Tuesday

There's a lot to do today and I'm so tired at work that I'm practically nodding off. Staying up until 2.30am reading about a young man's suicide is not, as it happens, the key to a good night's sleep. I have to get up and wander around the office to try and force some alertness into me - but little works.

After work Jess and I head into town as there are two quite significant book launches to attend, and we plan to make flying visits to each depending on the free booze/food situation. The weather is horrible and we arrive at the first gallery - a large, private photography gallery on Cork Street - soaking wet and hungry. The book being launched is a collection of photographs of a man suffering from Alzheimer's disease as taken by his wife. They're nicely done and are sad things to behold but the mood is a little dour and the crowd does little for me. This is until Jess and I each have a glass of champagne on the go and the girl starts coming round with the canapes.

The nibbles are excellent, including one rather amazing thing that seemed to be a cone of hard parmesan cheese stuffed with porcini mushrooms. There are also quail's eggs and some meat on a stick (which probably has a much poncier name than that). As usual at these events I feel conspicuously underdressed, given my refusal in these situations to bow to convention and put a shirt or some smart shoes on. I did do up the top button of the thick grey shirt I had on, however - I'm sure this distracted from the torn jeans and crumbling white trainers. Hmm.

After around four or five glasses of champagne and more quail's eggs than I've ever had in one sitting we make a move just as the boring speeches are starting. The weather has improved and we dodge puddles up to Soho to the Arts Theatre Club where a book celebrating a noted early-20th-century prankster is being launched. The club is underground and has a nice, old feel about it - but, alas, the bar is not free. Never mind: we grab a couple of beers and head over to meet some other folks from work including the MD and the publisher of the book. We sit and chat happily about the book and work coming up, then later I am, oddly, alone with the MD and our sales manager discussing the relative merits of various eras of music. After a couple more beers they suggest going for something to eat. I fear the night getting messy if I stay out much longer and am very aware that a jacket potato will be waiting for me at home with K.

I make my excuses and get on the tube just before ten, listening to the Collings and Herrin podcast on my iPhone and tipsily chuckling to myself on the Victoria Line. I get home and devour said jacket potato in front of yet another excellent episode of Mad Men.

Monday

Today I finally get round to finishing last week's Who Are Ya?! blog post and I'm actually rather proud of it. It's one of the first one I've completed over a few days and not just off the top of my head in one hour and, understandably, I think it benefits from the extra few days' consideration. I think I am lucky in that I'm able to write to a good standard very quickly and without much agonising over how best to phrase my thoughts - I can more or less type as fast as I can think - but I need to work on my ability to self-edit. This is less important in a blog post than if I were submitting something to be published, I know, but when you've written something you like it is very easy to be precious about it and wrongly see every word you have written as being essential.

Either way, I think I said what I wanted to say about the narrative and the drama of football - or the Beautiful Car Crash as I seem to have put on the Who Are Ya?! Twitter feed.

I post the entry online just as K arrives home and read sections of it out to her to check how the rhythm sounds. She seems pleased that I am happy but essentially disinterested in what I am writing about - let's hope The Publisher doesn't share this attitude three weeks today! We eat a strange Chicken Tikka Kiev each for dinner which is perfectly tasty but...strange.

My payday Blu-rays arrived today in the form of Toy Story 1 & 2 so we stick the latter on after dinner. It's probably the Pixar film I've seen least recently so remembered quite little of what was going to happen. What I had forgotten - partly because I remember the relatively flat textures of Toy Story and have been spoilt by the more recent Pixar films on Blu-ray - was just how beautiful everything looks in TS2. Every surface looks and moves exactly how it should whether it be wood, fabric, leather, plastic, metal, glass and it is clear that the filmmakers were keen to show off just how far they had come since the first film. As I always say about these films, if only all filmmakers put in just half of the effort and attention to detail that Pixar did, we'd have some truly spectacular films to watch.

Later we crack on with Mad Men and watch two very good episodes as bits of Don Draper's past seem to be coming back to haunt him. Even later I stay up far too late to finish Touching From A Distance - which I'm glad I finished but has made me feel little other than quietly sad. Suicide is never cool, but Ian Curtis thought it was and that is his real tragedy. He's just lucky he had people like Tony Wilson around to build the rock star myth for him after he'd gone.

Sunday

The clocks go forward this morning announcing the beginning of British Summer Time and letting me think I'd slept in until 10am when in fact I hadn't, really. Although I had.

