what's on thursday

I tried to make full use of my free hours today.

Somehow I woke up, thinking I'd overslept, that it was already past 10. Then I reach for the clock on the bedside table and look at it. It said 730.

I rub the sleep from my eyes and stare at the face again.

No.

Can't be.

Then I wonder if the battery went wonky again, as batteries are wont to do.
And so I look at the time on the iPod.

Crap. It is only 730.

I closed my eyes and drifted back off to lalaland.

Woke again at 945, decided I'd better get up and go for a jog. Because the last time I'd done that was Sunday. Too long ago.

I spent the rest of the time watching one of my favourite movies Amelieand reading Sideways, which unfortunately I never got to see in the cinemas.

It's an entertaining novel about two men making their way through the Santa Ynez valley in California, a week before one of them is due to be married. They get high, drunk, drink more, buy plenty of wine, muse about life and marriage and work, get shot at, beaten up and scratched, almost lose the wedding bands... Some roadtrip.

Makes me think back to last year, when I was lucky enough to be in Margaret River for three days for the first International Wine Tourism Conference, taking the place of my editor who'd been invited by MasterCard to attend the event.

I didn't get shot at or beaten up if that's what you're thinking.

Instead it was three amazing days of gorgeous scenery, lovely weather (it was in May, so crisp and cool, with glorious sunshine was the weather of the day), tantalising food and wine and a suite of my own to fall asleep in.

There were so many wineries we sampled at, including Vasse Felix, Evans and Tate, Brookland Valley Vineyard, the Voyager Estate, Xanadu Wines and the Leeuwin Estate.

And the food! (At which point I shall stop myself now from thinking about the food further than that because I later have to eat dinner around the office and it's no point thinking of good food but when I'm not going to be getting any!)

But I would like to have some wine, although I really don't know much about it, despite having attended the conference (and several tasting sessions at the wineries) as well as having covered two wine masterclasses.