'A last chance to buy a ticket for Glastonbury 2007

Both standard weekend tickets for the Festival and cancelled coach and ticket packages will be on sale.'

Frankly, no. It's too late Glastonbury. I tried, oh lord how I did try, but you were unreasonable, and demanding and frankly, quite impossible. It's best we go our seperate ways. I'm going to another festival. It promises to be everything you are, except much easier to buy a frickin' ticket for.

Karl proposes to Susan in Neighbours today! About spigging time!

Never have so many Tesco Value biscuits been crammed through those same lips between sighs.

Nevr have there been far too many minutes until Casualty starts.

Never has there been the rejection of a sexual proposition on the grounds that this is not an appropriate way to alleviate boredom (OK, so the proposal came from a homeless man, but I'm learning).

Never again will being paid to do nothing be considered a great situation to be in.

Never would be a better time to hand in my notice than now, via an announcement over the tannoy at the Chelsea Flower Show, where my manager is spending the weekend.

Maybe this colour?

So, this week, I got a new job, a whole heap of extra shifts as it turns out half the staff at my current place of work don't have up to date CRB checks and so can't do loneworking, and rather worryingly obsessed with this song, which is clearly rubbish:

Last night I watched Little Miss Sunshine again, which features a character called Dwayne, who has taken a vow of silence. He will not utter a single syllable until the day he can join the US Air Force Academy.

Sounds like fun doesn't it? OK, not fun exactly, but a challenge certainly. Think of the energy and time you'd save. You could hang a small blackboard round your neck for writing anything you needed to say on eg. 'More peas please' or 'I think we should see other people'.

So he turned to the services of a Dutch school for the sexually challenged, where silver-haired ladies with maternal bosoms would kick-start his ego, and his libido, and provide him with some much needed experience (with the added optional extra of popping his cherry at then end of the course).

Olly snorted, grimaced and winced his way through the programme in a manner very similar to a teenage boy watching a late night Channel Five film with his parents. I kept shouting at him to 'stop being so juvenile, it's just sex, that's the problem with this country, we're all too embarrassed to talk about anything, it's a form of cognitive therapy, rah rah rah!'

But even I was tempted to duck behind the sofa when James sat peering between the legs of his intimacy coach like a mystified child with its first jigsaw puzzle.

There was nothing in the course that a nice girlfriend with a lot of patience couldn't teach the man. But with his confidence levels at below freezing, James was never going to find himself a nice girlfriend, and would probably have ended up in the Guiness Book of Records as the world's oldest paper boy. There was a strange irony in that. Would he have been better off with just working with an intimacy coach on his self-esteem, and going on to sleep with somebody he actually found attractive? But would he have ever been able to reach that stage with a woman if he hadn't already lost his virginity to a professional?

Everybody has insecurities, but for the few people that become so emotionally crippled by their fear that it takes control of them, this sort of specialist help did seem appropriate. But, although it goes against my liberal sensibilities to say so, it was just, well, weird. And filming the event? This was a man who was so paranoid about his body that he hadn't even sat next to a woman in years. But he whipped out his manhood for the viewing pleasure of the nation, knowing there'd be a fair chance that his nan would soon be choking on her Horlicks at the sight of her grandson as nature intended.

Consequently, she was very brave to bring him anywhere near the house. Cath went to pick him up, under strict instructions not to talk to him. AT ALL. This must have made for a comfortable journey.

Once he had arrived, they decided to go for a romantic evening stroll around the 8 acres of nettles, abandoned attempts at fencing and rusty gates that make up the back yard. Toby, the only gay in the village, decided to accompany them. Cath and mum watched them from the window, cackling like a pair of hyenas.

Since my mum developed sciatica in both legs, she's been unable to do much beyond change postions on the sofa. She's resorted to a daily spliff to try and ease the pain, and whilst this seems to help that particular problem, it ain't doing much for her mind, which is already swimming in a soupy mess of prescription drugs. Perhaps that's why Dan Sandwich wasn't brought in to be introduced.

