It's been a whole seven days, if not more, since I last appeared here. That's probably some kind of record, but at least I can argue I've spent the week engaged in various worthwhile pursuits. Here's a rundown:

Sunday: Reading Festival winds down

That's the view late on Sunday night as BBC3's beautifully lit outdoor area stands empty. The backdrop takes the form of Reading Festival line-ups from previous years, which briefly caused me consternation when I saw Blur were top of the bill... albeit for 2003.

We finished the festival off with another quality live broadcast on Sunday evening, playing a Smashing Pumpkins track to round things off. Linda, the presenter, is going to be away for a couple of weeks in September... so guess who gets the gig of standing in for her?

Yep, I'm dusting off my music knowledge to present our new music show, including a live band in session each time. I've absolutely no idea how it's going to work but I'm really looking forward to it. Tune in on Sunday 16 and 23 September from 7pm.

Monday: What Bank Holiday?

I know there are a lot of people out there who work Bank Holidays. I tend to wear this as a bit of a badge of honour - the whole weekends and Bank Holidays thing - so the Monday was packed out with stuff to do.

By 11am I'd already been back down to the festival site to film the clean-up operation and the legions of dirty teenagers filing back down the road to waiting coaches, trains, and parents. The top one per cent had arranged to meet parents in the surprisingly deserted Waitrose car park, a mile's walk away but well away from the traffic. The remaining ninety-nine per cent were scrapping it out along the avenue right outside the festival gates.

Once inside (with security no longer an issue) I found myself a rubbish truck and started filiming the crew emptying sacks into it. These are standard shots for any regional news report: you can probably write the script yourself. "The clean-up has begun at Reading Festival this morning as eighty thousand rock fans leave the town.." etc.

Except I'll be taking £250 off You've Been Framed. One of the binmen picked up a huge black sack full of drinks cartons, empty food wrappers and such like, and swung it towards the truck. On the way, the sack broke, and his hapless colleague was showered in concentrated festival detritus. Needless to say, they didn't bother picking the debris up, and drove off.

In the afternoon I headed down the M25 to Sutton to watch Maidenhead United play. They recorded their first win of the season, 3-2, and we did live reports into our drivetime programme. It's remarkably easy to get just about anything on air on a Bank Holiday. Radio stations might as well not exist on public holidays - all the regular presenters are nowhere to be seen, so the stations tick over on anyone too slow to confirm their absence. As Richard Hammond said, sitting in on Radio 2, he was "cheap and available". I don't know if his definition of cheap matches our local radio definition, but the idea remains the same.

Tuesday: A Walk In The Life

As Amy knows, my dog Toby is a big fan of the sculpture trail that leads through the woodland a couple of miles away from our house. This was my first proper day off back here for a while so the priority was a good dog walk.

Toby had his usual half hour or so chasing tennis balls around a lush, green meadow near the woods, then as we headed back, we were intercepted by a young man with a number of clipboards. Turns out he's doing a survey about the woodland in the Chilterns for a degree at Reading University - he explained it in far better detail than that but I sort of lost the plot midway through and remain unsure as to what, precisely, I was contributing to. Either way, someone, somewhere, now knows I'd be prepared to pay a car parking fee for better upkeep of the woodland and initiatives aimed at preserving wildlife.

Later that day I got my hair cut, which I must say was quite incredibly overdue. The things hairdressers can remember continue to amaze me. Not only did mine recognise my voice on the phone (I, ashamedly, am still not sure of her name), remembered my job and even remembered that my friend Rita injured her knee in a bouncy castle-related incident two months ago. That's good going!

Wednesday: The Wedlock Stand

Sounds slightly dodgy, doesn't it? Like a market stall for mail-order brides. It's actually the comparatively harmless away stand at Bristol City FC, where my dad and I found ourselves for Wednesday night's Carling Cup game.

Our Blast reporter at work (a form of extended, in-depth work experience) is a Bristol City fan, so if Man City lost this one, I wouldn't be going back to work. Ever. Simple as that.

Happily we squeaked through 2-1, but since then we've lost at Blackburn. This slow degradation in form is funny in its own way, because if you read the online forums for Manchester City, they mirror the ones for Reading I'm so used to browsing. One moment fans are delighted to high heaven with the team - the next, every thread posted to the board is doom and gloom. Sadly my old plan of supporting whichever team is doing better has gone up in smoke, as they're both currently crap.

Thursday: Simpsons Movie

Not bad at all, this, but it doesn't at any point feel remotely like you're watching a movie. You can get a longer helping of The Simpsons just by sitting down in front of Sky One on a Sunday night, so despite the big screen, it's a glorified session in front of the telly. Don't misunderstand me though; that's no bad thing. This was a quality way to spend the 90 minutes or so. I keep insisting to myself that I should go to the cinema more often, but I fear this may have been another false dawn, and to my utter chagrin, Harry Potter goes unwatched...

