It’s mum’s birthday, so she came around for dinner with Andrew and Paul, and I cooked fish, saffron rice and green beans. I didn’t think it was all going to come together on time. I had a busy day, but left at half five and caught a train just after six. It should have given me almost an hour to get myself sorted out, but we were held up outside Romford and by the time I got home I had just under half an hour.

Fortunately they were all slightly late, and the fish was done just right. Just as well, as we didn’t have time to be sitting around; Paul had brought round The Sixth Sense, which mum has wanted to see since it came out, so we sat down with Christmas pudding and run sauce to watch it.

Watching it again, I was surprised how obvious everything is. There is an enormous twist that you don’t spot until it happens, but once you know what it is you can’t understand how you didn’t see it all along, and you immediately want to watch it again.

Unfortunately I knew about it before I even saw it for the first time. I had been sitting on a train one morning a few months after it came out when the guy next to me asked his friend if he had seen it. ‘I don’t know,’ said his friend. ‘Is that the one where…’ and he gave it away. Very annoying, but it is just as fun watching it when you know as you can see how easily everyone else has been fooled. It also takes all of the horror out of it.

Mark and I went to the pub at lunchtime, then picked up greasy fatty pizza on the way back to the office. Very naughty. Tasty, though. I feel it was justified as I made it back to the gym this morning, for my first pre-work session in quite a while. It’s very easy to fall out of the routine, and when you’re not used to getting up on time your body clock shifts an hour.

We took them back to the office where I found an email in my inbox from a sociology guy at the University of Surrey. Seems he’s been interviewing loads of webloggers about their online journals for a study he’s conducting. He got my details from David.

I’ve put his note to one side, but I’ve decided I’ll help out.

I’ll send a reply tomorrow morning.

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