WINE WINE EVERYWHERE BUT NOT A DROP TO DRINK

SADDEST NEWS OF THE WEEK: Mum has had to go to South Africa for the funeral of her brother-in-law, Nando. Apparently she's keeping aunty Alice's spirits up, but uncle Nando died very suddenly and everyone's very sad.

I'm not really sure why, but Alison has a Saturday job at a vineyard in Virginia and yesterday we went out there to check it out with Emily and her friend Grace. Emily was late picking us up and we spent an hour like urchins, sitting on the steps just inside the front door to our building (WAY too hot to wait outside). While we were waiting, we bumped into Paula from upstairs who was on her way to see 'Edge of Heaven' at the arthouse cinema we've yet to visit, and also saw Jonathan. Twice. Once on his way out to get breakfast for him and Megan and once on his way back.

By the time Jonathan appeared, we'd had to fire into our picnic and were merrily scoffing the chicken nuggets (SO good. Seriously, forget fancy cold meats and cheese and olives - all Devo picnics from now on will only consist of cold chicken nuggets). Fortunately Emily turned up in time for us to have some picnic left for the vineyard and we sped off in her righteous ride - a sweet old convertible jeep. It was so hot yesterday that that's really the only place to be, other than perhaps submerged in a swimming pool.

It took about an hour to get to the vineyard, which is in a breathtakingly beautiful spot up on a hillside. Alison and Emily's other friends Kristy, Katie and Katie's sister were already there when we arrived, so we went straight in to do a bit of winetasting and watch Alison strut her stuff with the various flights of wine. I'm still not drinking and wasn't even inspired to fall off the wagon while surrounded by fine wine in a lovely setting. But it was fun to hear Alison's spiel and Max had a good time quaffing away. No spitting, though.

Once Emily, Grace and Max had decided on their favourite of the wines they tasted, we got a bottle of that and headed out to join the others outside, overlooking the vineyard. Then we just spent a really nice lazy, very hot afternoon sitting there eating our picnics and drinking wine (well they did). It was really nice and the other three girls were really fun. Alison's been in California all week (with Brewster! Things are getting serious...), so it was nice to see her again, but she was super-busy.

It became increasingly clear over the course of the afternoon that Emily has something of a predatory crush on Max, which got a little annoying. Especially as she insists on calling him Maxy, while everyone else seems to twig that that's what only people close to him call him. Anyway, far more annoying was a massive stretch limo that pulled up, blaring out music and deposited a massive group of women in garish t-shirts on something of a vineyard crawl. But they were soon squirreled away in a back room of the tasting building so didn't bother us again.

Because I hadn't been drinking, I drove us home in Emily's jeep (insurance here works so that anyone's insured to drive your car). Turns out it is a very sweet ride, but really tricksy to drive and the steering's kind of loose. But we managed to get back in one piece.

We decided to give 'The West Wing' a break for an evening and watch one of the NetFlix DVDs that arrived ages ago and have been mewing at us from the top of the TV ever since, as we constantly shun them for the trusty WW. We watched 'Sullivan's Travels', which came highly recommended by my most discerning friends/brother. But unfortunately - much like the only other Preston Sturges film I've seen, 'The Lady Eve' - I didn't really like it that much. It was ok, but not super-great.

Unfortunately last night we suffered the downside of the lovely collegiate feel of living next door to Anne and Megan and being able to flit between flats and have friends on just the other side of the wall - we heard Megan and Jonathan having sex. Hdddrrrdrdrrr. Fortunately our iPod alarm clock was loud enough to drown out the noise, but I'm not looking forward to the next time we bump into them! Awwwwwkward.

I came over faint AGAIN in church this morning. I don't know what's going on. But before that happened, I was amused by a cool little boy who had a telescope and scrutinised the vicar and readers through it.

After recovering from my funny turn (hooray for peanut M&Ms!) and a good chat with my sister, we took the metro miles away to Alexandria in Virginia. Alexandria is known as Old Town (there's a restaurant there which opened in 1967!) and is basically one long cobbled street that leads down to the waterfront and is lined with many quaint shops - excellent for antiquing, (if only I was into that). It's got a really nice feel to it and will certainly be on our list of things to do with visitors - it's lovely to just wander around and windowshop.