Ten minutes later, love's young dream were sat in the kitchen, trying to recover from the sight of Toby chasing, pinning down and murdering two ducks he'd come across in one of the fields. He came trotting proudly back to the house, with his booty dangling limply from his mouth. He would have carried them inside and paraded about, except he'd been banished to the yard for rolling in horse pee earlier that day, so he had to settle for laying the feathery corpses on the doorstep and gazing fondly at them.

So. Toby is ripping two dead ducks to pieces in front of the kitchen window. My mum is stretched out on the sofa, flying over Lampeter. Cath is not permitted to speak, so there's not an awful lot she can do to save the situation. Do Mr and Mrs Sandwich stand any sort of chance at all? Watch this space.

Ah, decision made. Just opened the door to put the bin out and had the quite tight t-shirt I'm wearing billowed out in front of me by the wind. Even if I get cigarettes, each one will have to be smoked in the back garden, as am at work. There is not much pleasure to be had in desperately trying to light a fag in those sorts of conditions. No, I shall simply melt plastic on the cooker and inhale the fumes.

Anyway, I want to talk about this girl, for the simple reason, that I love her:

How much of her voice do you reckon can be attributed to her consumption of the evil weed? Ah, who cares? I like my celebrities to have a few bad habits, a healthy appetite for debauchery, and a talent for acts of self destructiveness. Amy Winehouse possesses all three, combined with a voice like black treacle and a complete absence of shame. I listened to her album for the first time the other week, and although it may have had something to do with being a wee bit stoned, I became totally convinced that this woman is the voice of truth dammit! Of experience! Of cocking up and coming clean! (OK, maybe it had everything to do with being stoned).

She drinks, diets compulsively, messes up her love life, has regular wardrobe malfunctions and says exactly what she thinks. I respect her for all these things. As does Heat magazine, which has a special corner reserved for her on the 'Spotted' page each week, entitled 'Where's Winehouse?'. This normally reads 'sprawled in a gutter in Camden, shouting offensive remarks at a troup of Brownies' or 'sampling cooking sherry in Tesco'.

Some of the titles of her books could easily be mistaken for low-budget, amateur porn. Whether this is deliberate or not is a subject for debate, but subliminal or not, I think the following evidence speaks for itself.

Exhibit One: The Mr Twiddle Series

1942 - Hello Mr Twiddle!

Alright, so this one is fairly innocuous. Although you can't help but wonder what a man with a name like Twiddle might do for a living?

1949 - Don't Be Silly Mr Twiddle

Slightly more suspicious. What could the nature of this silliness possibly be?

1953 - Well Really Mr Twiddle!

Mr Twiddle has clearly been caught doing something he shouldn't, perhaps with the babysitter?

Exhibit Two: The Mr Pink-Whistle Series

1939 - The Adventures of Mr Pink-Whistle

Now, what on earth could Enid be referring to here?

1949 - Mr Pink-Whistle interferes

And is subsequently arrested?

1955 - Mr Pink-Whistle's party

A whole lotta shakin' going on...

Exhibit 3: Miscellaenous

1943 - Dame Slap and her School

Of tough love no doubt

1949 - Bumpy and his Bus

Climb aboard ladies!

1949 - Rubbalong Tales

?!?

This is no place for children.

For a start, look at the people they've got on the BBC Trust:

Sir Michael Lyons (Chair)
Chitra Bharucha (Vice-Chair)
Diane Coyle
Alison Hastings
Patricia Hodgson
Rotha Johnston
Janet Lewis-Jones
David Liddiment
Mehmuda Pritchard

Women completely outnumber men! There are even Indian women present! I suppose they know their place a lot better than British women do, and are possibly a sneaky way of keeping the others in check by reminding them who is rightfully in charge.

