Whisked from one world and plonked sharply into the next, I've had a bumper crop of research this week. Monday night was Edinburgh, Tuesday, Glasgow and last night. Aberdeen. Which means that right now, I'm speeding (well, technically being sped) down the East Coast in a super fast super cosy train, gazing out (between paragraphs and a cup of tea) at the snow-soaked landscape. It's incredibly fetching. Right now, for example, the sun is trying its hardest to burn through a particularly stubborn clump of cloud so it's like a little white circle in a giant sheet of grey, the trees are spindley spiking through the fog and on the breast of a distant hill, a handful of wind turbines are lazily lifting their blades. It's a lovely land.

I feel a little bit bad because what all of this has meant is that I've barely had time to miss our Secret Rapture. Though some would say this is a hundred times healthier than the absurd protracted period of more or less mourning offered up by our Festival endeavour.

Perhaps when this particular project is out of the way, I shall be hit with a wave of sorrow for my "mmm"s and the cumbersome though no doubt eloquent to the ear phraseology: "like for instance tonight".

But for now, for now, I'm blissfully untouched by it.

It must be a measure of my mediocre ("pleasant") talent.