We can face it together

We're at Julie's watching the X Factor. She had decided not to "do" it this year, but in one session we've managed to get her royally addicted, which stitches up her Saturday nights until Christmas. All in a day's work...

Julie has just got back from South Africa and is knackered, so we brought the food with us... Pre-cooked. Glorious baked potatoes and a massive bowl of salad. Sometimes I think that nothing can beat a well-cooked baked potato in the autumn.

It was equally lovely to see dear Sam - who lives with Julie - but fled the moment the X Factor started. Frankly he has more sense... And, let's face it, class.

We're now listening to a very extravagant song from 1974 called Beach Baby, by a band called The First Class. It's an utterly exuberant piece, with all sorts of weird passages, which has got us dancing round the living room like Pan's People. Am I the only person who's not heard of them or this song before? Listen to it immediately if you're like me!

350 years ago, Pepys spent the day out and about in Westminster. At one stage he found himself in St Martin's Lane, wanting to go south to Whitehall. Unfortunately there were road works at Charing Cross, which meant all coaches were being diverted via the Mews, which was, one assumes, either a single back-lane, or a system of mewses behind the main (blocked off) roads.

There was talk of Sandwich, who had been involved in some unsuccessful military action in Algiers, and Catherine de Braganza, who, though still merely the Portuguese wife-in-waiting for Charles II, was already being called the Queen of England. Rumour had it that she was a proper little Madame...

Pepys, who had been attempting to cut back on his pleasure-seeking exploits, was tempted by the devil to the theatre, where he saw a pretty rubbish performance of The Merry Wives of Windsor. Funny to think of these Shakespeare plays being only 50 or 60 years old, which I suppose is the equivalent of an Osbourne play for us. How mad is that?