The hens who stayed over spend the morning waking up at various speeds so I head to Tesco to get extra bacon for a round of sandwiches. They're off to a spirit-tasting place in South London for hen-do-part-two at 12pm so we sit for a while in front of my computer watching movie trailers on Front Row which is quite fun and I should do more. When the girls finally bundle out of the door at midday I spend some time faffing around on the computer, trying to get down to starting the book pitch but instead end up heading out to Sainsbury's to do the weekly shop solo. This is good in that with only one person involved the shopping becomes more streamlined and less prone to impulse buys. Also I get to choose all my favourite brands, which is rarely allowed.

I get the bus home at the point when the day is really warming up and feeling very spring-like indeed, so after a late shower I head into Wood Green unusually coatless to have a look for some new trainers, having finally become frustrated with the sheer amount of water my old Stan Smiths are currently letting in at all sides. I don't really manage to find anything that takes my fancy in WG's few shoe shops - I'll probably have a proper look in town next weekend.

Later on I make some chilli and K and I sit down to watch Gran Torino, this week's Lovefilm Blu-ray. An award-winning Clint Eastwood project (written, directed, produced, starring) it tells the story of a bitter, racist, recently-widowed Korean War veteran who has seen his neighbourhood become dominated by Asian immigrants and various ethnic gangs. After saving one of his young neighbours from a violent gang he develops something of a father-son relationship with the boy and teaches him how to "be a man" while standing up for the boy in the face of escalating violence and tension. It's a piece of very economical filmmaking - in that no shot feels surplus to requirements and shows that Eastwood is in fact a very talented director; something I hadn't known before. It's a fairly harrowing film and fills me with the sort of sickness I get when I see people fighting or weaker people being bullied for no reason other than the bored amusement of the aggressor. It's also very good.

Saturday

Today is K's friend's hen do and the group will be assembling at our house before moving on to do some bowling and karaoke in Bloomsbury. Through the haze of a hangover I head to Tesco to source bacon for a frankly essential fry-up and we prepare for the visitors' arrival. By 1pm there are eight women in the house and I feel conspicuously male - especially as I am hiding in the kitchen eating a sandwich and watching Football Focus while they chatter away, doing each others' make-up and performing various other gathered female cliches.

Speaking of the football, however, things go very well indeed. Chelsea beat Aston Villa 7-1 at Stamford Bridge, taking them briefly back to the top of the league and edging a few goals ahead of Man Utd on goal difference. Arsenal also fail to make up ground on the two top teams by drawing away to Birmingham. Next weekend's Man Utd v Chelsea game at Old Trafford is going to be huge in the context of this season's run in. Down in League Two Rochdale beat Grimsby 4-1 and promotion is looking ever more certain. Never thought I'd see the day!

The hen party leaves the house at around 4 and I lazily watch final Score and play a little FIFA. I had planned to do a bit of work on the book pitch but by this point I am three beers gone (having joined in with the general party spirit in the house) and feeling less than sharp.

My general plan is to have a couple of drinks in Crouch End then to head into town to meet Andy and Joe et al in Soho to celebrate Joe's 25th. I wander over to the Harringay Arms feeling thoroughly rough - bloated and disgusting having spent the whole day getting over a hangover by putting away a few cans of Kronenbourg. Yuck. Regardless I sit with a nice big group of nice people and have a few more pints before writing off the central London idea and heading home at around 11pm. Having strung out a fairly heavy drinking session over so many hours leaves me feeling anything but drunk; more weary and full. I get home and watch a little of the interminable Football League show hoping to see the Rochdale highlights but end up falling asleep somewhere in the middle of League One.

The hens return shortly after I go to bed and I barely notice their arrival.

Friday

There's a sense of Things Happening today as I take the plunge and fire off an email to The Publisher to sort out a meeting at London Book Fair to discuss my book idea. Happily he says he'd be pleased to meet up with me so we set a time on the first day of the Fair. This is good - it means I now have a solid deadline to get my pitch and two or three sample chapters together. I'm thinking now that it would be to start with a jumping-off-point-type subtitle of "Things to Love About Modern Football" and then work from the resulting list.

It's all very exciting that I'll be able to put this in front of a sports publisher in three weeks or so having had it bouncing around in my head since the middle of last year. Hopefully I'll be able to make it convincing and interesting and maybe even a bit funny - I'm planning to make some time tomorrow or Sunday to start assembling things.

