Well, Nicholas and I didn't really last that long in the beer garden. The combination of alcohol and heat and general lethargy got the better of us and we both became drowsy very quickly. I bought a vodka, lemon, lime and bitters and the bartender informed me that bitters was actually extremely alcoholic. This was after she had poured three times the normal amount of it into my drink. Fantastic. Two guys sitting at the bar didn't believe her so she showed them the bottle. Well, there you go. That's my learning for the week out of the way.

Nessy and Tim came to the pub after a while. I felt a little bad because by the time they got there Nicholas and I were truly ready for sleep. Nicholas left and I walked back to Nessy and Tim's soon-to-be old house. We stopped off at the handkerchief-sized park on the way for a quick turn on the swings. Enjoyed the fact that Vanessa and Tim were swinging in tandem and I was going in the opposite direction on the middle swing, lending a pleasing kind of symmetry to the experience. I coined it 'synchronised swinging'. Much laughter.

Nessy and Tim had been painting over the blu-tak scars on the walls, so the house was filled with paint fumes. I started to feel a little overcome, and remembered that I had forgotten to eat since breakfast. So I stumbled home and ate half a packet of barbecue crackers with hommous. This, by the way, is my snack of choice. I go through a tub of hommous every three days without fail. Lazed about on the couch and read a book. After a while Andrew and Ben came home with ingredients for Andrew to make dinner with. We feasted on garlic bread and garlic cream potatoes. And from there, the evening went downhill. Out came the X-box and the moronic rugby game (Rugby. Ugh.) and I had no real choice but to go to bed, either that or sit around feeling like a third wheel. I read for a little while, then turned out the light and snuggled down ready for sleep.

It's pretty difficult to sleep with two noisy drunk boys in the living room yelling at a television screen and urging a bunch of blank-faced pixelated rugby players to sporting glory. I lay there for three hours and fumed silently. I hated them both, especially Ben for putting me in such an awkward position. There I was, unable to sleep and slowly reaching boiling point, yet I couldn't tell them to shut up for fear of looking like a nagging dragon woman. Were they really being that unreasonable? Maybe I'm just a controlling bitch who wants everything her own way. Maybe I should learn to compromise. But we have a small house, and Ben knows that I have trouble sleeping at the best of times. If I'd known that I wouldn't be going to sleep til 4am, I would've gone out, or at least drunk more alcohol.

I was extra angry because I tided up the living room yesterday afternoon. Believe me, I do not tidy up very often. Now, it looks as though a herd of elephants has used it as a thoroughfare.

I like to think that I got my own back by turning the bedroom light on without warning this morning while Ben was still asleep. I promise that I didn't do it deliberately, but now that I think about it, it's nicely symmetrical.

I wait with bated breath to see what's in store for today. The boys are now stirring. I predict that the X-box will be fired up within the next five minutes. This will render the living room uninhabitable for the day, unless I want to 'join in the fun'. As I've said, this house is rather small, so that leaves me the miniature study and the dank, messy rat-hole of a bedroom. Oh,and of course the spider-infested balcony.

Well, a week has passed and the weather has improved dramatically. It's a boiling, stifling, sunny, wonderful summer dress day. I get very excited when the weather starts getting really hot, I think that it reminds me of being at school, and that restless feeling that you get when the holidays are only weeks away, and your teachers get lazy and start letting you watch videos in class so they won't have to teach you anything. And the pleasant distraction of the afternoon storms which roll in like clockwork on the really hot days(usually), drawing the braver kids to the window to watch and causing the more timid kids to squeal and cover their ears. I'm not sure which camp I fell into, probably somewhere in between.

Yesterday was a rarity, because the storm hit in the morning, and continued sporadically all day. I was at my mother's house because it was her birthday. I went to work in the morning (7.30 in the morning, to be precise. My boss nearly had a heart attack when I walked into the office at such an early hour). Managed to get myself off the phones all day, because I had (and still have) a sore throat. It started to feel better about 2 hours after I arrived, but there was no need for them to know that.

I have a strange ailment which I'll call 'Part-Time Thoat Infection'. My throat will be sore, on and off, all day. It's very strange. Perhaps it is psychological (spelling probably incorrect), due to my hatred of answering the phones at work?

I am the proud survivor of 2 weeks of full-time work. Give or take a few hours. I can't believe I managed to do it, especially seeing as the air conditioner in the office has decided to stop working, so the atmosphere resembles that of an illegal sweatshop, especially in the data entry chambers. (There is a big main office where most of the phone staff sit, and two makeshift separate rooms where they stuff the data entry people. For anyone who doesn't know, I work in a call centre that does customer service for magazine subscriptions, and we also process subscription orders that come in through the mail and over the internet. I've been working there for a year and, needless to say, I now hate magazines. It amazes me how upset people get when their magazine is two days late, especially for a magazine like 'B' or 'New Woman'. Perhaps I should tell them to make a collage of articles out of their old magazines and read this until the new one arrives. That's probably how they make the magazines each month anyway). I've been given the important task of sending out the gift cards (of which there are huge amounts, over Christmas) and receipts. This involves a daily struggle with the letter-stuffing machine, which requires constant babysitting and the constant pulling of mashed envelopes out of its nether regions, but is infinitely better than having to talk to subscribers all day. I hide in the print room as much as possible, send plenty of emails, and check the weather obsessively on the internet.

I'm going to laze about in the beer garden with Nicholas now, and hopefully with Nessy and Tim also when they finish painting. I can think of no place more appropriate to spend a surprisingly lovely Saturday afternoon.