We took a really long time - including having lupper (the 'brunch' of the afternoon) at a nice grill restaurant - to get to the waterfront, where we were a little perplexed to see a bunch of parrots there, one of whom looked ready to eat a baby. Regardez:

But there was also a magician and a balloon artiste there, so they were part of the waterfront entertainment. Max bought me a massive ice cream and we sat and watched boats and ducks and a little boy terrorising the ducks.

After sauntering along the waterfront (not much to see), we took an old town trolley back up to the metro and went to Chinatown to see 'Wanted'. As we suspected, it was really pretty awful, but James McAvoy as an action hero - having been the most unlikely prospect since Keira Knightley as anyone alluring - was fantastic! He's such a dude. The whole thing looked like a computer game and I really liked a massively long shootout at the end, where McAvoy just dispenses with everyone in his path (I make no apologies for spoiling a film you really shouldn't be going to see anyway).

OPERATION HOLIDAY

CHECK IT OUT: look at the crazy weird bug that was on our window the other day! It's got a weirdy long tail...

So this week has been pretty uneventful, but for a huge amount of 'West Wing' action. I'm slightly wistful about this time last year, when I was working on my favourite TV project ever - the Stephen Fry documentary - and everything was crazy busy and dynamic, but really really fun and excellent. Ho hum. A few daytime trips to the park will stamp that out!

A while ago, one of the partners at the TV company I was working for before we left London employed me to do half a day's work every week between now and November, monitoring the online activity in the US election. Partner man usually makes the Lib Dems' party political broadcast for them, but this time around would like to consult them on what would work best on the internet. So I have to check out Obama and McCain's websites as well as keeping tabs on any 527 groups doing anything significant (527s are the groups that are associated with a candidate but can campaign more aggressively and negatively than the candidates themselves can).

So this all sounded fine - keep my brain ticking over and get me money for our summer holiday (of which MUCH more later! 'citing!), but unfortunately it's proved such a small amount of work that every week since I was set the assignment, I've found it's fallen a bit by the way. So this week I've been catching up on about three weeks (1 1/2 days) worth of that work.

Obama's website is so impressive that by the time I finished analysing and describing it in great detail, I was inspired to donate to the campaign, so ordered a bunch of stuff from the online store (non-US citizens aren't allowed to directly contribute to any campaigns, but you can buy merchandise and get your money to them that way).

McCain's site on the other hand is just the most chaotic, boring turgid mess ever and - no word of a lie - every day I've been scrutinising it, I've found myself having to go for a nap! Every single time, no matter how much Dr Pepper I have beforehand or how awake I've felt for the rest of the day. McCain's site is a soporific mess. Ugh.

On Monday we walked down to Georgetown to see 'WALL-E'. We took a detour along the waterfront, which of course i've seen from a kayak but never the landlubber's view! It's really nice and has a big bit of grass right by the water, which must be nice for picnics and the like.

WALL-E is a triumph - I absolutely loved loved loved it and am so pleased that there are people out there with the kinds of souls the Pixar people must have - it's imbued with such a wonderful way of looking at the world and is really funny, touching and moving. The children of Pixar people must be very lucky - they have very cool parents and probably get to screentest all the movies in advance, too.

I thought I was going to be bothered by how much WALL-E looks like the robot from 'Short Circuit' crossed with ET, but I wasn't at all. I just chuckled at how the object of his affection - as so many of us - was basically a beautiful sleek iPod that looked like what aliens would look like if made by Apple. In fact Max told me that Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple) is somehow involved with Pixar, so perhaps this is no coincidence.

I had to keep reminding both Max and myself that it was animation, as all the textures and landscapes looked incredibly realistic - it was amazing. And I'd like to see 'Hello Dolly' now, too.

We've been trying to work out where to go on our annual two week summer holiday for ages. Max has got 1 - 14 August off work, but we couldn't decide where to go. Until this week! It had long been between Trinidad and Tobago (Max wants to get back to his steel drumming roots) and Costa Rica, because we're planning a big coast-to-coast roadtrip over 4 weeks at the end of our time here, so wanted to go somewhere outside the US that would make the most of us being on this side of the Atlantic already.

This week we finally decided on Costa Rica and I've spent most of the week earning my travel agent's qualifications! Unfortunately I contacted Patrick for advice, as his sister's best friend lives in Costa and Patrick told me that Leanna miscarried a few days ago. What's worse is that he is out of town until the middle of this month. It's just awful. They had been really cautious about getting excited (I only know she was pregnant because I guessed that was the reason Leanna has been poorly for ages) and were only too aware of how many first-time pregnancies often end in miscarriage, so hopefully they're taking a lot of strength from that. But it must be really hard to be apart and they also lost the house they were going for a couple of weeks ago, so they've gone from being about to own a house and have a baby to having none of that.

