On Thursday I will be going to Paris and staying home all next week, it's my vacation days I have to use up by the end of May.

I am looking forward to it, although we are so busy at the moment, having just started writing designs for new developments. I seem to have all the very complex ones, of course, which I suppose is semi-fair. I have to complete another one by the end of tomorrow, plus do a very complex expenses claim, because of course they've just told us that there is a this-week-deadline for these. Plus everyone seems hung up on how many days I am actually going to be in which country for the foreseeable future. I've said to the new PD that I can decamp to Copenhagen whenever required, this is no hardship for me at all.

Re stitching, not a lot of progress, but I have nearly finished some Louisa Harding fingerless mittens that I bought yarn for in London this time last year. I plan to go over to London for the day on Monday, this is a bank holiday there, but John Lewis and Waterstones will be open, and this is what I care about. I must look out my Oyster card, I love this card, so good to go around on buses and just wave it at the card reader.

Roll on the vacation, the past two weeks have been a little fraught - we have new girl, who thinks the world revolves around her, and she is always right. She informed me last week that no-one in Germany wears bathing costumes, they all swim with nothing on, and I'm wondering just how this reconciles with all the German bathing costumes I have bought over the years. But she was quite categorical, so I suppose I am wrong! People like that do get a bit tiresome.