At the French Embassy reception for Bastille Day on Monday I bumped into my old friend Pete. I knew him in Bosnia five years ago where he had a variety of jobs in the international community and fell in love with my landlady’s daughter. (Lots of people fell in love with her, but she didn’t reciprocate.) Then last November when I went back to Bosnia for a weekend I saw Pete again, also back for the weekend. The landlady’s daughter was away, studying in London. But on Monday Pete looked blissfully happy with a Georgian lady on his arm, who he hopes to persuade to come back to the UK with him in the winter. Good for him.

My work email is completely screwed. The systems guys were migrating to a new system over the weekend but one of the consequences seems to be that I can’t read it from out of the office as I normally can. Apparently yesterday afternoon there were 260 unread messages waiting for me. I bet it will be 400 by the time I get back tomorrow.

Great exchange of the day yesterday:

Me: So what can you tell us about the peace process in South Ossetia?
Senior international official: Apart from the fact that we have achieved nothing since April 2000?