Ahoy! It's balmy late evening here, dusk has finally faded into night and HP-Hour steals ever closer. In a few minutes I'm going to slip noiselessly out of the door and scoot down to join the Potter-mad crowds at Waterstone's Notting Hill.

Rumours already filtering through of torrential queues forming outside bookshops, so it'll be interesting to see what's going down with the keen young chaps and chapesses of West London. Am vaguely anxious about being nobbled in the crush. Maybe I should be wearing childproof cricket pads. Hmm.

But what am I expecting from the book itself? Well, in addition to the obvious question of how big it'll be (and thus whether I'm likely to get any sleep before, say, Tuesday), I'm particularly interested to see what JKR has done with Master (soon to be Mr) Potter. Will a character who has always seemed a little thinly sketched – to me, anyway – suddenly erupt into roaring mid-adolescent life? Will he be sprouting acne? Marxist opinions? Unmentionable desires? Will he be, in fact, anything like any other mid-adolescent boy?

Allied to that, how much grown-up doom is Rowling prepared to trickle into her story? We've had long-trailed rumours of a major demise in HP6, but has the author got any nastier surprises up her spangly sleeve? Will she retain the sympathies of her audience, still less the family-friendly film franchise?

All these questions will soon have answers, but already the tension's ratcheting up. Time to slip on the robes, don the appropriate headgear and sharpen my elbows for the scrum. All out of Floo powder, though, so I guess it'll have to be the bike. Darn this Muggle lifestyle.

Check you back here some point after midnight ...