Thursday evening was spent in pleasant company in the only bar in the Tooting / Balham environs that wasn't rammed with people trying to set up their Easter weekend to be a lengthy period of recuperation. The bar (whose name I forget) sat off the main road and was sparsely populated, for reasons that weren't immediately apparent. We sat down at a table which was wet; Jenny went to fetch a towel from the bar just to dry it off. As she returned the towel she was berated by the proprietor. “It would have been more polite to ask me to do that,” he snapped. I dunno, you save someone a few kilojoules of energy and a damp hand, and they react as if you've tried to remove their underwear without disturbing their outer garments. Still, he had us over a barrel, as he owned the only place you could hear yourself think, so we stayed. On the way home I passed a car showroom where they had decided that positioning a large bear in the window would entice potential test-drivers.

Despite finding the bear particularly alluring, I didn't go in. I can't drive, and besides, it was 11.30pm and the place was firmly shut.

Friday morning was allocated for painting the back room, in which new flatmate Mark is already firmly ensconsed, a word that I particularly loathe. He gamely offered to help, and performed small acts of preparation while I walked down to our local Wickes, to buy dust sheets, paint, rollers, and handles for the rollers that were actually the wrong size for the rollers, a fact that I only iscovered on returning to the flat. I went back to Wickes and bought the correct size handles, and the rest of the day passed without incident.