Read on if you've ever had to take time to query an erroneous 'phone bill, or to return a faulty item, only to be told you'll be refunded as a "goodwill gesture"...

It's my pet hate. A few weeks ago I bought a new lamp for our living room, only to find (having stripped out the original) that one of the more crucial parts was missing. On contacting the shop, I was told they were "unable to provide the missing part", but could order one from the manufacturers "for an extra eighteen pounds". Needless to say, I wasn't about to write the cheque, and marched the lamp furiously across town for a confrontation.

"We'll refund on this occasion, sir - as a goodwill gesture," I was told.

The light may not have made it to the ceiling, but I certainly did.

Fact is, there's a difference between the free giving of goodwill and the indisputable need for recompense. Which is why I'm utterly gob smacked at the deplorable customer service I received today from what I've already named as "the worst bus operator in the world".

As a goodwill gesture, and by way of identifying the worst provider of customer service in the world, I'll include their logo:

You'll recall that Thames Travel (Wallingford) Limited is responsible for the bus which, on a cold night in March, sailed past my friend Guy and I at the most rural of bus stops. To give them their due, Thames Travel did respond to my answerphone message, and to the subsequent comment form I submitted online, promising to "investigate the complaint".

After a few days, I received a polite email informing me that CCTV footage from the bus in question had been examined, and whilst they'd been able to confirm that we were indeed left at the bus stop, "the lighting at the (bus) stop was very poor". The inference was that the driver, through a mere windscreen, hadn't been able to see the shape of two grown men waving frantically in the road, even though that spectacle clearly had been visible to the CCTV camera. (Wouldn't it look great on YouTube?)

All that aside, Thames Travel offered to do the only decent thing, promising to pay compensation for our tickets and the unavoidable taxi journey to take us back to civilisation before dawn. All in, I calculated that a cheque for £15.40 would make us at least financially square.

Today, that compensation arrived...

... in the form of "a voucher for £15.40 to cover the cost as promised".

As I sit here, contemplating the length of the bus journey I'd need to make in order to claim my full £15.40's worth of Thames Travel credit, I wonder whether there's ever been a gesture so bereft of goodwill. Clearly, my dissatisfaction with the service has been taken seriously to the point that it's been followed up, and that is to be applauded. But in terms of a satisfactory resolution for the customer, this is crass; it would be like presenting a victim of bird flu with a lifetime supply of turkey.

Nobody champions the cause of the small independent bus operator more than I. In this case, though, I take forward the cause of the wronged consumer. Bottom line is, the taxi driver didn't accept my bus ticket, so why should I accept a glorified bus ticket to "cover the cost" of the taxi?

As a goodwill gesture, I'll be returning the voucher to its sender with a debit note for the £15.40 I'm owed. I'll also enclose a credit note for any on-board radio presentation services they may need in the future. They'll be just as likely to use it as I will their buses.

It's not often I'm around in time for soap-tv. So, the adverts. Firstly, how can skin be "more than radiant". I mean, radiant is radiant. You can't be more radiant. That's something else, surely. Glowing. Or even "amazingly radiant". You're just radiant. Not "more radiant". And anyway, if you look radiant, isn't that good enough. Damn, I'd like to look radiant at the end of a day of work... even less than radiant would be OK. Second, why do we have to have adverts for anti-diarrhea and women's sanitary products? Don't we just get what we want? Will an advert for one brand of sanitary produce over the other really make a woman change? I reckon you use either a) what your Mother or sister used or b) what is on special offer. Jeez. Oh and third, why do glade or haze or something or other air fresheners come in such ridiculous smells? I want a room to smell sweet, inoffensive. Not like warm, rotting roses (TM OJ, or something along those lines). I do not want, "white tea and lily"... "mountain berry" or "peaches and petals". Whatever next.

Who lives in a mess like this?

Predictably, yet irresistibly, you're bound to say "David, it's over to you". And you'd be right.

Welcome to your backstage pass for Berkshire's most untidy sleeping quarters, uncharacteristically my very own room in deepest Caversham. Throughout school and University days, my reputation was for husbandry at quite the opposite end of the scale. That's hard to imagine when you see the clutter of the present Sheppard Towers above, but to prove it (largely to myself), here's a shot of friends Brian, Tom and Nick enjoying hospitality among rows of neatly stacked trinkets in my Bristolian lodgings...

(Granted, the curtains needed tidying into a bin.)

My current room is undergoing complete refurbishment which will eventually see it change colour, shape, size and sex - hence the mess. Question is, will I ever get around to finishing?

Or, if this past weekend is anything to go by, starting?...

Friday night was put aside for great things - the moving of the furniture, the relocation of the desk (which still hasn't been secured to the wall after all these months, despite being of distinctly 'wall mounted' design), and a celebratory bottle of rosé to toast progress. Suffice to say, celebrations started prematurely and put pay to any Friday night graft. Oh well, at least Saturday was free...

A hard day's work calls for a hearty breakfast, and with this in mind, flatmate Bryony and I visited our local frying pan for the world's largest breakfast. Naturally, a meal of such magnitude requires a while to settle before any manual work can be undertaken, so a small rest was taken in the sunshine. It's surprising how much hunger all this lounging can promote, so lunch was taken, and again time was allowed for stomachs to settle. You can see how Saturday went on...

Sunday morning came, and I'm delighted to say was dedicated in its entirety to bedroom matters - mainly sleeping off Saturday night's show. Still, plenty of time to work on the room later. If only I'd managed to resist the invitation to pop along to an art exhibition in the Oxfordshire countryside, I could have started immediately...

Mid-afternoon was upon us, and with a barbeque to get to in the evening, I still had an hour or so in hand to begin work on furniture shifting. In fact, I did move a chair... before deciding I'd make the most of the weather and cycle to my barbeque. A journey of ten miles or so, it would take the rest of the afternoon. Shame.

I have to say, this really was the most fantastic barbeque - salmon, king prawns, roasted vegetables - healthy fuel for the cycle home around 9pm, and surely leaving me with a little energy for the task ahead. Unfortunately, on getting back home, flatmate Bryony seemed to be airing one of my favourite episodes of Black Books, and I couldn't resist the empty space on the sofa. It was the one where Dylan Moran's character was finding any excuse to put off something he didn't want to do, eventually inviting a pair of Jehovah's witnesses into his house for a lengthy chat.

Today is Monday - the final day of my slightly elongated weekend. I'll be waiting for the doorbell to ring...

At the risk of being pompous, please note the originality of the title. Sadly, the Chief Kent Correspond... *pause while check Ollie's post to see whether I should continue with an "a" or an "e"... ent was not in the Garden of England when the tremor occurred. I think, technically, I was in Middlesex. It has always amused me how London separates into counties, even though they really have very little purpose at all; I simply live in a London Borough.

So, yesterday I had a blissful day with a friend. We went to Bicester, then camped for 3 or so glorious hours in the lake by Blenheim Palace enjoying the sunshine and our Tesco picnic. I got asked for ID in Sainsbury. Highly entertaining since my friend was also with me and is twenty-six. If they are still asking me when I am thirty or so, I'll be a happy woman. I then went to meet Mr Williams for dinner. We had one abortive attempt at finding a pub - it's closed for refurbishment. At least this means we have a venue for next time... we discussed all manner of things, including Ollie's cruelty to horses. He's yet to apologise for photographing a horse and cutting its ears off. Anyway, so then I ended up in Kent since I had to talk through something with my parentals. I had planned to do this on the phone, decided it was better done face to face, had pretty much decided to visit them for a couple of hours (I'd arrive shortly after 9pm) when at the split of the M25 where I would have to decide, there was a sign saying the Blackwall Tunnell was shut. Decision made. So, to Kent it was. Then back to London this morning and I have trawled Spitalfields and Brick Lane market in search of fancy dress. It's for a 1950s event. I've decided I shall look like a 1950s E-number. A pinky knee-length Grease skirt, a green polka-dot tie top, a neck tie and pink ballet pumps. Oh dear. And I'm a lawyer, right?

Nothing else to report. I've recently read the latest Ian McEwan, On Chesil Beach. There's a Guardian review, here. I didn't particularly enjoy the subject matter. In fact, when I was reading it on the DLR in the morning I should have been more comfortable reading a raunchy scene from a Jillly Cooper. Perhaps this is because McEwan is so delicate, so open, so poignant? I found it uncomfortable. Reading it in public, wasn't for me. Consequently I'm highly amused that in the photo taken of Cameron on the bus this week (in most newspapers this weekend), he is reading said book. Nudge, nudge, best get Cameron reading a best seller. You know, popular fiction. Something that will make him look intellectual, but reading something modern. Oh yes, great idea. How Edward wishes to pop Florrie's cherry. Perhaps I missed something, I wasn't convinced.

You'd expect that to be the sentiment of any American watching a cricket match. Potentially you can play for five days and still end up with neither team winning. But no, that's the view of BBC cricket commentator Jonathan Agnew as he watched the farce that is the Cricket World Cup Final.

Have a listen to Aggers' bout of depression using the audio panel below. With Sri Lanka on 150 for 3 having just re-emerged from a rain break, Agnew was told (apparently erroneously, it now seems) that according to the notorious Duckworth-Lewis method, Sri Lanka had lost two overs-worth of batting but still had to get the same number of runs. He wasn't thrilled.

"I can't work it out. I'm beyond working these things out. How can there be no change to the target? If they were to chase so many off 38 overs, why are they chasing the same number off 36 overs now?

"It used to be a straightforward game, this. You ran up and bowled, and someone hit it. It's a mad game now."

Seriously, listen to the audio version though. The tones of voice from Aggers and his summariser epitomise world cricket's lunatic tendency.

Update: Australia have just won after a bizarre sequence in which the umpires offered the Sri Lankan batsmen the light, the batsmen accepted, Australia thought they had triumphed, Glenn McGrath pulled a stump out of the ground, the umpires said the game hadn't finished, they took the stump back, put it back in the ground, then made everyone carry on.

