Wednesday: Sir John's Bedroom

I'm in Ottawa for a few days. The journey was relatively smooth - a five hour direct flight. I saw a couple of people I knew on the flight, including a work contact who was sitting right in front of me. He was clearly travelling with his very new girlfriend..........anyway, we had a nice chat at various points. My neighbour was also very sweet, giving me one of his tangerines.

My other colleagues from Toronto, Montreal and Calgary are also here and we are all staying in my boss' house. As you can see, I have been given a fairly substandard room. This house actually used to be Sir John A MacDonald's house (first Prime Minister of Canada) and this was his bedroom. I'm trying not to think too much about the fact that it's also the room he died in. It's not helped by the fact that there's a picture on the wall of what the room used to look like.

Over dinner we all had to share our Desert Island Disc - i.e. what one track would you take to a desert island, which was then played. Some of my colleagues have very dubious taste.......

I'm hoping we might have a midnight feast later!

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I finished 'Famous Last Words' by Timothy Findley on the flight, a Canadian author. I hadn't come across him before but a friend lent it to me. It was really good and felt surprisingly English in many ways.