Umm, so we're going to Costa Rica! We decided there'd be more to do there than on T&T and are going to spend the first week travelling around the greatest hits of the country - a caribbean beach where turtles lay eggs, taking a boat through the rainforest, hiking up an active volcano, visiting hot springs with waterfalls (it'll be like in 'Cocktail'!) and going on a tour of a national park on the Pacific coast.

We'd love to be those intrepid travellers who fly into San Jose and then just wing it, doing all this under our own steam and going off the beaten track, but found our 5 weeks in Mexico/Guatemala/Belize a few years ago really hard, as we have no Spanish and just found it really difficult to move around, be understood and even book hotel rooms. So we're coming clean with ourselves, admitting that we're not as intrepid as we'd like to think (though I should imagine if Max was by himself, he'd happily go where the wind takes him) and sought the help of a tour company who've put the whole itinerary together for us. So we're paying them a lump sum and they're booking all our hotels, arranging private transport between all places and booking bilingual guides to take us on daily tours of wherever we are.

It's taken about 3 days of toing and froing to get all this in place (not helped by them having an internet outage due to rain and wind knocking trees onto the phone lines!), but the lady we're dealing with is super-efficient and nice and now we're just massively excited about our trip!

It took us ages to work out where to spend the second week, which we wanted to spend just staying put on one beach. But after extensive research, we've found a fantastic place on the Pacific coast, and are booked to stay in a bungalow on stilts right on the beach, with two private hammocks and a barbecue underneath!! It's going to be aaaaawwesome. I'm going to learn to surf. I just feel like something of a fraud, because I really don't feel strung out enough to deserve a holiday and am having quite a nice little break here in DC as it is, thank you very much! The flights were a nightmare (long story to do with countless malfunctioning websites), but we've finally found better ones than we thought we could ever get - less than $400 (£200) each!

While in travel agent mode, I also booked myself flights to Denver, so I can join Maxy at the Democrats' convention and hopefully get to see Obama speak when he does his final night speech in a football stadium, rather than the convention centre. It was only once I'd booked those flights that I realised that Max is going straight on to St Paul for the Republicans directly after Denver, so I cancelled my return flight and have booked myself on a flight from Denver to LA and then back to DC a week later! I'm going to visit my friends Tom and Nina and Tom and Bambi and am really excited as I've been hoping for ages to make the most of being this bit closer to them all.

So in the month of August, because every flight I'm taking involves a change, I'll be on 10 planes! I feel this is most appropriate of one with no job or steady income, but every day hail the weak dollar, as it's costing less than a cheap return to New York from London. All these plans have the added bonus of ensuring we're hardly in DC in August, which is when the weather gets so hideous that people just stay inside all the time - it's a humidity-orama. We're back for just a week in between Costa Rica and Denver, when Max's parents are coming to stay for 5 days.

Last night we discovered a whole new park near our flat and sat and watched baseball for ages - it was really cool. Then tonight we went to Ailsa's leaving do at overrated 'concept' restaurant and venue of choice for all BBC leaving dos, Vapiano. It was fairly lame and Max is really sad Ailsa's leaving, because she's by far the most fun person at the Bureau. We saw Geoff and Sarah for the first time in ages, as they've been on honeymoon fishing in Alaska for the last couple of weeks. But they're nowhere near as fun as that first night we met them. I also met an obnoxious colleague of Max's who everyone loves, but I find annoying and arrogant and had my dislike of him confirmed when he balked at our raving about 'The Soup'. It's a show on E! that's a bit like 'Harry Hill's TV Burp' - a sardonic (and quite handsome) host just takes the mickey out of clips from that week's TV. It's freaking hilarious and the greatest thing on TV. But fathead flamboyant man doesn't like it. Whatever.

Unfortunately I made a glaring booboo while talking to one of Max's more earnest colleagues when she was talking about her time in Jakarta and I made some reference to, "well that's how it is in India", only to have her pointedly correct me with "Indonesia, actually". Whoops. Yeah, I don't know how I got an A in Geography A-level either, so stop wondering!

