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Sunday July 24
Back home from Galway, which, in my dreams, will one day be my home. I've been there every year, bar one, since 1999. And what a frankly unexceptional but glorious week it was. (There are holiday snaps throughout my blog this week: various bits of Galway with me standing in front of them.) Staying at the same thatched cottage in the same spot just outside Spiddal in Galway Bay, it's the kind of holiday that's predictable but that's precisely the point. Pure relaxation, head space and clean air in God's country: book-reading in all weathers - and the West of Ireland supplies all weathers, sometimes in the space of 10 minutes - a walk before breakfast along the coast under ominous clouds to pick up newspapers from the village, a bit of outdoor sight-seeing (this year to Boyle and Roscommon), much casual birdwatching (this year, as well as the familiar swallows, crows, jackdaws, rooks, magpies, gulls, cormorants, oystercatchers, heron, wrens and wagtails, I spotted my first stonechat, rock pipit and redshank), plus frequent drives, along the coastal road, into the fair city of Galway itself, which has two excellent health food shops for self-catering supplies and a pedestrianised street leading down to the swan-filled harbour that's bustling with great restaurants, bars and cafés. You eat well in Galway. Lots of potatoes. Even when you order a side dish of vegetables to go with your potatoes, one of these will be more potatoes, and have a look under your meat - there's a potato cake! That's three lots of potatoes per meal.

Weighed down by potatoes, I got through most of my reading list:

Blockbuster by Tom Shone: still reading, very good, he manages to describe films that you know all about in a new and refreshing way.
The Man In The High Castle by Philip K Dick: odd, but compelling; an alternative future in which the Nazis won the Second World War, very detailed and character-driven (which I didn't expect); written without bags of exposition, and yet lacking in action, which answers my question, why has it never been filmed?
Windows On The World by Frédéric Beigbeder: gripping; a fictional account of perishing in the World Trade Center attacks, interwoven with an autobiographical journey by the French author, who is drawn from a disintegrating love affair in Paris to New York to commune with the dead. Very affecting. Felt shell-shocked and weird after finishing it in 24 hours flat.
Suffer The Little Children by Mary Rafferty and Eoin O'Sullivan: still reading, but again compelling - testimony after testimony from those who suffered abuse at Ireland's Industrial and Reformatory Schools in the 40s and 50s. What cruelty is conducted in the name of the church.
Incendiary by Mark Cleave: a late addition to my list, bought on holiday, a first novel about an imagined terrorist attack on London, suddenly not so fictional and published in the week of the actual bombs (some of its garish posters and adverts were withdrawn out of respect, but I saw plenty still up on the Underground, and they were unexpectedly powerful). Flawed but interesting, written from the point of view of a working class mother who lost her husband and son in the explosion. The middle class characters are cut-outs, which is odd coming from someone who I suspect is a middle class writer.

Nice to be home, as it always is after a week away. We drove for fours hours from Galway to Dublin, then - after a calm two hour ferry crossing - six hours from Holyhead to Reigate. It rained across Ireland, as if by law, but Wales and England supplied sunshine. Arrived home at 8pm. The cats gave a noisy welcome. The bird feeders are empty. The foxes are still around.

Monday July 25
Back into the swing of things with a writing day. For Radio Times, a review of Melinda And Melinda, which we watched last night (not bad, but not really the "return to form" for Woody Allen that every critic seemed to announce in March) and a column on Patrick Stewart (Barry Norman is on holiday and I get to "be" him for three weeks, which is always a thrill); plus a rewrite of the script for Radio 2's Jaws documentary, which I'm voicing tomorrow - Roy Scheider, the original choice, dropped out due to illness. Who'd mind being second choice to Roy Scheider? Not me. Also found time for a 40-minute workout. (I managed three while I was in Galway, which is a good advert for travelling in your own car by ferry, rather than flying, as I was able to take the weights with me without fear of being charged excess by Ryanair.)

Can't say I'm looking forward to venturing into Central London tomorrow, not after last week's second round of bombs. It's clearly going to happen again, since you can't beat suicide bombers, and now we have the added thrill of people being shot by the police eight times in the head. Dutifully watched Peter Taylor's new series The New Al-Qaeda on BBC2 tonight - he knows his subject (his previous, Northern Irish-based series were Provos , Loyalists and Brits ) and always bases his programmes on horse's-mouth interviews, but I had two problems with this: one, the first programme just leapt into its chosen theme, the internet, without even a hint of background (I could have done with at least a potted history of Al-Qaeda); and two, it was over-flashily directed. In Taylor's previous films, it's been interviewees against a black background - here, it was all hand-held wobble-cam with shots moving in and out of focus. Very trendy, but it detracted from the grave subject matter, rather than enhance it.

Quick West Wing before bed: Access, Episode 18, written by Lauren Schmidt (her first this season). A gimmicky one, in that it took the form of a day-in-the-life documentary. I sort of enjoyed it, but yearned for a conventional episode. Let's get back to normal service please. (US dramas are always doing this - live episodes, dream episodes, guest directors - I suppose it's because they do such long runs and fear audiences will get bored around week 18. How wrong, in this case, they are!)

