large telescope.

15:47GMT: UPI reports 17 million leaflets dropped on Iraq to persuade soldiers to surrender.

16:25GMT: Troops still poised for attack, according to Channel 4 News. Some of them are getting a bit of a stiff neck.

17:58GMT: Xinhua News Agency reports Aziz appears on telly warning of "bloody war." Bloke in Bulgaria insists he saw him down the betting shop in Sofia putting a fiver on Bush to win.

18:19GMT: U.S troops remain poised for attack, confirms Reuters. U.K. troops, meanwhile, are having a cup of tea and watching Corrie.

19:26GMT: Reuters reports that 17 Iraqis surrender as a result of leaflet drop. Marketing Week reports all-time lowest conversion rate of any direct mail campaign.

19:35GMT: Fox makes a late entry into the media fray with the breaking news that Allied troops are poised to attack. Rumours begin to circulate that "the troops" actually consist of one Eagle-Eyes Action Man surrounded by handbag mirrors.

Right, that's it - I'm off to seal up the bedroom with duct tape and stuff tins of beans under the bed.

Iraq. Is it about the oil, or is there something more sinister going on? Sounds like a job for the Random Conspiracy Generator...

H. is correct that I'm old before my time. It's 9pm, I'm doing yesterday's Times Jumbo Crossword, half the clues have got something to do with Inspector Morse and I find this only mildly irritating, and I'm thinking of going to bed. I can guarantee that at this very moment, 600 miles north of here, my 92-year old grandmother is doing exactly the same thing. Granny probably isn't using Google to solve the Inspect Morse clues, and she doesn't have to get up at 5am to finish an essay on the cyborg potential of the internet, but still.

An amazing thing happened today (and it's only 8:53 am!). I received, unsolicited, a letter from my MP Frank Dobson (Lab., Holborn & St Pancras), assuring me of his belief that war on Iraq is still unjustified. Regular visitors to these pages may recall that back in September I used the Faxyourmp.com service to ask Frank to urge Tony not to go to war. I did receive a letter back quite promptly from Frank saying that he opposed war without the backing of the United Nations.

This morning he has sent me an extract from Hansard from 26th February at 3.29pm, in which he is recorded as saying:

"I am simply not convinced that all-out military action on Iraq can be justified at this time and on the scale envisaged [...] I share [the Prime Minister's and the Foreign Secretary's] concerns about weapons of mass destruction, about the vile and muderous Iraqi regime, about terrorism and about the need to uphold the United Nations. And I recognise...that every alternative course of action...is likely to result in protracted misery and a large number of deaths for the people of Iraq. The Government argue that these concerns justify virtually immediate military action, and that they would be resolved by that military action. I find those claims less and less convincing.

[...] I do not believe that the Government have made the case that, after 12 years of not protecting the Iraqi people from their vile and oppressive regime, it is now a moral imperative that we do it within the next few weeks. [...] I do not believe that we have made the case that there is any connection between the current Iraqi regime and al-Qaeda. [,,,]

[...] Even less convincing are the claims of the United States about the enforcement of international obligations, when we consider its failure to implement Kyoto or obey the World Trade Organisation. It is tending to behave rather like a small maverick state. A small maverick state is a nuisance. It is a real problem for the rest of the world if the only remaining super-power turns maverick."

I think it is fantastic that Frank has taken the time to write to me and send me his views. I am comforted that my local MP vigorously opposes the war. And I think it's fantastic that Faxyourmp.com is giving people the opportunity to have this kind of dialogue with their MP, rather than just whingeing about things in the pub. There's still time to persuade Tony of the massive public opposition to the war. If you feel like this, write to your MP and make your views known!

Got flashed twice by speed cameras last night as I was trying to break my Reading-to-Kentish Town record (which I did) and arrived home thinking dark thoughts about the police state. Why, if a decent, tax-paying corporate whore can't drive her middle-management silver convertible at 90 miles an hour in the middle lane of a deserted motorway at 1am, what can she do any more?

Actually I see it as a sign from God that driving is evil and that I should stay at home and be happy. As H. says, "it's never too late to drop out". It can't be a coincidence that my next MA exam falls on the same day as I am supposed to be giving some dumb presentation in Madrid.

You could put all this in context of the looming War on Iraq. I can't be the only employee of Corporate America to be feeling that we've somehow got caught up in a bad bunch, that we've accidentally got in with the bullies. That the nation that pays my wages is doing so out of the dinner money it stole from the poor kids with glasses and freckles. As the days wear on I feel less and less comfortable about it all. Maybe it's time to change schools...

