Well, trusty tome, we're almost due to launch the car and there is a palpable air of excitement in the building. The RB8 is about to step out of the shadows. It'll be time to show the world the new fun-loving side of Adrian Newey.
I have to be quite frank with you, diary, people often get the wrong impression about me. They think I'm some soup-obsessive, Carole Vordeman-worshipping, boffin-type technocrat who in spare moments likes nothing better than strapping on a quality double-stitched kagoule, a pair of woolly socks and stout walking boots and rambling on the North York Moors with nothing but an O.S. map and my dear wife.
Nothing could be further from the truth. I'm only mildly interested in Carole Vorderman and as we'll see in the next few weeks - a bit of a joker.
The fun will all start on February 6th when we launch the new car prior to a carefully structured test programme prepared by our computer 'Deep Thought'. Or as it's known at Milton Keynes - Adrian II. In recent years I have to confess I have been more than a tad cheesed off to see my carefully designed and beautifully executed technical ideas stolen by 'Bob - the Trendy Vicar'* and the Italian mob. So one afternoon I had a little word with Christian.
*Jana called Martin Whitmarsh this once and I'm afraid the nickname has stuck. You could certainly imagine him driving the youth group minibus.
This inestimably cunning plan calls for deception on a grand scale. What we have decided to do is design some god-awful looking car and a similarly useless exhaust system for the first test in 2012. We'll run the car considerably underweight and put rocket fuel on board. The minute it heads to the top of the timesheets we know that the C.A.D. design umpa lumpas back in Woking and Maranello will start copying it and integrate in into their cars while we reveal the real RB8 at Test No.2. Hoot hoot. Most rib-tickling.
Jana heard me chortling into the phone and wanted to know what was so funny. I pointed to the new wall-sized notice board - a little like the old Top Gear Cool Wall - which we have erected in my office. To this we will attach photos of other cars on the grid, highlighting parts of the fake and then the real RB8 that get copied through the season. At one end, the really good rip-offs, and at the other, the shoddy attempts.
Jana studied it with very little emotion then looked at me and said: "Is nice to see new things - are you also going to get soft play area for little boy who drives?"
Now, you know me well by now, faithful paper repository of my thoughts, I'm not easily moved to stern words and thundering rebukes. But I decided I had to take a very hard line with Jana and establish some boundaries.
"I think that... erm...might be a little out of order," I possibly said, "he IS a double World Champion."
"Oh?" she said, the way she does when she knows she has a winning argument. "If he is such grown-up, why does he call car 'Kinky Kylie'?
At this she smiled her 'you have no answer' smile and returned to her desk. No doubt to terrorise someone. I might have to warn Sebastian about that before he comes in next time.
Sebastian has decided he'd like to see how brake disks and pads are constructed and we arranged a trip for him to visit the Brembo factory in Italy. I thought that would be that - the brake box ticked - but now he's quite keen to see how Carbon Industries put theirs together as well, to see if he can find out if there is an advantage he can apply somewhere down the line.
To make it absolutely clear to Mark that we are giving him the same opportunities as Sebastian I rang up the Wild Australian Boy and asked him if he'd like a tour round the Brembo factory to see brake discs being made. I got a reassuring chuckle then; "No, mate."
However there was a pause on the line, when for a second I thought he might be about to change his mind. Then he asked: "Prof, which is our furthest flung supplier?"
I answered that we got some of the ignition technology from a supplier in Japan.
"Great," he said, "I'll tell Sebastian that I'm visiting them on the way out to Melbourne."
In the canteen at lunchtime on Friday and a delicious, overwhelmingly noodly, noodle-based Ka Tieu soup, with shrimp, meatballs and lashings of fried green onions. Though technically it's a broth not a soup. Christian arrived with his usual panini and iPad and grinned at me.
"What's that, shark's fin soup?" he said.
"Good gracious no," I replied, "I would never have shark's fin, even though it is considered by the Chinese as one of the eight treasured foods from the sea."
He tapped on his iPad and looked at me slightly more seriously.
"You know the Ferrari launch?"
"Yes," I chortled, "in the snow. The new Ferrari bobsleigh. Have they decided to combine it with their Wroom event next year?"
"Yes, but you know we had this plan to launch a complete ****brick of a car."
"Yes..."
"They've only gone and beaten us to it. Have a look at this..."
At this he showed me the new F2012 launch pictures. At first glance it looked very square. Like it had been designed by the technicians at Playmobil. We looked at the pictures for some while. At the front, at the side, at the back. But we kept on coming back to the ugly stepped nose.
"Not so much Maranello as Manilow," I mused and got panini spluttered back at me for my troubles.
It will be very interesting to see what Stefano (and Barry) think of our efforts on Monday...
