Sunday 22nd August

There is an episode of The Vicar of Dibley, of which my mother is very fond, where Dawn French (who, incidentally, is great in the new BBC4 sitcom Roger & Val Have Just Got In), through a series of polite commitments, has to eat three roast dinners in one day. Generally preferring my comedy a little edgier than Dibley, I'm no massive fan of the series, but it is funny watching her stagger from one meal to the next, looking like she's ready to burst. I mention it because today, K and I are facing the prospect of two consecutive roast lunches either side of the M5.

We had originally intended to be back in Gillingham, stopping off on the way back to London, for Sunday lunch, but when it became clear that our Cornish hosts were kindly going to lay on a roast for us here, we sent the message to cancel. Unfortunately, the message was never received – so K's poor mum is slaving over the lunch even as we wake up. It now looks like we'll be eating here, driving to Dorset and eating again. Part of me is quite pleased – who doesn't love a nice roast (or two) after all? - but I do hope that the portions are more modest than they appear in the gentle C of E-based comedies of my youth.

This morning is a lazy affair, spent watching Tim Lovejoy make an arse of himself attempting to coherently “present” Something for the Weekend (in the words of Alan Partridge, he couldn't present a...cat) while Louise Redknapp looks on, utterly vacant. We achieve very little before lunch, save for eating breakfast – there is something pleasantly soporific about Matt and Ellie's living room that induces total inertia from around 9am to 1pm, w hen Matt arrives with the beautifully roast chicken, cabbage, potatoes and broad beans braised in milk. It's relentlessly delicious, and serves as an excellent farewell after exactly the relaxed couple of days in the country I had hoped for.

We make our way back to Gillingham at around 2.30 and I spend the majority of the journey destroying my phone battery by staring in wonderment at the newly-discovered GPS function on my phone. I travel in cars very rarely, so a chance to use Android's very impressive GPS system shouldn't go to waste – despite the fact that K (who's driving) knows exactly where she's going and doesn't especially need me piping up with redundant directions every five minutes. We arrive in good time, getting through the door just as K's harassed-looking mother is serving up “lunch” (though it's now getting on for 5.30pm). Thankfully it's a completely different setup to Matt and Ellie's roast, this time treating us to roast beef and veg – and I even partake of a little red wine while we go over, for the first time, some of the wedding details with K's parents. I had been briefly concerned about how much they were engaging with the idea, but now it seems that they are on the same page as us, having even gone as far as to visit the ceremony venue early this morning.

After stuffing ourselves with food for the second time today, it gets to the time when we need to head back to London. We walk down to the station to catch the 18.50 train to Waterloo, which is predictably busy on a Sunday evening, but I manage to squeeze my laptop onto the wee fold down table in front of me and catch up with some writing. We finally get home just before ten – meaning that I'm in time for Match of the Day 2 and able to catch up with the weekend's results (including a brilliant second consecutive 6-0 win for Chelsea) and yesterday's goals. By the time it's over, though, we're both utterly shattered, and it's time for bed and back to the working-week way of thinking.