As a side effect, the sharks got smarter

Many of you are familiar with my, er, talent for transport and punctuality. This evening I was particularly on-form: it took me six hours to arrive, and I somehow managed to switch transports no less than five times (as well as ending up on the other side of the river).

I didn't mind missing the entire rugby game (France vs the All Blacks), but I wasn't so pleased to find that I had missed pub licensing hours. Yes, by the time I arrived I wasn't allowed inside. Cozzie laughed as I stood at the door, making sad faces.

Ally Mead is in London for the week, and she was looking forward to catching up with another — only I honestly couldn't remember meeting her before. I felt awful for entirely forgetting a person, and I'm sure she wasn't exactly thrilled at being forgotten.

It reminds me of one year in high school, where I shared the exact same timetable with a particular girl. That is, every time I went to class, she was there too. Every period of every day for the whole school year. It took me until September to realise this fact.

School would have started in February or March, so that's around seven months.

Top tip for London

Don't leave your bag unattended while you go inside to get drinks. Especially when there are signs saying things like:

Bag thieves in the area.

Don't leave your bags unattended.

I know, I'm a fool and I've got nobody to blame but myself. Luckily, it only had a couple of valuables inside (and only one was irreplacable).

• My camera and memory card
• Asthma-style inhalers
• A new electric shaver
• A notebook with some journal notes, most of which had been typed in here.
• A collection of Edgar Allan Poe-try
• A souvinir pen or two from my travels
• A box of Space Man candy sticks (mostly eaten)
• An expensive-ish software engineering book

...and a partridge in a pear tree. The journal is a bit of a loss, everything else is just a bit inconvenient.

Actually, the bag itself was pretty useful — it was the rugged zip-off daypack from a Macpac backpacker's backpack. Much sturdier than the Secret Santa bag I use for weekend trips away.

Roskilde, day 1 - mea culpa

If you were taking more than a week off work to go to a festival in a foreign country (and paying a fair chunk of money for the privilege), what would you bring with you?

This is part 1 of a series of updates.

You'll need your passport, for sure, a sleeping bag, some clothes, maybe something to read. If it were you, instead of me, maybe you'd also bring your tickets.

That's right, I was in Denmark but I left my festival tickets on the desk in my room in England. They told me and my innocent companion that they would only let us in if someone in England took a photo of the tickets and send the photo to them by e-mail. Of course, it couldn't possibly be that simple...

Our bags went inside the campsite where we couldn't get at them, my phone was missing all the useful numbers and burned through its credit with sky-high roaming charges anyway.

Luckily there was a couple of no-shows at the local youth hostel, so we did get a bed for the night. I will owe many people many favours before this is over!