30th September, 2005

Those few of you who anticipate this ridiculous offering might be interested to know why you were disappointed last Friday. This is principally the fault of a dangerous individual, a client of mine who works just down the road and who held a drinks party last Thursday evening. Uncharacteristically, I allowed myself to get led astray on the drink front, but eventually struggled onto the 11.15pm train to Cambridge, hating myself for having bought a Double Whopper with Cheese at Burger King. The remains of this having just been tucked tidily under the chair, a really rather beautiful girl came into the carriage and sat down across the aisle from me. As the train pulled out of the station she revealed a bottle of 10 year old Laphroig from her bag which, she explained, apologetically really, she had taken from the flat of a friend of hers who had been killed a fortnight earlier in a climbing accident. So we conducted a sort of wake I suppose. By the time we got to Royston - where essential rail works meant that we had to board a bus to complete the journey to Cambridge - more than half the bottle had been drunk and we had solved the Palestinian problem. Honestly. That was all there was to it. I cycled home and didn't wake up till mid-day.