Feeling much better and well rested, set out early to avoid the breakfast at my hotel and to get some decent coffee. Off to Senate House to register. Despite over a year of membership of the IES and previous conferences, I still find approaching this building (which was used for 'The Minstry of Truth' in the film version of 1984) slightly forbidding.

Registered, and headed for the first Plenary session. I always like to arrive early, select a seat in an unobtrusive part of the room, and watch people arrive. This was an interesting bunch - very cosmopolitan, including delegates and speakers from Russia, South Africa, Australia, Poland, the US and Canada among others. In fact, I met a number of very nice people in the first session alone.

The keynote, delivered by Professor Chris Jenks on 'The Flâneur as Urban Ethnograper' absolutely hooked me in. I'm always convinced before these events that things will be completely beyond my comprehension, but this seemed to pull together all sorts of questions and readings from the past few years.

I hope to put my many pages of notes into some form of order, so not too much more detail - no doubt to the reader's relief - but for the rest of the morning I delighted in hearding about the sublimity of sewers, London as the new Jerusalem, why the Martians attacked suburbia in The War of the Worlds, discovered new names for my ever-growing reading list and explored topographies of both shame and poverty.

A brief lunch and much needed pint, then back for more. The 'Spectropolis' panel had sounded fun, and I wasn't disappointed - firstly a paper on Will Self, a favourite for me among modern authors, then a paper on 'The Necropolis Trope in London Writing' which provided some fascinating stuff about cemetaries, and included reference to James Thompson BV. A couple more papers with dystopian and suburban themes, and the first day was over. Out and about briefly, but I was too exhausted to get up to much of the customary conference overindulgence. In fact a few of us decided on a quiet evening, and I eventually retired relatively early, but very happy.