Monday: Got up at 6am. Damn. Should have been up at 5, but still not too bad. Spend an inordinate time catching up on the news (piles of newspapers waiting for me after a week of travelling, and better take a closer look at the news and websites I've only had time to scan quickly while on the road) and drinking coffee. Rush off to catch my 9am meeting on the other side of town, tropical weather so all my makeup gone before I arrive. Spend the morning in a meeting going through my translation of a drug report. Did you know that the average success rate in residential drug rehabilitation programs is 20%, regardless of type of treatment regime? I didn't, even though I've covered this beat for 11 years and written a thesis on it. It's 1pm and I'm dizzy from all the coffee and lack of breakfast. After lunching over the day's newspaper I sit down to find some hardcore ghosts and haunted mansions, but my head is still spinning on the difference between significance and importance, variations, correlations and all those terms I tried so hard to forget from when I did methods and statistics in Uni. I call a friend who wrote her MA thesis on the sex life of male bona bons (monkeys) to brush up on my statistical terminology, after which I decide that it's simply not the right day to hunt ghosts. So I go home and attempt to proofread and edit the report I've translated, but half way thru I find Gudleiv Forr's opinion piece in Dagbladet which I just have to blog about...

Tuesday: Got up at 7am, still aiming for 5, but obviously not keeping it up as the week progresses (better stop this development while I can). To my delight I find an email from a friend of a dear friend now departed when I open my mailbox. Edit, edit, edit – no chasing ghosts today either – but I do catch a spinning session, and finish the editing – 11pm

Wednesday: Scan the news and blog in the morning, have a quick but tough workout. Once I get into my office I talk to one of Britain's top experts on haunted houses, find some really spooky ghosts and a mansion with some really cool ghostbusting equipment (the manager of this place has never actually encountered a ghost himself though). I learn that 'my book' (an anthology I'm represented in) is indeed 'out' and will be the first in a series of books on communication ethics, each book featuring one of my interviews. As a nice surprise I get an email from a former lecturer of mine who blogs here. Finalise drug report. Meet the big boss of one of my clients for lunch. Log the logs of the log. Been working from 6am to 6pm and attempt to attend a political debate, but need some dinner first. I've been planning for a while to write a story on what I used to think was the best winebar in Europe, so I head there for some food. However, the service turns out to be so bad that I end up leaving under a dark cloud – no review and no political debate – rather, I head home and do some writing.

Thursday? By now I've forgotten all about Thursday: I know it involved a long meeting, a quick but intense workout and lots of following up on loose ends and research requests.

Friday: Get up at 7:30. Do some writing in the morning before I go down town. I pick up a 545 page manuscript I optimistically plan to copy edit over the weekend. Back in the office I talk to some nice people at a haunted house, which unfortunately turns out to be closed during the summer (the winter is their 'high season' for paranormal activities). Besides, all their eight ghosts are friendly ones, nothing scary like in this place on the other side of the mountain. Neither can you see these ghosts; but you can smell and hear them and the three children ghosts like to 'play tricks' on visitors...

Weekend: not much copy editing going on, but some good workouts; I have some fun with my writing and steal a few hours with a good book (too good, I'm reading it for the third time but still I'm struggling to put it down). I try to mow the lawn but I still can't seem to figure out how to start the damn thing which is supposed to do the mowing (it runs on oil, I'm supposed to pull some thingy, but it doesn't have any effect so I give up) – the grass has grown so high that it's becoming rather embarrassing to compare 'our' part of the garden to the impeccable gardens of all our neighbours (better think of another solution but unfortunately I can't really imagine that any of my friends could lend me a better grass cutter, or have one at all). As always the weekend was much too short...

The upcoming week? It'll be a new adventure, though I do know it will involve models, locating a London double-decker for hire, James Bond, zorbing, surfing and some serious copy editing...