Here's a second clip from the BBC commentary - the final ball of the 2007 Cricket World Cup, in what television pictures showed us really was absolute darkness. It could be an Eddie Izzard sketch, but it's the actual commentary from the final ball of the finale of cricket's showpiece competition:

I know we've got readers in Kent and our Chief Kent Correspondent, Amy, might even be there as I write. There've been "earth tremors" there, as the BBC and Sky have taken to calling them, thus giving the much underused word "tremor" a fresh breath of life.

We don't as yet know what precisely has happened - some are saying there's been an explosion, some are saying it was just an earthquake, measuring 4.7 on the Richter scale.

What we do have in all situations like these are eyewitness reports from people in the region. People like Paul, quoted by BBC News Online. The following emphasis is mine:

Paul Smye-Rumsby, who lives in Dover, said: "It was about 08.15 when suddenly the bed shook violently.

"I thought my wife had got cramp or something but then I saw the curtains were moving and the whole house was shaking. It lasted about 1.5 seconds.

[source: BBC News Online]

I'm sure Mrs Smye-Rumsby will be thrilled. In front of the nation, her husband has compared her movement in bed to a minor earthquake!

Only a quick one to register my delight that the BBC's school-based drama series, Waterloo Road, has been recommissioned for not eight (series one), not twelve (series two), but twenty new hour-long episodes for a forthcoming third series.

This means the show, whose second season ended tonight, will presumably run for nigh on five months when it returns this autumn, sitting it alongside the likes of Casualty and Holby City in the BBC schedules as a long-term commitment for its viewers.

I only started watching a couple of episodes into the second series, but it's some of the most consistently excellent television I've seen in a long time, and for me it's up alongside Life On Mars and Dr Who as the best drama TV has to offer at the moment. Any show where a burger van plays an integral role in a murder has to be worth its salt. And vinegar.

Ahh, this must be what the good old days were like. Sat at my desk, neck to one side clamping the phone to my ear, typing furiously away as a BBC correspondent in a far-off land dictates down a crackly line.

Who needs twenty-first century technology? It all feels a lot more exciting and, I dunno, reporter-like that way. Our esteemed colleague Ben has gone to Sri Lanka to film the work of a Reading-based charity, helping people rebuild their lives after the tsunami. His plan was to write for our website each day using his laptop, but he managed to electrocute that (and almost himself) plugging it into a particularly unreliable socket when he got to the capital, Colombo. So in its absence he's gone old skool and is filing copy down the line.

This is where the NATO phonetic alphabet comes in handy, and I start to sound like a police control room operator.

Ben: "So the monk's name is B-U-(static)-B-H-I..."
Me: "Hang on, go again. B for Bravo, U, B for Bravo..."
Ben: "No, D! Not B."
Me: "D for Delta?"
Ben: "Yeah, B-U-D-D-H-I-K-A..."

And so this continued for ten minutes, until between us we'd committed all 428 words to my computer's memory. This third instalment will be on the site tomorrow - parts one and two, which made it through by laptop before Ben nearly killed himself, are here and here. (His mum has left nice comments on both, which is fantastic. Only a couple of months ago he was practically garnering death threats for his piece on dividing by zero.)

Ben's now back in Colombo waiting for his flight home tomorrow, having been out there nearly a week. But there's just one problem. As I was leaving for home, this urgent Reuters snap appeared:

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lankan authorities closed Colombo's international airport and cut power to the capital on Thursday night after suspicious airplanes were seen flying south along the coast, a military source said.

Witnesses in the area said they saw parachute flares fired into the sky and heard what sounded like anti-aircraft guns.

[source: Reuters India]

On the positive side, Ben could be ideally placed as a BBC correspondent should trouble break out. On the negative side, his proposed long weekend off is not exactly looking likely.

It may have been 12 months since the ever diplomatic Emma spared me the need to frog march my estranged desk back to its rightful home, but I can assure you her diplomacy remains as strong today as ever.

A couple of weeks ago, Radio Berkshire suffered the most severe IT failure I've witnessed since I joined the BBC five years ago. Computers were out of action for hours, the whole building remote from the internet, and even broadcast critical lines were being propped up to sustain travel bulletins and the like (no fault of our own, I hasten to add, and carried with little detriment to the listener).

When all was resolved, the BBC's Helpdesk sent us an email to explain what had caused the situation, and also to apologise "for any incontinence caused".

At the time, we assumed this to be either the most unfortunate of tryping errots, or a practical joke which had somehow made it to the inboxes of the 500+ staff in our building.

After today's events, I now have my doubts...

Two quite interesting developments this evening.

Firstly, I've interviewed an Elvis impersonator - sorry, "tribute act" - for the first time in my life. I hadn't really been expecting that to happen today, and certainly not at the speedway. But it turns out the boy Elvis is quite the Reading Bulldogs fan. Have a listen, he even sings a Bulldogs-themed Presley number:

The second point of note is that of all the celebrities in the world, my face most closely resembles that of...

Richard Hammond. And it's official:

I'm not entirely sure how Amy J will take this news. Is this Hammond immediately struck off "the list"? Click here for your own which-celeb-do-you-look-like gadget.

I've not yet had many chances in life to exercise the Old School Tie, but today I met one of the very few England test batsmen to have gone to my school:

That's Aftab Habib - member of Wills West house, Taunton School, in the early 1980s - departing the field of play having scored 12 runs for his new team, Berkshire. He played for England against New Zealand back in the late 90s without much success, then disappeared back into the depths of county cricket. After leaving Leicestershire at the end of last season, he's rejoined Berkshire (he was born in Reading despite his time at TS) and this was his first game back, a friendly against fellow minor county Wiltshire.

Berkshire lost by a fair margin, making 228 all out at Henley CC in response to Wiltshire's 313. At the time the photo was taken Habib had spent just under an hour at the crease, but the score on his departure was 98 for 6, far from healthy for a side which rates its batting above its bowling. Only Paul Carter, batting number 7, put up any resistance with 57 off 51 balls.

Having completed my umpiring course back in March I now know a fair few people associated with cricket in Berkshire - when I turned up to this game, my first ever in the county, I knew about four spectators, the scorer and one of the umpires. Here's my former instructor Errol waggling the finger of doom at a Berkshire batsman:

And the good news is it looks like I could be spending most of my summer doing this. I'm on sports bulletins duty each Saturday afternoon but have carte blanche to find a decent sporting fixture from which to present them, and the cricket looks odds on to win my vote since it's one of very few sports which can sustain a match from 1pm til 6pm on a Saturday, with something new to say each hour. Plus I'll take my trusty camera and put together a 'grand tour' of Berkshire's finest grounds - that's Henley in the can already, and possibly Thatcham to come next week.

I've really missed cricket, you know. It's good to have it back and even better to be paid to watch it. Plenty of photos and an interview with Aftab to follow on the Berkshire website tomorrow.

Nah, I'm not talking about this site. Although Ollie and I were recalling when, through Finals, OJ, Ollie and I each did things to Dayorama in order to de-spam, it. Ollie re-designed the site, I deleted thousands of comments offering viagra, and OJ did something with trackbacks, possibly? Anyway, who cares. Spamalot. Currently showing in London. A Monty Python marathon session. Fantastic. Well, fantastic if you are prepared to sit for however long it is - 2 1/2hrs? - relax, laugh and get involved.

5 colleagues and I arranged a trip sometime last week. There's a small group of us who are trying to organise events en masse, just so we do actually get out during the week. It's also useful that people understand when at the 11th hour you turn round and say, "actually, I can't go". So, there were 6 of us at 5pm. There were 5 of us going at 7pm. Only 3 left the Office. And the remaining 2 managed the second half and then a few drinks afterwards. Not bad, all things considered.

So, Spamalot. It has mixed reviews. There were some very funny, laugh-a-minute sketches and then there were a couple which seemed to go on and on a little bit too much for me. But such is life. Overall, highly entertaining and I'd recommend it to anyone who was just prepared to go with the flow (oh, and you have to be able to cope with anti-sematic, anti-French, pretty much anti-anything jokes). I think Anthony would enjoy it (no connection intended).

In other news, I haven't started an addiction to tropical fruit, aka Ollie, but I have stopped drinking. I say stopped drinking. I lie. I've cut back. Only 3 units in the last week, which is probably losing a 0 of the end of what I have drunk some weeks. It's just unnecessary, but somehow in the environment in which I work, it seems to happen without noticing. So does the missing breakfast and the eating eratically. So I'm on a health kick. I've also got a black dress I need to fit into!

April will, as I made a point of telling my listeners this morning, soon be disappearing down the back of the sofa. I've barely managed to adjust to writing "2007" when it comes to dating cheques and the like, let alone come to terms with the fact that another third of that year has somehow managed to slip by.

To give myself some perspective on how quickly time is passing, I decided to look back through my emails to see what was happening at precisely this time last year. Unsurprisingly, I remember it very clearly:

This was the message I was - eventually - to find waiting in my inbox on returning to work after a fortnight's holiday. It goes without saying that what I discovered first was the absence, not just of my computer in fact, but of my entire desk...

The "desk next to Richard's" (also affectionately known for the past 12 months as "David's Desk") was now bereft of any sign I'd ever used it. My trusty PC, with all its specialist production software, was now masquerading as one of our eight standard hot-desk PCs, and judging by the constant use it was receiving at the hands of a work-experience student, evidently making a convincing job of it.

It's hard to think it's exactly 12 months since I had to be scraped down from the newsroom ceiling, less than thrilled by this little "re-arrangement". It's also precisely 12 months since I asked those responsible for directions to my forthcoming funeral, since I'd apparently died without realising.

Thank heavens for the wonderful Emma - BBC Radio Berkshire's resident diplomat - who was quick to spot this would all be news to a homecoming holidaymaker, bad news at that, and negotiated for things to be returned to their rightful place.

12 months later, I've managed to resist further changes to the office layout. I don't think anybody would dare.

Then again, I've not exactly taken much holiday over the past year. In a few days time, when April is turned inside out and May pops out of the middle, I'll be off for a much needed holiday on the canals of the South. My anchor, though, will be in use elsewhere...

I'm always unfairly suspicious of eager students who disappear off on years abroad in unlikely locations.

It's my firm belief - though I'm sure many will disagree - that the vast majority of such people are doing so in order to come back and tell everyone what they did, rather than actually do the thing in the first place. Building the huts for the disadvantaged Sri Lankan children is a stepping stone to a decent party piece.

