Once again my travel plans are fated to take an unexpected twist.

Flying to the Balkans via Vienna today, I got to the airport on time, boarded plane, pulled out Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver and continued from where I’d got to last night (the Hague in the mid-1680’s). After about a hundred pages I realised that the plane wasn’t moving.

Fog in Vienna apparently. We were an hour late taking off; just in time to miss my connection. But fortunately the conference organisers were flying me business class so I’m in the lounge on a computer with an absurdly slow 33.6 modem – remember when those seemed really fast?

Anyway I’ll fly in this evening, and they’ve rearranged my pre-dinner speech to breakfast time tomorrow. But I have a real favour to ask anyone who’s following this evening’s news – my flight lands at 2025 European time and I’ll be whisked straight to the conference dinner, so won’t have access to TV news for hours. I’d be awfully grateful if some kind soul could text me the results of the Tory leadership ballot, which will be out at about the same time, so that I can have a good gloat (I think any of the conceivable results is bad news for the Conservatives). My mobile number is ( here ).