In good news (Indonesia lady obviously hadn't talked to her yet), Ailsa's replacement nobbled me to say that they're desperate for freelance producers to do 'shifts' at the Bureau and she's really really keen to use me. They'd pay me to shadow someone for a couple of shifts (I have NO idea what a shift involves) and then if I liked it, they'd put me on some kind of casual rota. Sounds good to me, after all I am Little Miss Ten Flights. I just hope the shifts don't require a firm grasp of geography...

PHOTOS: DEVOS DO DC pt.2

Click HERE for random photos of the last 6 weeks or so...

SNOREth OF JULY

THE MOST TELLING SIGN THAT WE'RE IN DC SPOTTED TODAY: all the graffiti in the loo of the soulfood place we ate at tonight was about the election! It was still pretty crude and rude, but all about Obama and McCain, with a bit of old-skool Clinton thrown into the mix.

After our hot day of much walking yesterday, I was exhausted this morning as I got up and made breakfast for Tessa and Bob. They had to leave early, to get to upstate New York in time for 4th July fun tonight, and we were sad to see them go - it's been a really nice visit.

I was good for nothing, so we basically spent all day watching 'The West Wing'. Anne and Alison are both out of town, so it's not like we had the option to do fun 4th July things with someone to whom it actually means something. We're heavily into (the penultimate) series 6 of 'The West Wing' now and I heart Jimmy Smits as Matt Santos. It's really weird to be watching the storyline that was based on Obama (FACT. Though it was written like, 3 years ago) with Obama running such a similar campaign now.

We found out that Jimmy 'swoon' Smits was compeering the 4th July celebrations on the Mall this evening, but everyone says it gets really crazy busy down there, with masses of crowds and it's a nightmare to get back on the metro afterwards, so we decided to go to a roof terrace party thrown by one of Max's colleagues, just around the corner.

When we emerged from our 'West Wing' cocoon, we discovered that nearly everywhere - including most restaurants - was closed, like on the last public holiday here (Memorial Day). It had also been raining heavily, so we weren't even sure whether the fireworks were going to happen.

We had dinner at Madam's Organ (in Adams Morgan. Geddit?) because Max was jonesing for some soulfood, which he thought was sufficiently American-ish for such an occasion.

The air was really weird and moist - not humid, just heavy with moisture - when we came out of the restaurant and there was thick cloud cover in the sky. I wasn't much in the mood for a party, but there was a great view from Max's colleague's roof terrace and it was nice to see Ailsa from the Bureau, as well as meet a few new people.

We had to watch the fireworks from underneath umbrellas, as it kept raining, and I swear they weren't a patch on the Bonfire Night fireworks at Ravenscourt Park. But I took my tripod along so enjoyed taking photos of the display. My lack of patriotic party mood wasn't much helped by the distinctly unamerican-ish Turkish pop music that Max's (Bulgarian) colleague played throughout the fireworks.

We hung around for a little bit after the fireworks, then headed back to the apartment for some more West Wing. It was like walking through London in the 19th century, as the combination of the thick cloud trapping the firework smoke and the massive amount of moisture in the air created a thick fog everywhere - it was a real pea souper. In fact, as we left the roof terrace, we were surprised to see the Capitol building had disappeared, having had a great view of it before the fog rolled in.

TESS & BOB

MOST EXCITING TELEVISUAL DISCOVERY OF THE PAST COUPLE OF DAYS: we can get Wimbledon! Woo!

Yesterday was a hectic busy day, because we welcomed my aunt (and godmother) Tessa and uncle Bob who are visiting en route from Dallas (where they live) to upstate New York, where they're spending the summer.

Our Pennsylvania trip wreaked havoc with my guest preparation schedule, such that I spent yesterday tearing around the flat, trying to make it vaguely presentable. Unfortunately this place just doesn't really get clean, so it still looked really grubby after I'd hoovered and scrubbed everywhere.

But the real disaster was the bedding. As anyone who's stayed with us in London knows, I pride myself on Hotel Devo boasting lovely matching bedding, but have little to work with here. I washed the one set of spare bedding we have here and it broke the washing machine!! The washing machine just stopped, mid-cycle and when I tried to manually shift it on a bit, it just filled even more with water! Aaaarrrggghhh - SO not what I needed a couple of hours before Tess and Bob arrived.

Fortunately Anne was home and let me use her washing machine to rinse the stuff, but in doing so, I managed to drip water everywhere between here and there and the sheets weren't going to be dry before our guests arrived, so I had to cobble together a woeful mishmash of sheets and pillow cases for them, while hanging my head in hospitality shame.

