Gibraltar is Scots when Channel 4 is short staffed...

Saturday Woke up in a hotel at Gatwick airport. It was bad enough after an exhausting couple of days to get up at 7.30am to catch a plane back to Edinburgh but I forgot to change my watch back from European time and got up an hour early.

On Thursday my cameraman Ken and I scrambled to Spain to cover the story about the problems Gibraltarians were having with the Spanish authorities. Not the natural territory of the Scotland bureau but there was nobody in London free to go.

After a hectic day's filming on Friday, inevitably getting stuck for hours in the queue at the border and haring to Malaga to cut the piece and feed it to London we only just made the last flight to Gatwick that night, arriving far too late to catch another plane to Edinburgh. A pretty long way to go for three minutes of television but at least we were able to stock up on duty free and did see a couple of hours sunshine. My great fear was I wouldn't be able to get back in time for a friend's wedding but I made it (just). A couple of glasses of champagne cured my travel weariness. Sunday Ideally I'd have stayed in bed for most of the day but I had a house full of six guests who'd come up from London for the wedding and they wanted the guided tour of Edinburgh. I filled them full of porridge and took them to the National Gallery of Modern Art. I'm ashamed to admit that it was also my first visit to the gallery and the walk from there along the Water of Leith to Stockbridge was as new to me as it was to them. That is the great thing about having visitors: they force you to explore your own city more than you ever would on your own. Monday Ken and I attracted a lot of strange looks, and were at one point stopped by the police, as we carried a large TV monitor around, propping it up in George Square, Sauchiehall Street and Princess Street and then filming it sitting there. We were making a short film for an International Press Institute conference about the challenges for the London-based media covering a devolved Scotland, and because I'd been specially commissioned by the editor in chief of ITN (the Big Boss) to make the film we thought we'd better try and be as inventive as we could. Tuesday All day editing said film in Pictardy - a TV and video facilities house in Edinburgh. Normally Ken and I have to edit our pieces on the very basic equipment set up in the back of our van, but for this project we were allowed to spend a little bit of money. We spent hours using all the fancy gizmos to make all the interviews we had done look as though they were actually playing on the blank TV monitor we'd shot in all the different locations yesterday. I had assumed that the conference was being held in Glasgow but discovered late in the day that it was actually in London so I grabbed the tape and jumped on the sleeper. Wednesday As everyone started arriving at the conference it began to look ludicrous that it was being held in London. Over two thirds of those attending had travelled down from Scotland to be there. Scottish tempers were not helped when we all arrived at the address we'd been given, Stanhope Street, to find it was a council estate. All the Londoners knew to go straight to Stanhope Place, several miles away. Five hours of wrestling with the West Lothian Question for broadcasters - how to provide enough Scottish coverage to satisfy viewers in Cranhill without boring viewers in Muswell Hill - provided few answers. Thursday As soon as one piece is done it's time to start working on the next one - but I haven't got anything set up or even got any good ideas of what we should be doing next. One of the most daunting aspects of running a bureau rather than working in the pool of reporters in London is that you are solely responsible for coming up with all your own stories. I spent the day phoning around the political parties, the Scottish Office and other contacts checking whether they were planning any events that I should be covering. I don't think the news desk are very excited by my one idea about how the PR system for the Scottish elections is going to work and what type of results it may produce. I'll try and sell it again on Monday morning - if it's a fairly quiet day they might take it. Friday A day off and I'm back in London to see my boyfriend. He is supposed to be moving up to Scotland with me but as yet hasn't found any work so he is still living in our flat in Ladbroke Grove. But it looks like it won't be a particularly romantic weekend. I feel terrible and at this rate it looks like I'll be spending the whole weekend in bed.

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