I found a bottle of beer. Charrington’s ‘Bi-Centenary Ale’. It must have been granddad’s.

My grandmother has moved into sheltered accommodation, and we’ve been clearing out her place. There is a certain type of china that is only ever found in old ladies’ houses and, boy, I now have plenty to spare.

Finding the beer was a bit of a shock. Granddad passed away twenty-five years ago, for a start, and this had been sitting on a shelf undisturbed and unopened since then. When you also take into account that the bi-centenary of Charrington’s brewery was, in fact, in 1957, this gives you one hell of a historic pint.

It’s miraculous it survived. Not that it didn’t get chucked away or knocked over or whatever, but… well – to put it tactfully – I get the impression that bottles of beer didn’t stay unopened around my granddad for long.

He was an interesting character. A granddad less like the popular Clive Dunn model would be difficult to find. Although I do think the song and TV show would have been improved immensely, had it been performed by a hearty, robust, red-faced Australian. With two false legs.

People say I look a bit like granddad, and I’m not sure how to take that.

Anyway, I took the bottle of beer. I thought I’d bring it back here, and drink a toast to him. I’d then keep the bottle as an ornament. I didn’t particularly expect the beer to be drinkable, but I was interested to see.

It would have been very moving, had the bottle not emptied itself all over the boot on the journey home.

Forty-seven years that bottle lasted intact. Now my car stinks of yeast.

Fishmonger!! I am indebted to Peter for ‘fishmonger’, which would have saved a whole lot of trouble from the word go. It’s one of those words that doesn’t get used much these days, and I feel that it’s part of our collective duty to cherish such phrases and to keep them alive. Although I won’t get much chance to contribute personally, being that the fish shop has… oh well, never mind.

So I stomped in yesterday evening, wishing that I’d gone for my third transport option – quicker, cheaper and more reliable. That is, to position myself outside the house with my briefcase and newspaper and wait for continental drift to carry me gradually South, until Norfolk was situated just adjacent to Surrey and I could do the whole journey in a brief stroll.

The real problem with transport in this country is not slowness, or even cost. It’s the fact that it’s just so teeth-grittingly unreliable. Train X might well be scheduled to get you to your Terribly Important Meeting on time, but to be safe you have to catch the one an hour beforehand. Likewise, it might take you an hour to get across the QE Bridge and round the M25, or it might take you three.

See. I told you this would be boring.

So, with apologies to the enthusiastic man from NASA, I find myself completely unable to get worked up about their new Scram Jet. Frankly, I just can’t get excited about being able to reach New York in seven seconds if I’ve just endured a four hour crawl to Heathrow Airport and a further three at check in being strip-searched for hidden toenail clippers.

And – forgive my cynicism – but there is just a teeny-weeny suspicion that the technology might go to the military before it’s passed on to the likes of EasyJet.

I check the website of Norwich International Airport, and as far as I can see they have no immediate plans to introduce scram jets on their flights. For the time being, I will stick with long weekends in Britain.

I have a Terribly Important Meeting tomorrow.

It’s been arranged for 10.30am, in Surrey. Which might seem reasonable to some, but from my point of view it may as well be taking place on Mars.

I have two options as to how to get there.

Get in the car, drive down through the Fens praying not to encounter any beet lorry convoys or eighty year-old caravanners, skirt the Cambridge rush hour, down onto the M25 to hit the traffic, brave the bridge at Dartford then motor round the stockbroker belt with an AA street atlas balanced on my knees whilst simultaneously trying to scan for street names, talk on the hands-free and change CDs on the stereo.

Remortgage the house and send the LTLP out to work the streets. This would enable me to buy a train ticket. Then I could drive twenty miles to the nearest station, and trust that the long BR journey/two tubes/short BR journey will pass with no problems whatsoever. Get a cab. Then reverse the process, but in the evening rush hour.

There is nothing – nothing – more boring than listen to peoples’ detailed moans about their travel nightmares. Therefore, in anticipation, I suggest you skip Tuesday’s post, and we’ll return to amusing anecdotes and stuff on Wednesday.

A final word of clarification on the last post, following on from a couple of emails:

‘Chippy’ = place where they sell pre-prepared meals, for immediate consumption. Still open, thank goodness.

‘Fish Shop’ = place where you source raw ingredients to cook yourself. Like a greengrocer’s. But with fish.

