The Charlie Says cat

Sunday January 2nd, and to prove just how conscientious I am, I did 5 hours’ work on the Metro musical today. I had set my alarm for 9am, but for some inexplicable reason it didn’t go off. A shame really, because the extra time I had in bed allowed me to dream the most dreadful dream about nuclear war with Pakistan. It was very much an “every man for himself” situation. I remember telling Philippa and her Mum that if we lost touch because the world was about to enter a nuclear winter, we’d all meet, if we could, on August the eighth at the top of Parliament Hill. Brother Edward was predicting, in his wisdom, that Pakistan were most likely to fire the missiles that evening, and Nathan and I discussed the possibility of driving North out of London and seeing where we could get to. It was all a bit too realistic for my liking. I haven’t had such a lucid dream for years.


Nathan and I spent a good half hour trying to work out why my i-phone alarm hadn’t gone off and ended up drawing a complete blank. We later discovered, via the news, that this was a world-wide phenomenon and that people in Australia even, had been late for work because their i-phone alarms hadn’t gone off. Apparently it’s a glitch, and by tomorrow all phones will be back to working order. Quite how they can be so sure, I've no idea. Some wise-guy emailed the news station to suggest that if people went to the shops and brought a £10 alarm clock, none of this would have happened, to which I respond, “why bother to buy an alarm if your 'phone will do the job?” In my experience, alarm clocks are just as likely to go wrong! Silly Luddite.

The cafe was hugely busy today with people who'd obviously been walking on the Heath. There was a veritable cavalcade of wellies and wax jackets; not that the good folk of Highgate need much of an excuse to dust off the country casuals!

The woman sitting opposite me had had THE most dreadful plastic surgery. To quote Frankie Boyle, she looked like a haunted shoe. I don’t know what possesses women to do it to themselves. Her lips looked like they’d been stung by a thousand bees and her eyes looked like pieces of melted plastic. I wondered how sophisticated and beautiful she might have looked had she allowed nature to take its course, but worry that this kind of surgery is becoming so prevalent that its results are becoming acceptable, rather than freaky. Of course, the moment she decided to open her mouth, she revealed everything I needed to know about her. It was like listening to the “Charlie Says” cat. She was obviously some kind of Eastern European with a husband with more money than sense. I'm sure he thinks she looks stunning, when he's not buying diamonds for his 30 year-old secretary, that is.

Wednesday 2nd January 1661, and Pepys spent the morning with Sandwich, who was off to Portsmouth with the Queen Mother, who was heading to France. Pepys returned home to find his sister, Pall, had arrived, and in a display of absolute callousness, refused to allow her to sit down at the table with him “which I do at first that she may not expect it hereafter from me.” We must remember, of course, that she was coming to live with Pepys, not as a sister, but as a servant. Rules is rules.