You may, or may not have noticed, that days after Dayorama celebrated its 5th Birthday, we disappeared. Someone, who shall remain nameless, forgot to pay our fees, so we were left to the ether. For anyone who missed us, apologies. For those of you who didn't, shame on you.

I was scrolling through the posts for "On This Day" and on 27th August 2006 I wrote this post. I commented how I thought it was stupid to tax us for our rubbish v our recycling. Well, times change. Views change. I think I now agree we should be taxed for our rubbish. How and what are questions I can't answer. Nor can I answer the question of what happens when people put their rubbish in bins belonging to others, or fly-tip and dump rubbish freely around the countryside to save payig tax. But we should be encouraged to recycle more. The supermarkets do a good job - green points, points / money off for using re-usable bags, the TescoDirect orders come in trays that are subsequently unloaded - rather than trays and then the food in tens of bags. I cooked a pretty impressive lunch for some close friends today and I created half a 'supermarket bag' of rubbish, mainly food peelings etc. I probably had another bag and a half of rubbish that I washed and then recycled - cans, food wrapping, packaging etc. Ridiculous. So, tax away. Or do something, anyway.

OK, so I promised Ollie I’d post. I’ve actually been meaning to post since Wednesday evening, but keep getting distracted by a variety of people and things.

First up, is the O2 / the Dome. I’ve actually been there twice this week, both times to the cinema to see the Bourne Ultimatum. Misleading as that sentence is – the first time my companion and I manage to miss the last showing so abandoned the cinema and settled for a bar. We were more successful on our second venture. Anyway, I was really very pleasantly surprised. There’s a good selection of bars / eateries, the cinema is pretty decent and the whole venue had a pleasing-enough atmosphere. I expect it makes a pretty cool concert venue. At the same time, it still has that air of being something, arguably quite impressive, but also a opulent waste of money. The interior is full of exuberance, but almost unnecessarily so. Good luck to it though, and it’s a convenient cinema. Incidentally the Bourne Ultimatum was pretty cool, actually. It’s forced in many ways, some of the characterization is a bit iffy and there were a couple of lines that could easily be contenders for the top 10 “worst lines in movies” – yes, OK, I’m hardly selling it – but overall it was enjoyable and entertaining. What more can you ask.

Second, and rather unexcitingly, I have a few people coming over for lunch tomorrow and have been cleaning madly all morning. It wasn’t as though my flat was a) untidy; or b) in any way unclean, but I’ve just sorted everything and cleaned my windows and cupboards. I even sparkled (?word) the outside of my kettle. I tell you, it’s gleaming. Oh and I’ve written a couple of letters. It’s hard being a “house wife”.

Next, Facebook. As you are aware, I have a potted approval of the site. However, I was at a very enjoyable birthday gathering on Saturday. When I left, a friend said (in relation to HK), “keep in touch and I’ll Facebook-you”. Now, what exactly does that mean?! Facebook you. I suppose it means a message or writing on my wall via Facebook. But honestly. Will this make the OED in the same way “doing a Delia” has done? I think the phrase “doing a Delia” is defined as the style of the cookery of Delia Smith or something. Could “Facebooking someone” be defined as the style of contacting someone via the website Facebook?

And finally, there was an interesting article in this week’s Economist, titled “Plus ca change? Not quite”. I’d link it, but I think after a week or so the link will die, as you would need to be an Economist subscriber to access the archive. Anyway, it discusses how clichés are gradually becoming outdated… on the basis that technology is overtaking language. Incidentally, the article notes that words such as “Google” and “wiki” have made it into the OED, so perhaps “Facebooking” has a chance.

I’ve digressed. The article comments on how we commonly use clichés, but increasingly their subject / illustrative object are far from reality. For example, thanks to book reviews and celebrity book-club stickers, you probably can judge a book by its cover. With blogs / email / Facebook / MySpace you can be out of sight but this does not mean being out of mind. In the era when everyone (except me!) has an iPod, no-one (except me, for good reason!) can be accused of not carrying a tune. With social evolution, stating “every Tom, Dick and Harry”, should probably be, “every Kevin, Chloe and Muhammad”. To “turn down all the tea in China” would be pretty foolish, but less so than if you “turned down all the cheap clothes made in China”. And of course, now the British are meant to have entered the metric era, we should be extracting 0.45kg of flesh, rather than a pound of flesh.

And so it continues. It’s a slightly far-fetched approach, but I thought it was pretty interesting / amusing all the same. I suppose it could be argued beauty is no longer skin deep, the camera (or at least PhotoShop) does lie and rocket science is pretty old hat. At the same time, these clichés have an important role in both our past and the use and development of the English language. If this article says anything, it should encourage us to continue to use these phrases to ensure they survive in future generations.

As a postscript to the previous report from Reading, I've found myself in the background of one of our BBC videos.

Click here and find the interview with Ash. About a third of the way through, watch the background behind the Ash gentleman's left shoulder. Yours truly will appear in a cream shirt and blue jeans, hat in hand, then hands on hips looking vexed.

