We went down to Hampshire on Friday for Omally and Tammy’s wedding reception, where we had a splendid time and got to catch up with some old chums I haven’t spoken to for a hundred years, and I was reminded how rubbish I am at keeping in touch with people. I may attempt to do something about that and start annoying YOU on MSN. Or more likely I’ll do nothing and die a friendless old man.

Hampshire’s an awfully long way from York - at least ten trillion miles - so we decided to make a weekend of it. On Saturday we went cycling on the New Forest, and therein lies a tale.

We rented a couple of bikes and were given a printed route to follow. Somewhat unwisely we didn’t arm ourselves with any other form of map, just the printed route, which was fine as long as you were following it, but if you went off course you were in a right pickle.

Can you guess what happened yet?

We more or less completed the twelve mile route without incident. We’d got to the very last turn, which takes you back onto the road into the village where the bike hire place is. We took the turn, rode for a bit, rode for a bit more, started to wonder why we’d been riding for so long and not got to the village yet, spotted a car park with an ice cream van in it, and stopped for a break.

I had a Strawberry Split. Jess expressed her concern that something had gone wrong, but I studied the route and assured her that we were on the right track. It was, after all, a straight road with no turns. Even I can’t go the wrong way on a straight road with no turns.

“Maybe we should ask the ice cream man which way it is back to the village,” she suggested, “just to be certain.”

“I am certain,” I insisted, and didn’t check with the ice cream man. I would come to regret this.

We rode on some more and it became increasingly obvious that we were going the wrong way. I was still holding on to my view that we couldn’t possibly have gone the wrong way, but to humour Jess I asked a passing woman the direction back to the village.

“That way,” she said, pointing the way we’d come from. “It’s miles.”

Oops, I thought. We worked out now what had gone wrong - though I was right in my view that you can’t take a wrong turn on a straight road, I hadn’t considered the possibility of turning onto the straight road in the wrong direction. We’d gone left instead of right.

Still, at least that meant we could correct our course by simply turning around. It would add a fair distance to our journey, which after twelve miles of bike riding on a hot day and rapidly depleting supplies of water was somewhat unfortunate, but soon we’d be back on track.

Except we weren’t. I still don’t know how it happened, but turning around didn’t significantly improve our situation. It gradually became clear that we still weren’t on the route, so I stopped and asked someone else for directions. “Carry on down here,” she said, “cross the A35, keep going, and that will take you to the village.” That didn’t sound too bad.

It took a while, but we reached the A35, crossed, and kept going. It was now approaching the time at which the bikes were supposed to be returned, we were thirsty, we’d run out of water, and we didn’t have the energy to go much further. We stopped a couple of other cyclists to find out how far it was.

They were rather more organised than us, having a proper map and knowing exactly where we were on it. Unfortunately, where we were wasn’t even remotely near our destination - the directions I’d been given were nonsense. My only consolation was that this particular screw up wasn’t my fault, even if it was part of a larger, overriding screw up that most definitely was.

We didn’t know what to do now. It was hot, we had no water, we were exhausted and tired, we were miles from where we were supposed to be, we only had the vaguest idea of how to get there, and the bikes were due back at any minute. In desperation, I phoned the bike hire place and begged for assistance.

They agreed to pick us up in the van for a fiver, which was about nought point one percent of what I’d have been willing to pay at that point, so I agreed readily. Unfortunately they couldn’t pick us up until they knew where we were, so I did my best to describe our position in relation to the A35, but my best wasn’t very good. We’d have to get back to the road, call again, and then they’d come and pick us up.

The thought of rescue gave us the will power we needed to retrace our steps to the A35. Now all I had to do was make one phone call, and we were saved.

My phone had no signal.

I walked back the way we’d come from. Still no signal. I walked down the A35. Still no signal. I got on my bike and rode into the forest, where the thickening tree cover didn’t fill me with confidence, but we were left with no other options. I had to find a signal or we’d still be lost in the forest at night and we’d be eaten by wolves and it would be all my fault and Jess would hate me.

Eventually, miraculously, I got a signal. I made the call, returned to Jess with the good news, spent fifteen paranoid minutes worrying that I’d somehow miscommunicated our location and he wouldn’t find us, and then felt very very relieved when the van arrived.

This can go on the list of future grounds for divorce along with the time I nearly killed Jess with Mr Muscle Smoothie and the time I nearly killed her with poisoned chestnuts.

This blog makes me sound like the worst boyfriend ever. I do sometimes do nice things too. But who wants to hear about them?

In the last few months Jess has got into the habit of waking me in the night to inform me that there’s something crawling on the walls. There never is, so either she’s dreaming, or it amuses her to wake me up for no reason.

The other night it happened again. “There are things crawling on the walls,” she said. I rolled my eyes and sighed.

“No there… oh,” I said, because this time she was right.

