It’s my sister’s birthday today. I’ve just tried to call her, but there’s no answer. So, if by some miracle you’re bothering to read this, Susannah, happy birthday. I’ve got your present here. I think you’ll like it. I think you’ll like it, because it’s exactly what you told me to get you.

I explored the arse end of Marylebone last night with Will and Ruth, and in the course of the evening we found ourselves at deVigne, the bar at the Mandeville Hotel. I know I’m speaking directly to huge swathes of Middle England when I say that the cocktail menu was simply extraordinary. I had some outlandish concotion called a Mojito Mojado, which combined rum, vodka, gin and tequila, and in all respects resembled the Um Bongo of the alcohol world. More bizarre, however, was a section of the menu devoted to YOU. Yes, YOU create the cocktails. “Hang on a minute,” I hear you cry, “why would I want to create the drinks when I’m paying some bloke in a bow tie £9.75 a pop to pour things from a great height into a cocktail shaker?” It’s a good question.

I’ve always been suspicious of any restaurant or bar where the onus is thrown back on the customer to make something tasty. Mongolian Barbecue is the prime offender – choose your ingredients, stand in a long queue, hand them to a spotty youth with a chef hat on, watch him half-heartedly push them around a griddle for three minutes, and then waddle back to your table with a plate full of student stir-fry which you could have knocked up yourself for a quarter of the price. Is Mongolian Barbecue still going? Christ, yes, it is. I certainly wouldn’t wish to ethnically diss the Mongolian race – but actually, I think anyone from Ulan Bator would find a visit to a branch of Mongolian Barbecue just as dispiriting as I did. Anyway, enough about Mongolian Barbecue. This deVigne bar staff accept suggestions from the public for cocktails, and then every month they bung three of them on the menu, naming them after their creators. Top of the list this month is something called the Madras Bailey. The ingredients? “Malibu, fresh mango, yogurt, curry and champagne”.

This basically means that some pissed cretin who works in PR decided that they’d like a cocktail that was a bit like a curry – probably in lieu of actually going for a curry. It’s very likely that this person’s surname is Bailey, although there’s always the possibility that they’ve cunningly used an alias to throw people off the scent. The most eyebrow-raising item on this list, of course, is “curry”. I mean, we all know what a curry is. But not in this context. Do they have a bottle of liquidised lamb dupiaza under the bar? Maybe they’ve not even bothered liquidising it, and lumps of onion will just bob about. Obviously this is all pure speculation, because – surprise surprise – we didn’t order it. Madras Bailey. Jesus.

I know this is going to make me sound even more like some jumped-up middle class wanker, but I went to Ascot on Saturday. Here’s proof:

– although actually this is just proof that Neil, Jenny and Linda ate a pie in the cold. But it was Ascot, I promise. Jenny won some money on the first race, and that was that. No more triumphs. Hard-earned cash squandered unnecessarily. I might get into the whole bookmaking thing. It’s got to be a good idea as long as there people as stupid as me gambling on stuff. After the races we came home and had a curry. Neil & Linda’s surname is Bailey. Hang on, there’s a theme going on here. I can do something with that. Use it as a plot device to weave the whole thing together. Maybe not.

I’ve resubscribed to the Freecycle group for the Wandsworth area, as Jenny and I are in the search for a chest of drawers approximately 94cm in width. We’re not particularly bothered about the height, although if it were two kilometres high it would be a bit awkward. Anyway, Freecycle is great. Someone’s just posted on there saying “Wanted: Breast Pump”. I know it’s wrong to find the words “Breast Pump” intrinsically amusing, and someone posting on the internet in a desperate search for a free one probably masks a heart-rending story of poverty, but still. “Wanted: Breast Pump”. Marvellous.

I’ve written 2568 words of my book. This represents 5.8% of the finished article. Quite why I’m on here blathering on about shit cocktails, horses and breast pumps I’ve no idea.