It's a beautiful cameo and I'm visible in the background for nearly the whole remainder of the interview. It looks as though I'm a complete spare part but I promise you, I'm actually busy! At this point I'm waiting for the kind Radio 1 engineer (see previous post) to appear with some much-needed cables. I didn't realise I was being filmed or else I'd have tried to act a bit livelier! Terrible.

Now, you may be able to find my photos from today's Reading Festival on the BBC website here, but that doesn't mean we're just online journalists. In fact between us, Linda and I have spent most of today putting together a live festival special which went out from 7pm til 8pm this evening.

Getting the audio to play in the show has been the easy part - it's the technological hurdles which have proved the hardest to overcome. Linda just about managed to use a special internet connection allowing her access to our audio database back in Caversham, but when she went to do her first piece on air at around midday, calamity - it was being talked all over by random voices on walkie talkies.

This isn't a new phenomenon. At last year's WOMAD I was doing a live piece into the programme of one David Sheppard when, from nowhere, a phantom female voice crackled into life, knocking me off-air. Clearly someone at these festivals uses our frequency and thus causes a rather large headache.

It's no use trying to do an hour-long live programme from the festival if you can't be sure of keeping out the crackly intruders, so we had a couple of options left. Either we took LInda back to the studio to do it from there (and sadly lose the live atmosphere) or find some other way of broadcasting from the site.

Cue an apprehensive knock on the door of the Radio 1 compound, and an inquiry as to whether their chief engineer was around. Over came a kindly-looking gentleman - excellent.

"Please sir," said I, doing my best Oliver Twist impersonation. "Can we have an ISDN line?"

And there we were, at 7pm, sat in the Radio 1 compound facing the VIP area, plugged into Radio 1's main desk.

It worked like a charm. Our friendly engineer said he was glad of the experience as it got him outside for the first time that day, but he really didn't have to help us. Sometimes it's nice to be a part of an organisation like the BBC - if you're a local commercial station, it's a lot tougher to go begging at the door of network radio.

Tomorrow is going to be a long day with filming for telly probably the priority. I'm hoping to get to the gates of the main arena in the morning before they're opened to the public, to film the crowds pouring in at the earliest opportunity, then we have a band to film on one of the subsidiary stages.

Sunday remains the longest day of all though, with a full radio shift followed by a dash to the festival to quickly knock off some shots for telly, cart them back to Caversham, edit them, then back to the arena to polish off our coverage. Oh, and they want some TV stuff on Monday morning too. My peers are nothing if not demanding. Thank the Lord for three days off next week.

Cor dear me. Sorry for the absence, it's been a long week. Much to recount but so little time so I'll stick to today for now, the first day of our 2007 Reading Festival coverage.

Last year the online coverage of the festival was down to the two of us on the BBC's Berkshire online team, plus a freelance photographer. Using my laptop, a creaky internet connection and my GMail account, we shifted dozens of top quality photos to the BBC's Reading and Leeds website, plus text updates from around the festival site.

Here are Dayorama posts from last year's festival:
25 August: Work + Rock - the internet goes down for everyone except me!
25 August: Giving It Some Welly - it's raining but we're snapping away...
26 August: Wow - Muse are amazing and our photos are up!
27 August: Think Penis! - Tales from the festival arena as we go out filming.

This year things are a little different. The BBC is this year's 'official online partner' of the festival and we're part of a team of fourteen people keeping various BBC websites ticking over. We even have our own office in the ginormous BBC compound, sat in the shadow of legion mammoth BBC Outside Broadcast trucks. The Beeb have taken over a corner of the festival to set up an incredible array of outbuildings, cables and vehicles. It's like being part of a small invasion force, as another white off-road vehicle with 'BBC Outside Broadcast' stencilled to the side thunders past.

It's an incredible operation. Think about it: someone has to make sure the television programmes go out on air, from set design through to driving the trucks, from powering the broadcast through to packing the right cables. Someone has to make sure the radio programmes go out on air, from setting the correct frequency for radio microphones through to issuing passes to all the correct staff. And someone has to make sure the online content reaches the web, from setting up broadband access and buying in laptops to going out and collecting the raw material - and that's where I come in.

Today I've been out in the campsites talking to the punters as they arrived. There's a funny smell as you reach the camping area, a sort of cow-meets-beer aroma, and once you turn a corner the vast extent of the human herd is thrown out before you. Reams of tents rise up to the right of a narrow metal track rising an inch above the rapidly liquifying soil, while on the left a line of shops can flog you anything from a smoothie to a sombrero.

You can click here to watch the footage I shot and see some of the people I met. One group of girls were so thrilled to be interviewed that they demanded a photo with me, so I ended up with one on each arm while their male friend took a picture - the trappings of fame.

If you can't watch the video you can hear from various people in a short package I've produced for Friday night's live broadcast from the festival site. Use this audio panel to listen to it.

Hopefully I'll have some time to keep you updated over the next three days - it should be fascinating being behind the scenes at such a major operation. Coming up on Friday we'll be out taking audience photos then producing a one-hour festival special for broadcast from 7pm, then on Saturday we're filming around the arena to gauge reaction to all the top acts. We have not one but two live specials from the site on Sunday, and that's after my usual 6am shift! It's going to be a busy one.

