An ancient art

I'm at Brother Edward's in Canary Wharf in a room filled with flags from European countries. Edward and Sascha are showing us this year's Eurovision Song Contest entries. Malta's song, I'm Coming Home, is a tribute to "those who didn't come home from the Great War." For obviously reasons it's immediately become my favourite. I was hoping for a song which referenced the war 100 years on. It feels deeply appropriate for a European competition.

Speaking of the First World War, I was deeply moved to discover that the cast of Brass have started writing letters en masse to one another. A great deal of Brass is based on letters written between England and France and I wanted the cast to have a sense of the magic and excitement associated with receiving a proper letter. It seems they're enjoying the process enormously and I'm enormously proud to have encouraged them to resurrect a dying art form.

I've done nothing but eat food today. We had brunch with Christmas Jim and Matthew in Vauxhall, which was more like lunch, before heading out West for a surprise birthday dinner for Iain, where we ate more. And now we're out East eating yet more... It's a hard knock life!