Not the nonsense on the TV which along with Big Brother, Love Island and I’m a total gimboid please humiliate me render me Amish amongst my hipper colleagues. Did you see what Coleen did last night?“/”No, unfortunately I was already booked to disembowel myself with a wet kipper and frankly it seemed to offer more scope for entertainment“

Anyway televisual snobbery apart, memorable things have been happening this week, unfortunately I appear to have lost the ability to remember them. Firstly my phone/pda/camera/watermelon thingybob jumped out of my trouser pocket and into an unused shoe. That can be the only reason why I found it there, after tearing around the house like an arthritic but still whirling dervish for a couple of hours. Those shoes in particular could, and probably should, be reclassified as weapons grade munitions due to a year of sweaty commuting. Amazingly the calendar/contact list/buzzsaw survived immersion in the noxious footbeds and provided sterling service until I lost it exactly twelve hours later.

How did that happen? I’ll get to it shortly but it is deserving of a unique entry. Well I think so anyway and currently embarrassment begets writer’s block.

Once re-united with my virus scanner/internet browser/nose and beard trimmer, so vexed was I with my memory loss that the intense concentration required to ensure it didn’t once more leap from my personage, saw me abandon a very expensive rain jacket on the train. I’m only telling you this now as the nice man at Chiltern Snailways (never have a bad word to say about ˜em, honest) found it by proxy and it’s now back in my happy grasp.

What’s not in my happy grasp is any cash since we’ve exhausted a Welsh slate quarry to build a patio, concluded the world’s most expensive summer holiday and invested in ahem a few small purchases in the bike category. Happily a small glint of financial restitution arrived via the nice man from the camera shop offering to restore my bruised camera to its’ former state of all workingness for a mere£60. Imagine my disappointment when a day later, he called back to explain that for reasons of extreme profiteering, the repair charge was now£160 which is about the same cost to go and buy the same camera.

Short delay. Forgot to breathe there for a minute. Landfill a problem? No bloody surprise there then since we throw everything away once the batteries run out. I shall wrest it from his moneygrabbing paws and hoik it on eBay for spares or repairs rather than chuck it in the bin “ that’s just plain wrong.

In other news, it seems that I am now of an age where trellis may enter my life in a non ironic way. Because the weather has been so “ what’s the word “ shit since we crested Hadrian’s wall to return south, riding MTB’s looks like a slide about in muddy slop. Instead I pace around the house looking for things to do an annoying my wife when she finds me wallpapering the cat or adding curtain rails to the sink. It wouldn’t be so bad if I was any good at it but it’s all botching, powertools and impatience. Normally she lets me get it out of my system before, sighing, starting the job again.

So in desperation, she sent me outside to install the new fence and trellis that divides and separates (was that a bra advert?) our garden as championed in about a thousand gardening programmes. Not that I watch such twaddle with a nice cup of tea while ensconced in a warm cardigan and some woolly slippers. Oh no. Soon I was hammering away like an aging porn star “ assuming their idea of ˜wood’ was a large sledgehammer and an twitching fence post. To my immense pleasure, this was followed by some righteous powertool action where I recessed and countersunk all manner of woodscrews though the power of a Spinal Tap 11�? setting on the drill.

Not sure that was required but that’s hardly the point is it. Well maybe it is but anyway too late now, they’re never coming out unless we suffer infestation by hardcore woodworm.

Talking of wood as we were, you’ll be delighted to know that I now have a woodpile. This is not a medical complaint, well not unless it falls on you. The pleasure derived from tidying up offcuts from a hundred abandoned projects and installing them by size, category and usefulness as missiles is rather worrying but honestly it’s magnificent.

I’d take a photo but my camera is broken.

The only thing I have left to lose is my mind and it may already be a little late to save it.