A coke float

For the past few days it's seemed that everything which could go wrong has gone wrong. Last night, for example, we sat down to watch the second part of Derren Brown's extraordinary Apocalypse on iPlayer and immediately realised that the old problem with our broadband connection had returned. Just as something exciting happened, we'd find ourselves looking at the spinning wheel of doom. To polish things off, Cas the rat suddenly decided to chew through the Internet cable, and that was that for our evening's entertainment.

This morning, whilst in Crouch End trying to replace the chewed-through Internet cable, I treated myself to a lovely cup of tea which I managed to drop on my lap as the car pulled away, causing not just a mess, but a nasty burn.

I returned home and, to make myself feel better, sat down to eat a plate of leftovers from Saturday's dinner party.... Which I managed to drop on my shoe. There was ketchup on my laces and quinoa all over the carpet. My carefully prepared lunch looked like road kill. I scraped it back onto my plate and ate it, feeling very sorry for myself, picking bits of carpet fluff from my teeth.

Still, the day improved significantly from then on in. I heard on the grapevine that Bryn Terfel enjoyed listening to The London Requiem, and had a little nibble about the recording from a radio station in Canada. It's also Fiona's birthday and we've been at the Woodman pub all evening. Monday night is quiz night, and we romped to victory with the ultimate team. We also won the "craft" round. As we arrived, we were handed a blob of play dough and told to create a sculpture of something both topical and comical. I don't think the quiz master was prepared for our scale model of a flooded Manhattan complete with miniature Chrysler, Empire State and Rockerfella buildings, three bridges, Central Park, Wall Street, a Statue of Liberty and the High Line. We flooded the model with coke. The quiz master said it was the best play dough model he'd seen in the two years he'd been running quizzes. We felt proud. Fiona got hammered. All is good.

And Manhattan...

I'm less proud of our pumpkins, which have gone mouldy and started to drip juices all over the fire place. I enclose a photo for your amusement. I tried to pick one up to throw it away, but immediately entered it with my thumb. I'll leave it to Nathan to somehow scrape them into a dustbin!