Tom's exciting weekend

I have demonstrated that I still know roughly how to handle a car, driving round Bottisham, and to Coldham's Lane Sainsbury's, and to Grandma in Histon, and to Scottsdale out in the wilds of Trumpington beyond Waitrose. My parents survived the experience.

I have seen The Libertine, a film whose producers clearly got a really good deal on prop mud on condition that they never displayed a saturated colour throughout the piece; Johnny Depp self-destructed as the Earl of Rochester, and it was never quite clear either what heights he was falling from, or why he'd chosen to fall.

I've made a nice Saturday lunch, with roast chicken on a bed of shallots and peppers accompanied by baby turnips, for my parents and my Nottingham friend Louisa, who has decided that academia's not for her and is starting to embrace her inner actuary.

I have watched the single most excrucitating Special Fan-Service Episode of Xena ever; there was a shark in the episode before, and clearly feeding it with the wounded and swimming around it is near enough jumping for these purposes; beckyc has fed me mashed potato with grilled cheese on top.

I have planted two hebes in different shades of purple, a euphorbia, thirty-six grape hyacinths and four short rows of specially bulbous easi-grow carrots.

And I have a job, a Real Job with an employment contract and not a fruit-fly in sight, starting Wednesday week. I'll probably buy new computer bits to celebrate.