Tuesday July 26
Quite creepy going into Central London. I caught the 8.51 from Redhill, so that I could walk from Victoria to Broadcasting House, thus avoiding the Underground. I don't fancy venturing down there, putting myself in the firing line, and if I can avoid it this summer, I will. It was sunny, and I love the duck-walk through St James's Park, so it was no sacrifice.

Met producer Mark at Radio 2 and voiced the Jaws documentary. Took about an hour. I was much cheaper than Roy Scheider, who I hope recovers. He underwent a bone marrow transplant to treat multiple myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cells, last month. He told the New York Daily News, "It went well. They harvested my stem cells. I was my own donor. I won't be bouncing around like I usually do this summer."

Dropped in at 6 Music to open two weeks' worth of mail. That's a lot of Jiffy bags. Then went for lunch with John Sugar, former programme controller of 6 Music who went freelance after a health scare and seems much happier (though I must admit he always seemed happy even when he wasn't - he's a cheery sort by nature). Basically, John's submitting a whole raft of radio proposals as an independent and he wants to put my name on a couple of them. I'm pleased to be asked and it was good to catch up. I had an omelette.

After lunch, I walked all the way back to Victoria and to the magnificent glass HQ of Channel 4, where Avalon Rob and I met with Head Of Entertainment, Andrew Newman, about "a project". It was a good meeting, but aren't they all? It overran, which meant I was forced to catch a homeward train bang in the middle of the rush hour. Never again. I won't be returning to London until Friday: an arrangement I'm man enough to admit that I relish. London's gone sour since last week. Everyone looks at backpacks and olive skin with suspicion. I actually felt self-conscious with my own backpack, which contained two loaves of rye bread, a paperback, an umbrella and an iPod. You read a lot about the stoicism of we who work and live in London, but it's mostly getting on with it because we've no choice but to get on with it. There's nothing romantic or Blitz spirit about it. They had it easy: at least they had shelters and could hear Hitler's bombs coming.

Watched some baby long-tailed tits on the tree from my window today - they were adorable. One of them was so young he was a short-tailed long-tailed tit. There are a lot of very young birds around, little fluffball robins and blue tits. Unfortunately a young thrush had obviously flown into an upstairs window yesterday as we found it laying dead on the roof tiles outside. Within 24 hours, its flesh had been picked clean by carrion-loving magpies and crows. You have to admire nature, red in tooth and claw. Nothing goes to waste.

Thursday July 28
Wrote Lee Mack script all day. It was heavy going. At one stage I had to go outside and trim the hedge, just to get some physical activity in and rest my brain. Watched the other Nip/Tuck and Gillian McKeith for lunch.

Bizarrely, I only remembered to send off my bi-annual tax cheque to the Inland Revenue today because Sean mentioned tax on Nip/Tuck last night. That's public service broadcasting. Imagine if it had only be on Sky One - as will one day be the case. I don't get Sky One and I would have incurred penalty costs and interest for being late.

Tonight we had tickets to see Richard Herring's Edinburgh show Someone Likes Yoghurt at the Wimbledon Studio (a bijou venue round the back of the theatre). It's part of a series of preview double bills. Richard was advertised as coming on at 8pm, with fellow Avalon comic Paul Chowdhry at 9.30. Loyally, we booked the world's greatest Thai restaurant for 9.30. A perfect evening: comedy by someone I know followed by Asian food. Tragically, without warning, Paul Chowdhry came on first. This meant we were left with a dilemma at the interval: go for the meal and miss Richard, or cancel the table, see Richard and go hungry. We chose the latter. (With no mobile between us, I was forced to use a phonebox to call the restaurant, as a courtesy. I can't remember the last time I used one. Aren't they expensive? It cost me £2.50 to call directory enquiries, get the number and say two sentences to the restaurant. What a rip-off. And because it was a BT phonebox I was disallowed from dialling any other directory service but their own. Another scandal. The mobile phone networks have won.) In terms of laughs, Richard was a triumph. I had the requisite tears running down my face. The audience was fairly light, about 40 people, and it seems that Richard thought they were a little off-side (his material is designed to be controversial, not least the bits about the idiocy of Catholics, a sperm as big as a trout, and the whole monkey-rape section). I thought they were into it. But then I'd just sat with them while Paul Chowdhry died on his arse. He just didn't connect, and his music cues all went wrong, which is obviously not his fault. It was a painful hour, I'm sad to say. I hope it goes better for him in Edinburgh. We needed Richard to restore our faith in the buzz, the theatre and the connection of stand-up comedy and he did. Ate toast at 11.30 while watching a terrible Al Murray programme about fights. Al Murray's an Avalon act too. Avalon have won.

The views expressed in this column are Andrew Collins' and don't reflect those of the BBC.