Then we have the executive board:

Mark Thompson (Board Chairman and Director-General)
Mark Byford (Deputy Chairman and Deputy Director-General; Director, Journalism Group)
Caroline Thomson (Chief Operating Officer)
Jana Bennett (Director, BBC Vision)
Jenny Abramsky (Director, BBC Audio and Music)
Ashley Highfield (Director, Future Media and Technology)
John Smith (Chief Executive, BBC Worldwide)
Zarin Patel (Group Finance Director)
Steve Kelly (Director, BBC People)
Tim Davie (Director, Marketing, Communications and Audiences)

Non-executive directors:
Marcus Agius (Senior non-executive director), Chairman, Barclays
Dr Mike Lynch OBE, co-founder and Chief Executive, Autonomy Corporation
David Robbie, Group Finance Director, Rexam
Dr Samir Shah OBE, Chief Executive, Juniper Communications
Robert Webb QC, General Counsel, British Airways

Good God. It reads like a list of attendees at a WI meeting! Alright, so they have a few 'complimentary' men in the highest positions of power, but do you think they can make themselves heard amongst all the squawking and cackling and pre-menstrual rage?

No wonder the BBC is stuffed full of nonsense about knitting and ovaries. If you employ monkeys, you get peanuts and if you employ women, you get appalling programmes about cooking and dressmaking.

"I used to watch Doctor Who and Star Trek, but they went PC - making women commanders, that kind of thing. I stopped watching."

Well, guess what? She's just given me a choice of two potential victims, by giving birth to her second sprog last night. 2 months early. Although she may have got her dates slightly wrong. She did with the first one, and was out all night partying shortly before going into labour, because she thought she had six weeks left to go.

We have a saying at work, 'Africa time' which refers to the notion that almost every child we work with from there seems to have, a laissez faire attitude to time - 'I know I have a doctor's appointment in five minutes, but I've just got to comb my hair and change my jacket three times, it'll wait, don't worry, what's the rush?' I think 'Africa time' is definetely to blame for the surprise arrival.

I'm going over to the hospital to meet baby 2 after work today. I'm aware they have CCTV in these places, so I'm not taking a rucksack, or any other device one might easily fit a new born into when her mother turns away to blow her nose. I'm joking, of course. Plenty of time to have my own bundles of fun, no need to go about stealing other peoples. Although I think borrowing them is legal, providing you leave a deposit?

In other news, Olly's wayward sister gave birth on Wednesday night, also to a girl. Anna-Lise. I'm not sure if this name was deliberately meant as tribute to Erinsborough's lilo-lipped bimbo du jour, but I really wouldn't put it past either of her parents.

Now I'm wide awake, and a little weirded out. I don't think the police are taking this case seriously. It's suspicious to say the least. Let's examine the evidence:

a) Rose the goat gave birth to a son during her marriage to Charles Tombe, but apparently 'not a human one'
b) This would suggest that Rose committed adultery with another goat during her marriage, which resulted in the birth of the kid.
c) This betrayal, coupled with the fact that Charles was forced to marry Rose as a punishment, would provide a pretty good motive for murder.
d) Rose is thought to have choked to death on a plastic bag she found in the street. Choked, or had it rammed down her bleating throat by a drunken, resentful husband who couldn't bear to spend one more night with his cheating wife?

Pink, a subtle blend of genders.

Pete, neither Arthur nor Martha.

Tre from The Apprentice, Mr Tumnus' understudy.

A goat, Tre's understudy.

Having spent the past two hours wittering on about how diplomatic, tactful and generally approachable I am, so please, please, please give me the job, one of the interviewers walked me to the door (probably to make sure I wasn't going to hang around and bribe the staff with cake).

As she shook my hand, and said she'd be in touch, an opportunity presented itself to show her just how fan-fricking-fabulous I am at dealing with difficult situations.

A fellow applicant, who'd been taking part in the group task with me earlier on, noticed I was leaving, and came dashing over to ask if I'd like to come for a drink with him when he was finished.

What I should have said, to prevent embarrassment and protect his feelings, was something along the lines of: 'That would be lovely, but I've got to get back. Why don't you give me your number and we'll do it some other time?'

But, in my eagerness to prove that I am not the sort of girl who will work my way through the male staff, leaving a trail of emotional destruction and sticky stuff behind me, what I actually said was: 'Urm, well, gotta go home, I urm, left my nan in the bath, and the dog needs his medicine and urm, yer, having the carpets shampooed tomorrow so must dash, sorry...byeeee!'

As they say, don't call us...