I'm just back from Portugal where the sky really was as blue as appears in this photo of the castle in Lisbon. It was that way for the whole week.

Our rented flat was very well positioned for getting around the city, being near a metro station. It's disadvantages were its eccentric room layout, its collapsing bed, its limited supply of food preparation tools (one blunt bread-knife) and by the time we left its broken teapot. Oh, and one of the keys.

We saw the principal sights, ate the principal dishes, drank the principal beverages and escaped the attentions of the principal felons, said to be pickpockets.

So it's back to the frustrations of ordinary life. What has happened to the supply of small, cheap diaries with a pencil in the spine? Have Collins and Letts, those giants of Scottish diary production, decided that small is ugly and that pencils in the spine are potential deadly weapons?

A visit to six shops uncovered nothing. Will the internet come to my rescue?