Hottubs are one of the great pleasures in life, and that is why we have opted to have one implanted into the garden at the Palace, albeit only for a weekend.

The question of why this evening has suddenly turned sour has still not been answered. All day I slaved in a piping hot workshop playing with silicone and discussing the finer points of GM crops (why can't we grow trees in the shape of chairs and cows into sofas. Yes, it can be very, very lonely in the workshops) to be greeted with a disappointing drizzle and a tepid hot tub (due to a recent cold water top-up). I am not amused.

This could be compounded by another number of depressing things, but I won't go into that. Instead I will focus on the fact that today was payday, and being Friday I finally can (metaphorically) suck on that chill pill I've been saving all week.

My new earphones have arrived, replacing my all-but-knackered white Sony's from New York. There was a nostalgic twinge as I retired them, but my new pair are nice and shiny and that's what counts the most.

Jumping back to the beginning; a hottub related tale. This morning at approximately 3am I was awoken by the drunk-subtle (noisy) attempt of Swan, the Day and the Swede climbing into the hottub, just meters outside the patio doors that separate my sleepy head from the rest of the world. If the tale had ended here, that would be fine, but it doesn't. The Three Amigos then decided that waking Higgs was Number 1 priority. Whilst they thought they were trying to wake me by flicking pebbles at the window, the reality was that I was already wide awake, and remained so for the next hour and a half before I gave up and went to sleep in Swan's bed. "That'll teach him," I thought, "Swan will come back upstairs and I will refuse to let him get into his own bed. I will then go downstairs after he commenderes my bed and make a racket as I get up."

Like all my elaborate plans, it didn't work, and when I got downstairs at quarter to nine, Swan, the Day and the Swede were all still in the hottub, very wrinkly and very drunk. I passed them another bottle of cider as I unlocked my bike and rode off for another day in the workshops.