…multiple choice.

There has been a veritable chocolate egg famine since the end of my childhood and then suddenly this year – boom – an egg explosion (I’ll refrain from saying egg-splosion) with eggs coming from every direction.

A Darth Vader egg from Paul to me, an After Eight egg from me to him, six creme eggs between us from mum and Andrew, a Flake egg from Helen, and two Nestle eggs from Paul’s aunt. That’s five full eggs and six creme eggs between us. It’s a conspiracy to make us fat. Fortunately I have steered clear of them all so far, and had my best session in the gym for ages tonight. Running, rowing, cross-training and cycling. Very aerobic-biassed, I guess, but at least they are all calorie burners, so they would have got rid of the remnants of the cake we ate at Trevor and Jon’s this evening. Likewise, last night’s run hopefully got rid of the massive Easter lunch we had at Paul’s mum’s, after which Kaevarn roundly beat me 2:1 at Rummikub.

And so tonight is my last night of cat sitting. I find that quite sad, actually. She is curled up here on the end of the bed as I type, purring away. She is very affectionate at night-time, and will happily come and sit on your lap as you read your book. That’s not something she’d do when the sun was up for fear of being seen by the rest of the neighbourhood gatos.

Tomorrow I move back home, so I have tidied up here and restocked the fridge after a hellish bank-holiday trip to Tesco. People in there are so rude. I was stepping aside to let a man the size of a cross channel ferry squeeze by with his trolley when a woman and her kids went blazing through, forcing us all out of the way. No please, thanks or excuse me.

The captain of the ferry just looked at me and raised his eyebrows, then hauled anchor and moved on.

Does anybody want a free settee (or ‘sofa’, if you prefer)? I have decided that it is best to let the flat unfurnished, so it’s time to say goodbye to what has been a trusty friend for the last few years. It’s very comfortable, and I have spent many nights sleeping on it, as it is actually better than my bed – particularly when you’re still awake at three in the morning looking at the ceiling. Switching from the bed to the settee – on which I could stretch out full length – was always enough to have me fast asleep in minutes, and I’d not wake up again until morning.

It’s in good condition, and I’ll even throw in the yellow cushions.

Free to a good home, but you have to pick it up or arrange collection from Chelmsford, which for those who have never been here is about 25 miles from London.

Tradition apparently dictates that we go out for dinner on Good Friday. I’m sure this must be the case, but as I can’t remember when all the Good Fridays of the last few years were, I can’t go back and check.

So anyhow, after a day of being generally limp and lazy, flopping around in the conservatory reading my book while the cat darted around in the meadow, I zizzed over to Mark T’s and we drove into London. Personally I hate driving in London, but you can’t deny that cruising through Docklands at night, and then up the Embankment to Parliament is one of the most visually spectacular journeys you can make. There really is nowhere else like it, and I was quite content to sit in the back and gaze out of the window as the world swept by.

We were booked into a Polish restaurant in South Kensington, but very nearly didn’t get there at all. Ystabub’s directions were from the tube station, and read ‘turn left out of the station, then left again and it’s on the corner’. A more accurate telling would have been turn right out of the station and then right again…

As such, we ended up going down some dark and dangerous alley (if there is such a think in South Kensington) and then retracing our steps to a very tumbledown-looking grotto on said corner.

Very bizarre inside. Reminded me of my first trip to Prague, years ago, before it got so popular. They had a noisy dumb waiter (surely a contradiction in terms) and broken panelling on the walls. The salt and pepper pots looked home made, and the loo was smaller than our understairs cupboard. The food was… interesting.

The ‘mushroom’ dish had no mushrooms in it. Instead, it was rolled cabbage stuffed with mashed potato. Most of the meat seemed to be veal, and everything else was either cabbage or beetroot. Despite that, though, it was all very very nice.