Here is a link to this year's BBC Reading and Leeds website. To see the fruits of last year's labour, here is the 2006 version.

I hate to be partiucularly geeky about such things, but there's currently a fascinating program on ye old box. The Secret Life of the Motorway. BBC Four. The three-part series is meant to look at the building of the first motorway, the people who drive on it, the wildlife, those that hitch lifts, those that mainatin it etc etc. It's actually very interesting. Or do I just need a life when I finish work early? OK, so don't answer that one.

So, not long until I go to HK now. Three weeks, but I guess those will pass by. And much to see and do in the meantime. Packing aside, I've people to see, lunches to cook and drinks to attend. Not to mention working and shopping. A hard life, huh?

But, it's a weird time. I suppose it's one of those things, but in life you never stop "doing something new" for the first time do you? Finally, when I began work I thought, "perhaps this is over for a while". But no, one year on and I'm upping ship and moving to the other side of the world. OK, so it's only for six months, but a lot can go on in six months. At the same time, February seems like yesterday, so I guess it will fly by.

Ollie and I met up yesterday and we were discussing what I thought I'd miss. It will be the silly things. Cereal. Cadbury's (even though I don't eat it that much, it's probably something I'll miss). A proper steak in a proper English pub (Ollie is already booked up to take me out when I return). Driving. And that's before family, friends, and England's Green and Pleasant patchwork land. It'll be an interesting time, but one I'm looking forward to very much. If you're really lucky, I'll aim to keep up posting rot on this site. You may even have the treat of a parody on "Born in the USA"... TM OJ October 2003.

But for now I suppose I should reflect on something I think Mandela said at the end of his autobiography. Something about discovering the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb... (although I think this time it's probably HK Peaks)

I’m currently watching the film the Notebook, and it has possibly one of the worst and cringe-worthy love scenes (or not, so it seems) of any film. This really is of no consequence to my post, but I couldn’t let it pass without acknowledgment.

I’m not quite sure when my weekend truly began, but I was certainly awoken early on Saturday morning to the delightful, or not, sound of vehicles akin only to road sweepers. It turns out that, in all their wisdom, the Highways Agency has decided to re-tarmac the road outside my flat on two consecutive weekends. This process begins at around 7.00am on a Saturday morning with the beeps of a reversing JCB, the groan of a tarmac roller and the flashing lights of all wretched vehicles imaginable. I mean? Isn’t a girl allowed any beauty sleep these days. I’d only got to bed at 3.30am too, so it wasn’t as though I was happy to be awoken at that time. And my head hurt!

I suppose it is only fitting that the last event of my weekend (bar, of course, watching this awful film) involved the road. I was traveling back from seeing Ollie and got stuck in a traffic jam on the way back into London. Suddenly the traffic came to a standstill on the A40. There was an accident ahead and we weren’t moving anywhere. Instead, people got out of cars, had a smoke, called people on their mobiles and chatted to people in neighboring cars. It was wonderfully British. Everyone in a twenty-minute queue, one small moment of sharing lives, and then onwards into anonymity.

Unless he's just emailed you to let you know his new email address.

My colleague Linda, who does a lot of work with bands and the music industry, must have found her way into the boy Sharkey's contacts list at some point.

She's just received this email:

"Dear All,

On Monday the 20th of August my email address will change to [address deleted otherwise Feargal would probably be a tad miffed].

At least that's the theory, fingers crossed.

Kind regards,

Feargal."

Have you had a change-of-email notice from anyone to beat that?

Just a few random thoughts.

1. Bl**dy Barclays continue to annoy. I went to my mailbox this morning and collected four letters from Barclays. My heart temporarily missed a beat. What was up with my finances. I opened the letters one by on. i) Bank Statement for my Current Account; ii) Bank Statement for one of my savings accounts; iii) Bank Statement for the current account I have been trying to close down for weeks; and iv) a letter offering me home insurance. Now, why couldn't they have sent all of that in one envelope, saving money on postage, saving trees and saving my heart. And when are they going to close that account?

2. I posted on Dayorama on Sunday about my weekend away. I was pretty tired and decided to post rather than unpack. Stupid decision. I've since worked two very long days and my clothes remain unpacked and my flat is in disarray. It won't be changing before Friday at this rate.

3. The next "event" on my Dayorama calendar is my imminent departure to HK. That's pretty daunting right now.

This train travels through Africa to towns across the Republic of Congo, pulling wagons stuffed full of insecticide-impregnated mosquito nets. It'll mean enough nets for one in ten of the population, on a continent where a million people a year die from malaria.

Click here to see more photos and read more from BBC reporter John James. This is online reporting at its basic best, particularly when serving a part of the world where broadband and technological innovation aren't ready for us to start lobbing video, audio and clever-clogs coding at anything that moves. Good pictures, good text, good story.

My brain was working overtime last night.

