Seachain an duine a bhíonn ina thost

Today I'm bored and feeling a little bit unwell. I woke up with what may have been a temperature this morning, although it may also just be that some rooms in the house were drastically overheated and others quite cool, and now I have a big bad headache. So I'm still at home, I haven't ventured forth into the exciting world of London yet today.

Actually, I'm losing my enthusiasm for sightseeing. I'm finding it hard to motivate myself to get up and look at things all day on my own. Anticipating days like this, I visited the big tourist office in Piccadilly and picked up lots and lots of leaflets with lovely names like 'Your Guide to the Big Smoke', 'Be a free range Londoner', '101 Reasons to Love London' and, bizarrely, 'Quizzle', a novel concept combining sightseeing with puzzles.

So I've spent most of the day reading these exciting guides and looking up websites they mentioned, and I'm getting some of my enthusiasm back. For example, I hadn't visited the V&A because I thought it was going to be terribly arty-farty, like the Tate Modern. But now I've had a thorough look on their website and although some of it sounds dull there's also lots of interesting-looking bits.

Oh how exciting, my phone has just rung and it was Nick who has invited me to The Oval this afternoon to watch some cricket! Surrey v Hampshire, that promises to be a corker. I'd better read up on how it all works before going. Oh this will be lovely, I'm terribly excited!

Well I probably have time for another hour or so of attraction-researching. Tomorrow I've booked tickets for the BBC Television Centre tour, and on Thursday I'm considering doing the Thames Path from Albert Bridge to Tower Bridge. That's 6 miles on the south bank or 5.2 or something on the north bank. I'll probably weave between the two. I do fancy a bit of walking. All this rain has been such a nuisance, it makes you not want to sit in parks, and if you don't want to sit in parks you have to either keep walking all the time or pay people for the privilege of sitting in their building.

So there. This weekend is the Thames Festival and the Great River Race so there's still exciting things to look forward to.