Yesterday we went to Tolethorpe Hall to see the Stamford Shakespeare Company’s production of The Importance of Being Earnest. But I didn’t have the foresight to book tickets and by the time we got there it was full.

Today we were supposed to be visiting my family at CenterParcs, but we’re in bed with food poisoning.

This week isn’t going very well.

Clearly the blogging muse has utterly deserted me. I can only manage it now if something’s actually happened.

So today, something happened. We’ve come down to Leicesecesestershire to cat sit while my parents mess about at CenterParcs with my sister’s lot. En route we stopped at the Welcome Break on the M62, because I fancied a KFC. Yes, I know, it won’t do the blue man any good, but sometimes the urge to be naughty is too strong to resist. Several times a day, usually.

Anyway, it was raining at the time - it does that a lot these days, in case anyone hadn’t noticed - so Jess didn’t fancy leaving the car. For her entertainment, I left it turned on so she could listen to the radio, and headed off to hunt my deep fried prey.

Of course you’re all way ahead of me here. You’re thinking: “If you were going from Lancashire to Leicecesecestershire then you must have been heading in an easterly direction, and the KFC is on the westbound side, so you’d have had to go over the bridge. And taking into account the length of the bridge, and the fact that you’re a bit of an idiot so it probably took you a while to even find it, and factoring in the time it would have taken you to get your food, I reckon you must have been away from the car for at least fifteen minutes. Which is all well and good, but I notice you said that you’d left the car switched on but didn’t mention anything about the motor running, in which case, by the time you got back, it seems a pretty good bet that your battery was flat.”

Well, you’re absolutely right. I was going to have to get out my jump leads and beg a stranger to give me a hand.

The first problem was getting at the jump leads, for they were buried at the bottom of the boot under a week’s supply of clothes, computers and other worldly possessions. With difficulty I managed to manoeuvre myself underneath all that lot only to discover that I haven’t got any jump leads.

So I went into the service station to buy some, but they didn’t have any. Never mind, I thought. I’ll just have to hope the stranger I accost has got some.

So I accosted my first stranger. He was in his fifties, and looked like a businessman - I suspect he works in the Sales department, but only because he looked like someone who worked in the Sales department of the place I worked when I had a proper job.

“Hello!” I said. “You look like a kindly gentleman. Would you give me a hand jump starting my car?”

“I don’t know about that sort of thing,” he replied, shaking his head and walking away hurriedly.

Next I accosted a younger chap in a turban.

“Hello!” I said. “You look like a kindly gentleman, though so did that other chap so I could be wrong. Would you give me a hand jump starting my car?”

He replied in the affirmative with great enthusiasm and willing.

“Hooray!” I cried. “Have you got any jump leads?”

“No,” he said.

Unable to exploit his willingness to help, I let him go on his way and pondered what to do next. Clearly I could be here all night waiting for someone who had both a) jump leads and b) a kindly disposition, so I set off on foot to the petrol station to buy some there. In the slim hope that the nice man in the turban would still be around when I got back I walked as fast as I was able with a stomach full of fried chicken.

To my surprise, he was still there when I got back, sitting in his car munching his sandwiches. He gave me a jump start and we were on our way again.

So really I think he’s probably the nicest man in the world. I suppose it’s possible that someone somewhere has done something even nicer, but not when I was stranded at a service station on the M62 they haven’t. So in the fairly unlikely event that he’s reading this, thank you once again! If you ever feel the inclination and advances in medical science make it possible, I would be happy to have your babies.

Hello! I am alive. I’ve just been very very busy recently.

Let’s see if I can remember how to blog, shall we?

The first thing that happened was Jess went to France for five days. I spent most of her absence working whilst watching all four series of Peep Show online. Unfortunately my phone chose that week to temporarily cease getting a signal at the house, so to get any relief from my Jess withdrawal I had to go to the park down the road and sit at the top of the slide, which was the only location in the near vicinity that it deigned to let me receive calls.

On the last day before her return I made my pilgrimage to the park as usual, except it wasn’t exactly as usual because I discovered on setting out that for no obvious reason it hurt me to walk.

What I want you to do now is go and get a big nail and hammer it into the sole of your foot. Have you done that? Right, now walk around on it for a bit. That’s what it felt like when I walked, and continued to do so for several days. It improved slightly, but continued to be painful in a different way. Take the nail out, put your foot on a table with something solid and flat on top of it - possibly a piece of wood - then put a vice around the lot and contract it until you hear a crunch. Now have another walk around, and that’s what it felt like until today. As of this morning, I appear to be fully recovered, which is nice. Sorry I had to break your foot to demonstrate that.

Oh and I got a new set of scales. I’ve yet to remember to weigh myself at the Official Weighing Time, so I haven’t updated the lardometer yet, but it isn’t looking good. Well, I’m leaving the lardometer up until I hit my target. My aim now is to do it before the grey man wastes away to nothing. I’m not hopeful.

Last night in bed, Jess said:

“I’m hungry.”

To which I replied:

“Then I shall leap out of bed and fetch you a snack, for I am a Wonderful Boyfriend and I do nice things like that!”

Jess said she wanted cheese crackers and orange juice, so I went downstairs, made her some cheese crackers, and went to pour her some orange juice, only to discover to my horror that there was none left! Whatever was I to do?

Were I a Mediocre Boyfriend, I would have given her milk instead, but that wasn’t good enough for me. She wanted orange juice, and orange juice she was going to get. So I peeled all the satsumas, threw them in the smoothie maker, and blended.

As luck would have it, the result was exactly one glass worth of freshly blended orange juice, so I decanted it into a glass and took a sample sip. It was good, but far from smooth, and Jess likes her orange juice smooth.

Were I a Mediocre Boyfriend, I would have given her orange juice with bits in, but that wasn’t good enough for me. She wanted smooth orange juice, and smooth orange juice she was going to get. But our sieve isn’t fine enough to extract the bits from orange juice, so I had to think of something more cunning.

As luck would have it, I’m a very cunning person, and I wasted no time in whipping out an unused dishcloth from under the sink, and by this means filtered the non-smoothness out of the orange juice. The result was perfectly smooth, but not nicely chilled like orange juice out of the fridge would have been, so I plopped in a few ice cubes and my work was done.

I took the product of my labours upstairs and presented it to Jess, who commenced drinkage.

When she’d had about half the glass, I asked:

“How’s your orange juice?”

I was feeling rather proud of my success, because normally when I try to do anything clever it goes hopelessly wrong, and I was probably also basking in the thought of how great I was to have put in that extra effort so she got just what she wanted. Oh yes, I thought to myself, I truly am a Wonderful Boyfriend.

“It’s making my tongue burn. Are you sure you used a new dishcloth, not the one I use to clean the kitchen with Mr Muscle?”

Oops.

Well, a phone call to NHS Direct assured us that she wasn’t going to die, and the stomach ache subsided eventually. But apparently her tongue’s still burning.

Next time she’s having milk.