Las Malvinas, nunca!

Two weeks ago tonight, I was part of the audience in a super-slick and highly professional evening of dinner and a dancing display in Buenos Aires, where I used my camera's (more probably my own) inadequacies to produce what I insist on calling arty images. I shouldn't have been there at all: I was meant that night to be at a different dinner in another hotel in another city in another country altogether. It was the annual Cathay Pacific Travel Media Awards run by Travcom, or NZ Travel Communicators, the professional association of which, until yesterday, I've been President for the last two years. It's a big event for a small group to organise, and with sponsors under financial pressure it was a real challenge to pull it all together.

But we did it, and I should have been there, not only to schmooze and suck up, but also to (ahem) collect a few certificates myself: runner-up for this newspaper story about Jaipur in India, winner for this one about Waterford in Ireland and, almost ta-rah, runner-up overall. Having won once, I can tell you that that works better - but it was good to have the Baby go up in my place while I was on another continent being wowed by smouldering looks, testicle-threatening high kicks and more Brylcreem than I've seen since last century. The show was wholly catering for tourists, but it was very well done too, and I enjoyed it.

Of course, it's the 30th anniversary of the start of the Falklands War today (throughout which it was studiously referred to in the British parliament and media as the 'Falklands conflict') and there were petrol bombs and water-cannon in Buenos Aires: not just smouldering there today, but actual fire. A burning Prince William, indeed! Harsh.