Thanks to Nicholas and Hind for listening to my woes and cheering me up Friday evening at Nick's impressively well-attended party. Hind told me that one of her friends had come along to my last gig in Brighton and liked it so much he bought the CD. Nicholas told me, to my surprise, that I might yet win my before-the-war £20 bet with him over how long it would be after the start of hostilities in Iraq before national elections took place in the country, but also took pleasure in my having to pay for expensive Islington hippie fare because he threw his party in the wholly organic Duke of Cambridge “gastropub”. [Har har, Nick, it's called the “Duke of Cambridge, but it's in London. Damian will have to schlep down to The Smoke and subsidize designer farms. Très drôle!] Worse, I had to admit grudgingly that my salmon was superb. Overpriced of course.

Nicholas Grassly works for the United Nations.