8.30 pm

Hodmandod Senior returns. We have a cup of tea together and then, an hour later, dinner which consists of a quick stirfry of chicken and vegetables and noodles...and then , at the last minute, eggs and bacon for Hodmandod Minor because he is a 'man', and prefers not to eat food that is not properly rich in saturated fats. Since he is mid-exams I comply.

Then a phone-call from Hodmandod Major, a longish email to a good friend and I'm back with the Scientific American. The tone of Scientific American seems to me to be somewhere between New Scientist and specialist scientific journals - more serious and of course Americo-centric.

It is interesting to view the world from different places. It is something I love about travelling. I often imagine myself sticking out from the globe of the earth like a clove stuck into a Christmas orange. It is hard to get into my head, to really believe it. Once, in 2004, I was in Europe one day and the next in South America...and yet everything seemed the same. There was the same sky, the same sun and even though it was autumn when it had been spring and woodfires burning old leaves when spring flowers had just come into bloom... apart from that it was so very difficult to tell that I'd really moved.

But once when I came back from the states I remember seeing the sun setting through the aeroplane window and then rising again just a little later. Then I was convinced that I'd travelled across a part of the globe or at least something had happened. It was disturbing and yet wonderful at the same time.

Then when you have arrived in a new place eventually you come to realise, after a few days, that you must look at the world from a new perspective. The place you now inhabit has new allies and neighbours and a different history. I think this discombobulation (I love that word) is good for the brain.

Looking through a country's magazines and papers is another way of travelling - and a greener and cheaper one - and you don't even have to move from your chair.