I’ve had one hell of a day today – another really early start (6am today and after a 1.30am bed time). I had to leave my hotel before they started serving breakfast so I was hungry and thoroughly fed up by the time I drove past the other hotel that I had a business meeting in for the day. (I couldn’t afford to stay in the Hilton!)

Driving past it, I couldn’t see the entrance to the car park and got snarled up in Heathrow Airport morning rush hour and it took a whole hour to find my way back to the hotel and inside the car park.

The meeting was gruelling, fraught and lasted all day. We eventually got on our way at 6pm. Because I had the car with me, I had promised to pop into DMs folks house to get his clothes – he’s been struggling valiantly on for the last few weeks with a small handful of tee shirts and underwear because on the day we moved, we had so much stuff in our cars that we couldn’t carry any more stuff with us. My poor Mum ended up spending a four hour drive with my wabbit on her knee because there was nowhere else he could fit in. I had the bright idea of phoning my trusty cabbie and giving him one last fare to go to ‘the in-laws’ and gave him the entire contents of David’s wardrobe to take there until we could collect the stuff when we had room.

I’d said to them that the meeting was due to end at 4.30pm so I’d be there between 5 and 6pm, then would be on my way early. I arrived at 7.10pm and interrupted a dinner party because the meeting had gone on so long. They were wonderful – kind as kind people could be – I’m extremely lucky there. They delivered a fix of tea, a dose of kindness and helped to pile up the car with stuff before setting me on my way.

For some reason I have these strange hallucinations when I’m driving and really tired. I see things in the road that aren’t there and generally get myself in a right old pickle. This journey was no exception to that despite Radio 2 surprising me with its finest after I turned over from Radio 4 because their programming was NOT what I needed to keep me awake.

I’ve always hated Radio 2 – the memory of my Mum listening to Terry Wogan et al, my last experience of the channel was Sarah Kennedy I think. Her programme is so dire that it’s baffling who would want to listen to such drivel. BUT, last night they’d pushed out the boat and programmed some excellent documentaries – one about the career of James Dean (did you know Eartha Kitt was one of his best friends?), one about BB King (did you know his name is Riley and he’s called BB short for ‘blues boy’?) and then music. Steve Harley was mostly good aside from the shameless promotion of his tour and the hideously boring Fleetwood Mac track he played. Last on my list was Mark Ratcliffe who woke me up (although briefly) with Sham 69 – picture the scene – me belting round the lanes on the last leg of my journey, window open to try to keep me awake, car stereo so loud it was distorting terribly and me belting out ‘if the kids are united, they will never be divided’ at the top of my voice – heaven!!!

My memory was jogged about a song on the terraces at WHL in the good old days of standing at the footie, when the crowd would sing to the tune of ‘Hersham Boys’ …

…..#Tottenham Boys, Tottenham Boys, laced up boots and Corduroys, Arsenal Boys, Arsenal Boys, fishnet tights and tonka toys….. ha ha – I know Jimmy Pursey was a Hammers fan – I wonder how he felt about his song being adopted by the Shelf Side….

My picture depicts the freaky ghoulish nature of my waking dreams on the journey. I could see rivers of blood running down the lane (which were really just rain water and mud) and monsters leaping out of the shadows. As I came to my last right turn of the journey, my freaky nightmare turned to reality when a car shot backwards at about 30mph out of the street that I was about to turn into – lucky I was a few seconds slower or I’d have been broadsided. It turned out to be three car loads of kids joyriding. As I climbed the hill onto the moor, sheep were lying in the road looking like the victims of some terrible accident – blood red marks on their backs and bottoms to identify the farm they came from gave them the look of road accident victims, especially as they were sprawled asleep across the road and I had to pick my way around them to get by. The whole thing was like some really cheap low-budget horror movie.

When I pulled into our road at 11pm, after a working day 16 hours long again, Mark Ratcliffe played a complete corker ‘I’m gonna make you love me’ and I was in heaven once again – this music is what I’m all about. So, instead of simply abandoning my car in the road and crawling indoors, I drove up the road, turned around and then abandoned my car in the road, crawled up the drive and made David go and move the car into a sensible space. It’s good to be home….

I was back to my teasing this time last year and the year before we were preparing for winter.