So I've taken the moral high ground, stayed at home, and tasked Interflora with fetching in a basket of exotic fruit to make me feel like I've been somewhere exciting and different. And here's my party piece to prove it.

That's a kiwano. Well actually it's a horned melon since even though the Interflora sheet says kiwano, Wikipedia reliably informs me the name has been trademarked by an obscure bunch of New Zealanders. The same article would have us believe this fruit was once native to the Kalahari desert, but has since found a home Down Under and in California. And now in Stokenchurch.

When you cut it open it's got convenient little compartments, so you can have a go at one at a time and get four or five small spoonfuls of green, gooey goodness out of each. It's like seeded jelly and is a bit like a kiwi fruit, only with a dash of unripe banana into the mix. It's also got a bit of resistance to it - you'll need to dig in to get the goods.

This kiwano's demise marks the end of my opening salvo against the fruit basket, which actually arrived as my birthday present to my stepmum. She's tried some small berry-like object which I don't think we could identify. Here's the rest of the troupe in grainy mobile phone technicolour:

That bizarre pink thing at the front of the batch is a dragonfruit, otherwise known as a pitaya (with no New Zealand lawyers lurking). That might be tomorrow's mission, since my stepmum and dad are both retaining a healthy suspicion of the basket and its contents. I might take it to the speedway just for the enjoyment of the culture clash.

OK, so two gripes concerning the post I received today (this is what happens when I come in from work early).

1. I receive an envelope which says "Motor Insurance Renewal Information / Please check that your details are correct". I knew for a fact that this wasn't from my motor insurance company, since I have direct line and there is always a little red telephone on their envelopes / direct line all over them. This letter is from some wretched insurance broker, promising to beat my current quote. I suppose technically they don't say anything wrong. It is 'motor insurance renewel information', because it is about renewing motor insurance. It is also worth me checking my details, e.g. name and address, I suppose. If I wanted to. But it is just misleading (or could be for some people). It just annoys me. There's enough wasted paper in this world without such junk; and

2. Sainsbury. Yesterday I received a small-ish envelope from them. It was made from recycled paper, as were the contents. For anyone familiar with S/bury, I also received some of their "points" vouchers. All connected with "being green" e.g. x points if you spend x on organic food; x if you buy a 'bag for life' etc. And then today I get another letter on "normal" paper. This includes my regular points vouchers e.g. x on petrol etc. How does that work? How can an organisation pretend to be "green" one day, and then utterly un-green the next day? It just does nothing for my trust in them or my belief that they really do care about my food air miles etc.

On that point, I go back on an earlier post where I mocked the government for suggesting that they tax us for our rubbish. I agree. I recycle drinks cans, food cans, paper, magazines, plastics. The whole works. I can create as little as one "supermarket" bag in a week. OK, I'm on my own and rarely in my flat, but most things besides food waste can be recycled. If I had a "garden waste" bin, I suppose I could recycle this too. It's so easy, and I've decided it really angers me if people don't recycle. I make no apologies for readers who do not recycle. It angers me. In addition, I've even started at work: we only have can-bins in our kitchens on each floor. Well, blow that. I'm not walking to the kitchen every time I finish a can of coke. Fear not. I'm not just being lazy and chucking them in the bin as I used to. I've got myself a separate bin, which I can periodically offload. OK, I'm mad. But it doesn't take much effort. (and perhaps makes up for the fact I drive a car regularly and work for a Firm which must have some of the highest air miles of any corporation in the world...).

A foul rumour seems to have been circulated amongst my nearest and dearest of late, which could soon get me into some considerable trouble. Apparently I can cook.

The odd moment of good fortune in the kitchen seems to have earned me an undeserved reputation amongst friends, who now land at my door with well baked culinary expectations and rumbling tums. Problem is, it's only a matter of time before they find out the truth. Okay, I can handle three or four signature dishes without too much fear of embarrassment at the table - so can most - but I don't really know anything about cooking. I'm blagging it all the way to the plate.

In an effort to keep up the charade, I decided tonight to try and return to the basics of good old fashioned baking. Somehow I'd feel less of a fraud with a few decent pies to my name, and certainly, if I took the time and trouble to follow a proper recipe for once instead of thinking I know best.

The result? This little beauty...

I say little, this is probably one of the world's larger pies, having been baked not in a modest pie dish as suggested, but in a Pyrex casserole dish - the only vessel large enough to accommodate the characteristically ample filling I'd prepared. I say prepared, the recipe suggested "simmering" the steak and kidney (etc.) for an hour and half before allowing to cool, and only then thinking about transferring to the pastry; I managed to have the thing sealed up within the hour. I say sealed, the recommended way of sealing the pie is with water rubbed gently around the rim; I used beer...

Hardly traditional in its making, then, but pish to that - it was delicious, and I had great fun making (and eating) it. I suppose that's all the amateur needs to know about cooking - how to make things work his/her own way. Sometimes it'll go right when Dr. Fluke is on your side, and other times, well... that's when the professionals help you out. It's no coincidence that most kitchens have cookbooks and take-away menus on the same shelf...

As an aside, my eye was drawn this evening to a little half-baked grammar on the Radio 2 website:

Pedants though we often are about grammar (just look at some of the recent comments on Ollie's shockingly under-punctuated posts), it's not too pedantic to expect the nation's most listened-to radio station to show a grasp of the apostrophe on its headline billing, particularly in the first week of promoting a new evening line-up. At least we get a rogue ampersand by way of compensation. And as for "Next On Air", this snapshot was taken at 2340, when Lamacq was already in full-flight...

Come on, lads, for the sake of my ambition.

Today's not been great for English cricket. As I write the South Africans are nine runs off a victory with approximately 31 overs to spare, which suggests an England defeat is becoming likely, and that'll be the end of their World Cup.

Performances on the pitch (there goes another four, five needed) have been pretty useless, but performances by England cricketers off the pitch haven't been top notch either.

Stand up Michael Atherton, former England opening batsman now plying his trade as a commentator for Sky Sports. A couple of overs ago one of the South African batsmen had a great big mow at the English bowling (who wouldn't?), edged it, and wicketkeeper Paul Nixon caught it. We'll pick up Atherton's commentary here:

"And that's out! No, wait, it's a no ball, but neither Paul Nixon nor Graeme Smith have realised!

"Had Nixon realised, he might have had a shy at the stumps!"

Pause.

"Er, not that that would have mattered at all."

Having just completed my umpiring course, I'm well placed to tell you why Athers is making a fool of himself. It was a no ball, which means the batsman obviously can't be caught, but he can still be run out. Alas, not by the wicketkeeper he can't, if nobody else on the fielding side has touched it. If that did happen it'd be a stumping, and you cannot be stumped off a no ball.

So, as Athers belatedly realised, Nixon lobbing the ball at the stumps would have achieved nothing. If you've captained England in a record 54 test matches and you're still not 100 per cent on what can or can't happen from a no ball, when will you be?

And there are the winning runs from Graeme Smith, the hapless Saj Mahmood watching his delivery disappear back behind him to the boundary. Thank you and goodnight.

I too am sorry I wasn't around during Miss Kennedy's visit to BBC Berkshire Towers. It's about the only thing I didn't manage to squeeze into a busy weekend, which saw me hard at work in Middlesex, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Greater London, Surrey... oh, and Berkshire.

Question is, have I had a busier weekend than RML 2394, our Routemaster, which accompanied me for much of the weekend?

Friday night saw the complete Broadcasters' Bus Consortium turn out for a meeting at Ken's Oxfordshire home, with much merriment and laughter punctuating serious plans for our first revenue earning gig (hopefully on August bank holiday weekend). Yet more laughter as I delivered Deadly and Charles back to West London, at one stage almost having to pull over on the A40 with tears running down my face.

Saturday required an early alarm for my morning show at Radio B (if only Miss Kennedy had come for the whole working day), followed by high tails to the bus's home near Windsor. From there, Charles and I whisked the bus to Ruislip where we were joined by a number of his friends who, on a visit from Ireland, had been intending to take the kids on one of London's (ridiculously expensive) sightseeing buses. Smiling faces all round as the children saw their own tailor made tour bus arriving at the stop outside the house.

Having taken in the sights (including Buckingham Palace during the changing of the guard, which is best viewed from the top of a bus doing numerous laps of square, we feel), we returned the bus to base and carried out a little maintenance, before my body finally gave out and demanded sleep.

This I got, briefly, before a quick dinner of sorts and another high tail to work to present the Late Show.

Home at 0130, up again at 0530, in readiness for a day of suburban bus conducting on the London/Surrey borders around Carshalton and Sutton. This proved to be a fantastic day, where the intention to recreate a 1960s bus service was fully achieved to the delight of all who came near. It's surprising, when a bus service is frequent and reliable, just how many people use the buses on a Sunday. It's also surprising that, on two hours sleep, I managed to put in a full day's conducting; with stairs to climb and endless fighting to stay upright, it's tiring stuff. But great fun.

Home at 2100, where I decided I was far too tired to sleep, and instead opted for a claming glass of wine in front of some bad television. My face was lined, my eyes were saggy, my hands were black with ticket machine ink and bus oil, but I didn't care. This had been a good weekend.

I've just come back from Bracknell's artificial ski slope and, tell you what, I've got a cracking little feature to come on the Berkshire website.

Earlier in the day I had the brainwave of taking one of the wireless lapel microphones we usually use with our video cameras. You clip a small pack to your belt, then thread the mic up to your collar and clip it there. It has a range of about 20 or 30 yards from the receiver, which you plug into the camera or recording device.

At the ski slope I interviewed a couple of great young snowsports stars called James and Sam (i.e. short for Samantha). James is 17 and still in sixth form but has won gold medals for his age group in a UK-wide freestyle skiing competition. Sam is only 15 and doing her GCSEs but has similarly racked up snowboarding honours.

I got both of them to wire themselves up, then stood by the side of the slope and chased them down it with the receiver. They described their moves as they went along. I haven't had the chance to listen back yet, but with a bit of luck there'll be a nice blend of sound effects (skis crackling over the artificial slope, then grinding on the jumps and rails) alongside the guys explaining what they're trying to do. It should at least be a bit different.

