1) I just found out that an old university friend is now deputy director of digital diplomacy at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office just as my new report is published.
2) I discovered (by quite some roundabout means) that the place we are staying to sing in the Arezzo choral competition is just over the hills from somewhere I hitch hiked to in 1990. Paris to a small hamlet in Italy in three hitches is pretty good going, no? The best bit? I tell a “how rubbish are my languages” story based on the hitch and asking to go to the mountains (“Volio andare a la montagna” or some such): it turns out that the place really is called Montagna!