pass me two of the blue ones quickly...

flippin 'eck. Everything seems just a little bit unglued at the moment.

There was a 'friendly' International football match last night (that's soccer to you heathens), in the last stages of England’s assault on the World Cup (please, please let it happen in my life time). And I belong a rag taggle group of fans who've watched 4 successive World Cups (bear in mind the World Cup only comes around every 4 years), 4 all too early exits, every game live (even those in the early hours of the morning) from the same smoky corner of the same dingy pub. We've hugged, cried, screamed, shouted, lamented, raged at the referees and the injustice of it all and thrown our beer heavenwards in rapture after scoring a goal or defeating an arch enemy.

It was a bit of a dull game last night.

Still I managed quite a respectable hangover and was propelled towards the bedroom carpet all too soon this morning by the alarm. I'm fuzzy at the best of times, but on mornings like these the world appears to me through a glass darkly, very darkly indeed. Somehow I manage to simultaneously feed the dogs, make tea, fish a towel out of the washing machine with my toes and minister to my headache by bashing down a couple of aspirin.

Except that I noticed, on the way out, feeling a lot better after a shower and extensive oral hygiene that the packet said "Nytol" and not aspirin, which wasn't exactly what I needed.

Consequently I felt right at home this afternoon waiting in line to renew my road tax in the local Post Office. "Post Offices" in the UK dispense stamps, pensions, rubber bands, packing tape and biros. They are also the Grim Reaper's waiting room, constantly occupied by the elderly, infirm and permanently befuddled, who spend their remaining coffin dodging hours waiting in line for a form, which they return to the back of the queue with...to ask for a pen, or another form, or to weigh their colostomy bag on the scale, or advice on the right blend of loam to grow artichokes from seed.

I rocked and reeled with the queue and had a little hot flush where I thought for a moment I might go down under the shuffling ranks of rubber footed zimmer frames.

And this is on the end of a 'Bank' holiday, a long weekend, which means that Sunday had potential for a late night too.

That's not to say I've not been "good". I have. I've done my chores, been on some very long walks with the dogs, caught up with friends, sanded the bathroom walls, begun to paint and even weeded the garden (deep joy).

What's more I got to meet Sandra, who is adorable and fun and great company, as she and her friends were spending a week packing in more to do in and around London than the average Londoner will ever accomplish in a lifetime. Goodness knows where they found the energy, but I would never have been able to keep up. Even after one very gentle evening - and it can't possibly be the beer, (we drank sociably and responsibly, the very epitome of gentile restraint and decorum I tell you!!!) - I put it down to the impromptu and very relaxing head and neck massage offered by the demented, infinitely camp, engaging and quite deranged, French, ('but I was an Inca in a former life'), jongleur in a crowded cobbled courtyard of a pub.....that caused me to slump over my desk in a dead coma the next day. (Thank you Yvonne for the tea, and the discreet nudge).

I must be getting old. Go leave me in a Post Office.

Oh, and ironically, as I could sleep all day but couldn’t catch a wink last night elle gave me the gift of poetry to keep away the night sprites