Entry 1:

Bleary eyed and jet-lagged, I head out for a day in London before heading up to Edinburgh, where I am to give the keynote address (or, to be precise, one of three keynotes) at an international conference on law enforcement and national security. It might seem strange that a writer on nature and the environment would be venturing into these waters, but I was invited because the conference organizer wants me to take some thoughts from my book The Future in Plain Sight and provide some context for the gathered cops and intelligence types by describing some of the big forces I see pushing the world toward instability.

That's the idea anyway, but in the back of my mind is the lingering fear that at some point after one of these lectures, some rumpled academic will diffidently raise his hand and say, "Mr. Linden, there's just one thing …"—and then methodically dismantle my argument. My paranoia has some basis in reality since this very thing happened to my first wife's father. At a gathering, he confidently launched into a disquisition on the origins of the Basque language, unaware that there was a man in the audience who had devoted his life to the subject.

To help forestall such a moment, I've come to Europe a few days early. My talk is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. (3:30 a.m. my time), and I want to be at my best, or at least awake.

In some respects London has not changed in the six years since my last visit—the bathroom fixtures still look like they can make espresso—but some things have improved. It's now much easier to get a cup of coffee that doesn't look like it came from the bathroom fixtures. I hop in a cab en route to lunch with an old friend. As we drive by Trafalgar Square, the cabby remarks, "Well, the tourists have finally showed up, thank God!" Apparently, hoof and mouth has been keeping them away.

Following lunch, I head over to Time's offices, where a different sort of anxiety is afoot (I left the staff in the mid-1990s and am now a contributor). In the United States, the magazine is shrinking as part of a companywide downsizing, and I ask whether this has affected London operations. A correspondent tells me that as yet the atlantic edition is unaffected, but the situation is like the scene in On the Beach where, having been told that a deadly radioactive cloud is heading towards them from the ocean, a crowd gathers on the shore to weigh the question of taking suicide pills.

Later, I have the good luck to get a last-minute invite to a concert and dinner honoring the great pianist Alfred Brendel on his 70^th birthday. I'm standing in for my friend Kate Bucknell's husband, Robert Maguire, who could not get back in time from a business trip to Asia. After the all-Mozart concert, I go off happily to the dinner, secure that as an add-on, my foggy brain and I will be seated far away from any danger. Idiot! I should have known that they would simply give me Bob's seat directly opposite Brendel.

I grew up surrounded by music (my father was a pianist and teacher), and I've studied music, but basically I know squat. This is particularly true this evening since I have been preparing to talk to Interpol types about things like international migration and not with Alfred Brendel about the origins of chromaticism. As I head to my seat, I feel like a first-time climber who is deposited midway up Yosemite's Half Dome with four pitons, a chalk bag, and a pat on the back. Ruefully recalling my fears about Edinburgh, I note that Brendel could easily fill the part of my imagined rumpled academic nemesis.

The restaurant is noisy, and it takes me a while to get the names right of the other people in our part of the table. Through the din, I hear the Countess of Chichester's name as "Schuster." The meal is almost finished before I summon the nerve to talk to Brendel. I'm curious about the confidence it takes to walk on stage and perform some fiendishly difficult part of the repertoire. Brendel turns out to be a gracious and engaging man. He acknowledges that performers need confidence, but also stresses that artists get into trouble when they start to think of themselves as more important than the composer: "It's important to keep in mind that the composer created the masterpiece, not the one who performs it," he says.

We talk about a great many other things as well. As the dinner breaks up, I walk over to the next table where Kate is talking to Brendel's wife, Irene. She notes pleasantly that her husband seemed animated and engaged in our conversation. "It only looked that way," I admit, "we were leaning in because we were having a hard time hearing each other."

On to Edinburgh.