I found the snowsports folk at the ski slope to be among the friendliest group of people I've ever interviewed for radio - full marks to them. Most of them are young and keen, and I was approached loads of times by kids as young as 10 or 11 asking for photos of them trying to pull off moves on the slope.

But you don't have to be a teenager to throw yourself down a snowy hill with a couple of planks on your legs - James introduced me to his dad, Paul, who is 50 and now competing at Masters competitions in Switzerland having decided he'd rather take his son on, than stand by the sidelines watching.

Essentially it's nice to find out about a sport that's up and coming (freestyle skiing's only about 10 years old), rather than many sports I cover, where the participants worry that their game is dying out and lacking fresh blood. The ski slope is in the process of expanding and there's going to be a big competition in June - I can guarantee I'll be back to cover it.

Sometimes I am wonderfully proud of having close ties with the Garden of England. And the sometimes I don't want to have any connection with Kent what so ever. What is this all about? The BBC don't seem convinced either. At least technically it is in Medway, not Kent...

Ollie and I will have this long-running argument: I dislike traffic lights on roundabouts. He finds them quite acceptable. I went to Tesco earlier. This involves me joining the A12, coming off at the first roundabout and travelling a further 500yds on a side road. There was an accident / incident on one of the roads leading from the roundabout. This was obviously holding up the traffic on that stretch and the police were, in all their wisdom, trying to sort the traffic. The problem with having traffic lights on the roundabout means that invariably when it is clear for you to go, you can't. And when you can go, there is a whole pile of traffic in your way. I found the whole thing very comical. People were beeping horns and waving arms in rage. Don't you just love the East end. But it just shows that there are times when traffic lights do nothing for the traffic flow.

And so to Tesco. The cashier looked at me, part way through my time at the till and said "are you a vegetarian or do you just like veg?!". OK, so I had bought quite a lot of lettuce / salad stuff... but I'd also bought chicken breasts, minced beef, cheese and salmon. Some vegetarian! Once again... you have to love the East end.

And so, it would seem that to have a truly enjoyable weekend, one must follow the events of yesterday with laziness and sunshine in St James' Park with OJ and Anthony. That was how the afternoon / early evening ended, anyway. Prior to that I cleaned my windows (yes, that great conversation starter... and finisher). The joys of living opposite a concrete works means that as soon as you are done, it is time to start again. Rather like the Tyne bridge. And then onto Hogarth. I admit, I don't find the paintings or etchings at all pleasing to the eye. Although, there is a delightful degree of character expressed in the faces of his people. What is interesting though is the though, the political nature and the social obligations behind said paintings. One must admire someone who can freely paint the aristroctratic classes engaging in prostitution, or a Christening scene, where the God-father (?) of the baby / the Priest is glancing slighly into the breasts / cleavage of the child's mother. And, to top it all, I've seem the infamous St James' pelicans.

OK, so as Ollie said in his post, I paid a royal visit to see him at BBC Radio Berkshire’s home in the depths of the Berks countryside. So, what did I think. Like all good tales, I’ll being at the beginning. Around 1.30am on Saturday morning… I got in from work. Deep joy! I then stayed up until around 3am watching a film; I was awake, I wanted to feel as though I had some evening. So, when my alarm went off at its usual time, I slammed it into a submissive silence. At 10.36 I woke up. And swore. Time for a rapid shower and I jumped in the car by 11am, filled up with juice and then headed for Berks. I could have driven through London, I suppose. But I prefer to hit the open road and take the M25. I arrived, on time, at around 1am and parked next to Ollie’s rather lovely car. It’s the Yorkie bar of cars: not for girls. But pretty fine all the same.

Ollie must be one of the luckiest guys around. I guess we know this. But I may have a swanky Office in Canary Wharf, with great views and fantastic facilities… but he basks in beautiful parkland and works from what is, effectively, a stately home. He’s also doing what he loves. I suppose I am, or at least I was in my old – and hopefully qualification- department. I was really enthralled by the things he was able to show / tell me. Radio is a lie. That’s all I’m going to say. Sadly, I didn’t see Mr Shep, but can now picture him at work.

I then left Mr Williams for the afternoon. Knowing the area reasonably well I decided to head towards Henley-upon-Thames. Since it was such a glorious day, Henley was chocker. It never loses its beauty, but it was still a bit hectic. I decided to pass through. And travel on up through Nettlebed. Old haunts from many past journeys. I passed my father’ s favourite pub – well, for the name, anyway – the Black Boy. Amazing that something like that still exists today. Iin our PC world of today, the historic nature still reigns. And then from Nettlebed I took a quick look at the map, decided that Marlow was a beautiful place and equidistant, sort of, between Reading and Stokenchurch. So, the Sat Nav positioned, to Marlow it was. I’d forgotten how beautiful Marlow was. Rather like a mini Henley, but prettier. There’s a good selection of shops, but I positioned myself on the green, in the shadow of the church and just beyond the bridge, and then read my book (more on that later, or tomorrow). Then I pottered to the river, wondered at the ducks, the Swans and other such wildfowl. I sat and enjoyed the sunshine and studied some Mandarin. Then it was time to meet Ollie – around 7pm now – so I headed back away from the river and sat outside on the green again. Ollie and I had a wonderful dinner – discussing anything from Berlin, to beer, to breasts to nits to (k)nickers to everything, including Dayorama… watch this space…

The moral? We should do this more often.

* Edit: I agree re. the chavs. But I was trying to glaze over them...!

I've just returned from a lovely dinner with radiant Dayorama colleague Amy Kennedy in Marlow. She's had the grand tour of the BBC as well, where she discovered that most of what we do is essentially, in some form or other, cheating. I'm promised a return trip to her Canary Wharf homeland.

Marlow would seem to be an incredibly unlikely European Capital of Chavs contender. I'd never entertained the notion that Marlow town centre would be throbbing with pikey teenagers (and pikeys need not be lower class, you understand - a collared shirt isn't enough to stop you being a dead loss to society).

But there they all were, getting drunk, lounging about on the war memorial, and - that giveaway sign of a chav nation - driving souped-up hatchbacks replete with shit music and naff blue lights.

Not that Marlow was unpleasant on what might have passed for a July evening, the river basking in the gently fading sunlight... the burger basking in cheese and tomato ketchup. Amy and I have concocted various plans for Dayorama (nothing too drastic), which may some day see fruition. It's all in the name of progress.

Now then, do you remember Stoppit and Tidyup? Good, because I don't. But even as I discover this 1980s children's series for the very first time, as narrated by Terry Wogan, a warm glow has appeared within my soul. Here's episode six:

Having seen that, I believe I am very much the Stoppit to OJ's Tidyup. I've yet to establish who fares worst in that comparison.

You can find more episodes by searching Youtube here.

Ah, Friday the thirteenth. Always a good laugh. You get up in the morning and have a quiet chuckle that this is supposed to be a terrible, doom-laden day. Then off you go, nothing untoward happens, and it slips gently by for another year and another quiet chuckle.

Sod that - today's been hell. Our radio station has limped through the day's programming like a squirrel on crutches thanks to two crippling defects, both of which we could blame on a certain well-known and formerly-monopolising telecoms service provider (think British Airways, but not airways).

I got in to be told that there was no internet access in the building because some wire had developed a fault. Now that doesn't sound too bad - no checking your email, no sneaky trips to Betfair for the Aintree racing, no idling on Facebook - but when you actually try to do some work, it becomes quickly apparent that we're absolutely buggered without the web. Especially when your job title involves "online journalist". If you're wondering why the Berkshire website didn't update til 8pm today, this will be why.

Around four hours after I got in, the internet was restored, and just for a moment it looked like Friday the thirteenth would rescue itself. But then we reached the 6pm football phone-in and once again, Mother Nature chose to let slip the dogs of war. Our ISDN line, connecting our presenter (at the speedway) with the studio, died 10 minutes before broadcast. We had to start programming half an hour late while our drivetime presenter span more records, as the speedway team decamped to the nearby football stadium and another ISDN.

It's funny: writing them down, these two events both sound incredibly minor. But it's been a long day for anyone involved, especially our engineer (although he looked like a pig in the proverbial scurrying round dealing with everything, which is precisely what I'd expect of someone doing his job - it's the equivalent of me being given a football commentary).

I've hopefully got the pleasure of Amy K's company at BBC towers tomorrow. This is a problem, because up til now I've tried to cultivate the impression that we work hard there. One fears that with a fellow Dayorama author present, this illusion could quickly dispel itself. But then it's not Friday the thirteenth any more, so surely nothing else will go wrong...

Christ on a bike, it's been a long day. I don't know why because the actual pace of the day has been fairly slow, I've been in no hurry to get anywhere and done everything I needed to, but quite a lot has happened almost without me noticing. A round of golf, a trip to Oxford, a haircut, and covering a tug-of-war team in Sandhurst, has left my head throbbing. This post will be my last action before sleep, and plenty of it.

Not that I can really complain given the day endured by other members of this house. Harry (the human one, i.e. my five-year-old half-brother, not the pony) has had eight teeth out today. Or at least I think it was eight - someone said six at the dinner table, but I don't think those intricacies will matter much to Harry, who it's safe to say has had a worse day than me.

Early this morning he was lured to the hospital for the operation, knocked out with anaesthetic, then it was goodbye to the offending teeth, at the back of his jaw on either side. Needless to say, this has made chewing food a bit of a no-go for the foreseeable future, so he was sat sipping hot chocolate through a straw and taking the whole thing remarkably well when I initially got in just after lunch.

By dinner time things had changed - the thrill of his bravery and tales of derring-dental-do having worn off along with the remainder of the anaesthetic, the poor boy was left with the lasting legacy of his missing molars. I found him sat in front of the telly, unable to consume some mashed-up carrots and other veg, feeling incredibly sorry for himself.

As you'd expect the day has not ranked highly for Harry's parents either. My dad freely admits he wouldn't have blamed Harry for calling his parents "swines" on emerging from the treatment room (I'm not sure that word's in the boy's vocabulary but there's certainly some choice equivalents). Given the little firebrand's temperament he'd been lured to the hospital with nary a word about what might follow, but to his credit he hasn't mentioned this gross betrayal to me yet. The full scale of the cover-up may not have fully dawned on him - if and when it does we'll all be in trouble, but for once I am sure any retribution will be fairly toothless.

