So, I’m back in the UK, and missing Croatia already.

There will be more reportage, but before I do anything else I should give my warmest thanks to all of those people who made my stay so enjoyable. I am particularly grateful to Mihaela and her family, who made me very welcome in their home. Thanks also go to Tomislav for being an excellent dinner date, and to Petra for hunting around Zagreb yesterday morning for a bottle of the mistletoe schnapps. The whole committee deserves thanks, but I don’t know all of their names so I won’t just list the ones I do know. And my thanks to Vlatka and her crew for making my first ever TV appearance so easy.

My fellow guests: Tim Powers, Charlie Stross, Dmitry Glukhovsky and Darko Macan were all great to hang out with, and thanks also to Feòrag NicBhrìde, Bella Pagan and John Berlyne whom I also spent a lot of time with.

Finally, of course, I should thank Fluff Cthulhu, both for not eating me, and for managing the weather so well. My apologies to everyone in the UK, who I understand got Croatia’s rain as well as their own.