Monday

There's an awful lot to do at work this week, to the extent that it seems slightly incredible that it'll get done. But it will - it must. As such, however, everyone is slightly on edge and the gradually warming weather is not doing nice things to what is always a pretty stuffy office.

After a cloudy start, by 5.30 the sun is blazing and it's suddenly a beautiful evening. Before we moved so close to my office, I used to love walking the 35 minutes home from work in weather like this, listening to podcasts and chuckling away to myself. Today, to get a little of that back and clock up a bit of much-needed exercise, I decide to walk home via Alexandra Palace, so head from the office up the steep hill from Alexandra Park Station. It's a bit of a slog up the hill and I have to abandon my hoodie (sticking it in my bag, not abandoning it completely) and I am instantly reminded of how great the view is from up here. You can see all the way across the city, easily picking out, from left to right, the O2, Canary Wharf, Tower 42, 30 St. Mary's Axe, the BT Tower, and of course the whole of Hornsey/Crouch End laid out below you. It's pretty spectacular, but I begin heading down again straight away, towards Priory Road and home.

All the while I'm listening to The Bugle podcast - the immensely enjoyable political satire/surreal nonsense show by John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman, which I've listened to every week for almost two years now. I get home at around 6.30 - so a nice hour's stroll - and get to work sorting out dinner for K & I, knocking together my now-signature home-made chilli con carne burritos. Delicious they are, and afterwards we are so stuffed there's little to do but crash on the sofa and watch The Royal Wedding, a so-so one-off drama on BBC2 as part of their 80s season, followed by Derren Brown Investigates, in which he visits a part-laughable, part-sinister training course who claim to offer sight to the blind through some sort of mental projection or something. Oddly, though, they refuse to prove their abilities. Funny how that happens quite a lot with people with "psychic powers" isn't it?