More good news today is that it's payday so after work me and the girls head to the Duke of Edinburgh for a quick drink. It's felt like a bit of a long week and it's nice to be at the weekend again with a chance, for me at least to have quite a quiet one. After a hasty pint I head home, stopping at Sainsbury's to grab some wine for K and her sister and pick up a wee Easter egg for each of them (because I'm nice like that) and a frozen pizza to take on board before heading to the Queens in Crouch End to meet Will and Nick.

It's a good night chatting away about football and new jobs and films and getting drunk on aeroplanes and flying business class and various other topics. It's also nice to spend some time in male company having seemingly had a few weirdly girly nights out lately (and, of course, working as the only man in an otherwise all-female department at work).

I get home shortly after midnight feeling rather content, having listened to Born Like This by DOOM very loudly on the iPod on the way back from the pub.

Thursday

K's twin sister arrives today and as it will be the first time the two have seen each other since their birthday we make plans to meet in the pub after work. There'll be a few people there and K's baked a cake for everyone to share. I pop home on my way back from the office to pick up K's twin's presents and get the tube to Holloway Road - as tonight will be a Big Red night.

Big Red is a good pub - unusual for where it is and a bit of a North London institution. Pitched squarely at the rockabilly-fanciers of the area they serve cheap lager and cider and, crucially, legendary chilli nachos. They also have plenty of space to sit, a jukebox that seems to play the same Black Sabbath and Rage Against the Machine records over and over again, a few pool tables and a men's toilet covered in some of the crudest and most rubbish graffiti ever seen outside a student bar. Big Red also has a collection of pretty stunning, heavily tattooed barmaids to complete the image most effectively. Flirting with these living-pinup-tattoos is a time-honoured late-night tradition, one that has doubtless resulted in a fair few well-placed "fuck off"s. Essentially its a really big, really silly and quite kitsch American-themed bar with greasy food and a good mix of greasers and student types keeping the place lively.

I like it a lot - and its a place that's been a regular fixture in my and K's relationship. We even planned to go there on our first date but it was full of people watching the Euro 2008 final.

So we go to Big Red tonight and there are a few friends waiting for us. K and her sister exchange presents and coo over various products that I think have something to do with knitting. Fair enough. We order plate of the chilli nachos and down a few of the reasonably-priced pints. A few more people turn up and we get a bit noisy and messy - mostly down to the cake though, I think.

We head home before it gets stupidly late - it is a school night after all - and ride the bendy 29 (otherwise known as the Free Bus for obvious easily-avoided-Oyster-reader-reasons) all the way there.

Wednesday

I sleep a sound and dreamless sleep for the first time in a couple of nights but still have to be more or less kicked out of bed. It is a beautiful day and while it is not hard to force myself to head outside it is hard to concentrate purely on work when I get there. It turns into the sort of day you remember from school when you'd be hunched over an exercise book with the heat from the sun on your back, your eyelids getting heavy and your body literally aching to go outside and play.

The feeling is much the same nowadays except rather than going out to play, by 4pm my body is aching to be sat with friends in a nice beer garden somewhere sipping a lovely glass of Kronenbourg. Shame.

Either way 5.30 does eventually roll round and, having just received my payslip, I toy with the idea of picking up some beers on the way home. I decide not to in the end as Thursday is planned to be a bit of a big night out when K's sister arrives to begin the weekend's "hen"festivities - and instead sit down to write an entry for Who Are Ya?!

It takes a while to come up with a theme but the one I have is good and the inspiration takes me for a while - until the Portsmouth v Chelsea match comes on BBC Radio 5live Sports Extra. Around halfway through the blog entry I am now completely distracted and instead listen to Steve Claridge talking mostly nonsense and get the distinct feeling that I am in an audience of one. There is a funny moment in the commentary as it transpires that the press box at Fratton Park is missing any sort of monitor on which to watch replays of the match; the equipment apparently having been sold off by the club's administrator.

I plan to finish the blog tomorrow or Friday - it's a good one and worth spending a bit of time on to get right, I think - and when K gets home from swimming we watch a little TV and another episode of Mad Men, which is getting better and better.

We've had three nights in in a row this week which is unusual for us (and especially for K). While this is the healthy and financially sensible option I do often find myself in need of some sort of night out by this point in the week. Had the Chelsea game been on TV I probably would have gone to the pub to watch it and scratched the itch that way. Never mind. Hopefully a few drinks tomorrow night will do the trick.