Quinquireme is back in the house, after a frightening foray into the world of the wealthy middle-class Caribbean vacation. A week of watching H. sip Pina Coladas under the palm trees on the tropical paradise island of St Lucia (my zero-vice-tolerance meant I quaffed nothing stronger than pineapple juice the whole week) has left me with a patchy tan and a feeling of nausea and horror at the senseless luxury enjoyed by the unthinkingly well-off. Made even worse by the realisation that my grip has finally been weakened and I've been sucked all the way down into the Sarlacc Pit of the Bourgeoisie.

It was never meant to work out this way - I always wanted to be an archaeologist or a waitress. I was never supposed to become a highly paid corporate whore with a silver sports car, a silver mobile phone and a silver iPaq. That kind of thing used to fill me with revulsion. Now look at me! You try and make excuses like "I wouldn't normally have gone to St Lucia, really we were just visiting my fiance's parents, who live there on their yacht", but that doesn't sound too good either. Anyway, Christ, I sound like I'm asking people to pity me. Actually I'm just giving vent to my self-loathing. I'll stop now.

Meanwhile...im Osten etwas neues: Albert the Gorilla is back! Go Albert!

The Great Firewall Of China

Just learned from nibus that Albert the Gorilla has fallen victim to the notorious Chinese firewall', thus putting an abrupt end to simian dispatches from Shanghai. Tunnel for freedom, Albert!

In other news: H. was attacked by a 'youth' in the illicit 24-hour off-licence on Saturday night. No harm inflicted, but tut tut the rising crime wave (and still FPD Savills want £295k for their poxy railway-benighted cubbyhole on Prince of Wales Road).

H., J. and I went to Somerset House on Saturday to try and track down the owner of The Wisdom of Epictetus, only to find that it's been turned into some sort of art gallery and is no longer the place to go to look up your ancestors. Any suggestions as to a suitable starting place would be much appreciated.

The Wisdom Of Epictetus

Struggling to write this from a condition of indescribable weakness and sickness - well OK, I have got a cold. But my legs are shaking a bit, and I nearly fell asleep in the car on the way home. DVT nothing, the real danger of long-haul flights is catching your fellow passengers' bugs. Thought I'd better write something though, if only to appease the EHA "crowd" (there's at least three of them) who have temporarily appeared - hello chaps and welcome. Make yourselves at home, feel free to toast a nice muffin or something before settling down to browse through the fascinating treasure trove of original thought and pithy observations that is my archive.

Anyway, update: home from San Diego, nothing much to report. Next stop: St Lucia, departing 8th Feb. Weekend highlights: watching the incomparable El Sid play a relatively well-attended gig in the world-famous Chat's Palace in Homerton, followed by a trip to Chichester (the San Diego of the English Riviera) to show the engagement ring to H's grandmother. Next project: trying to fill in the gaps in H's family tree, with particular reference to a mid-19th century Fellow of a London college who once owned a book of philosophy entitled The Wisdom of Epictetus. If that's not a strong lead, I don't know what is.

Moon Landings, Suspiciousness Thereof

Right, here I am, back from Geneva, and on my way out to San Diego (actually departing on Saturday), where I will have the privilege of being in the same room (a very large room, admittedly) as Dr Buzz Aldrin, Astronaut, Airman, Scientist and Patriot!

In anticipation of the probing questions I am going to put to Dr Aldrin regarding the authenticity of the moon landings, here is a reminder of some aspects of the lunar conquest that don't quite add up.

Engaged

What a day for news - a suspect has been named in the Camden "body parts" murder, the US has sent 11,000 troops to the Gulf, and H. and I are engaged to be married!

Yes, readers, he proposed to me last night in someone's back garden in N16, amid fireworks being set off by youths outside a kebab shop in Stoke Newington High Street. Both families duly informed and we are utterly exhausted with the whole rigmarole already. Going to buy the ring on Saturday. Wedding not until next year - possibly on an island in the beautiful river Orb in the Languedoc. Now facing the hideous prospect of having to read Brides and Setting Up Home magazine (shudder).

Don't be concerned though; this isn't going to turn into one of those wedding blogs. Normal claptrap will be resumed forthwith. And lest I forget in all the excitement - a very Happy New Year to all my readers and may 2003 bring you happiness, plenty and fulfilment.

Charles Dickens once lived in Camden (16 Bayham Street, to be precise). If he came back today, stories like this would make him feel right at home. I reproduce a particularly nineteenth-century portion here:

The mutilated bodies of a woman and teenage girl have been found dumped in bin liners behind a pub in Camden, north London. A double murder inquiry has been launched after the remains were found by a homeless man foraging for food in a bin in Royal College Street. He carried the leg parts to a nearby hospital for tropical diseases where shocked staff called in police. One of the black bin bags found behind the College Arms contained a torso, believed to belong to a white girl aged as young as 14. Two sections of a leg, thought to belong to a white woman in her 30s, were found in another bag at the scene.

