Having not written for many months, there is a lot that has happened. The best thing is that I am now engaged to M. (Over one month now!) It was organised on my part as a complete surprise. The surprise element meant that I had to buy the ring. Buying a ring is very cool. Everybody loves you and when you finally choose one (which is not easy!), they love you even more. The game was nearly up on the night before the proposal though. I was at the bar of a local pub and at that time some friends came in, saying that they were only going to stay for a couple of minutes. M went rifling though my manbag on the Friday night to get their wedding acceptance card out, and somehow (somehow!) managed to miss the box!

We've been drinking champagne ever since.

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The Australia itinerary is practically sorted; just the campervan to organise! We are flying into Sydney, spending some time there and then travelling into the Blue Mountains with friends. After a few days' there, we wave goodbye to one friend and fly off with the other one to Cairns and the Daintree Rainforest. After a few nights in a lodge, we are on our own for a couple of nights in Cairns itself, in a hotel with a harbour view. The disadvantage is that you hear the ships horns but we'll be on one of those the first day, snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef; who knows about the other one? The hotel is rated highly in tripadvisor and that has yet to fail us. Finally, on to Melbourne with a number of days on the Great Ocean Road in said campervan.

Very excited obviously.

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Skiing was brilliant. Courchevel is a great skiing resort. I skied down pretty much every red in the area which we were in and was neither scared nor swearing at anybody all the time! I took M down every blue. Every blue. That was great.

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I have at many jobs to be getting on with and it's 11.15pm on a school night: hang up the laundry, wash the dishes, put out the bin, pack, get ready for bed. Lots.

I was going to write something a few weeks ago but I got a headache. And I have kept it for four weeks. I had another blood test today in the hope that might find something that the previous blood test, ECG, chest x-ray, CT scan (with and without contrast) and physical tests haven't and that the ibuprofen, codeine and some migraine drug hasn't cured. It is getting better so I suspect it will be "cured" before I get to see somebody at the headache clinic. Oh yes, it's actually called that, rather than what I thought should be a neurologist!

It's not a migraine because I don't have any of the symptoms apart from some paresthesia. The doctor initially thought it might be a stress/tension headache. Hmm. Very stress-free period of life, I'd say.

I have been taking it easy. I have been out for dinner twice in the past four weeks and been to see Atonement.

Atonement made me cry, which was kinda embarrassing. I tried not to but then decided it was dark enough that I could get away with a few tears. Brilliant movie, and I don't want to spoil it for anybody by telling you what happens.

Anyway, I also decided to book two holidays this past week. The first one is a week in Prague later this year! Total cost for two was £120 for flights and £450 for hotel, so under £300 each. I only just realised that the price included breakfast and airport transfers. Not bad. The second holiday is a week in Courchevel 1650, where I have never skied. For some reason, it reminded me of slipping head-over-heels in some bar in 1850 two years ago. I'm surprised I didn't break something. Did everybody laugh back then?

We almost missed our flight to Nice on Thursday!

Everything was ready (pretty much) the night before, we woke up early and were ready to leave by 9am. Considering we had to check in by 12.30pm at the latest in Manchester, that should have been enough time... but not if your wipers refuse to work halfway through the drive and it's raining so hard that you can't see out the windscreen. So the RAC were called out at about 9.40am. We were (temporarily) fixed by 11am and we were in the short-stay car park at around noon, enough time to rush to the check-in desk for out flight. The RAC are great because the guy wanted to fix it properly but due to the lack of time couldn't. It still worked great though.

Nice was great too. As with every holiday, you don't bring something that you need. For me it was a pair of shorts because it was too hot for jeans! So after refusing to buy a pair for €300 in the designer stores around about our hotel, we found a great store called Jules, which is a cross between Gap, H&M and O'Neill. For the most part, we ate and drank loads, went to the beach and had a great birthday night bash in Monte Carlo in its famous casino.

It goes down as the only time I have ever worn black tie outside of England.

I woke up this morning at 10.40am, after 11 hours' sleep, feeling groggy and thinking it was Saturday! Away with the fairies....

I did remember to shave this morning because I thought it might help with the hay fever: less hair for the spores to get attached to. Maybe I should get a haircut before Thursday? I sorted out some investment stuff and checked my money and some travel arrangements. One thing I will be doing this time is letting the bank and the credit card company know that I am going to be abroad: it will stop a repeat of the Rome incident, where they refused one of my cash withdrawals. And the Nice weather prediction doesn't extend far enough just yet.

Having access problems at work hasn't been the only distraction in my life. Last week, I went to the North Wales coast, somewhere near Bangor to play in the water of the Menai Strait. Brilliant. On the Saturday, we spent all day sailing in a racing yacht. I did get a few bruises on my upper arm from when I turned the boat the wrong way (aka 90 degrees) when we were sailing into the wind. The boat's deck went vertical (it's counter-balanced), we had to hang on tightly to the wire and one of the guys got very wet (but hung on). Basics were understood by the end of the day: tacking and gybing.

