It’s been a long week – it stated with a 4:45am taxi on Monday morning and a flight to Zürich.  Despite the hour, the lake of Zürich looked stunning with its green-shaded water as we headed in to land.  No time to wait, straight onto another plane for Manchester…

A couple of hours working from a Macclesfield ‘hot-desk’ before visiting a customer.  The evening was spent in a hotel next to one of the UK’s major shrines to commercialism – the Trafford Centre – the ‘Brazilian’ restaurant was not so bad though!

A day and a half followed in north Yorkshire’s Harrogate – a very wet Harrogate at that – for the first day anyway, but it was a hint more sultry on the Wednesday before heading back to Manchester airport and home.

Yesterday I had the chance to take in some of the Art Basel 39 exhibition (left).  Even in 4 hours you will see only a fraction of what’s on display/offer.  Francis Bacon seemed to be in vogue, but I didn’t really feel quite the same level of wow-factor as in many years – and that was compounded by a corked bottle of Potel’s 99 Volnay 1er Mitans when I got home – grrr.

Still, now we head into a weekend where the Swiss will be going into overdrive for the European Championship 2008 (Trademark) – everything seems to be sporting a ‘TM’ – perhaps I’m not even allowed to write ‘Euro 2008’ – who knows (cares!).