Side burns, nuts and dildos

I'm on the Southbank sitting in the Royal Festival Hall foyer on a sofa with a lovely cup of tea and a chocolate brownie. Fiona is sitting next to me with a mound of nuts glued together with honey in a pastry casing. The doors are open and a light breeze is blowing in from the Thames.

It's been beautiful in London today. Everyone's out on the streets. Kids in Highgate were selling toys in their front gardens for extra pocket money. Someone was setting up an impromptu pergola and decorating it with beautiful purple ribbons. I jogged over the Heath after lunch and the sun almost burned the end of my nose.

Fiona and I had a wonderful walk along the South Bank. There are 200 beautifully-decorated eggs on plinths all over town and we've had a lot of fun trying to find them. One was even hanging from the roof of the Purcell Rooms! I love London when it does this sort of thing. They did it with pianos a few years ago and then giant cows.

Fiona has just told me the funniest story about a mutual friend of ours who was in the loo back stage at the Royal Festival Hall. She heard a clutter as the woman in the next door cubical dropped something. Out of the corner of her eye she saw something rolling underneath the cubical wall, and assumed it was a roll of loo paper. Imagine, therefore, her surprise, and horror, when she looked down to find a DILDO rolling up to her feet.

The story made me howl with laughter. Our friend spent twenty minutes outside the loo waiting to see who it was who'd  been doing unspeakable things in the loo. The likelihood was that it was someone she was working with. Sadly, she never appeared. She's probably still in there, trying to get over the shame!

Another one of Fiona's friends saw a dildo going round and round on a baggage carousel in an airport. Apparently no one commented. One assumes it was never claimed!

The clocks go back tonight, so we lose a precious hour of sleep. Apparently they went back last week in the US, so Fiona has lost two hours in as many weeks!!

350 years ago, Pepys wrote an incredibly entertaining diary entry, which is probably worth reading in full at some point.

Former servant girl, Jane Birch reappeared from the country and Pepys vowed to "have her again", which often meant he wanted a bit of how's your father, but in this particular instance it probably meant he wanted her back in his employ.

Elizabeth Pearce "La Belle Pearce" called in at Pepys Tower with a pair of "perouques", or artificial curly sideburns, which were becoming the fashion du jour. In later years it became fashionable to wear blonde curls even if the wearer was brunette; the cause of many arguments between Pepys, who thought his wife looked ridiculous when she started wearing them. Pepys wasn't a big fan of the look and only agreed to allow his wife to wear them because they'd been fashioned out of her own hair.

Pepys and both Elizabeths travelled into town via the river and got into an awful pickle in the rapids under London Bridge. There was an unexpected change in the tide just as their boat approached the famous land mark and the two women were traumatised by the experience.