The weather is horrible outside, and I have two more weeks in this job; my motivation is dribbling away. Also I know I’m going to have to come in tomorrow to do some of my least favourite task – editing. Also I have been suffering from nasty mouth ulcers all week, which were not cured by the miracle steroid cream which had always worked before. Also we had a bad night last night with both girls, so am feeling very sleepy.

But the new job is looking good – I changed my mind, and went for the first office I’d looked at, on Rondpoint Schuman, right in the heart of the European quarter. As noted earlier in the week, the internship advertisement went up on Monday and had attracted 100 replies by Tuesday. Though having said that, there is an intern here who has approached me already. He uses a wheelchair, which presumably means he will be less able to hump office equipment around; but on the other hand he has a car which he is allowed to park almost anywhere in Brussels, which is a serious bonus. And – joy of joys – I have been authorised to go and get myself a Blackberry!

(I know, I’m very shallow.)

Meantime, slightly to my surprise, one of the NATO jobs I applied for last year has come back to me with dates for interview in January. I’m not getting my hopes up, and in any case I suspect that if I become a serious candidate it could take months to get a security clearance. But I’ll go and do the interviews anyway. While I’m very happy to have got the new job, it remains my medium-term goal to get inside the institutions rather than outside, and if that matures a little sooner than I had anticipated, well, what the heck.

Right, time to go home. Since the car died I am beholden to public transport. I hope there is a tram soon – seems like the rain has stopped but the wind still sounds pretty vicious…