Oh I have been bad at updating. And Emerald has given me details of Wordpad, a new blog thing with pictures etc, so your blog can look more like a web page. But I haven't signed up for it yet. Instead have obsessively been checking Friendster and www.propertybroker.com about 15 times a day.

Weekend was spent filling a giant skip with the contents of the attic and shed, which have lain largely undisturbed for the past 45 years. No Picassos, first editions or fabulous diamond-encrusted brooches were discovered. I guess I’ll have to continue to work for a living. Saturday night there was an Actionettes show, at the Water Rats again. Bring back Upstairs at the Garage! Water Rats is a bus ride from my house (good) but no matter what the outside temperature, it’s always 90 degrees at the bar (very bad). Also, as I knew Kyle was going to be there, and as I have talked up my vintage Dior jacket to mythical proportions, I decided to give it an outing. I had conveniently forgotten that we were having an Indian summer and that there really was no need for anything other than a sleeveless T-shirt at the freakishly hot Water Rats, especially not a fully-lined tweed jacket. So ended up standing at the front, clutching the jacket in my sweaty mitts, and glaring at anyone waving a cigarette or raising their pint glass within 20 feet of me…

Sunday the boy cooked a lavish roast dinner, while I went clothes shopping. I don’t know why, but H&M and Topshop are just not thrilling me these days. All the stuff in there makes me thing ‘yeah, it’s nice, but…’. There’s nothing that I can’t live without. After trying on about 15 semi-okay items, I got a pair of trousers suitable for work, job interviews etc, which I’ll probably wear three times a year.

After scoffing the roast, we were settling down to a pleasant evening with a bottle of Merlot and ‘Practical Magic’ on the telly. (Well I was: Stephen was not much interested in Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman’s love curse, which mean that any man who fell in love with either of them would die!) The sound of a door being smashed and a voice yelling ‘armed police!’ alerted us to the fact that the neighbours were having a far more eventful night. Crouching on the floor and peeking over the windowsill, we saw police officers with dogs storming the building, with one officer crouched behind a car aiming a gun at the door to the house. After a quiet few minutes, two people were brought out and led to the van blocking the street. From the next-door garden emerged several black-clad Special Branch and yet another hungry Alsatian. After the rozzers had driven off, the other inhabitants of the house were allowed back in.