Good afternoon - sorry to have missed you yesterday but duty called elsewhere. Delighted to be here today to give your weekend the prod it needs towards perfection.
Not done that supermarket sweep of groceries and other necessities yet? Got a party coming up or the birthday of someone you really care about and need to get that "just right" pressie? Well take the A3 out of London and head to Guildford - University and Cathedral city and county town of Surrey. It has some fine shops and the parking is free! It's not as a celebration of some curious medieval "guild" event, but simply because they screwed up their parking regulations. The only downside is that you can expect long faces from any council workers or wardens you bump into, as they owe £600,000 to wrongly-fined punters and can't seem to sort it until winter. Marcus has a pot of yellow paint and lots of plastic envelopes to throw in the bin.
The Police won't trouble you.... unlike Ali Dizaei, himself a copper but, alas, again the focus of some grave concerns. I hasten to add, and without prompting, nothing at all has been proved against him and, indeed, when last the forces of law and order went in pursuit of him, he was totally cleared.
Then James will review Ben Stiller's production of a Ben Stiller story, starring Ben Stiller - "Tropic of Thunder". Faye, who looks like a bumble bee who fell, first, in a pot of pink paint and, then, in a pot of grey paint -thinks it's rubbish.
(I continue to harbour serious concerns for her - gout can only a be a matter of time, given what those jeans (yet another pair) do to her circulation.)
Salma was as warm towards it as the lower shelf in a very deep freezer; but for James, we shall have to wait to hear. He will also talk about Then She Found Me but I fear I must have fallen asleep at this stage of The Meeting as I have no notes - a journey of discovery for both of us, then, dear viewer.
David Essex I didn't need to make notes about as I was a fan, as a teenager, and my dear wife remains a fan in her golden period. But how old does that make him?
Anyway, a musical is planned along the lines of Queen and Abba though, truth to tell, we could only think of two Essex songs and even then very few of the words. I am sure Lucy will have done better as she will not have been troubled by much of the back-story. Rock On was one song, but I thought that was followed by "....Tommy!" and was a catch phrase of Little and Large..? Maybe not.
Some football, including the Hammers under new management against Newcastle without management; Robin's weather (looking good but I won't tempt fate); and the newspapers which will tell what is on this weekend but not as crisply as Salma in what has surely now become her What Not To Miss . I do not miss it. What one never had, and all that.
I am content and, to be frank, resigned.
See you, I hope., at 6.
Alastair (not Frank: that was a figure of speech) & Salma.
