A holiday weekend of ups and downs.

Leaving Fakenham Races £116 richer due to a succession of well-picked horses was a particular highlight. Definitely an ‘up’.

Leaving Fakenham Races minus my trousers, shoes and socks due to an Unfortunate Incident was less good. Bit of a ‘down’ there.

The highlight, however, had to be Oxford winning ‘University Challenge’, tragically my favourite TV programme.

Normally, I would cheer for the oiks, so an all-Oxbridge final would present me with a bit of a dilemma.

However, this series the Cambridge team has been captained by a chap called ‘Wallace’. Wallace, perhaps unfairly and for whatever reason, has made me want to commit some small act of random violence every time his ugly, smug, self-satisfied face has leered out of my TV screen. With all due respect.

So Oxford it was.

It’s always been my ambition to appear on ‘University Challenge’. Admittedly, as ambitions go it’s not up there with walking on the moon or finding a solution to the Arab-Israeli problem. But a man’s got to dream.

I blew my first chance when I failed my A-levels. And I think it unlikely that the ‘Professionals’ spin-off, in which they invite teams representative of different trades, will consider ‘people that sit around at home all day, occasionally doing a bit of this and that’.

However – inspiration! Perhaps they would accept a Bloggers’ team. They could pitch us against another profession that churn out shit on a regular basis – journalists from ‘Take a Break’ magazine, perhaps.

I would be able to cover questions on UK stand-up comedy, the novels of Peter Ackroyd and British confectionery (1975-present day). So all we’d need would be a particle physicist, a brain surgeon and a doctor of classics and theology and we’d be home and dry.

Any volunteers?

I hear a knock on the door!!!

This is a major event in the day. In the week, come to think of it. What’s more, the neighbours are away and Big A & his wife are at work. I have a MYSTERY VISITOR!!!

I can’t begin to describe the magnitude of my excitement. I feel like Tony Blair when they found those portable WMD labs.

The thing is, we have two doors.

We use the side door. It opens onto the conservatory, which is convenient. You can leave your muddy boots there and chuck your coat on the hook.

We don’t use the front door. It opens onto the back of my stereo system, which is inconvenient. It’s been opened twice in the last five years. I now forget that it is a door at all, and just think of it as a different-coloured piece of wall.

So I open the side door and nobody is there. Booooo!!! There is nobody at the door after all. Working here on my own has finally driven me mad. I am hearing people at doors.

I stomp back to the desk, disconsolate. Hang on. There is a shuffling, then a lady walks past the front window. There IS somebody at the door!!! I wave frantically at her, but she does not see me. She is escaping!!!

I sprint into the kitchen and hammer on the window, waving and gesticulating towards the side door. She hears me now. Oh yes, she hears me. “Don’t go away!!!” I mouth. “Please!!! Other door!!!” (point, point, wave, point).

‘I must get a sign made up,’ I think, as I run to the conservatory. Mentally, I compose some creative copy, finally settling on ‘Please Use Side Door’. Pleased with my efforts, I throw open the door.

By this point I am breathless and panting. She takes an alarmed step back. Then she hands me a leaflet about Jehovahs Witnessism.

I feel like Tony Blair when they discovered that they were portable balloon-inflating labs after all.

But a visitor’s a visitor. Human contact!

“I’m interrupting,” says Mystery Visitor who is no longer Mystery Visitor.

“No!!!” I reply, perhaps a little too quickly.

“Anyway, there’s the leaflet. I won’t stop. I can see you’re busy”.

I glance around, wondering what evidence at all she has to support this. I’m not busy. Reading Porny Boy Curtis can wait. This is a real, live, in-the-flesh, human being.

“I’m sorry?”

“Did I say that out loud?”

But by this point, she is turning to leave. I jabber something about the weather. She starts to run. That last bit could just be my imagination. But I stand at the doorway, and hang my head.

I have been spurned by the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

I hear a knock on the door!!!

This is a major event in the day. In the week, come to think of it. What’s more, the neighbours are away and Big A & his wife are at work. I have a MYSTERY VISITOR!!!

