Sunday 27 January

Some people make "putting foot in mouth" an artform, and none more so than Italian politician Silvio Berlusconi. At a Holocaust Memorial event in Milan, he said that Benito Mussolini had done a "lot of good things". Berlusconi wants to be reelected. I think he has blown that prospect. Italy deserves better than a dunderhead like that.

A day of mixed fortunes, starting dry and bright, but cloud soon covered the sky. It was not warm, 5C / 41F, but elsewhere in the UK, the rising temperatures caused snowmelt and with that flooding. These floods are set to get worse, and have already claimed at least one life. A canoeist was pulled from the River Swale at Reeth, but was later pronounced dead. The Swale is notorious for sudden rises in waterlevel, particularly when snow melts off higher ground; a footbridge outside Reeth was swept away some years ago during a flashflood.

And this evening, we were plunged into profound darkness for half a minute, when the power went off. With no streetlights, you really could not see a thing. The only light I had available was the screen from this PC, which runs off a battery. Fortunately, power quickly returned.