Just now I am sitting in my friend's house in Lisbon, Portugal. I have been studying, working and passing leisure time in Portugal for over 20 years now, and consider it to be my second home. I am a historian and a writer, and my specialism is contemporary Portuguese political history. It seems only appropriate, then, that I was informed that I am diabetic on 25 April 2007, the anniversary of Portugal's Carnation Revolution when the country made a fresh start: perhaps I can use this condition as a fresh start for me. Anyway, I am Scottish, married to Linda with whom I share a teenage son, Liam. We all live in a slightly delapidated Victorian stone-built villa in Dundee, Scotland (which is, we are told, the sunniest city in Scotland) with our cat, Mizzy. As I look out the window at my side, and I listen to the sounds of the city below and the birdsong above, I know that it is time to get showered, dressed and up to the city's book fair - with my trusty D70 in tow!