No need for tranquillizers this morning. From the beginning of the second set, a few rallies excepted, the result was not in doubt. Djokovic was amazing and certainly deserved to win. Better luck next time for Andy Murray. He played hard, took his defeat well and doesn't give the impression of settling for second best so there's no need to consign him to history just yet.

I was celebrating one of Scotland's established champions last night at a Burns supper. It was a most entertaining evening, my toast to the lassies went down quite well and John Kelly delivered one of the best recitations of Tam O'Shanter that I ever expect to hear. I've made a mental note of some aspects of his performance and will unashamedly copy them should I have to do it myself sometime.

What a stressful morning I've had. I shall need to have a box of tranquilizers beside me when he takes on Djokovic on Sunday morning. Two boxes if it goes to five sets.

I was complaining to one of my French friends once about some nonsensical legal requirement. He agreed it was nonsensical but offered the explanation that with two buildingsfull of politicians in Paris with nothing else to do but pass laws some chunks of fool's gold would inevitably appear amidst the pure nuggets of sensible legislation. (He has a great sense of irony.)

A recent chunk (or nugget, depending on your point of view) is the requirement that, as of 1/1/11, a property cannot legally be offered for sale in France in the absence of a "Diagnostic de performance énergétique". By handing over €110 to an expert we have got four copies of a colourful five page report that tells us all sorts of things, some with unbelievable precision. Three of those copies have gone to agents who would otherwise have been obliged to take us out of their windows and delete us from their websites.

Mind you we've been in their windows and on their websites for two years without result so maybe a "Diagnostic de performance vente" should be demanded of them.

So on a scale from A (économe) to G (énergivore) of annual energy consumption required for heating the building and producing hot water we are in band G. Well a cursory look at our ancient building would tell you it's not in the snug and cosy league, even in summer. On the positive side though it takes so much energy to heat the place that there's none left over for global warming. On a similar scale dealing with the emission of greenhouse gases we're only at B.

It then gives you a whopping great number of the kilowatt hours needed per annum and tells you to the nearest cent what that costs and rounds off by estimating costs and return on investment for various ways of improving the energy performance of the building and tells you about the tax breaks available.

All very impressive but I don't think it will be an encouragement to prospective buyers.

A nice example of commentator's blight. As Murray and Dolgopolov warmed up yesterday the commentator was waxing lyrical about Murray's serve. What he particularly found impressive was that when Murray missed his first service the ball was going out rather than smashing into the net. This showed, according to him, that the ball throw was just right, that Andy was stretching and getting his elbow up and hitting the ball on a desirable upwards trajectory.

Then on the first point of the first game of the match Murray serves a double fault straight into the net. No comment from the commentator.

I got the recording organised perfectly last night and enjoyed Murray's game when I got up this morning. The one little disappointment was that I forgot not to switch on the radio when I woke and so heard the result before I got to the recording.

That rather drained the match of tension. But our man won. Roll on the next one.

Still having trouble recording the tennis. I set the machine to record channel 301 but but when I got up 301 was showing highlights of the previous day's play. I thought nothing of it, assuming the match would start after the highlights but then the highlights started all over again.

I discovered that behind my back the BBC had switched Murray's match to BBC2. Half an hour after the match got going I had to go out so I hit the record button. To no avail since not only hadn't they told me but they hadn't told the EPG which thought it was recording Pinkie the Perky Pig or some such kiddie programme and stopped recording when that finished - round about the end of the second set.

It's 2 love to the Beeb so far. Will I make a comeback in the second week?

It's not only bankers who can afford little luxuries in these straitened times. I clocked one of the labourers re-laying the pavement in Chambers Street this morning puffing on a 9 inch cigar as he worked.

I sat up late last night watching Days of Wine and Roses which I had recorded from its transmission in the middle of the previous night. My memories of the film had dulled over the nearly 50 years since I first saw it but I knew it was about the demon drink, that brandy Alexander was chief baddie and that Jack Lemmon played a stormer.

All of that was borne out by the re-viewing and although some of it seemed mightily melodramatic it was a story that could put the fear of death into you if you were sipping while you watched, even moderately. I had to cough furiously not to feel ill at ease about my hot toddies.

I toyed with the idea of watching another film to bring me up to 4.20 when Andy Murray's first match was due to start but decided to record it. It will be on the red button the BBC website said so I found red button on my channel guide, set the time and went to bed.

