Some green-eyed, small-minded colleagues have claimed that I often use this diary as an excuse to write about music and food.

Nida Sanad was standing under the shade of a tree. She was dressed elegantly, in a patterned thob (Arabic dress) and headscarf. Only her blackened fingernails betrayed her work as a farmer.
Before her was a rapidly dwindling pile of large, densely leaved lettuces, some of the 4,000 she and her husband grow, across the two seasons each year.
Nida is immensely proud of her lettuces, but eschews the mystique and jargon that other food and drink producers spray around.
Asked what the secret is of the lettuces of Artas, she says: "The water is very clean, and the soil is special."
What types of lettuce does the village produce? "Ones with flat leaves and ones with wrinkled leaves," I am told.
The lettuces provide the bulk of Nida's income, along with some cucumbers and green beans. But that income has, she says, crashed.
She blames the West Bank barrier, which the Israeli government says it has erected to prevent attacks from the West Bank. Nida says that the barrier has stopped her from taking her lettuces to Jerusalem, where she could sell them for five shekels ($1.40; 70p) a piece.
For the past few years, she has had to sell them locally for 3.5 shekels ($1; 50p).
Nida also says that the route of the barrier has robbed her, her husband, and their five children of much of the land where they used to grow olives, fruit and vegetables.
It is for people such as Nida that, last week, for the first time, the boss of the United Nations Register of Damages (Unrod) visited.

Unrod was set up in December 2006 by the UN General Assembly, specifically to assess what reparations the Israeli government may have to pay individual Palestinians, as a result of the path of the barrier.
Israeli officials refused to meet Inroad's director, Vladimir Goryayev, saying that his mandate was illegitimate, that the route of the barrier was based simply on security needs, and that Palestinians had every right, as it is, to claim compensation through Israeli channels.
Times may be thin in Artas, but as the afternoon wore on, so rose the enthusiasm and passion.
On a stage below the mosque, and across the valley from the majestic Convent of the Hortus Conclusus, 10 men in traditional white tunics and black belts were stomping and leaping to the music of the dabka, a traditional dance.
It was a day later that I understood what had moved them. Up to then, I had thought that the point of most lettuce was to sit at the bottom of the salad bowl, pushing the more interesting ingredients to the top.
At our Saturday lunch, I gave the Artas lettuce nowhere to hide. I served it unseasoned and undressed, just chopped and washed.
It was a triumph: sweet and juicy, with a magical top note of dill. Ian would have been thrilled.