I had yesterday all planned out with military precision. Then it all collapsed. I would go to the gym early, get a head start on work, then leave at two, get to Milton Keynes by half three, do a bit of shopping and meet everyone for the concert at half five as arranged. What actually happened could not have been any further from that.

I never sleep well on Thursday nights. Too much adrenaline, I think, so I didn’t wake up as early as I had wanted. I got to the gym about nine but the gates were being unfriendly again and wouldn’t let me in, in spite of the fact I’d checked that my direct debits were properly set up online AND paid them an extra

I’ve managed to keep my desk tidy for four days now, which is a record. I think. Spent much of the day with a printer strewn across it, testing how well it worked with a new Epson camera, but still shuffled everything back into place before the end of the day. Unfortunately the testing also necessitated a certain amount of running around Piccadilly Circus with two cameras, looking like a tourist. Most undignified.

The breakfast show trail went well. I was far more awake than usual this time around and by 7am was already out of bed and doing the washing up. The studio called at 7.20 so I left the glasses to soak and tried to remember what I’d revised on Andoran trademark regulations last night. It was a bit hazy until I remembered I’d marked up my notes with a red biro, after which most of it fell into place.

These trails always go so much quicker than you expect. Just like the show itself, actually.

The show went well. We strung a phone extention cable from the studio to the control room and plugged in a web cam, which got loads of people chatting on the instant messenger, which was good. I’d consider making it a regular thing, but carrying in the camera, notebook, phone extension and all the necessary leads and cables is a real pain, and quite heavy.

I’ll be doing the show on my own next week, which is always fiddly - usually I don’t have time to chat online at the same time. I’ll have to find someone with nimble fingers to do the typing for me. Or just stick with emails and calls.

Arrived home feeling tired and hungry, but ended up listening to Clive Bull for well over an hour with my Weetabix. I have no discipline.

A quiet day in the office. Hardly anyone in, what with people off in Ireland (the trip I was supposed to be on) and working from home. I like it that way. You can just plug yourself into your music and get on with things.
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It’s lucky I woke up, as the batteries on my Psion were almost dead so instead of it chiming it just clicked half heartedly half way across the lounge; I can usually sleep through anything. I threw some kit in a bag and headed off to the gym so there wouldn’t be three of us fighting over the shower, but I really should have known it could not have been that easy. Somehow they’d buggered up my direct debit when I’d switched banks, and the gates refused to read my card. Damon at the desk was ever so nice about it, and he gave me a new form to fill in and charged my Switch card for the next month’s fees.

I got home springy and clean to find Sal looking decidedly worse for wear. She had woken up with a throbbing sinus, which had been troubling her slightly less before going to bed. I called mum, who called my doctor, and called back to tell us they were ready and waiting to see her right then. We jumped into my car and raced the two miles to the surgery, and they were as good as their word.
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How can I still be hungry after all I ate yesterday? Spent the afternoon munching digestives, which were the low fat alternative that shatter all over the desk and your lap. Fortunately I’d had a desk blitz first thing so my keyboard and customary clutter was out of the way. Entirely coincidentally, there’s a tidy desk competition on Friday, although I suspect mine will be back to its usual messy state by then.
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Stayed over at Paul’s last night and only popped home to empty the washing machine, but ended up downloading my email and doing a quick bit of work, which was naughty because it made me late arriving at my mum’s for the rerun of Andrew’s birthday party (see 24th June). There was only four of us then, but today it was the expected eleven (12 if you count the unborn).

We were so lucky with the weather - it could easily have been another downpour like yesterday, but it was hot and bright enough for the guy next door to light a fire and smoke us all off the patio by mid-afternoon.
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I drove through the most extraordinary rainstorm on the way to order flowers for the funeral this morning. I was on the A12 just outside Chelmsford, and in a second it went from being a few spots on the windscreen to a torrential downpour. The traffic slowed down to 20mph, and cars were pulling over onto the verge because you couldn’t see through the windscreen. As soon as I pulled off down the slip-road for Ingatestone, though, it stopped - just as quickly as it had started, and suddenly it was like driving along in silence. I chose a cushion of yellow flowers from the florist’s rather morbid catalogue, and wrote a card for it.
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It’s scary how far ahead of yourself you can get if you’re not careful. I spent the whole day editing a feature that won’t appear in print until the December issue. Admittedly December comes out on 26th October, but that’s still three and a half months away.
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It’s very exciting having new music and jingles. Half of them say ‘Nik Rawlinson and Gordon Laing’ and the other half say ‘Gordon Laing and Nik Rawlinson’, but the way they’re loaded into the computer it’s difficult to tell which one is coming up next. It’s like jingle Russian Roulette. Final score at the end of tonight’s show: 5:2 in favour of my name coming out first :o)

Apart from that, it was a very enjoyable show. I was off last week and four weeks ago, and Gordon was off the week before last and the week before that, so it was the first one we’d done together in a month and we had loads to talk about. We logged onto instant messenger and the LBC eGroup chat room for a bit of listener interaction but were so busy talking we didn’t realise our keyboard was broken and we couldn’t chat back until almost an hour into the show.
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It’s been a strange few days. There have been a lot of changes at work, and this morning I got a very nice card from Gordon T, who until the beginning of this week was our European Labs manager (not Gordon who I co-present the show with), thanking me for my friendship over the last three years and asking me to keep in touch. It was a birthday card that he had crossed the greeting out of. There was a cat on the front, which is probably why he chose it, so it was much nicer than an email. I’ll write back, but want to have a think about what I’ll say, so I’ll tackle that one tomorrow.
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