Been too busy to blog properly, not least thanks to my horrendous train journeys recently. Time to sum up the last week or so.

Bad
The re-election of That Man
The death of the Emperor John Peel
Getting a cold (cough, cough)
Commuting
Intercity train journeys

Good
Blackheath fireworks
New job
The Guardian and Observer cryptic crosswords
Savoury pancakes

Also good was the performance of The Phantom of the Opera I saw at the weekend in the West End. Only my third trip to a musical but well worth it. The staging was fantastic: inventive, stylistic and technically accomplished. The performances were uniformly top notch and the songs and score were as good as their reputation suggests. I was slightly disappointed that the ending was a little more upbeat than, say, the Lon Chaney film, but that barely detracted from the overall production.

For the second Friday running, I am in travel hell. Currently blogging from a rail replacement coach as I struggle to get to London after an earlier derailment. I’ll resist the temptation to detail all the irritations the train company have been responsible for today and concentrate on wishing us to London before midnight. At least the time on the roads can be spent looking for a 60.

I’m here at a party in central London watching CNN’s coverage on a massive screen. Slight nerves about the result but the atmosphere is great. If I heard correctly, in the poll taken here Bush only managed 5%! Still waiting for results from Florida and Ohio, which I guess will tell us the final result.

I tried sending a blog entry from my phone on the train back from Bristol on Sunday but somewhere along the line (boom boom) it disappeared into the ether.

I was at LDYS conference, where, as chair of the steering committee, I missed most sessions because I was busy ensuring the conference ran smoothly. We had a number of speakers, including new party president Simon Hughes, and it was a pleasure to chair speeches by LibDem PPC Marie-Louise Rossi and fellow blogger and Welsh Assembly Member Peter Black.

On Saturday night, we experienced the dubious pleasures of LDYS members doing karaoke. I did end up belting out a number of songs with other people, and was happy with my harmonies for California Dreaming – although Ryan‘s just played me a video of it on his P910i and it was rather less tuneful than I remember. Perhaps the least said the better though about my, James Blanchard and James Graham’s performance of Paranoid Android – not the most suited to karaoke.