Some architects have a hell of a sense of humour. This is a genuine aerial shot of the Smaralind shopping mall in Reykjavik. It's probably also the largest phallic monument in the world!

In the parts of my youth that were not so misspent, I learnt some languages. French mainly, a bit of Spanish, Latin to a fairly high standard and some ancient Greek. Not being a science boffin most of my education was centred around literature and languages and at one stage, surprisingly, I was considered to have an "aptitude" for languages.

An essential ingredient of any holiday is to sun yourself in the pool and that is exactly what I did today; I went swimming, Icelandic style. Since they have to find something to do with all that geothermally heated water, Reykjavik has an abundance of swimming pools.

Iceland has been causing a slight stir in the world’s media recently, and not for the reasons that have become increasingly common, as a modern, cosmopolitan, über-trendy and forward thinking society. Far from it. It is now an apparently barbaric and backward people who have the temerity to hunt whales commercially following the Ministry of Fisheries sudden announcement. This sort of story undoubtedly makes for good headlines and copy but can it really be described as an international outrage?

Not everyone is a fan of beauty pageants for a variety of reasons, but predictably enough Icelanders are fairly enthusiastic, in keeping with their tremendous contempt for what the rest of world deems politically incorrect.

I’ve been reading the Icelandic telephone book. That might sound an odd way of passing the time but it is a rather interesting document. I first came across it because I wanted to interview local celebrity and queen of camp, Páll Óskar, about the Eurovision, and after asking a few people how I might contact him, did he have an agent etc, I received fairly bemused looks and the reply, “Just look him up in the phone book.” Evidently being ex-directory is not a big thing here.