further signs of the imminent apocalypse

The main problem with going to the cinema over and over again is the ads. You get to see them a lot – and what a pitiful crop there is at the moment. Sports stars seem to be the flavour of the month, as if anybody still remembers the Olympics! If they aren't flogging Red Bull by telling you how important it is to be 'in the zone' (and what does that have to do with me?, I wonder) they are mysteriously appearing inside people's houses to tell them about Santander's mortgage deals. The people concerned (one of them is Karl from Pulling, now reaching the apotheosis of his career as Man Opening Fridge) look unsettled and embarrassed at the materialisation of Jensen Button or whoever it is in their kitchens and living rooms. Who are you and why are you telling me this?, they seem to be thinking – coincidentally my reaction to the Red Bull ads. Cleverly Santander have taken my own reaction from me and manifested it on the screen, so where does that leave me, I ask you?

Frankly, pissed off.

Then there's a woman archly describing to a friend her Canadian holiday in terms of a 'passionate affair', in what seems to be a heroic attempt to associate Canada with rampant sex. I wish the advertisers well in their endeavour, but am struck by the woman's (strikingly orange) friend, who is meant, I suppose, to look envious and intrigued, but instead looks merely uncomfortable, like she has stumbled in from an advert for Immodium. It's a non-speaking part, but she really makes the most of it I think, implanting in my mind a definite association between Canada and the general region of the lower bowel which I'm fairly sure wasn't there before.

Finally, there's a Shetland pony being made by computers to dance, in an advertisement for – I dunno, the internet or something. All this modern technology, and what have we achieved? Have we solved world hunger? No, but we have made a pony look like it's doing the moonwalk. This is exactly why our civilisation is doomed. Nostradamus foresaw this (and also, according to some translations, the Harlem Shake), and if he is to be believed, you should be putting down your i-phones and making your peace with God right now, folks.

IMHO

Some caller on Jeremy Vine (but it was Vanessa Feltz on this occasion) was telling Vanessa that they're fed up to the back teeth with homosexuality being 'constantly forced down our throats.' Yes, but it isn't really being forced down your throat, is it? Or at least (since I don't know what goes on in your private life), surely not constantly. If it was being forced down your throat constantly, I wouldn't have to hear you speak. So I think, on balance, that it's a good thing. At least when it comes to your throat.

I'm sure that most of the opinions that come through to Jeremy Vine aren't from 'the public' at all, they just come up with them in the studio, putting on funny voices if necessary. I expect Paul Whitehouse is involved. How else to account for the woman who disapproved of Polish immigrants because 'you never see them in Waitrose'? On the same topic, someone rang in to say that if you walked through Hereford with your eyes shut, you'd think that you were in Poland. It is not the 'shocking' image of Hereford-as-Warsaw that lingers in the mind upon hearing this, but the more startling one of the 'native' Herefordians stumbling through the place like a bunch of sleepwalkers. Perhaps the place could do with some livening up? More immigration would probably help.

The presenters are just as bad. Matthew Bannister, standing in for JV after the Eastleigh by-election, said to some Lib Dem: 'You've got sleaze in the party!', making it sound like dry rot – you half-expected him to say that he'd spotted some on the guy's shirt ('It's disgusting, like some kind of black snot'). Meanwhile, the Tory representative was told that the party was paying the price for their focus on 'gay marriage and wind farms'. Or how about the ultimate traditional Tory-voter's nightmare, the gay wind farm? Changing the subject slightly, Gay Wind Farm sounds like it would make a great musical – the next Book Of Mormon maybe. I shall write it! See if I don't.

Keep Out Of The Reach Of Children

The worst thing about living where I do now is a too-abrupt transition between my world (inside) and the world (outside). At Mayfield Gardens, I would have a garden path to walk down, and a succession of increasingly busy roads to negotiate before hitting the town. Here I step out right onto the pavement with all the drunks and mad people. It's too soon, I'm screaming in my head. It's a wonder I ever leave the house.

On the other hand, it's handy for the pubs and the curry house. Not that I go very often. Last time I went to the curry house it wasn't after a hard night's drinking. It was at six, and that was because the kids were there. Not that it was any less rowdy - quite the reverse.

I found myself down the end of the table where all the action was: Nicki had brought some rubber balls that lit up when thrown at the floor, so these were distributed into the eager hands of young Christopher, younger Sam and even younger Nicholas, and things really got rolling, until Vicki felt it necessary to call out: 'Everyone hold onto your balls!' In case that wasn't enough to occupy them, an i-pad was then produced, but instead of exerting a hypnotic spell over the children it soon became just something else to squabble over.

Although there were only three children, they seemed to create a commotion that was much larger than themselves. 'I'm going to do a poo!', thundered Sam with all the gravitas of the CEO of a multinational corporation, as he disappeared under the table for the thousandth time; while Nicholas, eager to claim his share of his brother Christopher's chair, invested the phrase 'budge up' with an anguished intensity it was never really meant to accommodate. Though once there he only contemplated the i-pad with a frown of statesmanlike self-importance, as if he was watching all twenty-six episodes of The World At War instead of whatever it was. Cars.

Then the power rangers came out. (One of them is called Kevin. You wouldn't expect that, would you?) And somewhere in the midst of all this a curry was ordered and eaten.

Then Christopher 'fired me' with a device which was meant to make me 'freeze'. 'I don't think it's working', I suggested, when I continued to move freely, but he only turned it on his Dad, who did obligingly cease to move for a moment. 'Maybe it's the angle', I improvised, but by then something else of life-changing importance had occurred to him.

By the end of it all, I imagine that the curry house staff were looking forward to the inevitable invasion of beered-up Essex boys and girls, figuring that it would come as a relief. And I don't want you to think that these are badly-behaved children. As I understand it, this is normal. That's the hell of it.

I went to the pub with Ross and Christine, who haven't yet caught the 'child' virus, though it's only a matter of time. I don't imagine Ross having noisy kids though - more brooding silent ones like the two little girls in The Shining. I think he's planning to keep them in some kind of cupboard.