Last week flew by faster than any week I can remember of late.

Perhaps it was the intensity of work over the last bit. I've been on the road doing lectures and presentations and at the museum giving hardhat tours and suchlike that 7 whole days went by before I could say boo to any one of them.

I have found that it is possible to walk through a construction site in high heels - as well as climb 20 foot ladders in a short skirt. And that a hard hat looks rather fetching when worn at a rakish angle.

I've never let fashion get in the way of anything if I wanted to do it badly enough.

(Except for climbing in the rigging. I am extremely superstitious about that and insist on wearing exactly the right shoes and simply must have my lucky-won't-fall-out-of-the-rigging ring on. One has to have standards...)

So it's been a wild ride and I'm sure that all of you who normally see me or talk to me are thinking that I've been abducted by small dancing voles or the ghost of Chatterton or something.

While either prospect might be not altogether unpleasant, the reality is that I haven't had two minutes to put together in weeks.

Until last night. Last night, right before I left work, Jim called and said that we had been invited to have dinner at the Duke of York's new restaurant with his brother, sister-in-law and nephew.

So we met them at the River Room and had a blast. We then walked around Yorktown, ran into lots of friends and went home, tired and happy.

We got up at - for us - an ungodly weekend hour - to meet Bill and Kim and Jack for breakfast and then they came by to see our new house. It's the mirror image of their old house from a few years back and we had a great time playing with Jackson and the three 'meows' - as he called them.

Today has been that kind of day that one needs. It flows by like honey and gives you exactly the kind of mental and physical break that is too often lacking in everyone's lives these days.

I have done exactly nothing today.

And that has made all the difference.