I started with the Ukrainian beetroot soup, which was very sweet and very rich, and seemed to have a layer of grass clippings on top, like it had been blended using a Flymo. After that, the Polish Vegetarian Platter, which was immediately renamed vegetarian splatter in honour of what it was likely to do to your insides. This consisted of a fried potato pancake (very yummy), sauerkraut (less yummy, but not as bad as kimchi), a pancake that had been rolled up and stuffed with cabbage (yummy-ish, and perfectly edible) and three small crumpled things that looked like human ears, which had been stuffed with cabbage (kind of pasty and not very yummy at all).

We finished with ice cream and yet more pancakes.

Overall, it wasn’t bad food. Very basic and very cheap (

Yesterday was Julian’s last day. After 14 years, he was leaving the magazine, so we took him out for lunch and then went for a drink after work to celebrate his new-found freedom.

We weren’t entirely surprised that he arrived late for his own leaving lunch. Fortunately we were eating just down the road, and it was very casual, but we had bought him some very appropriate presents: alarm clocks. Eight of them, so we could each give him one, each wrapped and disguised in a different way so he wouldn’t know what they were when we first passed them over.

They were all each set to go off at half one, too, leaving him with pockets stuffed full of ringing clocks, and the owner of the restaurant looking very confused. Their beeping was identical to the beeps made by the keys of his till.

We mooched back to work a couple of hours late and did some proofing, before bowling upstairs to eat cake as he was given his proper presents, and then decamped to the pub.

Considering how long he’d been there, it wasn’t surprising just about everyone had turned out to see him on his way – including some people who haven’t worked at – or for – the magazine in years.

Had a phone call from the agent looking after my flat in the meantime. She’s found another tenant, apparently, although they don’t want to rent somewhere furnished. I’d say that actually meant she hadn’t found another tenant considering I said specifically that I wanted to let it furnished, but… hmmm. So, what do I do? Do I take out all the furniture, dispose of some of it and see what of the rest I can re-house, or do I stick to my guns, pass up the potential of another

I’m cat sitting. The last time I did this, it was a bit of a thrill to come and live in a big house for a week, and when I went home the flat felt poky and small. Now, though, I live in a bigger house than this one, and it doesn’t feel quite the same.

It used to be a bit of a thrill to come here and have so many channels on Sky: a bit step up from my five or six on Freeview. Now, though, I have Sky+, which we don’t have here, so if anything I feel a little bit trimmed.

It is lovely to spend time with the cat, though, and of course there’s the conservatory, which will be nice over the Easter weekend. It’s nice to have a bit of a break, and feels almost like going on a mini holiday. It’s also nice to get away from the clutter of everyday life. I have just my iBook and some reading books here, and have spent this evening doing barely more than very very little indeed. I had a run, I showered, I ate dinner and found a half-finished bottle of wine that needed some attention, so am slumped in front of something telly-wise about the Italian navy and the Second World War.

I can’t faff on with the letters I need to write, or the mortgage forms that need filling out.

In all honesty, I could quite get used to these nights of lazy nothingness.

So, my suspicions were correct: I don’t have a tenant at all.

I rang the agent this morning and asked her how things were going. She explained that she had re-advertised but that she wasn’t too hopeful. I explained that I didn’t even know the original tenants hadn’t moved in, so had gone ahead and registered them. She explained that she had sent an email. I explained that it hadn’t arrived, and that emails don’t just go missing – especially not as I’d already had a mail from her a couple of weeks ago, so she’s not getting filtered out by my spam trap.

Ho-hum.

So what now? Well, I’ll stick with her for another couple of weeks and see how things go with this new advert. She wants me to let it unfurnished, but I’m reluctant to do that. Although I could take my bed, table and chairs to bits so they could be stored easily enough, I would have to get rid of the settee and don’t know what I would do with the fridge, freezer and washing machine, so I’m reluctant to go down that path.

Fortunately a very nice dinner with Emilie, Kathryn and Mark took my mind off it all this evening. We started in the Alphabet Bar (I don’t think we ever start anywhere else) where Mark showed us the spider bites on his hands. How he managed to get them in a posh air-conditioned fourth-floor apartment in the middle of Sydney, I don’t know, but they were apparently from a white tail, which is apparently worse than a red back, which is apparently bad indeed.