If my old University diary is to be trusted, three years ago to the minute I was busy pawing over Milton's 'Lycidas' as part of my specialist unit in elegy.

I'm certain it's not. In reality, I was probably in-transit somewhere between Bristol and Berkshire, having worked night and day respectively on their BBC local radio stations, alongside trying to keep the needles waggling at Burst, the student radio station of the former.

When I did get around to 'Lycidas', however, my keen thoughts would have been delivered in a tutorial to George Donaldson, one half of the tutoring duo who headed up the elegy course at Bristol. George was (and still is) a mild-mannered man who appreciated that, in his students, a passion for English literature might be secondary to other life ambitions. Alongside his teaching (and sparring) partner John Lyon, an amiable Scot, he quietly understood there was something on my mind besides Gray's 'Elegy'.

I remember one tutorial from which, with line of sight to the Students' Union building, I all but absented myself whilst watching Burst's transmission ariel being erected in readiness for the launch of our FM licence. George quietly turned a blind eye, whilst John with equal discretion mentioned afterwards that I ought to know about George's family connections; he was, of course, the twin-brother of the legendary BBC Radio 4 Announcer, Peter Donaldson, undoubtedly one of the most famous voices and broadcasters of our era.

Three years on, I find myself working at the centre of my biggest distraction. The subjects of my tutorial today were far from the elegies of Keats and Shelley (which, don't get me wrong, I still happily contemplate in my spare time), but scripts from Radio 4's morning paper review and 1400 news bulletin. Instead of scrutinising great words, I was having my delivery of words scrutinised by the great. My voice-coaching tutor: the other Mr Donaldson.

If it felt a little strange to be reading a 'dummy' Radio 4 news bulletin to the man who is Radio 4, it felt unreal to discover we had common friends - that he knew all about our Routemaster, "Deadly, Ken, Charles and Steve Mad-ooon", and wanted to know who drove it most often. A little twinkle in his eye prompted a long conversation about Radio 2 (where he started his BBC career in the '70s), and he showed in person the same great skill I so admire in all my heroes on the radio: he made me feel like we'd known each other for years.

My boss invited me for a drink with her and Peter after work, but busy at home, I declined and decided instead to press on. I now wish I'd gone along. After all, if 'Lycidas' can wait...

Who says we only ever hear bad news from Iraq? Quoting BBC News Online:

A Royal Military Police Major from West Sussex is spearheading a scheme to teach cricket to children in Iraq.

Andrew Banks, of Midhurst, is helping to bring the game to Basra Province to build bridges with local communities. Major Banks, of 110 Provost Company, said it had stopped some children from throwing stones at soldiers.

He said: "Something that runs through the sport is fair play. It would be very nice if the concepts of right and wrong were extended beyond the sports field.

"Maybe we have started something in Iraq. At least the children and their teachers were enthusiastic. But I don't think the Australians need to worry yet," he added.

[source: BBC News Online - 'Major builds bridges with cricket']

It occurred to me that maybe, once the 2007 Cricket World Cup is done, the tournament could move to Iraq and Iran for the 2011 tournament.

But alas, it seems the hosting of the 2011 World Cup has already been decided: it'll be shared between India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

So how about 2015? Nope: that'll be Australia and New Zealand. Okay then, 2019? No again: the tournament's back in England for that year.

Astonishingly, the ICC has everything sewn up until we reach 2023, by which time Iraq probably won't have had time to qualify for the World Cup, let alone host it. Bangladesh first appeared in competitive action in 1979 and reached the World Cup for the first time in 1999, which means we need at least 20 years, so it's all about 2027... if the ICC haven't already booked that one up, too.

By the way, we are now officially only the third article on the internet to mention the 2027 Cricket World Cup. In twenty years' time I'll look back on this as a proud moment. Coverage starts here and it's my sworn ambition to write for Dayorama at the 2027 World Cup Final. (I'll be 42. I'm going to go and cry now.)

Alright, I realise this is probably incendiary, but I've got issues with the ending of Life On Mars.

The series drew to a close with tonight's finale, in which Sam is exposed (to himself as much as anyone else) as an undercover cop trying to rid the force of the, shall we say, unorthodox methods of his superior Gene Hunt. Sam is transported back to the present day where he appears to wake from a coma, but then - disillusioned with 21st-century police methods and afraid he's abandoned the people he came to know during the series - he takes a running jump off the top of the building, and returns to 1973 to get the girl as the credits roll.

If you didn't see it, much of what follows, you might not. But if you did then let me know your thoughts.

1. Sam wouldn't jump.
I'm sorry, but given all we've seen of Sam Tyler in this series, he's not one for jumping off an office block - in other words, committing suicide. Even allowing for him having apparently been won over by Gene's style of policing versus the present day, that leap was a leap of faith too far for me to buy.

2. They've got their Gene back to front.
Think about this episode: the conclusion seems to be that it's okay for Gene Hunt to let innocent people die "because we like his style". In the first five minutes an entirely innocent man, who came to help the police, is murdered through Gene's gross negligence, and yet by the end Sam's portrayed as making the right choice in joining Gene, eschewing the way things are done these days.

I think that's an appalling conclusion to reach. I love watching Gene as a character but if he existed next to me in real life, I'd despise him and everything he stands for. People die because of his bravado, ignorance and stupidity, and he leads a life rooted in alcoholism and violence. A couple of times we've seen him go through some epiphany or other and acquire moral values when it really matters, but by the next episode they're gone again. The idea that letting innocent people die is preferable to clicking a pen around in a 21st-century police force is pretty sickening.

So where is he?
There's still no conclusive evidence as to what happened to dear old Sam. For my money, he's back in a coma in 2006. Amy J reckoned he was in 1973 all along and the 2006 bits were his imagination, but look at the cars: it's one hell of an imagination that's able to accurately guess how cars will look 30 years later, replicate the actual 2006 police car livery, and predict the format of UK car registration plates in the 21st-century (56/06 etc). Sam must have been in 2006 to start with.

So he's either back in a coma again, or he's travelling back and forth through time a la Doctor Who. And there is a crossover Christmas Special I'd like to see.

Taking a quick break from tales of last week's adventures in Northumberland (final instalment tonight, don't forget to set your Sky Plus... let's face it we must be due a channel), I discovered a wonderful golf course yesterday.

It's called Greys Green Golf Club, although I prefer its informal name, The Dog Golf Club, so called because it lies on Dog Lane next to The Dog pub, and not because of any antics in the expansive car park.

The Dog is a bit different to your average golf club around here. There are plenty of courses in Berks and Bucks, but you're talking upwards of £30 just to play one round, and you'll need to abide by all kinds of rules governing what you wear and when you play.

At The Dog, all you do is turn up and play. Wear what you like, play when you like, to the extent that if there's no one from the club to take your money because you're too early, just go round anyway and pay when you get back.

And yes, you can even take the dog around with you, and it doesn't have to be on the lead if it behaves itself. I saw one lively golden retriever living up to its name by haring after each of its owner's shots, finding the ball, picking it up and waiting patiently for the owner to arrive. It must be like having a portable ball-washer for your entire round.

The relaxed dress code and open invitation to visitors is the hallmark of a municipal course, but this isn't one. It was set up by a local farmer just over a decade ago and has grown from a rough-around-the-edges nine hole affair to having two nine hole courses and a full eighteen-hole course, all set in the lush South Oxfordshire countryside. A round of 18 holes here costs you about a tenner - anywhere else you're paying three times that.

This is all brilliant, but there's just one problem. It doesn't have planning permission.

Well that's not entirely true: there is some planning permission, granted retrospectively following a series of appeals, for the area occupied by one of the nine-hole courses. But around 27 of the 36 holes here seem to be living on borrowed time, with a public enquiry due at the beginning of May.

See, for some reason it seems people in the area don't like the golf course being there. When the course has been denied planning permission in the past (which doesn't appear to have affected it in the slightest - one suspects the local council may feel a little toothless in this respect), the reason cited has been that it diminishes the allure of the landscape.

That's poppycock as far as I'm concerned. This area of the country is not short on good-looking landscape, and the golf course, far from spoiling it, is a positive encouragement to local people to go out and enjoy it. With its low cost and relaxed attitude, the course naturally attracts people who maybe don't normally play golf and, dare I say it, don't normally get out and do this kind of thing much. When I played yesterday I was waved through by four sets of golfers who all considered themselves worse/slower than me - and I'm crap! If I'm going round feeling like the Zach Johnson to their Brett Wetterich, then clearly this is a course for everybody. I think it should be encouraged as a going concern, not persecuted.

Of course the real issue here is one of consistency. Given that the golf course didn't hang around to see if it would get planning permission and just built 36 holes anyway, the council are going to look a bit silly granting it the right to be there if they've had lots of similar requests from other, more patient ventures. Indeed, inspecting the planning permission documents, it looks like this is the main concern: the council know the golf course technically breaks policy at local, regional and even national level.

So we wait with bated breath for the outcome of the public enquiry. I would be a bit miffed, to say the least, if a golf course I've only just found is whipped from under my feet barely a month later! And I'm improving, too. I finished last week's round in Northumberland 16 over par after 9 holes - yesterday I was a mere 15 over par. At this rate I'll be playing off scratch by July...

I've often wondered how much of one's life can actually be lost and found down the back of a couch. That slit-like opening which barely takes a desperately searching hand, seemingly leads into an abyss where objects of any size can take refuge.

Last week, we were surprised to find a Christmas ball-ball wedged into the said opening, having apparently surfaced (in tact) after four months hiding below decks. Strange, we thought, that it should suddenly surrender itself to the mercy of more conventional storage after such a successful escape; perhaps it was being bullied by the remote control.

Having returned the rebel dec to its friends in the loft, I decided to confront the abyss head-on by removing all cushions and drapes to discover what other treasures could be found. Disappointingly, pickings were slim on this occasion.

