Friday 13 June 2008

Not bad for Friday the thirteenth, really

13st 11lb; 6.5 units of alcohol; 1,331; Alnwick and China.

When I was in London yesterday afternoon, I popped into PC World to buy a £4.99 pair of headphones for my laptop, and found myself making the considerably more expensive impulse purchase of a new wireless router. It took about five minutes to set up this morning and it immediately worked perfectly, greatly enhancing my domestic amenities and flexibility of working. In fact, getting me back to where I was a year ago, before my previous wireless router mysteriously stopped functioning and I made the disastrous mistake of ordering a BT Home Hub which has never worked at all. I should have known better than to purchase any product endorsed on TV by a man who spells his first name “Kris”. According to BT’s ever-helpful customer services staff in India, it doesn’t work because I live too far from the telephone exchange, but then that would mean that it was never going to work in the first place, so why the hell did they sell it to me? The argument is also hard to square with the fact one of their own engineers told me a while ago that there is a bloke living in the farm cottages up the road, 500 yards further from the exchange, whose Home Hub works perfectly.

No, don’t get me started. It’s bad for my blood pressure.

Anyway, I reckoned that was an unexpectedly positive start to Friday the 13th. I had decided to tempt fate by taking my convertible into Alnwick for its annual service and MOT, but even that passed off without expensive incident. Meanwhile I filled the time sitting in my conservatory reading the newspapers and weighing up the important question of the day: David Davis, nutter or man of principle?

My aunt kindly turned up in the afternoon to run me back into Alnwick to pick up my car, but before that we took the dog for a walk in perfect, not-too-hot sunshine. After collecting the car I took the dog to the vet’s for his annual vaccination, which he enjoyed greatly (he is a VERY odd dog). Then I joined the longish queue at the Co-op garage to fill up my car with petrol. Naturally I tutted a bit about all the other people who were panic buying in an irresponsible sort of way because of the tanker drivers’ strike, while I was motivated entirely by prudence.

My locally based ex-fiancĂ©e and her husband turned up this evening bearing a Chinese takeaway, which we ate in my garden room before we slumped in front of the sitting room fire to watch a couple of recorded episodes of Have I Got News For You. My ex was very keen that I see last Friday’s, even though she had already watched it, as there was a line of Paul Merton’s which she felt would be ideal for me to use when I meet the Less Tall Cheshire Brunette’s parents on Sunday. It proved to be: “I’m on the sex offenders’ register. Could you pass the butter?”

It’s an even tougher call than deciding about David Davis, but on mature reflection I think I’ll pass on that one.

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