Monday September 29th

My wife answered the door to Adrian at seven thirty in the morning and, after nearly three hours of sleep, I was ready to face the day. I help out Adrian most Mondays. I would say that I work for him, but the only payment I get is to turn almost every thing he utters into a stand-up comedy routine. I currently have two full routines that are entirely based upon things that Adrian has told me. He never ceases to amaze me. He is my muse.

On this particular Monday I was helping Adrian to replace a window at an address in Caerphilly. There is one of the world's most picturesque snack food vistas from the car park serving the burger van at the top of Caerphilly mountain, so he stopped the Transit van there to buy us both breakfast.

We sat in the van, enjoying the British tradition that is an entire breakfast in a roll. Adrian is a devout and commited Jehovah's Witness, and often conversation gets steered towards his beliefs. I never find this offensive If anything it's quite touching that someone genuinely believes that they can help other people and are willing to try, usually in the face of adversity and ridicule, to do so. On this occasion black pudding was the catalyst. He asked if I like black pudding, I said I did, but only ever in small amounts. He asked if I knew what it was made of, I replied that I did. He informed me that he used to love black pudding, but when he found out what it was made of, he stopped eating it. He then explained to me, again, the reasons why we are not supposed to eat blood. It wasn't great meal-time discourse, but I nodded politely, and continued to eat my roll. He looked into the distance, and then came out with one of the sweeping, groundless, statements that endear him to me,

'I bet black pudding kills thousands of people every year, but the government hush it all up'

I nearly choked on my bacon, and started laughing. He was adamant that he was onto something though,

'They know it's killing people. But think of all the money tied up in it'.

So there we are. On that Monday morning I had not only had a free breakfast roll, I had become embroiled in one of the most brilliant, and deadly, conspiracy theories of all time.

The rest of the day didn't live up to it's early promise and it ended with me falling asleep on the big sofa at around nine in the evening, having had barely any opportunity to think about death.