What's slightly worse is our washing machine is full of water and because it's 4 July weekend, a maintenance man can't come until Monday. I feel sure that a washing machine full of stale water will in no way stink after 5 days in this hot hot heat. Nice.

I had just about got my act together by the time I opened our bedroom blinds to find Bob outside, having miraculously parked in our parking space, despite not knowing which ours is. They were going to call ahead from the road and I was planning to tell them stuff like that and that our front door isn't actually on 19th St, but they just arrived and as such I had to go down and rescue Tess from knocking on many wrong doors.

It was lovely to see them and they both seemed very well. I made them some tea and we sat down, chatting, then didn't get up again or stop chatting until it was time for supper! It was really nice to get to talk to them both at such length as, due to our gigantic family and their living over here, we usually only get 15 mins of 'how are you' at family dos before one or either of us has to move on to talk to someone else.

We walked down U St for supper on the roof terrace of Local 16, which was very nice. Last time I was scuppered by not taking ID and therefore not being allowed to drink, but this time it wasn't a problem, as I'm still off the booze (good thing I took my ID anyway though, as they wouldn't let me through the door without it, regardless of whether I was drinking).

A slightly flustered Maxy met us with the good news that he's definitely going to both conventions in August. This is great, as we worried he'd be expected to stay in the DC office and just give instructions from afar to correspondents who are at the conventions anyway. It'll be the political highlight of his working life here and he'll finally get to see Obama, having had to endure covering Clinton and McCain already!

Today was busy and utterly exhausting. I'm so embarrassed that I'm more knackered than my aunt and uncle in their 70s and 80s!

After a morning of sitting around chatting, I took them to see the Jacob Lawrence exhibition at the Phillips Collection down the road, which they both enjoyed. Tess has an even shorter attention span than me at galleries, so it was great - we just dashed around the greatest hits and then headed to the fancy Italian place down the road for an al fresco lunch of cold meats, bread and olives.

Weirdly, one of our fellow diners was the old chap I met in Georgetown aaaages ago - Lanny Carew - but I didn't re-introduce myself.

We stopped off at the BBC Bureau after lunch, where Max gave us the tour (turns out it's way bigger than I thought it was - I hadn't had that tour before), then headed to the Mall.

It's been SO hot today, it's unreal. Both Tessa and I came over all faint a couple of times and I regularly thought I was going to pass out. Tessa and Bob used to live here (Bob worked for the FBI) and Tess was a bit disappointed when we got to the Mall to see that there was a huge event taking place, with masses of tents and flags and things, as she was looking forward to seeing it in all its unencumbered glory.

I couldn't quite get to the bottom of what the event was, but it's been going on for two weeks and seems to be celebrating Bhutan, Texas and NASA. Quite what those have in common, I'm not sure. But we watched some Bhutanese folk dancing, which was interesting - the ladies were wearing funny clogs and the men's shoes were curly at the end like Rumplestiltskin - but they must've been BOILING in their traditional dress. I felt hot just looking at them.

Bob was very keen to see the World War II memorial, as that's the only one that wasn't here last time they visited. So we trundled down the Mall, desperately trying to not melt on the way. SO. HOT. It's been really brilliant getting to know Tess and Bob more, as there's lots I didn't know about their lives. Tess told a funny story about how she met Bob when she was travelling in Mexico and her Dad got him checked out by J Edgar Hoover's deputy, who knew a friend of his! And I learned about all the places they've lived, including Guadalajara, Bogota, Caracas and New Mexico and how Bob was the only FBI agent allowed into Jonestown in 1978.

I also hadn't realised that Bob served in WWII (just), spending two years with the airforce in the Philippines. By the time he got there, there wasn't much combat going on, but it was interesting to find out how he felt about it all. It sounds like he very much just took it in his stride. Anyway, there's a pillar at the WWII memorial for the Philippines, so it was nice for Bob to see that. I meanwhile was resisting the temptation to dive into the massive fountain in the middle. AND I was outraged to see that the memorial bears in the name of George W. Bush - it's the George W. Bush memorial. What an outrage. But I think it has something to do with him being the president when it was created.

I tried not to cry as we passed a hopeful-looking park ranger standing in front of a sign saying that his next talk was in 5 mins, with no-one waiting for him, and we limped home in the heat. I was absolutely exhausted when we got home and embarrassed that my aunt and uncle had way more energy than me!

