Princess Margaret has died. I thought Chelmer FM was playing rather dreary music when I switched it on. They were playing ‘I Hope I’m Old Before I Die’ until they realised how inappropriate it was and swapped it out for some hastily cued-up Phil Collins.

The first I knew about it was when the news came on without a jingle and a serious voice made the announcement, and I immediately switched over to Weekend Breakfast on LBC for the extended news and ad-hoc obituaries from the ITN correspondents.

Apparently she died at half eight - exactly the time I woke up from a bad dream where someone had just been shot. Very strange.

I listened until the clockwork radio wound itself down to silence, then got up and showered and headed out with Paul to the station. He still had bits he wanted to buy for his holiday so we decided to go to Ipswich for a change.

What a difference travelling at the weekend makes. The train arrived and left on time, and ploughed through Essex and out into Suffolk at speeds unfamiliar to us weekday travellers. It was full of football supporters, off to watch the local team (the so-called ‘tractor boys’) take on Liverpool - a match that had made the front page of the local rag.

So, while Paul dragged me into all the clothes shops, I dragged him into all the cookery shops looking for the elusive cheese grater I’ve been after for months (27 Jan 02, 20 Jan 02, 7 Jan 02, 6 Jan 02, and plenty of times before that). It looked like it was going to be one of those trips when we found everything but the grater I was looking for.

I was seriously starting to wonder if they were made any more, and was on the point of giving up, when we Paul went into a larger than average Woolworths to look at the DVDs and I followed, bypassed the DVDs and (no surprise ending to this story) I found one! Actually, I found loads of them. This clearly proves the people of Ipswich have been hoarding the national supply, which explains why I’ve not been able to find one in four months of hunting.

It’s a really stupid thing to get excited about, but I couldn’t stop grinning about it all the way back to the front of the shop so I could show Paul. I felt like I did when I finally passed my driving test (fourth attempt).

It’s far better than I was expecting. It has three different sized grating thingies and the picture on the box very clearly shows it grating cheese, which puts a stop to the nerdowells warning me that cheese would bung it up.

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