Stop all the clocks.

It is night again and I sit after another late night at the office, a three hour class and a long "meeting" on how to integrate music into an interview piece, and another long and vivid 6 man debate on how I am going to manage to be in Richmond and Boston simultaneously on Saturday morning.

- And so as usual the day has raced by far too quicly -and the hours in the day seem to be getting shorter and shorter - and the list of people and things I want to do gets longer and longer. My whole life seems to condense itself down into sound bites and radio features. And so at the corner of every street, in the undercurrent of every conversation, at the edge of every person's eyeline I sense a story - or an interview or a soundscape. I am even beginning to feel slightly paniced that time is going to run away with me and all of a sudden this beautiful Washington world is going to be gone and I won't have all the features that I want. What about my comparison of a being a Muslim in a post 9/11 world in America and Britain? What about my feature on embedded reporters in the Iraq war based on my chats with three embedded journalists? and the interview footage I have of the Aceh refugee? And will the "Talk Radio News Service" clout be enough authority to get an interview with Chomsky, or Huntington on reactions to Richard Clark? All my ideas whirr constantly around like ticking butterflies- urging me forward in ever crazier patterns and on to ever more mad and exciting ideas. I only wish I lived in that scary British kids TV programme - Bernard's Watch - and could stop time for a snooze - or for a few stolen seconds to breath and exchange a pleasantry with someone.

But no - in between my whirring I am experiencing all the bizarre times of life in DC, the half hour chats with polite tramps, the squashed margharita sipping bars (where again it is possible to smoke), the exchanges of business cards in a solumn childlike game of ritual and custom, the bright cold sunlight over the brown river I cross each morning, the screaming protests outside embassy row, even the habit of near death every time a driver decides not to believe the traffic lights red and charge on trhough the pedestrian crossing. It is a happy, young, straining city - and the pretentiousness is bearable because it is mixed with the irony that somehow the rest of the world has played into the idea that what goes on here is important. The real world goes on, and winds the cogs that keep DC ticking, and DC continues to fool itself into believing that it runs the show. I have realised how completely sucked in to this opinon I have become...

I spent yesterday sitting 6 feet away from Condoleezza Rice, I had accidently left my coat and bag on Mr Obama's chair (yes THE Mr Obama - set to be the next greatest thing in Washington politics). It was an absolutely sureal pleasure to listen to the lightning rods of tension rising and crackling between Condi and our dear Californian Barbara Boxer who raged and interrupted in her strikingly fabulous manner. It was a hearing on the state department's budget - not the most thrilling of events I suppose -- but I am sucked in entirely to the celebrities and gossip of this place - and so obviously sat enthralled by every word. I managed to lean back a little so as not to look too eager and interny when the hungover Fox News sound man on my left and the chirpy CNN guy on my right started laughing at the two blatent interns who were trying to take photos from the back of the room - and couldn't quite contain their excited gleefulness. I wonder if this thrill of watching power play itself out - in every sense of the word - will ever wear off. Every time I enter a hearing on why America has withdrawn their ambassador from Syria or why Bush's social secuirty plan is horrible for the elderly I sigh a deep sense of contented and restrained happiness - because there is something beautiful about relying on news first hand -and not having to trust the distortions of a media outlet. And because I love hearing intelligent people speak - especially when they have years of experience and an entire department of facts and figures and reports to justify each of their statements. Indeed, because it is good to know that democracy in some senses works - that Condi is not quite as weak and submissive as she sometimes appears, and that Boxer is ten times as magnificent.

If I were less tierd I would finish this post off properly and tie all these thoughts together - but my room mate is already stirring madly. So, instead I wish the world a goodnight and I pray I stop dreaming up any more features and instead manage to focus on a way of being simultaneously in Richmond, Boston and doing laundry on Saturday morning.