I met a woman with a deathwish today. She jumped in front of me in the ten-items or less queue with more than ten items in her basket. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ she asked the cashier, ignoring me. He didn’t, apparently. It was painkillers that had pushed her up over her limit. So many packs that the till got suspicious, beeped in a very accusing manner and refused to sell them. It serves her right, anyway - when they were taken out of the basket it knocked her down to 10 items.

The Evening Standard has written a guide to the most stupid things Prince Philip has said over the years. He really is quite shocking.

• “It looks as if it was put in by an Indian” - pointing at an old-fashioned fusebox in a factory near Edinburgh in 1999.

• “Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed” - during the 1981 recession.
• …and plenty more…

When I visited, the ad banner above the list of slanderous, libellous and generally derogatory statements was for legal advice. How appropriate.

It’s been a day of little jobs and tidying around. Paul and I were playing Project Gotham on the Xbox when Andrew appeared at the front door this morning with his tape measure and a ratchet screwdriver. I’d been telling him about my wobbly shelves last week and he had offered to cut a backing board from a large sheet of plywood in his garage to hold it all together and said he’d come around to measure up.

In the end, though, the measure was never unwound, because while my screwdriver had been rough and cheap and had cut a hole into the palm of my hand, Andrew’s was rather more complex and had been worn smooth with age. This smooth and more experienced screwdriver had strengths mine did not, and it sunk the remaining loose screws deep into the wood. It made me think again about how well I’d done with my DIY last weekend. I had been rather impressed, but now I’m not so sure.

The charts this evening closed with the inevitable news that Will Young has made it to number one. Well done to him, but it’s not really an achievement, is it? His achievement was in winning Pop Idol. After that, and the half-year build up to the final I can’t believe circumstances didn’t guarantee a number one single, regardless of what it was or what it sounded like. Don’t get me wrong. The song is fine. It’s just nothing special.

Whoever won Pop Idol would have been number one today, which just shows how little we often have to do with our own destinies. Even if he’d not wanted to be at number one there is such a momentum of public interest that it could probably not have been stopped.

He doesn’t see that, of course, and neither would I if I were him. The BBC News web site quotes him saying ‘To have broken records with my debut single is incredible.’ That’s perhaps a little naive.

The Xbox rocks. I am not a fan of games, but I have spent all afternoon (barring a trip into town to buy supplies and a photo frame) running around an artificial world with a gamepad in my hand. I am totally hooked. The Xbox truly, truly, rocks.

I’ve been playing Munch’s Odyssey since one o’clock. One of the cutest games going. You play a bouncy little alien who is looking for his friend, who in turn has been abducted by other aliens, who are developing a new shampoo colour improver. Edge of your seat stuff, and mid-level graphics are as good as Toy Story.

Less rocking was taking Jess to the vet this morning for her boosters. She never goes quietly, but I got off quite lightly with a bloody finger and a morning of aloof looks when we got home. It didn’t help that the vet was running late and we sat for twenty minutes in the waiting room. Every minute she got further and further into the back of the basket until she practically had stripes on her bum.

In all, it’s been pretty a web-free day. A day without email, and a day without instant messaging. Quite refreshing, all things told. Cat scratches aside.

If I hadn’t received a large Christmas cracker last night I wouldn’t have sent an email this morning, and if I hadn’t sent an email this morning I would have been writing about how the whole team went to the Star Cafe at lunchtime - the first time we had had time to go out as a team during the day since our Christmas party.

If I hadn’t sent that email I would have started this entry by pasting in this link to a story in the Washington Post. It seems the US has set up a ‘parallel government’. A complete copy of all the roles performed in the real government. About a hundred people filling key roles - or at least waiting to. They are hunkered down in two heavily fortified bunkers on the east coast of America waiting for the day Washington is destroyed by a terrorist weapon. When that happens, they swing into action. Until then, they sit and they wait and they keep quiet.

I might even have been including a link to a new game show from the people who make Big Brother. It’s called Big Diet and although it sounds like a rather obvious wind up, it’s not. It’s real, and it’s airing in the Netherlands.

But last night I received a Christmas cracker. Out of season. Black. Green trimmings. Sealed inside a wide white tube marked with a tick, like all mail arriving in ITN, to indicate it had been checked for explosives. Inside the cracker was a hat, and inside the hat was an invite to the launch of the Microsoft XBox at midnight in the Virgin Megastore on 13th March.

I replied this morning, saying I’d come along and the PR guy mailed back to say that my name was on the list and I should be receiving my XBox today. ‘Cool,’ I said. ‘How long can I hang on to it?’

‘Hang on to it?’ he replied. ‘Permanently.’

WOW!

An XBox and three games -