We ate Thai at some place I’d never been to before despite the fact it is just off one side of Carnaby Street, and then made plans over coffee in Amalfi, which for years and years and years while Lorraine was still alive was the de facto venue for PCW’s Christmas lunch. I’d not been in there since.

So, we settled on a weekend trip down to Southend to play bingo, followed by a Carry On evening around at ours.

White trash a go-go.

I’m starting to suspect, quite seriously, that I don’t actually have a tenant at all.

I’ve been checking my account each day to see when the agent has paid in the first month’s rent, but so far… nothing. She has also ignored my email asking if all went well with the move.

So, getting curious, I drove around to the flat yesterday morning, and although I obviously didn’t go up there and walk straight in it certainly doesn’t look occupied from the outside. There is nothing on any of the windowsills – not even in the kitchen – and from what I could see if the shelving, there were no personal belongings on display.

Feeling somewhat pensive, I wandered into town to buy some new jeans and flicked through the Chronicle in WHSmith. There was an advert from my agent hawking a flat that sounded suspiciously similar to mine, in the same location and at an identical price.

Now there’s no guarantee that is my flat. There are quite a lot of that design, but then my road is two towns away from their office, so it isn’t exactly in their usual territory, which does make me wonder… and it would explain the absence of any money.

So much for having another couple lined up to move in right away if the ones she’d got sorted out fell through.

I’ll call her on Monday morning. I’m not worried about it not working out with that first pair – she can’t help it if it doesn’t work out – but maintaining radio silence and letting me go ahead with paying to register the new non-tennants with the building management company, and then write letters to the council telling them to redirect the council tax bills to two people who aren’t even living there is very naughty.

The rest of the day was much more productive. I found two pairs of jeans, sat in the sun by the river, went to the gym and then, in the evening, out to dinner with mum for her birthday. Sal and Dan had come over for the weekend, so there were six of us all told and after eating in Margaretting we went back to Galleywood for coffee with the balding cat. Poor thing looks like she’s got chicken legs now. And not very meaty ones, either.

How quickly the years fly by. Last night was the Creative St Patrick’s party, which is always well attended and well worth attending. It barely seems a year since I was falling down the stairs at the end of the last one and somehow staggering to the station.

This year I was much better behaved: a single pint of Guinness to avoid slumping back into illness, and far too much of the greasy food that was doing the rounds. I probably shouldn’t have gone, but I was on one of those post-ill highs when you feel as fresh and bouncy as a lamb in a field of fresh mint. Besides, the sun had been shining all day – so much so that it was far too hot to walk around with a coat, and there was topless bathing in the square behind John Lewis – so the whole city felt smiley.

Today was much the same. Full of brightness, with the sun full on my desk all day, which makes for blinding proofing.

Popped into Virgin on the way home to buy The Incredibles. They had it stacked deep and high, as you’d expect, but at the same time were having a mad 5 DVDs for

I feel so much better tonight. I made it into the office yesterday, having worked from home on Monday, but after a rough night last night I stayed home again today. I do enjoy working from home, where the sun streams in through the window. Even today, in mid-March when it’s technically just about spring, it was so hot I had the windows open, and from my desk I could watch the rabbits playing in the meadow at the back of the garden.

Having been asked twice about my book in the last two weeks, I decided tonight that it was probably time to dig it out and see if I could pick up the thread again. I’m ashamed to say it’s almost a year since I last did any serious work on it, so it sits at that 110,000 word limit, almost all of which was written in the space of just three months.

I didn’t start at the beginning – I know I’m still having trouble getting my head around that, so I skipped to chapter three and read it through – 18,000 words – before dinner.

I was pleasantly surprised. It flowed well, and had a lot more dialogue than I remembered. Dialogue is my weak point, I think. Very difficult to get it sounding natural. So, I feel quite cheered by that. Perhaps when the weather is better and there’s less chance of getting my bag wet through I’ll start taking my iBook into work on a more regular basis so I can work on it on the train.

In the meantime, though, it should be print-outs and pens. I’m quite keen to get this moving again right now.