I woke up in a cold sweat at about four o'clock in the morning having just emerged from what I can only describe as a sort of sci-fi zombie horror nightmare, beautifully crafted by my subconscious, drawing inspiration from one of the movies it knows I can't stand, then adding in some very nice topical touches.

It took as the basis for the story the film, "28 Days Later". Now I've only seen tiny portions of this film, which found its way onto terrestrial telly quite recently, and I flicked back and forth, trying not to watch too much because frankly, those films scare me rigid. I can't do horror. This is the basic premise of the film as lifted from the internet, in case you've not seen it:

"Set in early 21st century England, the story depicts the breakdown of society following the accidental release of a highly contagious virus known as "Rage" (which renders people mindlessly violent) and focuses upon the struggle of four survivors to cope with the ruination of the life they once knew."

So there I find myself, at the top of an all but derelict tower block-cum-multistorey car park, in some nondescript English city. We're on the tenth floor. I know (not sure how I know, but I know) that floors seven downwards are full of Rage-infected zombies. In the back left corner of the room there is an elevator that will take me down, should I wish (I really don't wish). To the right, you can walk outside onto what used to be a roof garden, but what is now quite eerily overgrown and silent.

I say "we" because I'm not alone by any means. This top floor is abuzz with activity, concentrated around three or four banks of computers that vaguely resemble an old school computer room, except the PCs all look fairly futuristic. It's apparent that this is the home of some form of anti-zombie resistance movement, with quite technologically-minded Bright Young Things clattering away at keyboards, wearing headsets and generally acting like the Rebel Alliance. Outside, all is spookily quiet. Inside, it's a blur of activity.

And who's leading this last hope of humanity? My old school friend Gaby, who added me to Facebook some time yesterday afternoon. My subconscious has played a blinder in immediately casting her as the Admiral Ackbar of my worst nightmare.

The zombies never made an appearance during the dream, but I'm not sure that was any help. Instead my internal Hitchcock racked up the tension with horrific noises-off, the air rended with screams from the floors below - particularly when I briefly gazed down the ramp of the car park section of the building, toward the dreaded seventh floor. Picking my way cautiously through the roof garden it became clear that this was some kind of post-apocalyptic attempt at food production by the top floor survivors, who would obviously have to be self sustaining unless they fancied running the gauntlet of the zombies below.

At one point I was mad enough to board the elevator with Gaby. Its inspiration was definitely the lifts at Reading station, dull yellow lights illuminating the panel of numbers, an awful metallic claustrophobia setting in as the doors rattled shut. Gaby was going down to the eighth floor but I, panicking at the thought accidentally going just one floor further down, slammed my hand on the "nine" button as we reached it, then waited for the elevator back up - minus Gaby. (Plot hole: why can't the zombies board the elevator up?)

Then, an interesting turn in events. I hadn't been terribly sure what I was doing in the building from the off, but the first act had been taken up in exploring and trying to comprehend the situation. The second act, back up on the tenth floor, was for me to produce my new mobile phone - another nicely topical reference. Suddenly, I'd remembered that I worked for the BBC and was only here as a sort-of observer, albeit an incredibly reluctant one, and I very much felt my work here was done, thanks very much.

So I started tapping away at the phone, trying to enter my BBC passcode to access... well I don't know, but it felt like I was trying to access something that would get me away to the safety of a BBC newsroom as fast as possible (no zombies there, apparently - first time for everything).

Then, in the third and final beautiful element of topicality, I finished the passcode, hit "OK" and pulled this kind of transparent cloak over myself, grimacing and steeling myself for the sensation of compressed air inside my lungs.

And where did that come from? The final Harry Potter book, which finished itself (as an audio book, read by Stephen Fry) in my car last night. Harry owns an invisible cloak and can disapparate - which, as one Potter fan site will tell you, means:

"A magical form of teleportation, by which a witch or wizard can disappear from one location and reappear in another. The act is accompanied by a very unpleasant squeezing sensation, as though being sent through a tight rubber tube."

The squeezing sensation stopped, and I woke up. Genius. The only similar exit from a dream I've ever had was about ten years ago, when I somehow managed to dream a big black door with one of those luminous green "Emergency Exit" signs above it, walked through it, and awoke. But I don't think that can rival disapparating out of a zombie-infested tower block, back to the land of the living. If only I hadn't left my car on the seventh floor...

As long weekends go mine was rather fun. Pure, wholesome fun. For a little bit of context, a friend from secondary school was getting married in Durham on Saturday. My Mother was at Durham *shhh, in the 1960s* and hadn’t been back since. When I announced some time back I was off to the wedding, she said she’d come with me. So, on Thursday night I drove to Kent. At 4am Friday morning we set off for Durham. We arrived in the hotel around 10am. 5hrs of driving 1hr of stops. Mad, perhaps, but utterly painless.

We wandered around Durham and went to my Mum’s College – St Hild, now St Hild & St Bede – and then went off exploring. We ventured North into Northumberland. Absolutely fabulous countryside. We were blessed with a particularly good day weather-wise, so could see for absolutely miles.

