Mission tax return accomplished. It feels like quite an achievement, actually. I don’t know why I put it off so long. Actually, I do. I thought it was going to take ages, but I got it done in an afternoon, which was a pleasant surprise. A less pleasant surprise was the last page, which seems to think I owe the tax man some money. Hmmm

I woke up to what I thought was a foggy morning, but on closer inspection it turned out to be sunny bright and the windows were just covered in condensation. I don’t know why that happens in the winter. I can understand it in the bedroom where your breathing condenses on the cold glass through the night, but that doesn’t explain the lounge, which is shut off from the rest of the flat. It surely can’t be the plants.

So, after wiping them dry again I bought moisture gobblers at B&Q. They looked a lot smaller on the shelf in the shop, but after unpacking they have to be put together and then they’re about the size of one of those big plastic balls a hamster runs around the house in. They are also in nasty iMac blueberry so they rather stand out. Still, we’ll see how they go. I held back from putting one in the bathroom, which seems to enjoy a sub-tropical dampness most of the year anyway - I thought that might be expecting a bit much.

Listened to a bit of Thursday evening’s show on the Lab web site and did a hunt on Google for a way of recording RealAudio streams. I would buy the Realplayer Plus if I knew that would do it, but the product descriptions are so bad on the site it hardly tells you anything about the difference between that and the free one, which doesn’t record.

I found a freeware app that seemed to do the trick. The only trouble is, it’s totally linear so you have to listen to the whole clip and either record the whole thing or wait until you get to the bit you want and then hit record. Tested it with a clip of the “faxing a dump” slip-up and it seemed to work fine. It did gobble up 250MB of hard drive just to get the 28 seconds I was after, though, so the hunt goes on.

Left at half six, wrapped up warm in a fleece, coat, hiking socks, gloves and baseball cap to pick up Trevor, Jon and Paul and drive over to the fireworks at Lake Meadows. The Round Table gate-police were out in force, but did little to stop the killer pushchairs barging through the crowds and doing their best to push those of us without kids closer and closer to either the water or the steep drop, along the ridge of which is perched the path where we stood. Perhaps that’s how pushchairs got their name.

It all started a bit late and there was a nervous silence between the end of the Essex FM roadshow and the start of the fireworks as the mist gathered across the surface of the mirror-still lake. After about fifteen minutes, though, there was an enormous bang and a huge firework lit up the whole sky, scaring the life out of the ducks, which quickly took to the air and flew as a big black mass across to the other side of the lake, turning sharply as they realised they were heading for the bonfire.

They splashed down on the lake and sat there with their heads low to the water until there was a pause. Either feeling brave or forgetting what had just happened, they paddled slowly back towards the furthest shore, well out of the reach of the spectators. They were about half way across when it all started up again. Huge flares shot out across the water, showering the surface in a fountain of white-hot sparks, and quite wisely the ducks were off again.

This went on for about three quarters of an hour, by which time we were thoroughly frozen and the ducks were probably deaf.

We went home and Jon cooked us his vegetarian spaghetti bolognaise after which we sat around drinking peppermint tea and eating ginger biscuits. The three of them are off to Madrid next weekend so much of the talk was of early starts and 5am alarm calls when I’ll still be happily tucked up in bed.

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