We had dinner up the road at the very fancy Cashions, which Max and I had been wanting to visit for ages now. But unfortunately it was really disappointing. There just wasn't anything on the menu that appealed to me or to Bob and it all took ages to arrive. As we were leaving, Max's friend Oliver accosted us and it turns out that he'd been there all along. He was having dinner with a friend who does interviews for the Guardian. I'd like her job, please.

Having shunned the over-priced desserts at Cashions, we dug into some tasty Ben & Jerry's frozen yoghurt back at the apartment and chatted even more.

PHOTOS: AMISH COUNTRY

Click HERE for photos of our trip to Pennsylvania and Amish Country.

AMISH COUNTRY

MOST INGENIOUS INVENTION SEEN TODAY: the quillow. Is it a quilt? Is it a pillow? The beauty is, you don't have to decide. It's a pillow that can fold out into a quilt! I'm still grumpy with Max for not letting me buy one. We need a quillow in our life.

I woke up this morning to find a very dejected - and awake - Max. He'd been up for ages, having checked whether his McCain townhall piece had been published on the website yet and finding it significantly changed. He was sad.

He eventually pinned his editor down to explaining why and it seems to me that it's purely stylistic and that particular editor is the kind who has to change everything that comes their way, to justify their existence. But Max's confidence wasn't improved by the stinking unions still not coming through with anything for us to do today.

I watched the curiously awful 'Georgia Rule' (the film that Lindsay Lohan behaved so badly during the shooting of that the producer sent her an angry letter that was 'leaked' to the press) in our hotel room while Maxy made and waited for calls and eventually we decided to sack it and have a day out in Pennsylvania instead.

So we headed to Lancaster County, the heart of Amish country. We had lunch at a place that had llamas and a donkey and some billy goats in the garden and saw some real Amish people having their lunch. There were men with braces on their trousers and a little old lady with a white sort of cap on. The restaurant was this big wooden place that felt very homely and had a nice view (left). The food was very wholesome and our placemats had suggestions of graces we could say before eating, with different options for different faiths.

Afterwards, we headed up to the gift shop upstairs and got some locally-made trinkets before doing down the road to a village called Bird-In-Hand for a buggy ride around the local area. While we were waiting, we saw the weirdest most hairiest hen ever:

The ticket booth for the buggy rides was run by a little boy and his sister. They were both proper Amish. Eventually we got to go on our tour. It was just the two of us in a horse-drawn buggy with a guide who grew up Amish (his father was a pastor), but left the faith after his rumspringe - he got too used to driving a car and didn't want to give it up.

Our tour lasted about an hour and a half, as we clip clopped along little windy country roads just like in Dorset. It was a really nice and restful way to see the countryside, which was mostly big crops of corn that had grown unusually high this year, dotted with smallholdings with big bullet-shaped seed store towers.

It was a real privilege to get such a long one-on-one time with someone so familiar with the Amish and we ended up basically interviewing him for the whole time. We asked him about what it's like to be an Amish child, how they date, how they vote, what he reckons the future of the Amish is and lots and lots of other things. He knows the school teacher from the place where the massacre was a few years ago, so that was really interesting, if upsetting. Apparently the school house has been burned down now.

Part of the tour was visiting an Amish home, where we met an Amish fellow who has an extraordinarily industrial setup in his garage, for one who's not allowed to use electricity. He turns plastic tubes into railings using massive hydraulic machines. I would like to've taken a photo of him, as he had a beard and no moustache and braces on his trousers, but I was painfully aware that that would effectively reduce him to animal-in-zoo and apparently the Amish aren't too keen on photos anyways.

He had a huge house and lots of land and we went down into his basement, where they hold church services every Sunday. His wife was upstairs, sewing stuff and they had two little kids running around. Increasingly as our tour went on, the uncomplicated life of keeping things simple made real sense in such serene surroundings. But then we saw a man ploughing a field with some horses and I thought that things could probably be easier for him. We also saw a one room schoolhouse which was tiny.

It was all fascinating and I was really pleased that Max's work fell through (though I think he's a bit worried about it, as he was hoping to make up for the heavily-edited piece he wrote yesterday).

The satnav scaled new heights of awfulness on the way home, but we did manage to get to Ikea, where we bought massive frames for the Jacob Lawrence print Max bought me and a huge poster I got made of one of my photos of a beach in Montauk. Our flat looks well fancy now!