Back to work yesterday. Another office shuffle and we now have been moved to the part of the office I used to workin with a lovely view of the river. Little actual work going on, a momenatry lull, which is nice.

General Election here on Thursday. The ward of Brighton I live in has a slim possibility of electing a Green MP. However old tribal loyalties are still making me want to vote Labour despite the conduct of Blair. Read a persuasive piece in Prospect by Matt Cavanagh to the effect that the left shouldn't cut off its own nose to spite its face because Blair has had the dirty business of actually leading the country. It is easier to be a purist out of power.

Missing MJ really badly now. However have just booked another sneaky trip to New York, which I am greatly looking forward to! Remembering this morning on the train our lovely times in the West Country and swimming in a heated outside pool on the hillside with MJ and Johanna under a clouded English late afternoon sky. The ladies swimming up and down doing English accents which necessitated them pulling ridiculous faces and sticking their tongues out. I said at the time that this would be a mental snapshot to remember, and it is proving to be so for me.

On another happy note... two old friends from my university days both emailedme in the last day.

Andy's email contained a fantastic photograph of himself, which I will post later. He has been overseeing land clearance in Sri Lanka in the aftermath of the tsunami. And then this morning I recieved an email from Sophie, which was brilliant too. Hoping to see her soon.

Andy's note yesterday rather pricked my conscience. What am I giving back to the world? MJ is working with children with autism, Andy is literally preventing people being blown up. And me? Nothing much. The Buddhist part of me thinks that it is not so much what you do, but the way you conduct yourself is the important thing. But just going about trying to be a nice person is not amazingly dynamic.

I felt quite strange yesterday when I was asked for money on the train by a guy from Eastern Europe saying he was homeless. There were a few of us in there but he fixed on me, because I gave him eye contact. But these days my response is an automatic No. For some reason yesterday I felt quite bad about this.

The reshuffled desks at work now mean I am sitting opposite new people. One of them Linda told me about her son being autistic this morning. Quite funny how certain issues begin to present themselves at the edges of your life.