So long, then, 39. Go and stand in the corner with your brother 38. You’ve both been a bit crap.

Hello, 40. Let’s be friends.

So I’m in Paris for a few days for my birthday. Seems a bit extravagant in a way, I’m not doing anything I couldn’t do in London – walking round museums and cemeteries, and eating out – but they’re different museums and cemeteries, and I never do the restaurant thing, so what the hell.

The Musée des Arts et Métiers is an interesting place. There’s some lovely bits of history in the museum itself – for example the collection of TVs and cameras through the ages, including the Lumière brothers’ cinematograph, and Ader’s Avion III suspended in the main staircase like some horrendous steampunk hell-bat – but as I’ve been reading Foucault’s Pendulum again the highlight had to be the chapel that houses both the pendulum and one of the book’s climatic scenes. Nerves a-tingle just walking in.

Somehow I’d forgotten quite how much hill there is in Montmartre. Not that it was a steep hill with lots of steps, just that everything seems to point UP no matter which way you turn. Got turned around several times looking for roads DOWN, and for an hour or so only found roads going the wrong way down, which of course involves more up afterwards. My legs don’t seem to be complaining today though, so once again, what the hell.

Off to Père Lachaise Cemetery this morning, after I hunt down some caffeine… This hotel’s OK given the budget, and I’d probably stay here again, but wobbly wifi and no kettle are slight downers first thing in the morning. Also for some reason my iPhone can’t pick up a damn thing, so I’m relying on the ancient and dubiously-justified Eee for a connection to the outside world. Might risk switching on data roaming later, see what happens…

Anyway. Off to another hill full of dead people.