Let's start off with a Nature Fact.

“Those leaves look big.” Indeed they do. Big enough to warrant featuring in a grainy photo, and then immortalizing them in a 300×300 pixel frame. So, that's done.

Yesterday was busy. The day started at 9am at Oval tube station, with my first ever driving lesson. I was finally persuaded of the necessity of learning the difference between the clutch and the brake when an editor at The Independent sent me an email 2 weeks ago asking me if I could drive, and when I said no, said oh, alright then, forget it. Prior to that moment, the fact that I'd never turned on a fog lamp or studied a rev counter hadn't made any difference to my life whatsoever; in fact, I enjoy being the passenger, navigating, pointing out speed limits and proximity to other cars on the road, and feeding small morsels of Ginsters Pasties to the driver. But now, now I was losing work. That would never do.

Muriel comes highly recommended by . She successfully taught him and his wife to drive with confidence and flair – and as calls me whenever his computer breaks down, and computers are obviously more complicated than cars, I figured that it would be a breeze. Muriel runs the “Safe And Sound Driving School”, a name that reassures and encourages, in the same way that “Multiple Pile Up Driving School” and “Cut Me Free From The Wreckage Driving School” do not. We met at the tube station, there was a brisk handshake, and she pulled away, taking me to the safety of Albert Square SW8, a quiet road, spoilt only by the sound of juddering cars; 2 other people were having a lesson there at the same time. Muriel and I swapped places. I was behind the wheel of a car, at last. Soon I would be able to move amplifiers across town for band practices. Soon I would be able to drive to a beautiful country pub, drink a Britvic 55, and drive all the way home again. Soon I would be able to wind down my window and unleash my anger at appalling drivers on Tooting High Street, not realising that they are all equipped with firearms. Mmm.

Look, most of you have had driving lessons, so I won't take you through what all the levers and pedals do. I've pretty much forgotten in any case. But we spent two hours going round and round Albert Square, which bore little resemblance to its fictional namesake. For example, I noticed that there was no launderette, and no Adam Woodyatt. This was good. I didn't feel that I was really driving the car, just acting out a series of instructions which Muriel announced, clearly and regularly. I was just a robot, really. But a robot with feelings, emotions, desires, hopes, dreams, a provisional driving license.

The clutch is the bastard, isn't it. Put me in an automatic, and I could probably pass in a couple of months. But the clutch – man, that's got to set me back until Christmas or something. Muriel taught me how to move off in 1st gear, releasing the clutch slowly. “Now,” she said, “feel for the biting… feel for the biting…” I felt for the biting. For two hours I felt for the biting, and then went for it, only to realise I'd gone past the biting, or had not yet reached the biting. They should have a “biting” setting on the clutch pedal. Too much is left to chance, in this driving lark. Auto-pilot, that would be best.

When I got home, there was an email from The Independent asking me if I was free to write something today. I called them up. But no, I'd missed the boat. So, because I was at a driving lesson – prompted by The Independent asking me to write something – I missed the opportunity to write something for The Independent. I can't win, can I.

After a brief appointment with for him to add some tasteful accordion to the new Spearmint album, it was up to my old university in Islington, where their marketing department have seen fit to use a song I wrote about having a mid-life crisis* as the soundtrack to a video encouraging teenagers to attend the university. I've known for a long time that my self-obsessed wailings deserved a wide audience, but I hadn't considered the possibility that they could be used to SELL something. My ambition: getting “Talking Nepalese” on an ad for Nivea Visage. After playing me a rough cut of the video, I was taken out to the front of the building to record a short piece to camera about why I loved being at the university. This was tricky for me, as I couldn't remember much about it, and wasn't convinced that fresh-faced teens from the shires wanted to become, er, me. “Hello!” I said, unconvincingly. “I'm Rhodri Marsden, and I came here in 1989.” Then I dried up. The interview was completed with much mumbling of “can we do that again, please.” God knows how they'll get 10 seconds worth of decent footage out of that.

Afterwards I went for a drink with my sister, where I told her of my problems with the clutch. She asked me what kind of car I had been driving. “Red.” She was giving me a short lecture on careful use of wing mirrors, when behind me a minicab slammed into a cyclist, who subsequently flew across the road. We all ran up to him. “Do you want me to call an ambulance?” I asked. “Why?” he said, with a look of panic, “my face! Oh, god, is my face OK?” He stood up, and carried his knackered bike to the pavement. He was a posh boy in his mid 20s. I asked him if he wanted me to get him some water from the pub. “Hang on,” he said, his mobile phone ringing, “I'll just take this call.” Ah, f*ck off then.

The Keatons once released a compilation cassette called *Mid Life Crisps”, which, inexplicably, still makes me laugh.