We ambled around the countryside and made the obligatory visit to Hadrian’s wall. On our way back into Durham we stopped off at the Angel of the North. It’s an amazing statue. Instead of being impressive from a distance but pretty naff close-up, or vice-versa, the Angel of the North is both impressive from afar and when you are standing underneath it. I’m rather pleased with the below photograph (plus I had to ram myself into a bramble bush in order to take it!).

On Saturday we wandered around Durham Cathedral and Castle. I then attended the wedding – which took place in the Cathedral. It must be said, it’s a rather impressive setting for a wedding. After that we had dinner with my closest friend from school (a PhD Historian at Durham) and then today we bimbled home… but what a drive… We decided to go via Whitby and the North Yorkshire Moors. Absolutely beautiful. The heather was in full bloom and the natural colours were wonderful. Certainly worth it… and I’ll definitely be returning… I’ve also now got some “lucky” heather in my room… let’s hope it will counteract the “unlucky” peacock feathers… only time will tell!

Nobody denies that it's horrible when little children go missing, and it's impossible to imagine how it actually feels were it, God forbid, to happen to your children.

But there is a line between sober reporting of this kind of tragic development, and sensationalising something to the point where the actual human loss seems to be somehow devalued and overlooked.

This screenshot of the Daily Express website, on the page where you can view its last seven front covers, is a case in point:

In case you can't tell, the front page has the word "Madeleine" splashed across in big letters on each of the seven days. (On two of them the word "Diana" has also made it.) The same photo of Madeleine is on six of the seven front pages.

This was drawn to my attention while reading the BBC Editors' Blog earlier on. In it, the BBC's head of TV news - Peter Horrocks - had the following to say:

"The situation that many facts are not reliably established has not stopped many of our press and broadcast colleagues from treating rumour as being newsworthy.

For instance, ITN led last week on a claim that a child like Madeleine had been sighted in Belgium. ITN headlined this with a lurid photo-fit of a suspect abductor with the words "Does this man have Madeleine McCann?"

The BBC gave little prominence to the possible Belgian sighting, on the basis that there have been many previous false sightings."

Well ITN are so unhappy about this accusation that ITV News editor-in-chief, David Mannion, has written back using the comments:

"I feel I must correct the impression made by Peter Horrocks concerning the reporting of the story by ITV News.

[Peter] singles out ITV News for leading on the potential sighting of Madeleine with a man at a café in Belgium to which the BBC gave little prominence on the grounds that there had been many other sightings.

May I point out that, like the BBC, ITV News has given little or no prominence to the countless sightings which appeared to have no basis in fact. The Belgium sighting, however, was different. The person who believed she saw Madeleine was a highly credible witness, a professional woman who worked with children and often worked with the police. We sought and achieved an interview with the woman in order that we might establish for ourselves, her credentials and to question her about what she saw. The police in Belgium confirmed that they regarded the matter worthy of detailed follow up investigation. In my book this was a story and your article, Peter, amounts to little more than an excuse for missing it."

Well, no, that's not a story. One hates to parrot the party line but, no matter how reliable the witness, there was absolutely no hard evidence (indeed now that the evidence has arrived, it strongly suggests the sighting was in error). If the same "highly credible witness" had said she'd seen a UFO, and had seemed pretty convincing when interviewed by ITV, I still doubt they'd have run the story unless they had bloody good visual evidence for the existence of such a thing.

The coverage of a young girl's disappearance shouldn't be about "missing stories". There are two stories: one, the girl is missing, and two, the girl has been found. While things remain in a state of flux it is absolutely pointless reporting on glimpsed sightings unless there is demonstrable, hard evidence to lay before the public. As for seven days of Express front pages, the continual use of Diana as a marketing device is sickening enough, without this.

If you were reading yesterday, I promised you a multimedia special including the solution to the tantalising question: where have I lost my BBC pass?

The answer is just to the right of the Citroen:

Yep, I tossed my BBC pass to one side on the grid at Silverstone as I prepared to film this piece to camera. It was clicking against my jeans and I didn't want the unnecessary noise. As I threw it down onto the grass verge, I made a mental note: "Don't forget to pick that up."

I forgot to pick it up and, having done the filming during a short break without any cars on the circuit (bar the Citroen), only remembered once Porsches and Ferraris had resumed thundering round the track at hundreds of miles an hour.

So, lying as it does on a stretch of grassy verge almost inaccessible to man, my BBC pass has probably found a new permanent home just next to the fifth grid position. Look out for it at next year's Grand Prix.

Yesterday's filming at Silverstone was a marvellous, jaw-dropping experience. We'd gone along to report on a young man from Maidenhead who, aged 15, has a bright future in motorsport. He'll most probably go on to become a touring car ace, but you never know - he might just be the next Lewis Hamilton yet.

The filming was a treat in itself. We shot interviews in the Silverstone pit lane, then I perched in the back of a Renault Espace, filming our kid in his souped-up Citroen Saxo as we did a slow-motion lap of the Grand Prix circuit.

