I have a photo pinned to the cork board above my computer monitor. It is a picture of me aged 3 or 4 years old, drinking cocoa with my father in the back yard of the house we lived in at the time. We’d been digging the garden together.

My father died when I was eighteen years old.

Now that I have daughters of my own, the picture means more to me than ever. Looking at it, I feel a deep sense of loss – but also a strong determination to be as good a father to my girls as he was to me – and I wonder which pictures of me they will look back on in the years to come?

I’ve just heard I’ve landed a new job, as Campaign Communications Manager for a recruitment communications company based in Bristol, starting at the end of this month.

This morning is one of those bright, clear autumn mornings when everything looks like you’re viewing it through the wrong end of a telescope. A few hundred yards from the house stands the village church. I can see it from the bathroom window while I’m shaving and cleaning my teeth. It was built in the 1950s to replace the original building that was destroyed by German incendiary bombs during WWII – something that seems almost unimaginable on a morning like this.

My BT Home Hub has developed a fault. A replacement is due to arrive Thursday evening, so updates are likely to be patchy until then.

I’ve just returned sunburned and relaxed from a glorious week beside the sea in Pembrokeshire to find feathers on the doormat (courtesy of the cat) and a gas leak in the living room. Normal service will be resumed shortly.

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My nasal passages are raw and everything smells of gunpowder. I think I’m coming down with a cold.

9th October: We leave Bristol in the fog and rain and touch down in Barcelona in 21 degree heat, coming in over the cruise ships and the blue Mediterranean. The taxi driver doesn’t speak English, and we don’t speak Spanish. He drops us miles from the hotel and we have to limp around the narrow streets of the Gothic Quarter until we find it. We have a late lunch at a restuarant on the Vila de Madrid – ravioli with lamb, pine nuts and mint – then take a look at the Cathedral. My leg is hurting and I’m trying not to overdo it.

In the evening, there are taxi drivers smoking in the street beneath my hotel window; shutters and potted fearns opposite. The street hubub of Spanish voices bubbling along. The shops are open late, and families are still shopping and eating at 9.30pm. We go to a small restaurant near the catherdral and I eat fried rabbit with mushrooms and garlic.

10th October: I wake late and breakfast on cold meats and cheese. We walk along the Portaferrisa to the cathedral again, then under a decorated arch to the Gran Hotel Barcino. Stop for coffee, look at the statues in the foyer of the Barcelona Institute of Arts, then back to the hotel, where I listen to Spanish radio while waiting for the business meeting to start. I want to walk down to the beach but I don’t think I can make it that far with my bad leg.

Outside, rubbish lorries crawl through the narrow streets. Water runs down the central gutter from an overflowing drain in a side alley. A giant smiling buddha sits in a shop window. A paper mache camel guards the entrance to a covered market. And there are geese honking in the cathedral.

The afternoon’s spent in the meeting. My presentation goes down well.

In the evening, we take a taxi to another hotel, where we spend the evening dining on the 23rd floor, watching a massive electrical storm smash over the city. I eat octopus and lamb, watching the storm recede over the Mediterranean. I spend most of the evening talking to Sabine from Germany, who wants to write a fantasy novel.

After the storm, the streets smell fresh, washed clean of traffic fumes and cigarette smoke – the city’s two most dominant smells.

11th October: The meeting recommences at 8.30am local time (7.30am BST) and goes on until 12.45pm without a break. Afterwards, Linda and I have lunch at a cafe on La Rambla, opposite the Museu de l’Erotica. I eat garlic chicken and fried potatoes. I haven’t seen any vegetables since I got here – everything comes with fried potatoes and olive oil.

Outside, the middle of the street is full of stalls selling chickens, budgies, baby rabbits and parakeets. At the end of the street, in the Placa de Catalunya, we catch a tourist bus for a guided sightseeing tour of the city. The tour lasts two hours and takes in many of the famous landmarks, from the Olympic Stadium to the busy commercial container port.

We fly back to Bristol as darkness falls. The Mediterranean coast is a ribbon of yellow, quickly lost behind us. After that, the towns of France are dots of orange that slide past like the raked coals of glowing campfires in the night.

At one point, we see the lights of Bordeaux to our left and Toulouse to our right, and I realise we’re flying over the region of France where my sister lives.

I drove on the M5 through some of the worst affected areas of Gloucestershire and Worcestershire on Saturday. I was on a rescue mission, to collect my mum from Birmingham after her train had been cancelled. And it was like driving through a scene from a distaster movie – the hard shoulder was littered with abandoned and broken down cars; the rain lashed down and the waters either side of the road were rising; rescue helicopters circled overhead; the southbound lanes were jammed for mile after mile; the service areas had run out of petrol; and the radio kept repeating its warning not to travel unless absolutely necessary.

It took six and a half hours to complete the round trip – a journey that should have taken half that time. But we were lucky: some people spent thirteen hours trapped on the motorway overnight.

Living in the city, night comes all at once. The orange streetlights fire up and the blinds in the apartment blocks across the road go down. Everyone’s cooking dinner and watching TV with the volume turned way up. No-one’s looking out. No-one wants to hear what’s happening in the street. Night comes down like a curtain, shutting us in with the minutiae of our lives – lager in the fridge and sea salt crisps. Some programme about lawyers in Chicago, or LA. The kids sleeping upstairs, their breathing relayed through a humming, interference-prone monitor. The lingering smells of garlic and onion.