The weekend before August bank holiday - this weekend - the population of Chelmsford quadruples, and there’s a better than average chance you could find yourself queueing beside a real life pop celebrity in Tesco or WHSmith.

It’s the weekend of the annual V festival in Hylands Park.

The hotels and guest houses are booked up a year in advance, and anyone who has any sense will spend both days avoiding the main roads and the railway station. The former will be blocked from early morning until late night, and the latter is beseiged by unfriendly police with drug-sniffing dogs.

I forgot this a couple of years ago. Paul T and Ems came to visit and arrived by train. While the respectable older looking crowd was allowed to leave the station by the normal route we were herded with several hundred festival-goers down the back stairs to have inconvenient places sniffed by an alsation. We moved slowly towards the front of the queue, but as it finished sniffing the guy in front of us the dog sat down.

This would appear to have been a sign, as the police pounced on the guy and dragged him off while he protested his innocence.

The fierce woman holding the dog looked at us with what seemed disappointment in her eyes. “You’re lucky,” she said. “Very lucky.”

We were waved through while the dog recouperated.

I felt like arguing back, showing her my driving licence to prove that I lived there and hadn’t just journied in for the festival, but it would have achieved nothing. It wouldn’t have earnt back the time we had lost, or done anything to make any of the others in the queue think that Chelmsford was anything other than an unfriendly and unwelcoming police state.

I wanted to tell her that we would only have been “lucky” had we actually got away with anything, but as none of us was carying any drugs we were actually unlucky - our time had been wasted for nothing.

“Welcome to Chelmsford, where everyone is guilty of trafficing drugs until proven otherwise”

So, today I stayed in much of the day, avoiding the shops and the crowds. Oscar had woken me just before the alarm went off by tickling my nose with his whiskers, so we lay there for a while having a cuddle while I listened to the radio. I got up, sorted some jobs, hoovered while Oscar hid beneath the bed, and tidied the flat ready for his departure.

Sal arrived with Dan, mum and Viv at 4.45 - perfectly coordinated with Trevor, Jon and Paul. I don’t know whether I’ve had so many people in the flat at once before. Sal had brought back a pottery pisky from St Ives to thank me for cat sitting, but beyond opening it, saying thanks and briefly showing them my latest panorama there was little time for anything else.

I’d never heard of a pisky before, but it turns out it’s a small pottery gnome with hair like dried noodles. The little card that came with it explained what it does:

It has long been known that this goblin-like creature brings health, good luck and good fortune to all who possess him. Although he can be mischievous and downright bad tempered his charming demeanour will keep you spellbound forever. Look after him and he will look after you.

I gave Oscar a goodbye hug, left mum in charge of locking up and dashed out with Trevor, Jon and Paul to Ipswich to catch a film.

It’s a long way to go to the cinema, granted, but it was an Italian film film touring the country with a name that roughly translates as Ignorant Faries. Brief synopsis: woman’s husband is killed, she discovers he is having an affair with another man, she hunts him down and they become friends. Very enjoyable from the start, and even more so after they propped up the front of the projector on a book or something so that the sub-titles were actually on the screen rather than cut-off half way.

It was a very small cinema. 40 seats in the cellars of the Ipswich Corn Exchange.

We drove out to Woodbridge when it had finished to have dinner in a pub-come-hotel. Cheese overload. Usually not a problem, but on a hot night like this I foresee nightmares.

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