Ever since I put this date in my diary, I've had a dream of recording a piece to camera with cars buzzing past my ears while walking gingerly down the grid to the start line. I was amazed to discover we could make this a reality - and, having jumped a fence, enlisted the Saxo to roar past me as I bellowed an impromptu script to the camera. The image above is taken from the middle of this. It's one of the most exciting things I've ever done.

That said, it has competition for that honour from the laps of Silverstone I spent as a passenger. Some of the cars idling in the pit lane were literally worth millions of pounds, and we were offered a seat in one of only two Ferrari F50 GTs in the world. The father of our racing starlet was kind enough to offer us a lap alongside the young maestro, first in the Citroen, then - unbelievably - in a Porsche 911.

I could feel my guts scream with anticipation as we roared out of the pit lane, slamming round the corners, thundering over the rumble strips, and lurching from side to side as the tyres fought to grip the legendary tarmac.

To think I used to try to nip over the grassy bit of the chicane on Formula One computer games. In real life it turns out it's bad enough being on the tarmac, without going cross-country. Then I looked across at the driver. Here I was, in a Porsche 911, being hurled around a world famous motorsports venue... by a 15-year-old.

And he's a much better driver than me, I can tell you. No wonder he's already top of his junior championship with a deal to drive at senior level next year. I've added him to my collection of future sporting legends - I now have interview footage of a potential British number one tennis star and, who knows, maybe the next Lewis Hamilton. Va va voom.

PS As regards this being a "multimedia special", the caveat is: only if you're on Facebook. I only had time to upload the final video piece there earlier on. Think of it as an incredibly small incentive for you fuddy-duddies out there to sign up. By which I mean all our parents.

Well I've not lost it, per se. I know exactly where it is.

But I'm not going to tell you where that is just yet, because it requires the whole story, pictures, video and all.

Suffice to say it's in a location which, if BBC passes had to vote on locations to be lost in, would easily make the top ten. And I'd be risking death trying to get it back in a hurry.

Full details in a multimedia special tomorrow.

Fear not, this is not another diatribe about the faults of the population who frequent Tesco. No, tis instead an account of how I got distracted on the way to Tesco yesterday. I left my flat at 1pm and returned at around 4pm. The time I spent traveling to and from was around 15mins, and my time in the store around 30mins. By my reckoning, that leaves around 3.25hrs unaccounted for.

However, I must digress slightly first: I should just like to add one qualification to Ollie’s post below. He exaggerates. The excuse of journalist flair. Damn good post, maybe. But he exaggerates. Kangaroos? No, more joeys.

So, back to Tesco. My local Tesco is Bromley-by-Bow. It is built amidst the remains of the industrial East End and backs on to a site known as the “Three Mills”. I’ve often glanced at these Mills. They are stunningly beautiful. Set against the River Lea, one half of the building has a twin-oast and the other hosts a clock tower. Overall the complex is a fine example of Georgian / early Victorian architecture. Behind the main Mills are the so-called “3 Mills Studios”, apparently used for quite well-known terrestrial tv dramas and the like.

The Three Mills are part of the Lea Valley Country Park. There’s a potted history here, but clearly the site has been important since 1066, if not before. It’s undergone some changes, but the current development is a real treasure.

I ventured inside for the first time – it was a glorious day and after sitting by the river for a while I thought the Mills were worthy of further investigation. I was fortunate enough to join a tour group, and spent the next hour and a half or so, having a tour of the Mills – and at the same time learning an incredible amount about the local history of my area. Now, don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a “tourist attraction”, per se. Of course, in essence it is – but sadly like many developments, funding has been minimal and infrequent. The Mills have survived on generous donations and the support of volunteers, rather than from the backing of a well-known heritage trust. The volunteers hope that one day the Olympic legacy will help them on their way – and I’d be the first in line to support the cause.

However, this lack of “official” funding, makes one’s visit intimate and personal. The tour itself centered around the House Mill. So called, because it was situated between two houses. There’s a little about the tour of the Mill on the link above, and but in essence you traveled throughout the floors of the Mill right from the top where the grain sacks were hoisted, to the storage of the grain, the grinding stones and then down to the water-wheels in existence. Rather fascinatingly, and for some unknown reason, the tide of progression is still evident. There are four wheels, yes, but they each represent different stages in the engineering thinking behind the wheels. This hasn’t been displayed like this for “museum” purposes, this is how the Mill was left. Similarly, there are around eight milling stones of one design, alongside four with a more traditional structure. The website has more detail. It’s incredible to see the differences, side by side, and really understand how they developed to both meet the needs of the Mill, adapt to increased engineering knowledge and availability of raw materials.

So, a fascinating and rewarding little jaunt. Not often you can go to Tesco and get to see the UK’s largest tidal mill in the bargain.

Amy mentioned she'd be paying a visit, and we spent yesterday afternoon on one of our usual trips round Berks, Bucks and Oxon, ending up with a very nice pub dinner at a place called the Golden Ball near Assendon. The food took a while but was lovely when it came - recommended if you've got time to spare.

