Cover me in chocolate and throw me to the lesbians

Ahh, Saturday morning at home! No longer do I have to wake up to the shrieking squawk of my French alarm clock. Instead, I get a rough paw thrust in my eye socket repeatedly until I crawl out from under the duvet, mumbling and grumbling and peer through the curtains at the wind tearing through the trees and the rain lashing down the window. Oh to be in England again, and how I’ve missed this weather. Sammie and I bound around the fields down on the farm. At one point the wind whips under my puffa and I whirl up into the sky like Flat Stanley. Anybody remember Flat Stanley or is it just me? You know, the book about the little boy who got squashed as flat as a sheet of paper when a wardrobe fell over on top of him, and went on to find that far from being a disability it was actually quite liberating to be able to slide under doors and be flown in the sky like a kite? But I digress. I returned home clutching a copy the Saturday Guardian – possibly the best thing about Saturdays, except Jonathan Ross on the radio. Imagine my disappointment when at the end of Brian Matthews’ Sounds Of the Sixties show (Radio 2, 8-10am) it wasn’t Jonathan’s lovely wolling r’s I heard, but some stand in bloke. It wasn’t even Mark Lamarr for goodness sakes. What had gone wrong? My day was all but ruined.

But I couldn’t sit around feeling sorry for myself. I thought of what this nation stands for: books from Boots and country lanes; free speech, free passes, class distinction, democracy and proper drains. Then I made a dash for Asda and bought some bags of salad which no doubt are washed in bleach and insecticide and cacogenic chemicals by underpaid illegal immigrants under terrible conditions working for unscrupulous gangmasters in the guise of employment agents. I did think about that, but I really needed salad. I'm sorry. I won't do it again. Mum and dad arrived soon afterwards and we knocked back a few calming glasses of Madeira before I threw together a Spanish omelette which went well with the Rioja I had picked out.

Over the last few days I have been receiving a lot of text messages from a mystery number. I think I have received about twenty of them in total now. They are all blank, except for one which mysteriously said simply, ‘Got’. I wondered if this was some kind of code and began trying to crack it in an Enigma-stylee. I even started to feel vaguely concerned. At one point I replied to the number saying ‘Who is this? You keep sending me blank messages. Please check your phone!’ But to no avail. Still the messages continued to arrive. I was beginning to get a bit freaked out by it to be frank. Could it be that somebody was stalking me by mobile? The last time I thought I had a stalker, it turned out to be the cut of my trousers, but that's neither here nor there. Anyway, to cut a long story short I lost my mind. True. Gold. Through the barricades. After dinner mum and dad proudly produced their new mobile phone which my brother (whose name rhymes with clever but this time had been far from it in my opinion) had given them for Christmas. The creaky cogs in my brain began to turn, and yeap, you got there before me, the mystery messages I had been receiving had all come from this phone. It turned out that random button pressing in a chimpanzee style by mum had led to me receiving all these blank texts – although they were completely oblivious to sending them. They were also oblivious to the fact that they had been corresponding with somebody in Afghanistan who had sent them the following two messages.

We are both feeling a bit unwell with coughs which might be bronchitis. Linda is hoping to get out on the horses tomorrow

Linda is going to take the horses out soon if you want to join us for a ride

Well, it was all rather odd. I asked mum and dad if they fancied going horse riding in Afghanistan, but they said that whilst it was a lovely idea and thank you for thinking of them, they would have to say no on this occasion.

The phone was retuned to it’s cardboard box mum and dad were returned to Stoneleigh. Sammie and I went for a long walk and then I settled down for a night in front of the telly. I haven’t watched any television for over three months so it felt like quite a novelty. It was disappointingly crap, and I consoled myself that I haven’t missed anything at all by not having a box. I found an old episode of Alan Partridge on a video and laughed loud and long. I also found the opening twenty minutes of the film Hotel Paradiso at the end of another tape. Why do I find the puerile humour of Adrian Edmonston and Rick Mayall so damn funny? Maybe it can be explained by my early diet of Laurel & Hardy and Harold Lloyde, and total love of slapstick (the sight of somebody slipping over on a banana skin is still the funniest thing in the world as far as I'm concerned), but when Ade and Rick start knocking each other around with frying pans and slamming each others heads in fridge doors, I almost lose control of my bladder. This film was panned (no pun intended) when it came out. It is a work of genius! I need to see the rest of it and quickly.

Ah – then I switched on Jerry Springer The Opera! I saw this at the National way back when, and loved it. It didn’t work so well on TV – stage productions rarely do – but it was still good stuff. I sent the BBC 50,000 emails of complaint (one for each swear word in the show – allegedly) and then went to bed, looking forward to church in the morning.