2nd July – This morning’s word of the day: Attic Room Bug Syndrome. That feeling you get when you have to stand in the bedroom, hand on hips, other hand pointing firmly out of the door, in an attempt to get your children to mobilise, and you suddenly feel like the housekeeper from Jet Set Willy.

8th July – I don’t know why, but every time I hear Alan Jackson sing “It’s only half past twelve, but I don’t care / It’s five o’clock somewhere”, I find myself involuntarily replying “Only if you’re several regions to the left of an offset time zone…”

18th July – Memo to self: when encountering done-up-to-the-nines female colleague, I’m sure that saying “I barely recognised you, you look lovely” sounded like a compliment when it was only in your head.

7th August – If Beverley Craven really is right where she wants to be, losing track of time, how come she knows it’s four o’clock in the morning?

28th August – Well, I hope that little girl now realises that if you sit in an unlocked Portaloo, people are going to open the door…

3rd September – Does anyone else find it amusing that people like Vinnie Jones tell everyone how sick and tired they are of immigration, and then show their disgust by going off to live in another country?

7th September – Just managed to get the air mattress back in its bag. It’s a question of laying it down flat and squeezing from one side and the other, and then curling it into a tube, inch by inch, and then lying down on it every so often to push out the last of the air. It takes a long time, requires considerable physical effort and there’s probably an easier way to do it, but that’s how I roll.

8th September – Watching Withnail & I accompanied by a bottle of Hardys. If Em weren’t seven months pregnant I might have convinced her to do the drinking game. Probably a good thing she is, because we don’t have any lighter fluid.

20th September – You know you need to curb your Portal 2 obsession when you get to the last vacant slot in a car park and find yourself bellowing “SPAAAAAAAACE!!”.

21st September – As much as I enjoyed The Expendables 2, I can’t help thinking that including a screen credit that begins “Story by…” is colossally misleading.

28th September – Lesson learned this morning: if you’re supposed to go and get something from Cargo, you can save yourself a lot of time and considerable confusion if you remember that Cargo and Robert Dyas aren’t the same place.