2005-12-14 - 3:17 p.m.

Two hours karaoke and with assorted work people, including drinks: �10. Drunkenly trying and failing to get back into the venue some time later �please just for one more hour we won�t break anything or spill drinks� at 1am after an ill-advised weekday bar hopping session: Priceless.

It�s been a year of singing in front of strangers. Well, twice, anyway. It had been a while for me, so my Sammy Davis Junior went off all half-cocked. Oh, well.

Sure, the newspapers are full of outrage at the new 24 hour drinking culture, but you try getting into a pub after 11 in Soho. Hard as it ever was. You still have to hunker down in that scruffy Spanish place and drink warm Dos Equis for about five quid a throw whilst swarthy malodorous pygmies do some aberration of Flamenco and knock your beer over�hardly the sophisticated, continental booze utopia that we were lead to believe might appear in what is still the capital city if I�m not mistaken. The only capital city we resemble in hospitality terms is communist Warsaw in about 1978.

Not that going home after several litres of rice wine is so much a bad idea, I just hate that it�s the only codding option.

Luckily, the pain this morning is numbed by the 2,000 word feature I have to write on conference facilities in the east end of�and even as I type, my synapses shut down from the unrelenting tedium of what is perhaps the dullest article since Moses. God I hate the trade press. As I was saying to someone who has themselves sweated ink-tinged blood at the coal face of corporate journalism, the murky waters that we call the travel 'trade' are much the same as rough trade, as you get totally fucked and afterwards your wallet is much lighter than you suspect it should be.

Meanwhile, there�s seven straight days of drinks invitations to contemplate. So that�s something.