The Sunday involved sticking your arse in the centre of a rubber tyre and being dragged around by a power boat, followed by an afternoon of windsurfing. (Think Alton Towers for the rubber tyre....)

There have been various weddings and visits to friend, and I'm off to Europe next weekend. A bit worried about the hayfever.

The IT systems at work are conspiring against me. After last week's access problem, this week it has been a complete profile problem. I have been deleted from the system! Brilliant. Somebody forgot to stop the automated job from running... or stopped it half-way through... or something but essentially everything is screwed up.

So I have a new used id because it is impossible to restore my old one, an incomplete list of systems, none of my documents and no access to e-mail. Four days now. And four days since this all got escalated, i.e. placed on a priority list to get it fixed.

Some ridiculousness: the password(s) I was given were incorrect but they couldn't reset them because (1) I didn't have any security questions and (2) didn't have access to the system to set my security questions. I won't go into the "just send us an e-mail... " "I can't because...." exchange.

Still no sign of my P45 but I now believe it is only a matter of time.

After Boeing Boeing it seems I can't stop going to the theatre. There's been The Boy Friend at the Theatre Royal and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in Stoke. Both were great but Joseph was the surprise! The guy who played Jason was a brilliant, powerful singer and you really felt for him. (They created a good party atmosphere so that helped sway me.) Next up is Beauty and the Beast at the Grand Opera House because I bought (I hope!) some tickets through work.

It's interesting to note that for my birthday weekend in London, I must have vetoed pretty much every musical going, except Dirty Dancing.

Oh and How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying is on soon so I might see that show too if M is up for it!

So what do you reckon is a good birthday present: an age-defying male facial (!), a Paul Smith wallet, a Police watch, some money, a head torch or a lemon tree? Though so. I think they're all great presents, although I have a weakness for the watch and the wallet.

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Saturday started off badly. Our train was cancelled so we had to fight (i.e. walk quickly) for our seats in the first-class carriages, something you don't expect when you've paid almost nothing for them. (I had some old free first-class tickets to use up.) But the rest of the weekend was great.

So in London, we headed for our hotel. I was a little worried that it wasn’t going to live up to my expectations. The Athenaeum was the great deal for a hotel in Mayfair (on Piccadilly). The room wasn’t ready so we left our bags and headed out for lunch and a little shopping. Back in the hotel, we got a bit of a surprise when we realised that we had been upgraded to a park-view room – it was great!

The pre-theatre dinner at Arbutus was lovely. It was £17.50 per person for a three course meal each, a bargain when a main is about that price alone. They sell the wine in a 250ml carafe as well as by the bottle. Since we were off the theatre afterwards, we went for a carafe but ended up with two because it was so nice!

Our seats -- obtained at 7pm just before everybody else turned up to pick up theirs -- were okay, up in the gallery about six feet from the bar. This meant that I was first of about 100 people at the bar. Excellent. And they sold their soft drinks in cute little bottles. The play itself was very funny and is recommended if you can get tickets.

We had the best time in the whiskey lounge back at the hotel. Again, we were lucky! We arrived late enough that we weren’t the only ones there but early enough that we got one of the best tables. Anyway, I had a huge amount of fun choosing something to drink: the 1977 vintage Ardberg was unavailable so I went for the 18-year-old Coal Ila. Very smooth.

I really wanted to find somewhere to eat sushi. Unfortunately, nowhere (similar to Nobu) was open on the Sunday so we decided to eat at Itsu! It essentially a Japanese version of Pret! With lunch over with, we had a little wander round Harrods and then The British Museum. (Terracotta warriors arrive in September.) With about three hours between the museum’s closing time and the return train, there was still food to be eaten. I remembered a great little Chinese restaurant with an indoor river and a bridge -- much better than it sounds -- and found it very quickly once I got my orientation of Leicester square the right way around. A dim sum platter, some barbecued pork, noodles, rice and some Chinese broccoli.

We caught the 8.45pm train back to York, wondering whether we could justify travelling by first class on all our train trips to London!

We're done. I have booked the train tickets, the hotel for Saturday night in Mayfair, the pre-theatre dinner (at Arbutus) and two seats at the evening performance of Boeing-Boeing.

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I got my modem installed from Virgin (after spending an age explaining that I really, really didn't have one). The installation was more of a faff than I thought. The guy had to install two boxes -- who knows? -- but I didn't want him to destroy the work I had done decorating. The solution was to just install them in the corner where nobody will see them (and he did a great, neat job). The wireless router took a little longer than I thought it would. The laptop connected to the router but not the web, yet the router was pinging the web fine. Eventually realised that it was an IP address issue on the laptop and I have fixed it.

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Decorating! I have finished the living room and almost finished the dining room. There's probably only another two days' work in it: a second coat of the ceiling and a second coat to half the wall. The most difficult part was painting the ceiling above the stairs! That part may need three coats!