...and back to having to think of proper titles. Like this.

At work, Paul returned from San Francisco, where he went for just over a week. Paul, like me, hardly ever goes anywhere, so there was a certain amount of muted excitement at his return. In the moments before he arrived, Jo was craning her neck to see out of the staff room window, as though expecting some bronzed Adonis to appear. But no, he was still small and ginger. He said he saw a lot of bums. Tramps, I think he meant. Place is full of them, apparently.

A woman asked me to recommend a good book ‘for a man’. Easy: anything with a dark cover. Next!

Mat and Dave both went away at the weekend, so I had the place to myself. This whole enormous space! What would I do? What wouldn’t I do? I watched Making Your Mind Up, the programme in which our Eurovision entry is decided on, sadly missing, however, the moment in which Terry Wogan announced the wrong winner. People are taking Eurovision seriously now - or they’re extra desperate - so there were a lot of washed-up pop stars in the line-up of hopefuls. Justin Hawkins, formerly of The Darkness, was there, looking like Rupert Everett’s debauched younger brother. He was part of a double act called Hawkins and Brown, a good name for a firm of solicitors I thought. When Fearne Cotton asked him if he’d ‘always loved Eurovision’ he mumbled something to the effect that he had, especially since his career fell flat on its face seven months ago. It wasn’t a joke.

On the other hand, there was definitely a sense that people had made an effort this year, even with the throwaway stuff. ‘It isn’t easy being cheesy’, quipped a member of Scooch, who went on to prove this with a laboured routine in which they dressed up as air hostesses and air stewards and imitated planes flying. They made Steps look like The Horrors. And they won, of course.