Of Mice and Men

Being press week, this last week or so hasn't really been very exciting. Unlike the next few weeks which promise to be filled with more stuff than there are days to do it all.

I passed through Ashford's award-winning shared space scheme a few evenings ago, for the first time in months. I was interested to see that, among the beautifully aesthetic bricks, block and paving, were scattered an army of plastic yellow bollards - presumably to help drivers work out where the road part of the scheme is because it's not easy to tell. It's a bit embarrassing when one finds one has driven the last quarter of a mile along the pavement, especially when all the cars behind have followed.

I have been without my main laptop for the last few weeks as it has been busy digitising dvds, but I now have it back to play with, and the first thing I did was toon Vitaly Petrov. Just because he was all sweet, over-awed and emo when he got his podium place at the Australian GP.

Then Mark Webber because he went from 18th to 3rd in the Chinese GP. It's the Spanish GP this weekend, which is my favourite as it's Barcelona, of which I have very fond memories, even though no one was racing at Catalunya when I was there.

My train was cancelled this morning, the first time since the bruhaha over Southeastern targets, and it was due to some moron thinking it a fab idea to throw a brick through my train's windscreen while it was sleeping in the sidings last night. Moo.

Wednesday evening, I had my first experience of a lineside fire. I've seen them many times, but they've always been set back from the tracks. Earlier this week, the fire was on the far side of the tracks from my train, but was closely adjacent. We could really feel the heat as we went past which was actually a little shocking.

There was a train stopped just before it, and looking back, it could be seen that the flames were blowing straight across its path. I suddenly have a lot more sympathy for when they have to shut a part of a line because of a lineside fire. This particular one was somebody's back fence - was it sparks from the rails, or a BBQ gone mad?

I was with a heating manufacturer on Wednesday, which was highly educational, and full of amusing anecdotes - especially the one about the boiler, the bouncer and the 7am shower. Which I am not going to relay here - next time food and alcohol is involved, I will share.

I have a new pleco in the fish tank. Old pleco passed away a couple of weeks ago - fed up with being bullied by the loaches probably - and the algae moved in. Acquired new pleco, a young lady who is very flouncy and bad tempered and beats the loaches up. She is very excellent house-keeper and has cleaned away all the algae from the tank. I now need to find a way for her to come out of the tank and clean all the cat hair out of my house.

It has been brought to my attention today that I talk quite a lot about Neko and Nico and people are confused. So here is the difference:

• Neko is my cat. He hogs the sofa, but does not travel at over 200 miles an hour, not even when he hears food.
• Nico is currently my favourite racing driver. He drives a Formula One car very, very fast, but does not leave dead mice in my shoes.

I hope that clears up any confusion.