All the best bits

1. Anthony the Carpenter called. This falling-down house possesses large wood and glass doors, hand built in the late Victorian age and lovingly sited as an entrance to a room (somewhere under piles of paper and crap) that me and Dig like to bicker about. Is it called the Dining Room? Or the Boardroom? Or the Room Full of Crap? We put a ladder through the glass on one door and mended it with a plastic sheet glued to the remaining glass daggers. We have lived with this stylish solution for, um, dunno, seven years? But the time is right for a carpenter who knows what they're doing to restore our fine aspirational living. Anthony the Carpenter called and he might fit us in before Christmas. Or not.

2. En famille to Murder on the Orient Express. I thoroughly enjoyed the moustache.

3. I filled in Shark's biology form. With an actual pen. This is no small thing. Not by accident have I created a life for myself where I have had little to do with them. Forms are like discovering you put curdled milk in your tea. They put me in mind of when me and Dig tried to sell books. People would send us an order form and a cheque, which we would lose. After 6 months we would shovel the pile into the shredder without a note of guilt or embarrassment. Indeed, this capacity to have a complete lack of responsibility or interest with forms makes me the perfect person to teach the gritties how to deal with them. Rule 1. Fill them in, completely wrong and hopelessly, immediately as you receive them and bounce them back to where they came. Rule 2. Find a secretary or other friendly agent, and get them to fill in the form for you. (Pay them if necessary.)

4. I posted a Knicker Drawer Book to a young lady who will dress it up superbly and make a wonderful piece of art. Hurrah!

5. I ran a workshop for home ed kids. I forgot what simple fun it is.

6. Watched Leviathan on the iplayer. Completely recommended. Although if you like romantic comedy and narratives where the little man wins against all the odds, possibly not one for you.

7. En famille again to Glyndebourne's travelling Hamlet at Milton Keynes Theatre, plus pre-show talk. Excellent. I loved the aspirated H's before the Hell with the sliding strings against Hamlet's unbalanced head. But I feel I am the last to know about this (only has Plymouth to go) so I'm unlikely to make my next career as an opera critic.