Well, I suppose it isn’t a good holiday question, but it is an interesting one. I was thinking over dinner about how to work out what really matters to you, and trying to answer this question is an interesting way of approaching the less momentous one.

My conclusion? I’d spend it in the British Museum (or given where I am at present in the Louvre) or so other equivalent place of cultural interest.

Yes, OK, you can now all tell me I’m “sad”….

I’ve just watched with some bemusement a mangle (wringer) going for £132 on eBay. We’re not talking here of some substantial, attractive piece of Victoriana to decorate a fine conservatory, no, a probably 1950s or perhaps 1960s, bolt-to-the-side of the tub, plain white number of no visual merit whatsoever, but advertised as in good working order.

I’ve done a bit of research (and totally bemused the South Asian staff in my local odd-goods store by asking if they had mangles – well they do have lots of odd old-style things) and it seems no one is making these today. Obviously a business niche begging to be filled.

(And if you are wondering why I want one, yes it is for the obvious purpose. Having limited space in the kitchen, I’ve chosen to have a dishwasher and am washing clothers in a Wonder Wash, which works very well. But hand-wrung items are taking rather a long time to dry.)

Note to my (non)-delivery man this morning. At 8.30 on a Sunday morning I will be nowhere else but in bed, asleep. Should you have told me that the delivery will be between 9 and 12, and I not answer my phone at 8.30, due to, obviously, being asleep, perhaps you could get out of your cab, walk 50 yards and ring my doorbell, rather than take the bookcase all of the way back to Lancashire?

Just a thought.

This recipe, which I’ve just made for the first time, produces a pretty respectable gluten-free fruit cake, something I’ve definitely been missing since having to give up the dreaded compound. And I have plans for modifications to make it even closer to a proper one…

And the whole site looks like a pretty good source for gluten-free recipes.

If you received an email from me this evening and it was a bit scrambled, apologies. Competing rather over-vigorously on the squash court at lunchtime, I headbutted the wall while making a desperate attempt to retrieve my opponent’s drop shot.

And I think it is catching up with me.

So note to self: I must curb my competitive instincts, at least when I’ve really got no chance of winning…

Just back from the Liverpool Green Party conference, and looking forward, very much, to sleep. That’s after four nights in what I’d like to put up as possibly the worst £50 a night hotel in Britain, and possibly Europe, The Lord Nelson. It’s basically the rooms above the pub, given a rough coat of paint, some very dirty cream carpet, and a location right over a very bad nightclub. And that’s without mentioning the beds, which managed to be both saggy and incredibly hard and uncomfortable.

If you’d paid £25 for that in Paris you’d think you’d done badly – and you’d still be in Paris.

I know all of the arguments about why British hotels are so expensive – wages, land costs etc, but really, why do they have to be quite so just awfully bad as well?