Tonight, our sofa was the venue for a nice cuddle with our little feline friend, Basil, who's on very clingy form at present. When the time came for bed, he leapt from the sofa, hot on my heels with a series of top-volume meows as I tried my best to part company for the night.

Taking cover in the bathroom, I could hear noises on the other side of the door as Basil hatched his latest plot to secure a space on Uncle David's bed. When all was quiet, I opened the door and tiptoed to my room where, although there was no cat to be seen, there was certainly a Basilesque presence to be felt...

I've no idea where he's storing them, or how many more of these festive treats we can expect in the long months before Christmas; but I've a fair idea where they came from, and I know why the Christmas tree proved such a fascination for a quietly contemplating Basil.

Next time I'm short of change, I shall be looking further than down the back of the couch.

I thought I'd pay a quick visit to Oxford while on holiday. Oxford, Northumberland: home to a crossroads with a small tea room, and not the one with the libraries and the put-upon students. Northumberland does a very good line in places sharing names with more illustrious cousins - you can also find a Preston and a Bolton nearby.

But today (note from future self: this was written last Thursday! I'm now back home but am posting these one day at a time since I had no internet access up north) was about going north of the border to Scotland, and the city of Edinburgh. Even though I was on my way by 9:30am, it took me until 1pm to reach the Scottish capital, and the reason for that is the tiny village of Saint Abbs on the south-east Scottish coast, just over the border.

I'd seen it marked on a list of interesting places, so when a sign appeared on the A1 I followed it down a winding road to a small car park and, yes, another tea room. But the tea room exists very much in the shadow of the Saint Abbs village shop (below, left).

I'm proud to say I bought a Bounty and a Diet Coke in what is officially - according to the framed poster - a village shop Highly Commended in the Calor Gas & Woman And Home "Village Shop of the Year 1994" awards. High praise indeed.

In fact everything in and around Saint Abb's is of a very high standard, not least the sumptuous scenery. Climbing the rocky outcrop that is Saint Abb's Head afforded a superb view of the village itself:

And an even better vantage point for a spot of birdwatching, with hundreds of coastal birds massing on the cliff face:

It felt like heaven to be stood on the cliffs listening to the noisy gaggle of birds below, and squinting as the sunlight skipped off the waves lapping into the bay. Every single person I passed on the way back down seemed genuinely thrilled to be there to witness this combination of weather and wildlife.

Edinburgh, by stark contrast, left me a little cold. I think it's fair to say I'm a person who prefers isolated, natural environments at the expense of the Big City, so it may not entirely be Edinburgh's fault, but that's just the way I am. I started at the Queen's Palace:

This was a fine building but, though I'm always keen on architecture, I could get a little sick of the standard fare interiors of this kind of attraction: giant old portraits, ornate carpets, collections of weaponry, crockery and other trinkets, the same boring-but-expensive furniture in every room. I'm a big fan of old buildings but no lover of medieval interior design, so parting with more than a tenner for a quick tour of the Queen's Edinburgh crib seemed extortionate.

After that I set off up the Royal Mile towards the castle, which is a mightily impressive structure dominating the skyline as you look up Canongate and the High Street. But again, the sheer number of people flocking to see it dulls the spectacle a little. I know this is selfish and more than a little hypocritical - after all, if I want to see it, I can't blame anyone else for feeling the same way - but would you rather visited a near-deserted castle like Bamburgh or Norham (see previous days' entries), or a castle like Edinburgh teeming with people?

To my mind this strengthens the argument for doing your research and finding the places no one else knows about. I've been a bit lucky in terms of happening across interesting places to go, but if you only went to one castle on a week's holiday in the north and that castle was Edinburgh, you'd probably think medieval history was a wee bit crap. Stand in the deserted ruins of Lindisfarne Priory as the sun rises in the morning and you might reconsider.

Not that everything in Edinburgh Castle annoyed me. I found this small garden, set away from the crowds beneath one of the top levels of the castle:

I left Edinburgh feeling a bit disappointed, so the best fix for that was to find another castle as soon as possible, which is not at all difficult given supply exceeds demand in this part of the world.

Sadly by the time I reached it at 5:30pm, the thirteenth-century Dirleton Castle just to the east of Edinburgh (above) had closed for the day, so I decided to head for Melrose - where the monk Saint Cuthbert first entered religion before he arrived at Lindisfarne.

That journey took me on an hour's drive inland and allowed a couple of what I have now come to call 'Bonus Rounds': things to go and see which I didn't know existed til I spotted the signposts. First up was Chesters Hill Fort, in place since before the Romans arrived. Sadly for its occupants there was one major design flaw: whereas hill forts are traditionally designed to afford a height advantage, this one had been built right next to a bigger hill (see below left). Meanwhile, below right, could this be the smallest visitor car park in the world?

Two and a half spaces. Good job the hill fort is a little out of the way. A bit further down the road I got my second bonus round with the Lynn Dean wind farm:

A sign by the side of the road also advertised the presence of a nature reserve, but the number of empty beer cans in the layby far outnumbered the visible wildlife, so I moved on to Melrose. And to think that when I arrived and parked my car, I initially didn't even notice the ruined Melrose Abbey staring me in the face:

This is what it's about. Forget Edinburgh Castle if you ever come to the area to visit. Drive to Melrose and see this building. Can you even begin to imagine what this must have been like in its heyday, newly cut stone etched into the blue sky, light refracting through stained glass windows, and no finer building for tens of miles in any direction? Melrose Abbey inspires enough awe in me in this state - as a fully functional religious house in a time when Christianity powered the country, it's difficult to find the words.

I stayed in Melrose for a nice steak dinner at the King's Arms Hotel, which claims to have been the meeting place for Melrose Rugby Football Club in its early days - the team which, so the hotel claims, invented Rugby Sevens. I stayed a bit too long in Melrose really, because by the time I left it was 8:30pm and I had badly miscalculated how far from the coast Melrose is. I thought it was half an hour at most from the Lindisfarne causeway, but in reality the Dodge and I endured (alright, enjoyed) a 90-minute white knuckle ride, in complete darkness, for between 50 and 60 miles across Scotland and Northumberland back home.

And home is where we'll be going tomorrow, but there's plenty left to do. Monkwearmouth and Jarrow, in what is now Newcastle, were home to the Venerable Bede himself and an important community of Anglo-Saxon monks. Bede now has what I suppose you'd call a monastic theme park and working farm in his name, so I'll be going there, and there might even be a game of golf, or even a bonus round or two.

I threw a slight, good-humoured strop at my Mother for failing to purchase mint sauce from Sainsbury during her weekly shop. How does she expect me to eat lamb without it. Bless her, she tried to palm me off with mint jelly (just not the same) and then suggested she made some of her own (it's ok, I wouldn't want her to have to go to all that effort... my Dad and I still remember the last attempt*). So, whilst on route to buy my Father's birthday present yesterday (a small greenhouse, incidentally, which he is now filling) I went to Tesco to buy mint sauce. Tesco's Finest. Balsamic vinegar. Oak hung mint, or something. And it has food colouring. Let me repeat, it has food colouring in it. Why? Is this necessary? It is good quality mint sauce and they insist on filling it with colouring and gum and tumeric extract (since when did that go in mint sauce?!). I'm distressed. I'll be bouncing off the walls later on E-numbers.

*it really was very tasty, actually.

Well, what a wonderfully sunny and cheerful Easter-Sunday morning. I managed to get up for the 8am Service at Church this morning, much to the shock of my Father. And now my Mother and I are off to the local Country Market. There's certainly sometime wonderful about being out of London and breathing the fresh country air. In total I'll be having four days off, too. Four days. I haven't had that many days off since September, and it is wonderful! In other news, we have a pair of ducks, regularly visiting our garden. They are going through bread like anything, but in the interests of their digestive system, I bought my parents "duck and swan food" as an Easter present. I was getting regular "duck" updates from my Mother last week, and I confess that her enthusiasm has touched me. They're fascinating little creatures. No puns about me quacking up, please.

It has made me think of the poem by F W Harvey, titled "Ducks" (to E.M. who drew them in Holzminden prison). The third verse is below:

When God had finished the stars and whirl of coloured suns
He turned His mind from big things to fashion little ones;
Beautiful tiny things (like daisies) He made, and then
He made the comical ones in case the minds of men
Should stiffen and become
Dull, humourless and glum,
And so forgetful of their Maker be
As to take even themselves - quite seriously.
Caterpillars and cats are lively and excellent puns:
All God's jokes are good - even the practical ones!
And as for the duck, I think God must have smiled a bit
Seeing those bright eyes blink on the day He fashioned it.
And he's probably laughing still at the sound that came out of its bill!

Happy Easter.

Who needs the Statue of Liberty? This man gave a new religion to an entire kingdom. St Aidan, on arriving in Northumbria in the early seventh century, travelled the north east spreading Christianity among the Anglo-Saxon rulers. And it was to Lindisfarne that he came to found a monastery.

Nothing remains of the seventh century buildings - initially constructed of wood, then with lead sheets added to the ceiling and walls. The ruins above are those of the later Lindisfarne Priory, built for the monks on the same site and occupied until Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries in his reign. If the ruins are a guide, in its heyday the building here would have been spectacular.

Not that Lindisfarne is without a skyline in the twenty-first century. Just down the road lies Lindisfarne Castle:

This was a much later addition to the island, essentially built to give the French something to think about if nearby Bamburgh Castle didn't put them off. But then, if the French had a fear of castles, Northumberland would not be ideal territory - you can barely move for castles. Yesterday there was Alnwick and Bamburgh, today Lindisfarne and Norham (more on the latter in a moment), and tomorrow Edinburgh, with many, many more in between.

It's funny how these castles have been able to benefit from hundreds of thousands of pounds in restoration and upkeep, but other historic sites are all but overlooked. After leaving Lindisfarne I set out to find Yeavering, site of one of the first Northumbrian Anglo-Saxon royal palaces in the early seventh century. King Edwin presided over a great hall, an area dedicated to craftsmanship and tools, a small wooden amphitheatre, a large enclosure likely used for cattle, and a small chapel set at the bottom of a hill. In an age where no castles existed in England, it would have been a very impressive sight.

