Durham

We spent the afternoon pottering around in Durham today - tea and cake in the Undercroft, a pootle round the craft fair, and a look at the reindeer in the market square. Lots of tinsel, some beautiful Christmas lights, and, of course, the cathedral, which is one of my favourite buildings.

The others being, in no particular order:

• the Eiffel Tower (for sheer lunacy and its breathtaking views)
• the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco (it's painted red - what more do you need? And Orb asked me to marry him in the middle of it)
• the Pompidou Centre in Paris (again with the breathtaking views, but this time escalators rather than lifts)
• the Angel of the North (less a building more a giant sculpture, but when I see it I know I'm home)

But back to the cathedral. It's the massive pillars down the nave that do it for me - they are just monstrous and beautiful, and contrast so well with the thin tracery of the stonework behind the high altar. I could witter on about it for hours, if I could remember much of the course on early Northumberland and its history and buildings that I took in my third year at the university.

Sadly, that was quite a while ago, as we realised today. Where did the last 16 years go?