Saturday October 25th

Saturday was a strange one. I awoke fairly early, in a flustered state, as I was unsure at first, of exactly where I was, or who I was with. As it became apparent that I was in my bedroom with my wife, I began to relax. I then panicked, as I remembered that I had gone out with Rob, but had not returned with him. My wife then assured me that I had returned with him, and that he was the person snoring in the Blue Hawaii Suite (aka the spare bedroom).

I felt remarkably well as I headed downstairs to make coffee. But I was not about to be fooled by the Window of Wellness and, as such, I retired to the big sofa to await the hangover. But it never happened. The Window of Wellness was to last all day. The only after-effect of our mammoth drinking session, was to be an insatiable, extreme, hunger.

My wife left before midday, as she was attending her best friend's hen party in Swansea later in the day. She wanted to get there early to distribute hats, outfits and badges, supervise dance routine practice and ensure that everyone had brought their musical instruments. This attention to detail seemed to me to be fairly futile. I have witnessed many hen nights in the Wind Street area of Swansea, and by 10pm they all resemble each other. Girls wearing almost nothing fighting/vomiting/urinating outside Yates Wine Bar, before heading to eighties theme bar Reflex to dance with/be sexually molested by a steroid-fuelled, tattooed, highlighted dwarf, who would invariably expose his penis at some point during, for example, Chaka Khan's 'Chaka Khan'. Still, it makes her happy.

With my wife gone and Rob awake, it was time to head for breakfast. We opted for Steve's Cafe, a short walk from my house. During the brief journey I glimpsed Beelzebub disappearing down a side street.

There is nothing like the Great British cafe. As we ate bacon, eggs, black pudding and luke-warm floppy toast, I tried to avert my eyes from the other diners. If one ponders too long on the fact that the fork which one is putting in one's mouth, may very well be the same fork that the stubbled, unwashed, vagrant sitting across the linoleum floor put in his mouth yesterday, it can really spoil one's appetite. The dining experience was enhanced, as usual, by the grunts of the slipper-wearing illiterate, feeding his latest payout from Accidents Direct into the fruit machine. Doubtlessly hoping to land the big £5 jackpot. He was accompanied, as he always is, by a mute, slipper-wearing, female. The precise relationship between the two is hard to ascertain. She may be his sister, his daughter, his lover. Or any combination of the three.

After breakfast we stopped at Tesco Metro on the way home to buy Mars Bar drinks and doughnuts. Thankfully, the flirtatious Asian checkout operator wasn't working, as my hair and breath were both in need of urgent attention. On the way home I again saw Beelzebub, this time in the vicinity of the Salvation Army shop.

On getting home Rob and I drank our Mars Bar drinks, ate doughnuts and watched TV. This kept us going until our late lunch. At around two thirty I drove Rob's car to McDonald's. I was relieved that he asked me to drive, as I have been a passenger in the car with him on several occasions on the day after a drinking session. In recent years, more often than not, he has had an epileptic fit whilst at the wheel. He suffers from a form of epilepsy which causes, what I would describe as, vacancy, rather than the more common/humorous convulsions. As such, I am normally unaware that he is experiencing an episode until after he has driven through a red light at a junction. At McDonald's we enjoyed Big Mac meals, and we both 'went large'.

After lunch we came home and watched the Cardiff vs Leicester rugby match on TV, whilst sharing a jumbo bag of jelly tots.

After the rugby Rob, headed back to Portsmouth and I made myself a bacon and egg sandwich, before returning to the big sofa.

In the evening I settled down with two bowls of Honey Nut Shredded Wheat and toasted pitta breads (?) to watch Strictly Come Dancing. I am not ashamed to say that I love everything about that programme. I love the dancing. I love the singing. I love Bruce Forsyth. And the girls look pretty good too. (I have been trying in vain for weeks to programme my brain to dream about a scenario I have created, involving Lilia, Ola, the new one with the breasts, who looks a bit like Christina Aguilera, an 'in-shape' me and a dance floor covered in KY Jelly, but to no avail. Whatever that means.)

Later in the night I watched comedy DVDs, to try and ward off the thoughts of death, which I know will be even more pronounced every time that I am home alone. After the second Alan Partridge episode I felt briefly less depressed, so dashed upstairs to try and get off to sleep before the gloom returned. It didn't work. I lay awake, endlessly pondering my own mortality, alone in my enormous bed, until three in the morning.