FIRE!

There was yet another fire alarm at work. There seems to be a sinister intention to show us just how few people are actually left in the centre. Every time there's noticeably less, so it's a bit like being in a horror film where characters are being picked off one by one - only less fun.

We are currently being encouraged to 'Go BIG Early', which means reporting potential 'critical incidents' as soon as we notice anything 'out of the ordinary'. Which sounds to me like a licence to run around screaming and waving your arms around every time an insect flies in the window - I can hardly wait for it to be put into practice.

Meanwhile, in the office, Jeremy Vine on Radio 2 was discussing the story of some girls who were arrested for picking daffodils in the park. This story is certainly good tabloid fodder with its lively opposition of contrasting cliches: the innocent young girls skipping through the park with their Easter baskets full of flowers being surrounded by armed police and carted off to prison to be brutalised. It reminded Lorraine of the dog poo bins in Doddinghurst, which had been set alight by youths. 'They should do a programme about that', she said. I agreed that it would certainly put those leaking Japanese nuclear reactors into perspective.

Doddinghurst sounds like fun. I recall Lorraine's account of a 'donkey derby' there at which someone's big dog attacked someone else's smaller dog, and, in order to get it to unlock its jaws, someone set fire to it with a cigarette lighter. This proved so popular, that they now do it every year.