The fish shop has closed.

The fish shop has closed!!!

I went to the fish shop, to buy some fish. But I couldn’t get any fish, because the fish shop has closed.

Black waves of depressed old-gittishness engulf me, as I stand outside the closed fish shop, reading the ‘thank you for your previous custom’ notice. This what Britain is like in the twenty-first century. Fear of terrorism. Crumbling transport infrastructure. Fish shops closing.

‘Shop’ is probably a grand term for it. It was a shack at the back of somebody’s house, where the fish shop lady used to sell her husband’s catch, plus other stuff she’d got from the markets. In season you could pick up pheasants or partridges for a couple of quid as well.

I should write to John Prescott. It’s all very well making a song and dance about rural post offices, but where the hell am I going to get hold of a sea bass now?

I now wish I’d gone in there more often. But it does confirm the old commercial maxim that a business isn’t viable unless its trade has been the basis of at least one successful situation comedy.

They are still selling mussels from a hutch at the front, with an honesty box that looks suspiciously like an old ice-cream tub. I take a big bag and leave my two pounds fifty. I don’t even like mussels. But it seems appropriate.

The LTLP had a bad day at work yesterday. And a lousy commute this morning.

Consequently, I have been threatened with death should I produce another horrible dinner.

I blame Dr Atkins. He has been quite good to us in some ways, but bears full responsibility for the fact that I seem to have completely forgotten how to cook.

A month of ‘Cheese on a Bed of Eggs’, ‘Pan-fried Eggs with a Julienne of Cheese’ and – my favourite – ‘Oeuf et Fromage Surprise’ sort of sapped my will to create in the kitchen department, and now we’re back to eating normally I’m afraid my Ramsay is more Alf than Gordon.

So tonight it’s back to basics with a can’t-fail new-man treat-her-like-a-goddess banker evening. A crispy, crackly baked pasta stuffed with smoked bacon, tomato and pepper. Nicely chilled Sav Blanc on the side. And the video of yesterday’s ‘University Challenge’, which promised to be an exciting quarter-final battle between London Met and some Cambridge college.

Now come on ladies. Don’t say you wouldn’t just FALL into bed after that…

Off to the in-laws this morning.

That means a long car journey and, more to the point, an argument about what music to play.

CD collections in a relationship are like Venn diagrams. On the left there’s a big circle containing the stuff I like. The LTLP would like it as well, if she made more of an effort.

On the right, there’s a big circle containing the stuff she likes. Which is all rubbish. Clearly.

There’s a small overlappy bit in the middle containing the stuff that we both like. So that’s what we tend to listen to. It’s a well-known fact that you can go through a ten-year relationship and only actually play three CD’s.

The Proclaimers’ Greatest Hits it is again, then.

All together now:

“When you gooooooo….”

Have a good weekend, y’all.

I have to come to terms with this. Downshifting: no regrets, no stress, lovely part of the world, nice people, work on my own terms. However I am going loopy at the lack of human contact in my day to day routine.

My day yesterday:

Got up
Did laundry
Went to dentist
Worked at PC
Picked up newspaper
Worked at PC
Watched telly
Went to bed

As you see, this was an eventful day for me, as I went to the dentist. I think it summarises nicely if I say that I was quite looking forward to this, as it meant I would meet another human being.

I walk in to the waiting room, which is packed, neatly encapsulating the state of NHS dentistry in this country. I sit next to an old lady, who smells of wee. She constantly turns to her elderly husband and asks if she’ll be all right. Every forty-five seconds or so.

Over the twenty minutes that I wait, his replies escalate from “of course you’ll be all right”, through “will you stop worrying! You’ll be all right!”, reaching “look, I’m not going to tell you again. It’ll be fine” and finally “will you just sit there and shut it!” – which is when I’m called in.

Look – I know it’s cheap having a go at dentists. But honestly, I’ve never had a problem in the past.

He calls it a ‘descale’ but it feels like a drill. He starts on the delicate bits against my gums and I’m astonished at the speed at which he seems to develop an advanced form of Parkinson’s. Three minutes later and I’m out of there, a mouthful of blood, sandpapering the tip of my tongue along the back of my bottom teeth.

“Now. Can we book you in for six month’s time?” asks the receptionist sweetly, charging me fourteen quid.

“Great. Thanks.”