Not any more it isn't: it burnt down in the later seventh century and was abandoned, and no one has thought to rebuild it since. On the road to Yeavering there's no signposts acknowledging the area's past, no tourist information centre, and the modern village of Yeavering is so small my satellite navigation doesn't recognise it. So you have to know where you're going, and what you're looking for: a large field at the bottom of a hill. There's quite a few of those around these parts.

Initially I thought I was out of luck when, 500 yards on the other side of Yeavering, there was no sign of anything that might be home to an ancient royal palace. Not that Yeavering was without intrigue anyway - who should be occupying one such field-at-the-bottom-of-a-hill, but the BBC's Springwatch team:

Harbouring as I do no great desire for Bill Oddie's autograph, I went back to my car to turn round. The sat nav said I should go another half a mile and there'd be a turning place. And then, as I drove along, I spotted this sign:

Someone, somewhere, has found the time and money to create a stone memorial and a few small signs commemorating the very field I'd been looking for. Not that there's over much in the field itself, although this contraption might well pass as an ancient artefact:

But after 10 minutes' exploring the field for signs of ancient inhabitation, I felt the current inhabitants were getting a little maaaaaardy:

Time to move on. In the back of the Dodge I managed, with some effort, to squeeze in my set of golf clubs before I left, and with Northumbria basking in glorious sunshine, now seemed like a good time. On the way back from Yeavering I happened across a nine-hole golf course outside the village of Belford.

The only problem was I hadn't played golf for at least two years, and wasn't much good when I did play. Prudence being the watchword I took the clubs to the driving range first, scattering 30 golf balls around a field with just enough conviction to convince myself I could handle a proper round.

52 shots and two hours later I was back, face glowing from the sun, every muscle glowing from an activity they had long since forgotten. Okay, so that's 16 over par after just nine holes, but let's be honest, that could have been far worse. My putting is certainly letting me down. I think I'm going to start touring the golf courses of Bucks and Berkshire during my days off when I get home - for some reason, in my search for an occupation during my midweek days off, golf had entirely passed me by.

Back at the Dodge I realised time was fast passing me by too, so it was back on the A1 and up to the medieval walled town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, highly recommended by my dad, who told me it was near here, in 1980, that he and my mother had experienced the Great Gerbil Toss.

My mother, ever one for animals, had taken a pet gerbil along as the happy couple embarked on a tour of bed-and-breakfasts along the north-east coast. She'd even packed it in a little container with plenty of cotton wool to keep it snug. Alas, the critter found a way to strangle itself using said cotton wool, and by the time our protagonists left Berwick, the gerbil was in a state of permanent exhalation.

Now it's often thought that roadside littering is a recent phenomenon, but it turns out that long before fly-tipping, we had gerbil-tipping. My dad, usually one for the pleasantries, took an unusually hard-line stance on the deceased gerbil. In what he described to me as "the equivalent of burial at sea", my dad took the asphixiated rodent in its little cotton wool coffin, and lobbed it out of the window of a moving car.

There were no such antics on my journey to Berwick, and I was able to park up by the Elizabethan earthen ramparts before a little sight-seeing. The town centre didn't particularly excite me but the bridges across the Tweed are certainly impressive, especially the viaduct. Even the ducks are keen to climb the ramparts for a better view:

After a fish supper from the Cannon chip shop (very nice cod), I set off for Lindisfarne. But on the way back my eye was drawn by a sign for Norham Castle, of which I'd previously heard nothing, but then with the number of castles up here that's not surprising.

With the sunlight fast fading I turned the car around and put the pedal to the metal, hoping to find the castle before darkness fell. Of course there'd be no one there to let me in, but seeing a castle from the outside is always more than enough - it is not for the fancy carpets in the state rooms that I love these buildings.

Just as the last flickering rays were set to disappear over the horizon, Norham Castle came into view, and it's a beauty:

It's a shame I don't have the time to go back during the day for a proper tour, but it's up to Edinburgh for me tomorrow...

Anyone know this young man?

No wonder I'm smiling. Taken on my 13th Birthday, I'd just returned from what I still rate as one of the best days of my life. Beginning in understated fashion at Paddington station, I was soon hurried along to Platform 13 where 'something' seemed to be happening.

Sure enough, the smell of steam heralded the arrival of none other than the Duchess of Hamilton, resplendent in maroon and blowing off majestically in front of her crowds. (At this point you must understand it was the locomotive of the same name, and not the Duchess herself, who sees steam even less frequently these days). With a full rake of Pullman dining coaches, I was thrust aboard before I could ask questions, and off we went for a day of first class food and drink, West Country scenery and 90mph steam on the mainline.

Railtours like this bring together all things I've come to love. So imagine how envious I was when my Dad and step mum accidentally revealed they'd been invited to join a similar steam-hauled charter train a few weeks ago. This time they were bound for Carlisle, sans 13-year old Shep, behind the magnificent Princess Elizabeth (again, don't be silly). It's another picturesque journey, with the added attraction of a battle with the mighty Shap, arguably the country's most notorious railway climb which has caught many an engine driver, erm... off-guard.

Thank heavens for YouTube. I may not have been there to enjoy the thrill of the climb myself in the armchair luxury of the restaurant car, red wine and roast beef in hand (I'm not bitter), but I can at least enjoy this magnificent piece of footage showing what, at one time, would have been the everyday sight of man and machine working in perfect harmony.

It's one of the most majestic scenes I can imagine.

(Once you've watched the ascent of Shap, take time to enjoy the tail end of this video, with the perfectly framed shot of Princess Elizabeth storming one of the East Coast main line's sharp bends (around 4 minutes in). I shan't spoil the 'surprise', but a freak of timing results in what, by sod's law, was probably completely inevitable. I shouted when I first saw it.)

You might be wondering where I've been all week. (You might be wondering where any of us have been all week! Then again, you might not.)

I've been up on the island of Lindisfarne, just off the Northumberland coast, holed up in a small hotel and enjoying a few days of travelling to different historic sites in the north east. There was no internet access on the island, which I can assure you was a blessing (I can't remember the last time I spent so much time away from a computer, and it felt good), but each night I faithfully edited up my photos and prepared a piece for Dayorama.

Since I couldn't publish them then, I'll do one a day from now on. I warn you they're pretty lengthy, but if you're interested in history or wildlife then there'll be pretty pictures. Here goes...

Day 1: Alnwick and Bamburgh

Welcome to the island of Lindisfarne, connected to the tip of Northumberland by a fragile causeway, submerged much of the day underneath the North Sea.

I'm sat in room number 10 of the Lindisfarne Hotel. In room 11 there is a gentleman listening, loudly, to the World Service. In room number 7, downstairs, a lady was playing the violin (very well) as I walked past with my suitcase. One suspects the volume of the World Service is in direct relation to the volume of the violin - we can't all be music lovers.

It's been one of the best days I can remember. If you've got the time and you're interested in things like castles and wildlife then you can see photos and find out more about where I've been by reading on.

If you're in a hurry or not overly fussed, in summary:

• I drove to Northumberland from Stokenchurch this morning, and I'll be here for three days. Hopefully there'll be some golf and a trip to Edinburgh in between, plus visits to the religious sites of Lindisfarne and Northumberland, which featured heavily in my university thesis despite never having seen them for real.
• On the way I paid a visit to Alnwick Castle, home of the Duke of Northumberland, and then nipped across to Bamburgh, a small village on the North Sea coast, home to another equally spectacular castle.
• I found Bamburgh - a key trading centre in Anglo-Saxon times - to be a beautiful area with bird life and wildlife in spades, plus one of the most pristine beaches I have ever seen.
• The day ended crossing the causeway to Lindisfarne once the North Sea had subsided enough to expose it. The road sits at the same level as the sand, so it feels as though you're driving across the sea bed, and I half expected the tide to come rolling in around the car at any moment - but we made it.

Here's the Dodge bathed in the sunset at Budle Bay, just above Bamburgh on the road to the Lindisfarne causeway, as our day drew to a close. In the background a lone wading bird, seen at the bottom of this picture, spent 20 minutes or so pacing back and forth as gatherings of ducks and birds milled about the background:

The scenery in this part of the world is second to none. I've got the week off and I could have spent it in Ireland, Malta or Brussels - those were my initial options - but the idea of driving to Northumberland, and staying on the island about which I heard so much during my degree, really appealed to me. This was one of the most important Anglo-Saxon religious centres in Britain and even though I can hardly call myself a committed Christian, I've wanted to come here for ages.

Tomorrow will be about properly exploring Lindisfarne. Today has been about diving into interesting places on the way up. It's a five or six hour drive from my house to the place they call the Holy Island, but it's worth it when you find somewhere like Alnwick Castle en route:

From October until April the twelfth Duke of Northumberland and his family live here, with much of the castle restored. The state rooms look like any other you'll have seen with ornate furnishings and carpets, long dining halls and portraits hanging from every wall - except, with the family only just having moved out for the summer season, some anachronisms remain. For example, the library has the prerequisite dusty volumes lining the room from floor to ceiling, but in the middle of the plush furnishings sits a flat-screen television. One small child in the room remarked: "But mummy, I didn't think they had telly in the middle ages!" They'll go far as a history student.

Funnily enough they didn't have witches, wizards and broomsticks in the middle ages either - but Alnwick has seen plenty of them. In case you don't recognise it: it's Hogwarts. Or at least, it's Hogwarts for various exterior shots and some outdoor scenes in the Harry Potter films. Mercifully, while the local tourist board website makes a big deal out of this, Alnwick keeps it hush hush. There's no blue plaque as yet.

I left Alnwick and carried on driving up the A1 towards Lindisfarne but, knowing I'd be far too early for the causeway to re-open (it works on tide times), I headed for the village of Bamburgh on the coast. In the seventh and eighth centuries Bamburgh emerged as a vital trading centre in the Northumbrian kingdom - it's fair to say it's been somewhat eclipsed since then but the great thing about this part of Britain is so many sumptuous castles remain, and I do like a good castle.

