✒ I see Martin Amis is leaving Britain, again. I thought he'd left ages ago, but like Frank Sinatra's many farewell shows, the allure does not dim. He thinks our country is "sad" and that we haven't yet got over the loss of our global role. That point was made more than 50 years ago by Dean Acheson, but it too loses nothing in the retelling.
Mr Amis – whom I knew slightly while we were both employed by the Observer, when I found him friendly and charming – is to live in Brooklyn, the posh part, though if he wants to meet some sad people he won't need to walk far to find them alleviating their sorrow by drug dealing, running protection rackets and so forth.
I wonder, though, why we make such a fuss when writers announce their departure with the same rueful gravity as Edward VIII abdicating.
Why we are supposed to be more worried when writers go than by other people, I do not know, though I notice that the ones who give up here tend to be those whose books are more admired than loved, such as Salman Rushdie, rather than, say, JK Rowling or Sebastian Faulks, who bravely paddle on across the pool of misery.
It can't be that they get better reviews in the US than they would here – the New York Times once gave Martin Amis a poisonous notice. I suspect it's because Americans have a reverence for celebrity that's absent here. There slebs tend to be fawned over; here the cheap papers print pictures of their cellulite.
But why can't we pine over the departure of other people, who may be less famous, but whose opinions are also valid? "Billericay was rocked this week by the news that Terry Bolster, runner-up in the prestigious 1998 Leading Ford Dealer in South Essex contest, is to leave Britain to live in Spain.
"Frankly, I've had it up to here," Mr Bolster said. "I've got the bleeding VAT man on my back – make one little mistake and they're all over you – and the price of petrol, blimey, what's that all about? Go up to town these days and might as well be Karachi or Warsaw, when did you last hear someone speaking English on the tube? And our Luanne just got herself sacked from the nail bar, for telling a customer what's what … "
✒ London is full of tourists and it's not even Easter. The day the Arts Council cuts were announced South Kensington tube was almost impassable; the visitors had reached critical mass, and more people were pouring into the station than could get through the barriers.
Obviously we want and need these people to come, though I wonder how many are going to visit our marvellous enterprise zones instead of going to one of the theatres or arts centres about to close.
That is the fallacy of the government's blitheringly silly "we're all in this together" mantra. Some government expenditure actually makes a profit. Our theatre leads the world. Loads of tourists must be attracted by the fact that you could spend a week in London doing nothing but visit superb museums and galleries, free.
And why in heaven's name are they cutting HMRC staff? Saving a few million there could lose billions. The government seems to stumble blindly from one mad idea to another.
I have been monitoring David Cameron's bald patch, which gets bigger when he's worried; this week it was larger than I've seen it before.
✒ A new brand of gin arrives on my desk, always good news. This is 1599 Oliver Cromwell, and the makers hope, I suppose, that it will replace Hendricks in my affections. Apart from wine and beer, G&T must be the world's most well-recognised drink.
I recall driving my fellow reporters mad while we waited for Joshua Nkomo for eight hours in 40C in what was still called Salisbury, Rhodesia. I described the condensation on the glass, the faint blue blur of the tonic, the clinking of the ice, until they were about to strangle me.
My late father-in-law used to insist on 40% Plymouth gin, arguing that a heftier slug of the 35% stuff was no substitute. He would have liked the new gin.
The tonic is crucial. Many people like Fever-Tree, which is subtle, though perhaps too subtle for me. I prefer the direct hit of Schweppes, though this is like offering a wine snob Piat d'Or – you lose all credibility. Schweppes slimline, however, has an awful chemical taste.
We held an informal tasting, and though the 1599 was good, the winner was still Hendricks with Schweppes tonic, chilled, a single ice cube, and a twist of orange rather than lemon. Alcoholic perfection.
✒More demented labelling. Dr David Jenkins bought a pack of ground coffee at Tesco. It had a picture of a cup of coffee marked "serving suggestion". As opposed to sprinkling it on cornflakes? Tesco also sold Andrew Dash a brand of butter that was "guaranteed nut free".
And in the interest of openness, Sainsbury's furnished Martin Nicklin with a pair of shoelaces for £1.02 – "1.4p per centimetre". Does anyone say, "Gosh, I need 78cm of shoelace, could you pick them up?"
Blake Alcott and Özlem Yazlik were baffled by a waste bin at Leeds University, marked "NO plastic, NO cans, NO glass, NO food." They point out that leaves only paper, plus perhaps worms? The university also provides in its toilets an illustrated step-by-step guide to washing your hands.
Wolf Suschitzky bought a Sony Bravia TV, which he is very pleased with. And to extend his viewing pleasure, it tells him: "Do not throw anything at the TV set. The screen glass may break and cause serious injury."
And Jean Garrington sent a wonderful headline from her local paper in Colchester: "Lollipop lady axe is putting our pupils' lives in danger."
