Monday

Getting up to an alarm after yesterday's 8-hour sunshine-and-shandy session would have been unpleasant whenever it went off, but this morning it goes at 7.30 as we have to be at Paddington Station for the train to Worcester at 9.20. K rouses me by promising to buy breakfast when we get to the West London station, but I am sure to get a hot cross bun in before we head out of the door.

I feel, perhaps unsurprisingly considering the fact that I spent yesterday pushing that boozy Easter weekend idea one full day too far, fucking horrible. The tube to Paddington is pleasantly fast, however, and soon I am tucking into an as-promised sausage and egg bagel. Just the job. We get onto the train early and bag a table for the two of us - which is handy as the train is small and this happens to be the train that feeds the tourist economies of both Windsor and Oxford on Bank Holiday Mondays. It does, however, completely empty at Oxford leaving us with a very nice 90-or-so minutes completely alone in the carriage - time which I use to get stuck into Dara O Briain's Tickling the English. Not being a commuter (my office is a 10-minute walk from home) I often feel I miss out on this reading time, and generally find myself jealous that K ploughs through books in her 2-hours-a-day of travelling.

The book is highly enjoyable in that it is partly a tour diary, a travelogue and an extremely perceptive and funny analysis of English culture. As with other good comedian/writers, such as David Mitchell or Charlie Brooker, I simply find myself agreeing with almost everything he says - and mostly wishing I could express what they're saying, or that they could express themselves to a wider audience than simply their fans.

We arrive in Worcester at around lunchtime and head to K's brother's house, where most of her family will be arriving to celebrate her nephew's third birthday. Having such a huge family (K is one of six siblings) he is of course showered with presents and has the sort of toys at three that I could only have dreamed of (a post office! a Black & Decker workbench!) or could even dream of now. One such present is a Playmobil fire engine which requires such intricate assembly as to completely swallow my afternoon (I offered after tutting at K's younger brother's cack-handed attempts to build the thing one too many times). I then find myself involved in something of a parody of a "Christmas Dad" situation where I spend a long time building a complex plastic fire engine while absently watching Bank Holiday League One football on Sky Sports (Yeovil Town 1 Leeds United 2). I swear, this thing had so many parts that needed to be attached that it surely cost the company more to design the instruction booklet than to sell the fucking thing complete.

My toils aside, the little one loves his fire engine when it is done - for around two minutes until cake turns up or he starts smashing something with a plastic fire axe or something. Little treasures, aren't they?

Actually this one is - very sweet and chatty and with that fun three-year-old thing where he attempts to repeat things said to him even when they include words he can't possibly pronounce.

We start to walk back into the centre of Worcester for our train which is at 4.02 - and followed by none for another hour. Having slightly misjudged the walk we end up power walking the last 10 minutes of the journey in what is another very hot day. By 4.01 we are at the station, feet burning and sweat pouring - but we are on the (very busy) train, at least. Thanks to debris on the line and various other "hilarious" Bank Holiday-style travel problems, the train takes 3-and-a-bit hours on the way home, but again it gives me plenty of time to read more of my book.

We eventually get home, shattered and a little spaced-out from having spent over five hours travelling to and from the West Midlands for an afternoon of party food and cake, and decide to watch Children of Men - a DVD rip passed to us by a friend some time ago. The film is very good and paints a very believable picture of a near-future dystopia in Britain via some very clever effects and some surprisingly decent performances. It does shake us up a little, though, so we wind down for bedtime by watching a bit of the enjoyable by-numbers-Will-Ferrell-sports-vehicle Blades of Glory on BBC Three. It's been a long day (and now a long blog post) and a long Long Weekend. But a fun one.