Earlier in the day I nipped into work to sort some things out. Like Scrabble on Facebook, for example:

Says it all really, but how addictive is this game? Half the office is surreptitiously scrabbling away during quiet moments or lunch breaks. I even discovered today that a colleague has started a game between her, myself, and the man who edited our Reading Festival website! It's somewhat odd to feel like Scrabble is being used to break down borders and build relationships. I've also had my first two ever seven-letter words. You cannot overestimate the joy that brought. For the record, my first time was "PIONEER", followed by "AMPULES". Get in.

Friday: The Bash

Our managing editor had her leaving do on Friday night. You know it's going to be good when there is spare room in "The Lodge", a sort of miniature hotel-like chain of buildings near the entrance at work, each housing a number of universty-accommodation-esque rooms.

Naturally I chose to wear an eight foot multi-coloured sombrero to the evening, and was delighted to find the sombrero and I in the company of the chairman of Reading FC and the man in charge of all local radio sport across the country. I'm sure I made a good impression. I managed a second potential You've Been Framed entrant in a week, too, when filming my friend Emma on my mobile while she was sporting my sombrero. She went for a couple of drunken spins on the dance floor, collapsed, and ended up propped against a table with the sombrero at an angle, akin to a sleeping Mexican in a Speedy Gonzales cartoon. Nine seconds of pure joy.

Great mirth on our Friday night sports show earlier that evening, too - it turns out fans aren't the only ones confused by last-day transfer deals before the transfer window shuts on the top football clubs in the country.

We had Reading's Glen Little in the studio. During the conversation the name of fellow midfielder Seol Ki-Hyeon was mentioned. "He's gone, hasn't he?", said Glen. "Er, no," replied our presenter, Tim. "Oh," said Glen. "Must be, er, wrong about that one then!"

Naturally, hours later, Seol had left the club. One can only assume the club had told the players earlier in the day and Glen hadn't realised they were keeping it quiet til the deal had properly gone through. It's nice to receive the occasional inadvertent tip-off!

Saturday: Gently Down The A4

Saturday, on paper, was a relaxing day: in work, but no bulletin or programme responsibilities to maintain, so just a website shift.

In practice I slaved away all morning, bombed down the A4 to record a piece about Maidenhead United's historic football ground for BBC London's new non-league show, then bombed it back to film my adopted rowing crew in their grand finale back in Reading.

They came third out of nine - a fine effort - and at the end, someone came round with a clipboard persuading all the novice competitors to sign up permanently. I have to confess I was sorely tempted to volunteer. The atmosphere at the rowing club was electric and the sense of camaraderie among all the members is amazing. I'm going to give it serious thought. How hard can it, er, be?

Speaking of rowing, Bristol City-supporting Chris had his trial for the World Class Start programme today (Sunday). Because of his height (a good six inches taller than me) he was singled out for the chance to try out for the phenomenally successful rowing programme, which has produced a succession of stars in recent years. He's had no previous rowing experience so today will have been interesting - the best bit is, he's recorded the whole lot, so you can hear how he got on this Friday from 6pm. Oh, and it's yours truly presenting.

On Saturday evening the family descended on The Bull at Bisham for Alice's birthday meal (she's 12). The Bull had lost the booking but put on a fine show, and the food was as good as is expected at what is a fine establishment. My dad, impressively, was only £2 out with his guess as to the final bill. I think he'd agree that's a sign he has too much experience in that place. The Maitre D' is one of the best in the business - makes you feel completely at home when you know full well he couldn't really give a toss... but he's just so nice...

Sunday: Barbecue On Ice

Getting up at 6am has become routine for Sundays but, for some reason, was sheer hell today. The morning passed off calmly enough but the whole day was really a preamble to the excitement of going to the home of the Slough Jets for a barbecue by their ice rink ahead ot the new season.

I had an enjoyable if slightly garbled and staccato conversation with their new Czech signing - who drove to Slough from the Czech Republic! - and discovered that the team's manager, Steve, once played (albeit briefly) for the New York Rangers back in the late 80s, scoring one goal in Philadelphia. That's good enough for me.

The best bit is that it looks like ice hockey commentary may be a realistic prospect. Whisper it quietly, since we need to iron out some of the technical side of things, but we just might be in a position to do a live commentary from the Jets' first game of the season this coming Saturday night. If so, you can spend your Saturday night by the computer, listening live... yep, knew you'd be thrilled. But well done for getting this far to the end of the post, eh! Normal service will resume, promise.