It turned out we’d got bed bugs. According to the internet, which never lies, one of the ways you can contract the wee beasties is if there are bats living in the attic. We do sometimes hear noises overhead that sound a bit like the flapping of leathery wings, and all the local virgins keep waking up dead with two bite marks in their neck, so I think that might be the explanation. So now we’ve got chinchillas and bed bugs and bats. We’re practically living in a zoo.

Except we haven’t got bed bugs any more. One and a half bottles of fly killer saw to that. We’re quite mean zoo keepers.

Now we just need to work out what to do with the bats. Does anyone want a colony of bats?

In other news, you’ll remember how in 2004 I mentioned my liking for Dorothy L Sayers, and in the comment’s Mort’s Mom recommended Thrones, Dominations, a joint effort by Sayers and Jill Paton Walsh, and you’ll remember how in 2005 I reported having read it, and that I was making excellent progress on A Presumption of Death, which Ms Walsh wrote all on her very own. Well, I liked that even more than the one Dorothy helped her with, so I went on to read some of her other books.

This year, for my birthday, I asked my mum to get me The Bad Quarto, the only one of her Imogen Quy novels I’d yet to read. I was a bit puzzled - the cover and title seemed awfully familiar, almost like I had read it, but it wasn’t on my bookshelf and the plot didn’t ring a bell. No doubt just a spot of deja vu.

Then the other day I was tidying the house and discovered another copy of The Bad Quarto which I’d bought last July and never read. I know I bought it last July, because the receipt was inside the cover. The particular date in July that I’d bought it on had not yet come around again, which raised the question of whether Waterstone’s would let me return a book slightly less than a year after purchase. Happily the answer was on the back of the receipt, which told me the cut off point was a mere 28 days.

Does anyone want a copy of The Bad Quarto?

And then this evening we were grilling some sausages and smoke started coming out of the hob. Peering through the holes in the curly wurly metal ring (is that the right term?) we could make out something lying on the shelf above the grill, being cooked to a crisp by the heat rising from beneath. It was a curly snail shell type shape, like that snail shell shaped pasta you get, and I speculated that that might be what it was, until Jess pointed out that we never use snail shell shaped pasta. “Maybe it’s a snail,” I quipped. Ha ha ha! What a funny joke! Just imagine if a snail had crawled inside the oven and we were cooking it alive!

…Well we haven’t pulled the shelf out yet to find out what it actually is. I don’t think it’s a snail. But I don’t know what else it might be. I’ll keep you posted.

Does anyone want a very well cooked snail?

Oh dear, has it really been that long?

The trouble is that the closer I get to the end of the novel, the more keenly I want to spend every spare minute writing it, which means blogging doesn’t get much of a look in. Another, oh, six weeks or so and it will be finished. Then you’ll have my full attention again.

I should mention for anyone who’s still reading it (is anyone still reading it?) that there are rather more than six weeks’ worth still to come on the blog. On Monday you’ll get the exciting climactic conclusion of part two, then there are another, oh, thirteen or fourteen chapters of the third and final part to get through. I’m quite tempted to post part three at a rate of two chapters per week, if only for the added excitement of not being entirely certain I’ll finish writing it in time.

But what you really want to know is what’s been going on in my life. We had a lovely weekend away in the lake district, staying at a fab hotel - or, as it insists on calling itself, ‘restaurant with rooms’ - The Hideaway. If you’re ever in the area, I thoroughly recommend dining there. I think it may have been the nicest meal I’ve had in my life.

And I’ve had Domino’s Veg-a-Roma pizza.

We had a lovely weekend, doing all sorts of nice things like walking round lakes and going on lakes and looking at lakes, all of which I’d like to write about in more detail, chiefly for my own benefit so I can remember it in the future, but I can’t, because I’ve left it too long and forgotten already. But if I’m reading this as an old man, trying to reminisce about the happy days of my youth, you had a nice time. That’s all you need to know, isn’t it? Oh, and you’re in the wrong bit of the archives - by no stretch of the imagination could this be described as my youth. Maybe you’d like to go and read about my trip to Disneyland when I was 20? That’s about the best I can offer you.

Sorry about that heart attack you had last week, by the way. I’ll cut down on the fatty foods shall I?

Also we went to my sister’s house for Ben’s fifth birthday party, where we were joined by Obi Wan Kenobe, Princess Leia and Yoda. I don’t know if you’ve ever watched an elderly midget in a Yoda mask who doesn’t know left from right attempting to keep up with the Jedi-oke (that popular dance which is remarkably similar to the Hokey Cokey - and, come to think of it, the Hero-oke and Fireman-oke performed by Spiderman and Fireman Sam at previous parties), but if you haven’t, you should.

And no doubt lots of other exciting things have happened, but I’ll let you use your imagination about them. I want to get back to my novel.