With Oscars in the offing I'm keen to see as many of the contenders as I can so as to measure my evaluations against those of the Motion Picture Academy. We don't always see eye to eye. Today after two failed attempts I managed to get to The Queen. I was quite prepared for Helen Mirren's excellent performance but not for what a really good film it was. The mingling of fact and conjecture was brilliantly done to produce an interesting, absorbing and at times moving story. Helen Mirren aside, the man of the match for me was Roger Allam as the Queen's secretary. He could have a solid future in deference and tact training.

I well remember the British public's mass display of grief at Diana's death. It so happened that the weekend she was being buried was scheduled for the implementation of system changes that I was managing for a major Scottish insurance company. It was a window that wouldn't reopen again for some three months but we had to go pretty high up in the company to get permission to work, most of British industry and commerce having shut down as a mark of respect. I've absolutely nothing but sympathy for any poor girl who hands in her dinner pail so young but I didn't understand or share that mass hysteria like feeling so I could see where the Queen in the movie was coming from.

Ewan rang me this week to tell me that he had been appointed Vice President. Unlike the American government who have only one, American corporations have several so he is one of a number but it's an impressive title so I'm altering my email and mobile phone records to list him under VP. What's more he's being relocated to work out of the UK so at some stage later this year it should be the case that my two sons and I are living in the same country for the first time in twenty five years or so.