I can’t begin to describe the magnitude of my excitement. I feel like Tony Blair when they found those portable WMD labs.

The thing is, we have two doors.

We use the side door. It opens onto the conservatory, which is convenient. You can leave your muddy boots there and chuck your coat on the hook.

We don’t use the front door. It opens onto the back of my stereo system, which is inconvenient. It’s been opened twice in the last five years. I now forget that it is a door at all, and just think of it as a different-coloured piece of wall.

So I open the side door and nobody is there. Booooo!!! There is nobody at the door after all. Working here on my own has finally driven me mad. I am hearing people at doors.

I stomp back to the desk, disconsolate. Hang on. There is a shuffling, then a lady walks past the front window. There IS somebody at the door!!! I wave frantically at her, but she does not see me. She is escaping!!!

I sprint into the kitchen and hammer on the window, waving and gesticulating towards the side door. She hears me now. Oh yes, she hears me. “Don’t go away!!!” I mouth. “Please!!! Other door!!!” (point, point, wave, point).

‘I must get a sign made up,’ I think, as I run to the conservatory. Mentally, I compose some creative copy, finally settling on ‘Please Use Side Door’. Pleased with my efforts, I throw open the door.

By this point I am breathless and panting. She takes an alarmed step back. Then she hands me a leaflet about Jehovahs Witnessism.

I feel like Tony Blair when they discovered that they were portable balloon-inflating labs after all.

But a visitor’s a visitor. Human contact!

“I’m interrupting,” says Mystery Visitor who is no longer Mystery Visitor.

“No!!!” I reply, perhaps a little too quickly.

“Anyway, there’s the leaflet. I won’t stop. I can see you’re busy”.

I glance around, wondering what evidence at all she has to support this. I’m not busy. Reading Porny Boy Curtis can wait. This is a real, live, in-the-flesh, human being.

“I’m sorry?”

“Did I say that out loud?”

But by this point, she is turning to leave. I jabber something about the weather. She starts to run. That last bit could just be my imagination. But I stand at the doorway, and hang my head.

I have been spurned by the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Insular and self-absorbed post alert. Please scroll down for more interesting stuff.

The strapline’s changed.

There was a very good reason for the former strapline. That is, you need to choose one before Blogger will let you get on and write anything.

As sitting down and thinking about it would have been tantamount to reading the instructions before starting to use a dangerous new power tool, I didn’t bother.

It was, and is, still relevant. I am still worried about all the things that I was worried about before. To wit: ever since I’ve been working here on my own devoid of any human contact, I’ve been turning into a small-minded tight-fisted anal-retentive mentalist.

But I thought that it reinforced the Meldrew connotations of the blog title a little too much.

I don’t even like the ‘I don’t believe it’ title. Again, it was done off the top of my head. I’m still worried that it implies that I’m the sort of crazy guy that stands in the pub quoting catchphrases from well-known British comedy programmes.

Like smeg I am.

I won’t change the title now, as people have been kind enough to link to me, and it would cause them inconvenience.

If I did change it, I’d take a leaf from the Yellow Pages and rebrand myself AAAA1 AARDVARK BLOG SERVICES LTD. It would get me to the top of lists and stuff.

So we’re now ‘Broadcasting Live from Norfolk’. We’ll see how that goes.

My Sunday newspaper wasn’t there!!!

The shop is closed on Sunday. Pre-ordered newspapers are left in a box outside. You pay when you next pass by, or leave some money in the box.

It’s a good arrangement. The paper shop marketing people should consider introducing it in London.

But mine wasn’t there. Some catastrophic breakdown in the supply chain had led to none of the newspapers being there – except three copies of The Mail on Sunday. Who says that evil doesn’t triumph in the end?

So an awkward situation yesterday, as I had to tell The Lady In The Shop.

The Lady In The Shop is incredibly nice, and I am an English Male, so what really should have been a straightforward conversation (‘my Sunday newspaper wasn’t there’, ‘oh, I’m terribly sorry’, ‘not to worry, I got one later on from the petrol station, just thought you ought to know’) was always doomed to descend into a flurry of mumbling self-guilt and apologies.