Morning came but no Murray. The recording was blank. I was I believe a victim of red button interactivity, which seems to be defined as splitting the activity between channels 301 and 303. Too bad if you plump for the wrong one.

I've hardly moved out of the house this week in an effort to shake off my cold. It's been a good opportunity to get stuck into reading some of the books that came my way at Christmas. For a short time I'll be able to talk knowledgeably about Tom Morris's role in the development of golf, an 18th century French expedition to the Amazon to establish the shape of the earth, and the banking meltdown as seen in fictional form.

But that knowledge will sink more or less slowly and more or less completely into the pulped fiction and non-fiction sludge from the hundreds of other books I've read and forgotten that constitutes my cultural capital.

There has also been some excellent snooker to watch, culminating today in an all Chinese final between the self-confident and articulate Marco Fu and the shy and tongue-tied Ding Junhui. I am looking forward to that as the second best treat of the week.

Top treat was Connor's moist and tasty homemade gingerbread.

And the cold? The treatment has been successful. I shall be fit for normal life tomorrow.

You know those cinema drink ads full of good looking people in fashionable clobber having a whale of a time in up market bars where the final frame entreats you quietly in a corner to be responsible and drink in moderation.

Well the financial services industry, no doubt full of remorse at the part it played in the crisis of the last couple of years, has followed the drinks industry's lead. I got a replacement credit card in the post today and there was a little sticker on it with a message in block caps - "PLEASE SPEND RESPONSIBLY".

It was easily peeled off so if they genuinely want people to hold back they need to get a bit more hard hitting with a permanent reminder on the card. How about a range of Dickensian affinity cards? A picture of a debtors' prison or of Mr Micawber reciting his famous mantra. That would surely do the trick.

I'm self medicating at bedtime this evening with a brace of hot toddies against the pesky cold that has plagued me for the past two weeks.

I've managed to ignore it and get on with whatever but I was sorely tempted not to struggle out across sheets of ice and under driving rain tonight. However the siren call of St Cecilia was too strong to resist.

For tonight was the first meeting of the new session of the Dunedin Wind Band within whose ranks I am determined to blow my horn. I am testing their announced welcome to all ages and abilities. They were in fact very welcoming and didn't seem to mind that for most of the time I didn't play because I was totally lost.

It looks like their system is based on the well known chuck him in at the deep end principle and I was pretty pleased that there were a couple of numbers where I managed to keep afloat for more than the first few bars. We'll see if I can make a better fist of it next week given that I'll have time to try some of the music at home. I say some because there is a lot.

In case enthusiasm wanes and I am tempted to backslide I paid all the dues for the four month session straight away.

British, and more particularly English, musical history is replete with traditional observances. One thinks of the candlelit va et vient of the Sally Gardens, of Malcolm Sargent's adoring promenaders, of Glynebourne's picknicking middle classes, of Elgar and the three choirs festival, of Britten and the Snape Maltings. But no musical hero has so marked our British inheritance than did Herr Händel.

His Messiah is a towering work of genius and the fact that it first saw the light of day in Dublin only endears it more to the British audiences who have made it their own over the ensuing 268 years.

I thoroughly enjoyed the performance that I attended this afternoon and was only momentarily thrown when at one point a man in the front row of the stalls rose to his feet before the notes of the section just finished had died away. Could you not have waited a moment, I thought, before dashing out for a pee? But he stood ramrod still and to my astonishment the entire audience followed his example. I rose with them not wishing to be remarked upon as a heretic. The singers then burst forth into the Hallelujah chorus and as it ended and we sat back into our seats my neighbour pondered whether George the third had needed to stretch his legs and that was why he had stood up at this point.

That alerted me to the fact that we were here observing a tradition. Now I am informed by Google that it was in fact George the second who stood up, and I have no reason to doubt that it was. Especially since I know that the mad one was George III.

What Google is less positive about is why he stood up at this point. Far be it from me to adduce a reason. Let me only entreat that should you attend a performance of Handel's Messiah you rise reverentially and with a straight face at the self same point to honour and maintain an important British musical tradition.

For those of you inspired by the haikus written by prominent Scottish literary figures and projected in words and pictures onto a screen on the side of the RSA building yesterday contrasting in a very haiku like manner with the music emanating from the stage alongside here's how to do your own.

Remember that Basho said that each haiku should be a thousand times on the tongue so don't rush into print before you've tested it thoroughly.

幸有れ