I wasn't sure about doing a whirlwind tour of Florence, but it seems daft to pass on the opportunity considering how much I want to visit the city.

So - what to see in Florence? Please advise.

Belgium

Went to Belgium on one of our organised estate days out on Saturday. Don't think I'll bother again. Most of the day is spent in tobacco and wine warehouses and I was fucking knackered after getting up at 5.30am. Not worth it for 3 hours on the beach at De Panne, lovely though it was.

Also, if I'm there everyone expects me to sort everything out despite us being quite strict about the tenants needing to organise these things themseves. Doesn't make for a fun day out.

Telly

Dr Who fucking rocked. Simple, effective plot, great use of music, jokes that were actually funny, Billy Piper. I think what Theophile Escargot said after episode one was spot on - the real pleasure is the fast pace and presumption that we can follow it and don't need it all explaining again and again. Very refreshing.

Books

Read Stasiland whilst I was up in Lincolnshire (left Ubik at home by mistake, along with changes of pants). Really very good and a lot different to what I was expected. You could call it gonzo journalism at a stretch - Funder spends as much time talking about her life in modern Berlin and uncovering people's stories about the Stasi as she does on the stories themselves. What's most shocking in the end is that she doesn't have to look far - everyone has a story about a run-in with the Stasi, she just has to interview her friends. A frightening book that made me very angry, but also got me pining for Berlin. I love that city.

Read Holly Johnson's autobiography A Bone in my Flute last night for a bit of easy escapism. I've read it before and it's the usual sex and drugs stuff, but very entertaining and wonderfully catty. Not as good as Boy George's, but a lot better than Lemmy's.

A couple of points - the treatment of AIDS patients by health professionals in the mid-1980s was appalling. Holly's then boyfriend was misdiagnosed just because he was gay and had an absess, and told matter-of-factly that he was going to die and nothing could be done, by a nurse in what looked like a radiation suit. A lot of the people around Holly also seemed to think that promiscuous gays deserved it, despite being part of the supposedly liberal fashion and pop worlds. It's made me want to read more about AIDS in that era.

Another interesting thing I picked up from the book was how much cooler Liverpudlians are than Mancunians. They don't try as hard, and don't have that unfortunate anti-intellectual, wannabe gangster stance Manchester has had since the late 1980s. And let's face it, Frankie Goes to Hollywood were about as cool as they come.