We started off by walking the dog round the sculpture trail, except the dog had already had a walk round the cricket pitch and chose to lie by the fence in the back garden, taking in the rays, studiously ignoring us. So we went round the sculpture trail minus the dog, then did a bit of basking in the sun ourselves on the spacious meadow by the car park.

That photo was taken about five minutes before Amy brought shame on the family, the Dodge, the park, the county and the human race.

As we ambled back down the dusty track near the entrance to find the car, with an elderly lady behind us escorting a medium sized dog, Amy noticed something which apparently required my immediate attention.

"My tits!" She exclaimed. "My tits! There's mud on them!"

Now, I don't know if God has a Reverb button for the dusty track and surrounding woodland, but if he has, he's left it turned up to 11. Amy's succinct observation bounced around the trees like a kangaroo on heat. The medium sized dog and elderly lady froze. Children playing in the distance began to weep. Squirrels fell out of branches.

Having bundled the now delirious Kennedy into the car and away from her horrified public, it emerged that the few specks of mud in question were on her top in that vague area rather than being actually... there. She needn't have panicked a nation. The dog acquired an instantaneous shock-induced perm quite unnecessarily.

We drove on towards Stonor down possibly the only road around Stokenchurch that I've never previously explored. It was beautiful - including one length of road that became a kind of secret boulevard, with vast driveways leading off into the beyond, ginormous houses shrouded in foliage. Still, even the incredibly rich and secretive need a post box:

That post box is in the middle of nowhere on this shady little boulevard, perched a good half a mile from any dwelling, sticking out like a sore thumb. And it's what makes Britain special. Like the postal service in general at the moment, that post box is shockingly striking.

Carrying on down the road, it became apparent that it was quite a bit busier than ought to really be the case. For a tiny, winding lane through rolling countryside in the middle of nowhere, there was a steady stream of traffic going on. The reason soon became clear.

There, appearing out of nowhere on the left hand side, was Stonor Park, home to the country estate and readying itself for an open-air concert that night. Hundreds upon hundreds of cars were stacked up along the lane for miles - Lord knows if they all made it in on time. Of course it might be they weren't going to the open-air concert at all. They'd probably all stopped at the sound of a distant echo...

"... My tits! ... Mud on them! ..."

A fellow Dayorama reader and I went out for dinner last night. A very pleasant restaurant in a hotel, and the food was wonderful… but the service. Oh, the service. The problem was that whilst the waitresses were thoroughly well meaning and cheerful, they weren’t particularly experienced and English wasn’t their first language.

The issues really began when we ordered dessert. Now first, let me digress to the menu. It had little “v’s” next to vegetarian dishes and “n’s” next to dishes containing nuts. The cheese platter indicated that it contained nuts. Now, this isn’t necessarily a misnomer. I mean, you can have cheese with walnuts in it. What was rather confusing though was that the almond tart didn’t appear to contain nuts. Nor did the cake with pistachios in it. Interesting.

To begin, we both had to repeat what we had for dessert, twice – the waitress didn’t quite seem to be able to distinguish between crème brulee and ice cream. We’d had previous problems when we tried to explain we weren’t guests at the hotel, and therefore however many times they asked us for our room number we just didn’t have one. When the waitress delivered the cutlery for desert, she looked puzzled and then gambled saying crème brulee to me (correct) and then gave me a fork and a large spoon. She gave my companion a small spoon, for an almond tartlet. Now, anyone who knew the two desserts would probably think it was logical for the crème brulee to have the teaspoon and the tart to have the fork and large spoon. We swapped the cutlery over.

Then it came to the bill. The puddings were delicious, incidentally. The complication was that we had a 25% discount card. Presented to the waitress, she looked at it as though it was a bizarre creature from Mars. Thankfully, given to her boss, he was slightly less flummoxed and produced our bills. This is where the fun began. We added on a tip and my companion handed over two credit cards. The initial confusion started from producing two cards from one wallet, even though one belonged to me. I’d taken nothing out with me other than a card so had asked him to look after it. Then we said we wanted to split the bill 50:50. The waitress came back with two bills, without the tip we’d previously added. The bill could actually have been split 50:50, but instead I ended up with a bill for £X.19 and the other bill was for £X.17. Why they weren’t both £X.18 is beyond me. In my usual dizzy state, and also under the influence of a good bottle of red, I couldn’t add up and was told to add £X.71 to mine to make it to a round number. Now, think about this: 71 + 19 is 90. Not 100. Two Oxford degrees and impossible to add to 100. So my total was incorrect and the bills had to be returned. Again. Then one of the cards was refused (not mine, incidentally :o) but seeing as the person in question earns over double my salary, somehow I think this could have been the card, rather than the lack of funds). Anyway, somehow and approximately 30mins after we’d originally asked for the bill, we managed to pay and left. Good job we weren’t in any form of hurry. I’m seeing Ollie for dinner later. I hate to think what is going to happen.

Way back in the mid-1990s I had my first brick of a mobile phone, a Nokia that weighed half a ton, on what was then the one2one network.

