Had a trip to Nottingham today – there seemed to be some kind of morris dancing festival on. It’s a very characterful place, which I always feel is more like a large historic town than a city in the mould of Manchester or Birmingham. I did a number of pubs – the most memorable were the two Castle Rock houses, the News House and the Vat & Fiddle. Have Tynemill now metamorphised into Castle Rock? Sad to see the impressive Queens Hotel opposite the station, once a Shipstones’ stronghold, now closed and turned into a “Floor covering centre”.