Perhaps I hadn’t looked hard enough. Perhaps it had somehow tucked itself inside one of the other newspapers, between ‘New Euro Law to Release all Paedophiles’ and ‘All Women Are Slags’.

WHY am I unable to be confrontational? I skulked back home, feeling small.

Lunchtime’s nadir TV: ‘Through the Keyhole’. The panel: Ian McCaskill, Niamh Cusack and Richard Whiteley. The guest: a man from Hartbeat. I know he was a man from Hartbeat, because the BBC had added ‘A Man from Hartbeat’ in the caption under his name.

Far be it for me to shoot fish in barrels, but…

Yeaahh!!! Lads night!!! (part two)

So with the world our masculine oyster, we settled down around Big A’s dining table on Saturday night to immerse ourselves in the turn-based WW2 strategy board game ‘Axis and Allies’.

And there I was, implying to you that we’d be going over the top with something wild and dangerous. Toying with your expectations. Like an evil puppetmaster.

This is what my life has become.

Should I be worried that I’ve reached the point where immersing myself in a turn-based WW2 strategy board game is more attractive than drinking and whoring my way around the bright city lights of King’s Lynn?

‘Axis and Allies’ does actually teach you a lot about history. Like for instance how the war must have been so much more fun for the Germans, as they had loads of extra tanks and stuff to play with. And the fact that it was probably a bad idea for the Japanese to annoy the Americans. I may email Simon Schama with my unique insights.

If you include the setting up, the games tend to last longer than the actual war itself did, and by the end Short Tony had lost interest and Narcoleptic Dave had gone to sleep.

This, of course, was preceded by the Grand National. I never have any luck with the Grand National. I believe that last year my jockey set some kind of record by falling off before he even reached the first fence.

Of course the best thing about Grand National day is the atmosphere in the bookies beforehand. There’s always that vibrancy and buzz that comes from a big once-a-year sporting event, that shared sense of occasion. I try to imagine this as I sit alone in front of ladbrokes.com.

And you know the saddest thing about my Saturday? I actually wrote out betting slips for myself, with a felt-tip pen and post-it notes. It was forward planning. I knew then that I could have the small pleasure of tearing them up and throwing them on the floor.

Please. Just kill me now.

Tomorrow is ‘girls night’.

The LTLP has invited Short Tony’s wife, Big A’s wife and Narcoleptic Dave’s wife round for ‘a pampering evening’.

(Memo – must think up names for the female characters that allow them each an identity in their own right).

Two beauticians are driving over from Norwich to administer pedicures, massages, eyebrow grooming and the like, whilst they all presumably drink white wine and pick at olives.

So it’s ‘lads night’ as well. I’ve been looking forward to this for ages. We do so little that isn’t couple-related. We go to the pub together. We visit the cinema together. If I see my mates, it’s in the context of a couples’ dinner party with pasta-based dishes and Norah Jones.

But tomorrow is ‘lads night’. It’s back to the wildness of my youth.

Ignoring the fact that I spent most of my wild youth friendless in my bedroom with Crash magazine and Jet Set Willy, I start making plans.

For a start, Narcoleptic Dave has a huge great TV system. In fact, it’s so impressive, it could be described as a ‘huge great fuck-off TV system’. So the immediate thought is that we get some beers and rent ‘Porky’s’. Yeaahh!! Lads night!!

(Memo – must think up a better name for Narcoleptic Dave)

Then there’s the field possibility. I reckon, given a few cans of Kestrel and some cheap sherry, we could have a great ‘revisit our youth’ evening huddled in the field behind the cottage trying to grab sad glimpses of the girls in their underwear.

Clearly, as we are blokes, we won’t organise anything until around half an hour before the event. As opposed to the girls night, which has been planned like a military campaign.

That analogy doesn’t really work these days, does it?

I shall let you know what happens on Monday. Yeaahh!!! Lads night!!!