Diary of a week (or how my chances of a knighthood are growing slim).

SATURDAY: Our political reporter Keith Baldrey calls me from the golf course. "Get down here, quick. The sun's coming out, it's dry and the radar says it's going to be great."

I was sipping a steaming hot coffee, sitting in my pyjamas and looking forward to a morning of doing absolutely nothing. It had been raining outside but, yup, it seemed to be letting up.

I got to the golf course 30 minutes later, and caught up with the group at the fifth hole. Which is when I got the e-mail on my BlackBerry. The first of many.

I had taken a few light-hearted jabs at Prince Charles in the paper that morning. The reader called me cruel, discourteous. A second e-mail arrived. Republican jerk, said the missive. Then a third. You oughta be executed, it suggested.

I started hitting balls into the woods. I fluffed shots. This was unsettling. Beep, beep, beep went the BlackBerry. Readers called me unwelcoming, a writer of cheap shots, unCanadian, a philistine. My game disintegrated.

Then it started raining. Cold, biting, furious rain. I had no rain gear, no umbrella, no chance, and got soaked to the skin. I left the course shivering, freezing, deflated and defeated.

God, apparently, is also a fervent monarchist.

SUNDAY: Prince Charles and Camilla are at the cathedral, but I keep a safe distance -- there could be thunderbolts in the air -- and head for a walk with my wife along Dallas Road.

Sometimes, when the elements co-operate, it has to be one of the most beautiful places on the planet to take a Sunday stroll. Snow-capped mountains across a shimmering sea, boats bobbing in the distance, other walkers and joggers nodding hello, dogs skipping happily along the grass. A chill in the air, but everyone wrapped warmly, secure in the knowledge they are in the closest thing to paradise.

MONDAY: Tony Parsons and Mike McCardell in our newsroom both have new books out in time for Christmas. Look for book signings in your neighbourhood. They'll both sell well, McCardell's because he's a one-man bestselling machine, Parsons' because he's our Walter Cronkite, our TV news icon.

I invoked Parsons' name in a talk I gave in Parksville the other week. It's a story our weatherman Wayne Cox likes to tell.

Parsons wasn't always a news veteran. As a cub reporter he worked on a Toronto radio news station on the overnight shift. Just before news time a wire came in saying the former king of Romania had died.

Parsons went to read it on air but realized he couldn't pronounce the name, which had about 97 syllables.

Not to be defeated he went on air and said, "We have breaking news. The former king of Romania has died. His name is being withheld until next of kin have been informed."

TUESDAY: I see Christmas lights on two houses on my drive home. There ought to be a law against them before Remembrance Day. Then again, maybe they didn't take them down last year.

WEDNESDAY: Nimrod. I Vow to Thee My Country. Abide With Me. This is the music of Remembrance Day, and I hear them all this morning.

Heartbreaking, heart-wrenching pieces searing their way into your soul. They are, yes, songs of death but also songs of hope and tenderness.

Gustav Holtz adapted his Jupiter from The Planets and a poem by Cecil Spring-Rice to create I Vow to Thee My Country. The words and music are a perfect union. Especially these two lines:

The love that never falters, the love that pays the price,

The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.

THURSDAY: We break a story on the News Hour about a new home being built in Vancouver, a home which -- at 44,000 square feet and with as many as 29 bathrooms -- may be Canada's biggest.

This sounds a little over the top. I'd get lost trying to find my way down for breakfast every morning. By comparison, the White House is 55,000 square feet, Bill Gates's Seattle home is 48,000 square feet and Hearst Castle is 60,000 square feet.

FRIDAY: After all the Victoria hoopla, you've probably forgotten the Olympic flame is still making its way across Canada -- well, actually it's now making it back. Today it is in Cape Spear in Newfoundland, North America's most northeasterly point.

The speculation on who will light the torch at the Olympic stadium in Vancouver in February now begins in earnest. I'm guessing Betty Fox, Terry's mom, handing off to Wayne Gretzky who ignites the flame. Any other bets?

Ian Haysom is news director of Global News in Vancouver. He divides his week between Central Saanich and Vancouver.

ihaysom@globaltv.ca