Trees with names

It's a bit odd being in London whilst the rehearsals continue in Sevenoaks. I did a radio interview at shit o'clock this morning with BBC Radio Leeds. It was super surreal. I went back to bed afterwards so the whole thing now feels like something of a dream. They played some of the Barnbow Lassies song and then asked me lots of questions about the real life Barnbow lassies. It's slightly odd to be considered an expert.

The rain rattled at the windows through the night, and I slept really very badly. At some point I went into the sitting room and sat and stared at the computer for a while, reading an article about the cast of The Big Bang Theory earning a million pounds per episode. That's the sort of figure that ceases to have any meaning.

Young Josh called me at lunchtime to give me an update from the front line. It seems that the female cast (some of whom have learned brass instruments from scratch between the Easter and summer rehearsals) did a mini concert of brass music for the lads last night. I'm told it was rather moving. I'm also told that all music from the show has now been taught to the kids. I feel a little sad that I didn't have the chance to be with the cast when they learned the last number.

We spent some time today on the phone to Talk Talk, who randomly added £126 to our phone bill as an "adjustment." I'm not sure I would have spotted the charge, but Nathan is fortunately somewhat more keen-eyed than me. He spoke to a lad in the Philippines, whose voice kept making him laugh, but the upshot was that Talk Talk randomly added the money to our bill because another D B Till, somewhere else in the world, owed them money. You really have up watch those bastards. Keep an eye on your phone bills, folks...

This afternoon, Nathan and I took ourselves off to the parents in Thaxted where we had some delicious food and watched The Great British Bake Off, which made us very happy.

It's bad news from the parent's garden, however. Their beautiful plum trees have some kind of blight, which has pretty much destroyed every piece of fruit hanging on the tree. On the slightly brighter side, subsequent discussions on the subject revealed that my Mum actually names her trees. You'll no doubt be relieved to hear that Griselda, Benny the Pot, Harvard and Princeton are doing rather well. Interestingly, the plum trees, however, remain nameless. It's little wonder, therefore, that they're doing so badly, surrounded by their crowing neighbours with their beautiful names and long, vibrant branches.

On the way home we got stuck in a traffic jam on the North Circular in a car which seems to have developed a hole in its exhaust. Tiresome.