Friday

After watching City's fairly dismal showing in the Ukraine on Thursday night (observations in brief: Tevez looked like a member of the Taliban; Balotelli is officially a tosser; Dzeko has been unfairly criticised for his performance, and I thought he did reasonably well, given the position he was played in; Silva was inexplicably shit, like a grotesque parody of himself; Kolarov looked good going forward; there was not enough intent from us, and we are in danger of going out of the Europa League) I took Friday off.

I woke up to the news of the devastation in Japan (even at this moment, one can only hope that the nuclear power situation doesn't worsen) and my thoughts immediately turned to my very good friend who lives in Yokohama. A check on the map seemed to indicate that the area in which he lives would be less likely to have suffered than some others, but I had no way of knowing what he had been doing when the earthquake struck. He has taken up snorkelling over the last couple of years, and (I think) works in Tokyo, so there was a possibility that he might have been caught up in it all.  It took me more or less the whole day to find out that he was all right. A couple of times I rang the Foreign Office number, but hung up when I realised that I didn't have enough details about him to be of much use. I know his name, phone number and home town, and that he is an English teacher, but that's about it. In the end, I received a text message from him, and was very glad to hear he was safe.

So I was free to enjoy my evening at the BBC Radio Theatre, watching a recording of The Museum of Curiosity, featuring Dave Gorman (who replaces Bill Bailey as the 'curator'), John Lloyd and three other guests. This was quintessential Radio 4 fare, and was mostly highly enjoyable, being largely just an amiable chat among a few cuddly eccentrics, complete with erudition hidden in the frivolity. My friend John accompanied me, and he is one of the gregarious ones, striking up conversations wherever he goes, so I trailed dutifully after him, enjoying the experience, realising that I am not one of the gregarious ones.