A decade later I've come home. Sat beside me is a Nokia N95 on the T Mobile network, one2one's successor, after an afternoon of to-ing and fro-ing between the Vodafone and T Mobile shops in the centre of Reading.

For a while now my Sony Ericsson w800i has looked a little dishevelled, and the camera function's incessant self-activation has drained both the battery life and my patience. So it was time for a change, and I wanted a phone that would get me online plus offer me good photography capabilities. My mum has an N95 and it looks like it will fit the bill perfectly.

I suppse I'd have been happy enough staying with Vodafone but since joining them ages ago they've always felt a bit like the enemy - it didn't help when they sponsored Manchester United, for a start. So I decided to shop around and realised it was between them and T Mobile. Off to the shops.

Shop 1: Vodafone, 4pm
Something is amiss. I've got to approach a Vodafone employee rather than having twelve of them circling me on entry. Vodafone lackey Yasar tells me he's got some concerns about the N95, but they don't sound too grave and seem to centre on Vodafone's proprietary software for it - certainly it doesn't seem to have bothered Vodafone, who have adverts for the N95 plastered all over the shop.

Yasar and I spend ten or fifteen minutes establishing precisely how I'd change my contract and what the phone would cost. It seems like the data/internet side of things is an afterthought in their brochure and in their mindset, rather than the central feature I want it to be.

When I say the phone cost seems to be a bit steep, Yasar calls in a senior employee, who is clearly feeling a bit brash and starts barking away with Vodafone advantages over T Mobile. The one he returns to is Vodafone's superior network coverage. "But I'm not going to spend that much time in the Shetlands," I protest. "No need to be flippant," he barks. Quiet, relaxed Yasar - who was prepared to admit Vodafone's failings where appropriate while giving decent advice - is quite a contrast to barking man, who makes it clear I need to give T Mobile a chance.

Shop 2: T Mobile, 4:30pm
Look, this is the last day of the month, these guys are supposed to be ready to do anything to hit their targets. Instead I have to ferret out an employee again, but this time it seems a bit more like they're understaffed and the shop's at the wrong end of town, rather than not giving a monkeys.

Chris is immediately more impressive than anyone at Vodafone. He rubbishes at least three Vodafone claims about T Mobile's service and assures me their internet is unrestricted, does have a more generous fair use policy, and isn't harder to view on the phone. He's even got an N95 himself with Web'n'Walk, the T Mobile service I like the look of, and hands it over for me to inspect. He can also talk from experience about which sites work best, and how you go about doing various things. It's very helpful to have found someone with the phone immediately to hand, with experience of day-to-day use.

Chris gives me his absolute best price for the Web'n'Walk deal I want, and I say I'll go back to Vodafone to give them one last chance.

Shop 3: Vodafone, 5pm
Eight Vodafone employees are laughing and joking at the front of the shop. Yasar, sat at the back, confirms the worst: they've hit all their targets for the month and I'd be better off ringing customer services. The clear message is that having hit their targets, they couldn't care less about keeping my custom. Fine by me. T Mobile could put the cost of the phone up by fifty quid and I'd still sign for them at this point. Barking man comes over and tells me the phone might be £50 cheaper with Vodafone, but he'll only know once he puts the deal through. "So I'll only find out if I've saved money once I've paid you?" Yes.

Shop 4: T Mobile, 5:15pm
Go back to T Mobile - Chris insists he can't drop the price of the phone. It looks like a few beads of sweat are forming on foreheads in T Mobile though, which is a good sign.

Twenty minutes later I've somehow managed to negotiate myself into paying an extra five pounds a month, for ten pounds off the phone. That doesn't immediately sound like a great deal, but the extra fiver means I can use the phone as a modem for my PC to get online anywhere, which is well worth £5 a month. It's a deal. Off to the till we go, where Chris hands me to fellow assistant Brett.

Brett now tries no fewer than nine times to persuade me to take out mobile phone insurance with them, for £9 a month. Replies of mine include:
"There is no way on God's green earth I am signing up to that."

"No thanks, I'm not touching that insurance form with a bargepole.

"Good God man, how much commission are you on to sell this?"

At one point Chris comes over and says he'll knock £10 off the phone if I sign up to the insurance. "I thought the phone was as cheap as you could possibly make it?" I say. "Oh it is, it is. Just baiting you," says Chris. Hmm.

Five minutes later, Brett is still at it. "We'll knock £40 off the phone if you sign up." Hang on - at this rate they'll be paying me to take the phone in return for this insurance scam. How desperate must these people be for me to sign? As a joke, I suggest that I'll sign up if they knock £100 off the phone. "I'll have to ask the manager," says Brett, walking into the back office. Bloody hell.

The manager says no, thankfully, so there's no dodgy insurance for me, just a nice new phone and a half-price memory card thrown in. It's funny - at the Vodafone shop, Yasar took a call during his chat with me, which turned out to be to do with some house-hunting he's doing in Marylebone. "Bloody estate agents," he says. But it's only taken me an hour in a couple of mobile phone shops to realise why I only do this every two years. To think I work for the company accused of deceiving its audience...