Now this wouldn't have been around when the likes of Bede were walking the earth, but whenever you see a castle, chances are the Saxons were larking about a few centuries earlier:

That castle is about half the size of the entire village of Bamburgh. I followed the signs for the "Bamburgh Long Stay Car Park", which advised that during busy periods, you should park first before purchasing a ticket. This was apparently not a busy period:

Yes, of course I paid and displayed. By now though the castle was shut, so I soon moved on and tried to get as close to the sea as I could. That turned out to be a layby about a mile further down the road, and this is now officially my favourite photo of my car:

Leaving the Dodge under the auspices of two ponies I wandered over a small sand dune to find a pristine beach that could have been lifted from a Hawaii picture book, let alone left to battle the North Sea:

And on the other side of the road, a small lake occupied by literally hundreds of birds:

Imagine living here! The castle, the beach, the wildlife, and even a glorious-looking 18 hole golf course that might well get a visit before my holiday is done (I managed to cram my set of golf clubs into the car - despite not seeing the light of day for two years they might yet get one hell of a return to action).

It was starting to get dark and the causeway was about to open, so I made my way north along the coast, but stopped in another layby at Budle Bay to watch a magnificent sun sink behind the trees as the birds wandered the wetlands below. There was absolutely no noise except the occasional, distant chirrup. It's difficult to explain how it feels to find this in your own country, in a place hardly advertised in neon lights as a tourist destination. I don't know how the rest of the world has missed Bamburgh. But I'm glad.

I've got dozens of photos of just this one day, and in reality I only had an afternoon since I spent the morning driving. But if the next three days are like this one, it's going to be a very good week.

A sure sign summer is here: the dog takes refuge under the covers at the cricket pitch during what really wasn't a particularly strenuous game of fetch.

By the way, did I tell you my sisters have bought a horse?

Well, I say horse - more pony. And I say bought - more acquired, then left at the stables for regular visits. I came home today to find a bag containing at least 50 carrots by the doorway, which I found initially inexplicable before remembering our latest addition to the family.

The pony is named Harry. Yes, I do have a four (nearly five) year old brother named Harry. Yes, that is ripe for considerable confusion. I wasn't responsible for the naming of our hooved homey, although I gather he was so-called before joining the team, so I might let everyone off. And I don't believe the rumours that my dad thought he was doing a swap deal.

What is especially galling is the suggestion that we buy horse insurance, when I don't even have life insurance, which presumably instantly makes the pony a more valuable asset. This horse insurance lark must be incredibly big business: it returns over five million results in Google,

And having read the stern words of warning (for which read: sales pitch) on the front of one website, I can see the sense in this plan...

Due to a decision in the House of Lords you are now liable for any damage or injury that your horse does to other people regardless of whether you are negligent or not. So make sure you have third party liability insurance cover if nothing else.

The last thing I want is to end up on the street because our pony turned out genocidal, and with a name like Harry that's not just possible, it's likely.

I was going to get an online quote to see what sort of figure we're talking, but I have enough trouble remembering my own details for these things, let alone guessing the kind of information these sites want. I've just been presented with a drop-down menu containing no fewer than twenty-five choices for 'Colour of Horse', including such delightful options as 'flea-bitten grey', which is hardly going to make my horse sound sprightly and fit to an insurer. Now it's asking for a passport number, despite my insistence that the horse will not try to leave the country.

Not, of course, that we'll be dwelling on the physical fitness of Horsey Harry (as opposed to Human Harry). Apparently he's been declared lame already. I'm told this isn't permanent but it hardly took the horse long to cripple itself and declare running at any speed beyond its capability and comprehension. Hmm. It'll fit into this family all right.

The world seems to have forgotten what a telephone is for. Talk to any mobile 'phone retailer and you'll soon begin to think you've accidentally walked into Jessops or HMV. Telephones, mobile and otherwise, are no longer sold to us on the strength of their fitness for purpose; that's taken for granted, or else neatly lost in the sales patter. We now buy a phone because of all the things it can do almost as well as the purpose-built video camera or mp3 player we already own.

Or else, we buy it because of the name...

My 'new' telephone does little besides its most basic of functions. In fact, at the moment, it doesn't even do that (I've some mending to do first).

But it does talk. From the moment I first saw it topping a pile of rubbish in our engineer's office, it cried out to me. Its slanty but rounded BBC logo dates it somewhere in the late-60s/early-70s, and as an avid hoover-up'r of all things BBC branded, I had to save it.

A conversation with our engineer revealed it had been in store for some time, and that it was probably beyond use (it's not unthinkable for the BBC to press into service something from four-generations ago - mark what husbandry guards the spending of your licence fee). However, he was reluctant to let me have it on anything other than a 'long-loan' basis, partly in case I hurt myself and sue on Health & Safety grounds, and also in case it should come of such value that I might retire from the BBC on the proceeds. Some chance.

So, the 'official' deal is that I keep the 'phone for as long as I'm employed by the BBC. Should I ever stray, though, I'll be sure to request it as a leaving present, and so we're practically destined to be life partners.

I haven't yet decided whether I'll plug it in and use it - probably not. I'll clean it, mend it, and then proudly put it on display in every house I'll ever own. That's what a BBC telephone is for.

We all like an iconic dog, and nobody knows this better than HMV.

Nipper - old HMV dog - is being replaced, only temporarily mind you, by Gromit, erstwhile companion of Wallace in many an Aardman animation. For a special campaign, Gromit is now the Listening Dog, sat attending to his master's voice down the gramophone.

So that's Gromit. But back in the deep, dark recesses of my childhood the very name 'Gromit' conjures up the memory of grommets - tiny devices inserted into the ear to drain fluid and improve hearing in children. Steel yourself for this photo of an eardrum with grommet in place:

Yep, I became a member of the Borg at the age of 6 or 7, lying on a surgical table, holding my own anaesthetic tube like a brave little boy, then slowly realising it was all a con and that the sweet strawberry-scented air was actually knocking me out.

An hour later (or maybe a day, a week, a decade - I've no idea) I woke back up and must, presumably, have had these things installed. They are apparently supposed to drop out of the ear after about a year, but I've no recollection of ever waking up to find the Inner Ear Fairy had left a pound under the pillow.

Ah, the fun we had with my hearing when I was a child (and you thought these ears were funny shaped and nothing more). I remember a separate visit to the doctor, still only aged something like 6, where I was given a pair of headphones and told to raise my hand when I heard a sound.

The doctor went over to the tape machine, sat back down, and waited. I heard nothing. After two to three minutes the doctor went to talk to my mother. As she tells this story, he asked if I was, shall we say, mentally deficient and unable to grasp the concept of raising one's hand on hearing a noise. She double checked these relatively simple rules and regulations with me and I assured her I was on top of my game. But still I wasn't putting my little paw in the air. I was either deaf, dumb, or both.

Or alternatively the doctor might have forgotten to actually press 'Play'. This tends to help. I'm led to believe apologies were swift and profuse (I don't remember any, so he still owes me one). Bless my mother for having to put up with my many attempts at physical injury when young, most of them somehow involving my head, a source of endless maternal exasperation. On another occasion a doctor had a breakdown with us in the room. Clearly I'm a bad omen for these people.

A couple of other points of order for tonight:

- Yesterday I accidentally declared our horse racing reporter dead. I meant to call him a "great" correspondent but accidentally prefixed it with "late", as in the popular yet entirely inappopriate phrase "late, great". Happily I don't think he was listening but it's never wise to prematurely announce the demise of your collleagues, since it tends to hasten your own.

- I can't stop listening to an album by the Norwegian singer Hanne Hukkelberg.

It's called Rykestrasse 68 (don't be scared, all the tracks bar one are in English) and you can find it on iTunes or in your local music shop, hopefully. There's a bit of Kate Bush, some Sarah McLachlan, a little jazz, some country and a typewriter. As with all the best music, there are dozens of layers to each song and you find a new one with each listen.

P.S. I've just checked on Google and yes, I am the first person in the existence of humanity to use the term 'Inner Ear Fairy'. There's an achievement.

Seriously, life is just flying past at the moment. One month into my second "seat" at work. Litigation. Damn it is dull! Worked my first Sunday though today. 9am - 7.35pm - exact, I know, but I was getting bored by the end! I had emailed a document to a colleague in our Paris Office and she wanted me to wait until she had managed to print it... all 167 pages... agh, seemed to take forever. Anyway, so that was my day today. I was going to go to the Hogarth exhibition, but had to cancel. And then it turned out I hadn't booked tickets, but that is another story. So I didn't have to cancel, but anyway.

I was in Oxford yesterday. A couple of things to note. First, traffic lights. On roundabouts. What is that about? "Big" roundabouts with junctions at awkward angles / exceptionally busy roads are fine. But all along the Oxford ring-road even the smallest of roundabouts seem to have traffic lights. Really annoying. Defeats the purpose. Traffic lights on roundabouts are also really dangerous when they don't work - because people expect them to and "normal" roundabout wisdom is utterly thrown. I was going onto the M25 the other week and the roundabout traffic lights weren't working... that was a pretty scary mad dash.

Anyway, so the traffic lights were one thing. And the Morris Dancers (seriously) were another. Thousands of them. It would appear that I decided to go to Oxford (although, strictly I didn't decide the date, it was written in stone) on the day of the "Folk Festival". Lots of folk singers (some good Johnny Cash being played in Bonn Sq) and many, many Morris Dancers. Great fun. It was a sunny day, and spring seems to have finally arrived. Although, strictly speaking it arrived last weekend (nothing to do with British Summertime) but Anthony and I had our first walk of the summer through St. James' park. Summer, perhaps, is coming. So, after the Morris Dancers I had a country drive to Southern Oxfordshire, a lunch, afternoon tea somewhere else, and then a drive home. Rather amusingly, my parents and I left at different times from Oxfordshire (I was behind them) and from slightly different locations (although we had been together) and I ended up over-taking them on the motorway. Amusing. Now, whether that says they drive slow, or I drive a bit too fast is anyone's guess. I think it is probably a combination of the two.

And now I am off, since Persuasion is being shown on ITV. Oh the highlight of a Sunday evening. The best thing about working all day on a Sunday though is that a) I'll actually get up later tomorrow e.g. Monday since the DLR is more frequent so I can leave later to get in for 9am... and b) there is no such thing as a "manic" Monday morning. Small things please.

Roll on the bank-holiday weekend.