Everything about this story makes me feel sick - children murdered at Christmas time, people with nowhere to live being forced to scavenge for food over Christmas. At the risk of sounding like a Daily Mail reader (I assure you nothing could be further from the truth), is this how far our "progress" has brought us?

Still, on more cynical note, I hope this latest atrocity will be the final pin in the bloated pig's bladder that is FPD Savill's ploy to sell one-bedroom flats on Prince of Wales Road for a third of a million pounds a go. "Oh, but this *is* a nice area. Really it is. So there are a few murders, and the filthy Silverlink train runs right outside your bedroom window, but it's a small price to pay for the convenience of living so close to Iceland, Woollies and the Drinker's Paradise off-licence..." Would be house-buyers are strongly advised to get a grip.

Aha, found the answer to the Beacon Hill question, thanks to www.thorneycroft.com. Apparently it's named after one or more Beacon Hills in Wiltshire, as a Wiltshire landowner, Thomas Poynder, owned the land in Holloway on which this and other streets were built on the 1870s. So in a way, it is named for the ancient beacon fires lit by prehistoric colemen, just not in that actual place.

I'm not much in the habit of linking to "interesting things I found on the internet" (that's really for the boys, I think), and still less to things I read in other people's blogs. But I've got to make an exception for this fabulous thing I found via Ben Hammersley - someone has started to write up Samuel Pepys's diary as a blog! We're probably witnessing the start of a new craze for 2003 (I'd write up Dorothy Wordsworth, if I had the time), but you do get the feeling that however cool and modern this is, the paper versions are still going to be around when the websites have long gone. Whoever said we're living in the new Dark Ages was undoubtedly correct.

[...] I wrote the above, and now I've had some more thoughts about it. Now I've linked to Pepys's diary on the sidebar there, it's like he's here among us, walking the same streets, eating the same leftover turkey etc. It's like a telescoping of time, ourselves and our past selves suddenly living side-by-side. And I love the whole linking thing - links to maps and explanations and descriptions of places etc. When I was very little I had a persistent fantasy about writing a diary and putting it in a huge tea-chest with all of the objects and photos of people, places etc. that I had referred to in the diary. In my teens, I did keep a diary in a box (actually a series of yearly biscuit tins) together with related objects, and I have several of these boxes in my cupboard still. So I suppose in a way I was envisaging a kind of blog format, with the source text and the links to mentioned objects close by... who'd have thought that it would come to be so easy and take up so little space!

Merry Christmas to you all - hope you had, and continue to have - a fab festive season.

I've just started reading The Fields Beneath by Gillian Tindall. It's an incredibly detailed history of Kentish Town, intended to be a blueprint for uncovering the history of inner suburban areas everywhere. It's beautifully written, completely authoritative and with an excellent wry sense of humour woven in.

Who would have thought that town planning could be so fascinating - anyone who's read Emergence and liked the sections on organic versus planned developments will enjoy the minute (I mean really minute, there's practically an inch-by-inch description of where the River Fleet and its tributaries used to run) detail in this book of how urban areas develop and are built. I'm on my way to becoming a Kentish Town bore, and am already delighted at the knowledge that Anglers Lane, which my street runs off, used to be a track taken by people going to fish in the river Fleet (also known as the Ken Ditch, from where Kentish Town takes its name) before the river was encased in an iron pipe and built over.

Note to Mark - you would really like this book - get it from the Owl Bookshop! Same goes for anyone else who lives in Kentish Town, Camden, Highgate, Holloway and surrounding areas. Maybe I'll even find the answer to my question about Beacon Hill in here.

By electing to spend Christmas Day together just the two of us, it seems that H. and I are conforming to no demographic known to man. He's a meat-eater and I'm a vegetarian, which essentially makes it Christmas dinner for one, yet the fridge is full of stuff designed for extended families - 18 chipolatas (the lowest denomination available), half a pound of pork, sage and onion stuffing, a month's worth of potatoes, and a giant net of sprouts. Unable to face the prospect of a giant bag of carrots, I've opted for one of those teeny trays of baby carrots, with some baby leeks thrown in for good measure. H is getting smoked salmon for a starter (another giant pack, most of which will probably end up in the cats' dish) while I'm having an onion tartlet. For the main course, H. is getting a kind of pre-stuffed chicken breast affair, and I'm having vegetarian Lincolnshire sausages. For pudding I'm making a tarte tatin - it was going to have pecans in it, but I seem to have eaten them all already.

Christmas Day is the only day in the year that I ever cook, so we're not expecting Nigella Lawson quality, or even Delia. But if the worst comes to the worst I guess we could always crash Jamie Oliver's place up the road, break his arms and nick his turkey dinner. Incidentally, I confirm that there is no Sainsbury's within miles of Oliver's Kentish Town pad, so I can only assume he actually shops in Somerfield like the rest of us.

Went to see the Two Towers last night in the seriously horrific new complex in Fulham Broadway (shudder). I *loved* the film, it's got such amazing scenery, and the Man, the Elf and the Dwarf are great, although the Hobbits continue to be deeply irritating, especially Elijah Wood, who has about five lines in the whole film and spends the rest of the time looking pained and pathetic and in need of a good slap. The Ent was just as I had imagined from the book, and Gollum is spot on.

The Two Towers is all about impending war, and I spent at least half of the film in tears because it's all about to come true, and we're on the wrong side. It's difficult to feel good about Aragorn & Co pelting the Uruk-Hai with arrows, and the Riders of Rohan turning up at the 11th hour like the Prussians at Waterloo, when you're plagued with a queasy feeling that Sauron and Saruman are just Bush and Blair with beards. The Middle-Earth/Middle-East connection is too close for comfort too. Well, if it comes to it, I'm with the Ents, even though the "Which Lord of the Rings Character Are You?" test has me down as Galadriel.

Wooo - one superhuman effort later, and all the Christmas cards and presents have been wrapped, sent and delivered, the Christmas tree has been bought and decorated, peace has been made once more with my grandmother (whose 92nd birthday it is today - happy birthday, Granny!), the cleaner (whose name is Lolita - I kid you not) has been given her Christmas bonus, and all the work-that-had-to-be-done-before-Christmas is complete! Wooooooo! I'm off to have a nice hot bath and a game of Tomb Raider to celebrate.

When, oh when, oh when will it end? It's the week before Christmas and I have back-to-back meetings all week, was in the office till 9.15 last night ploughing through piles of rubbishy work things, the Christmas cards haven't been sent, the Christmas presents haven't been wrapped or sent (but at least this year they've been bought), I'm owed four thousand pounds in expenses and consequently haven't got any cash, I got a speeding ticket, the VAT man is after me and I haven't eaten anything sensible for days. Things have been like this for two and half years solid now. Is it actually going to be like this for *ever*?

Apart from all that, I keep meaning to say something about the Lilac Time. I used to have this huge crush on Stephen Duffy (I await charl's disdain) when I was 15 and he was in the charts with that dreadful "Kiss Me" song. Then when I was 17 he came out with the first Lilac Time album, now tragically discontinued, which was the greatest album ever (I await nibus's disdain) - beautiful folk-pop melodies and quirky lyrics that managed to stay just on the cool side of twee. How I *loved* him.

Sadly, in the early 90s I went all indie and rave, and Stuffy and I went our separate ways. Last year, though, I bought the Compendium album, which now lives in the CD player of my horrible soulless company car, and it's like rekindling an affair with a childhood sweetheart. In my mind, over the intervening decade and a half, he wrote all those love songs for me and for our long-lost romance. In a parallel world, I could have been the Girl Who Waves At Trains. In this world, it turns out that I am just the Girl Who Keeps Excel Spreadsheets. Perhaps it's not too late - Stephen, if you're reading this, please come and rescue me from corporate purgatory.

A mammoth work week just gone, featuring 15-hour days and a particularly enjoyable 48-hour stretch with no sleep and no food other than vending-machine hot chocolate and vending-machine blueberry Frusli bars. At one point I somehow managed to get myself quoted in the press in Norway. Still, by yesterday it had become clear that my project (product launch) was an overwhelming success and that [whisper it] senior management was very pleased. Given that senior management is currently in New Zealand gearing up for the semi-finals of the Louis Vuitton Cup, I personally doubt the veracity of this.

In other sailing news, huge excitement welled up on Tuesday as it seemed that against all odds, Sanjola had pulled into the lead of the Atlantic Rally, ensuring safe passage into the history books for Cap'n Dicko and First Mate Jennifer. Sadly it turned out that our seafaring heroes were heading in entirely the wrong direction, and had to pull a quick U-ey round the Cape Verde Islands to rejoin the others mid-fleet. Looks like they'll have no trouble fulfilling Cap'n Dicko's ambition of being in St Lucia for his birthday though. Go, Yacht Sanjola!

Ooh, and as ordained, Smat has now got a blog. And a new job! Go Smat!

Got to go, Simon Schama's on telly. The Picts, Simon!