Off to Colchester tomorrow morning to collect a shed for the chickens.

Apparently they don’t make chicken sheds in Yorkshire…

Pain is not my friend – it’s someone who followed me home from the pub, and now it knows where I live it is going to stalk me.

I have two slipped discs: one trapping a nerve in my lower back and causing pain in my leg; the other in my neck, causing pain in my arm.

And pain, just in case you need reminding, is humiliating, debilitating, exhausting, relentless, stupid, pointless, ridiculous and distracting.

But at least my prolapsed discs haven’t caused loss of bladder control.

Darling Wifey’s new car arrived this week:

I was pretty cynical about the whole Audi thing – after all, an Audi is just a Skoda with a pretty frock on. Or so I thought before I was asked to programme the on-board computer to de-ice & pre-heat the car ten minutes before Darling Wifey leaves for work every morning so the temperature is just right when she climbs in…

What I don’t understand is just where I went wrong and ended up missing out on all this luxury?

One aspect of adult life that has (thankfully) passed me by is office hierarchy. I got a taste of it this morning when I went out to buy a new chair for my desk.

Office chairs are ranked according to seniority and comfort. Apparently you aren’t allowed to have one without the other.

So a junior typist gets a glorified stool with a backrest so low that any attempt to lean on it will cause irreperable damage to the coccyx.  Work hard at your keyboard for a decade or so, and you can be promoted to a full-size typist’s chair with manual lift.

All typists dream to be operators, though. I don’t know what an operator does – but they get ergonomic seats with plastic armrests.

As I was buying a chair for my home office, I decided to promote myself to "Entry Level Management." For this I get swivel and tilt, height adjustment, and real leather trim. But if I work hard and achieve all my targets, I should be entitled to an executive chair at some point in the future. This will have headrests, leather arms, a footrest and real wood trim.

This sort of thing really bothers the under-thirties, but is really cool when you can see your 40th birthday hurtling towards you at breakneck speed: I haven’t shaved since Wednesday and, according to Darling Wifey, still can’t grow a full beard.

Just call me Peter Pan.

Did I mention that I had a photoblog?

Ever since I stopped biting my fingernails I have noticed an increase in nosebleeds.

During my last interview I ended up talking about spanking. Don’t ask me why.

This morning, while waiting to go in to the interview, I was joking with the colleague who was due to be interviewed after me about appropriate methods for bribing the panel.

I suggested a £50 note subtly placed between the pages of my portfolio. She upped the ante with a blatant offer of chocolate. I was not going to be outdone.

I said I would offer the panel sex.

A man who was signing in at reception paused, turned and looked at me, and then disappeared down the corridor. And can you guess where he was sitting when I was taken in to meet the interview panel…?

I got the job – but I don’t know what it is going to cost me.

I almost missed this – The Angel of the North is 10 Years Old!

It was just sixth months after Little Madam was born (doesn’t time fly?) and I remember saying, shortly afterwards, to a friend that while I loved the idea of the angel, I did think they could have made a more visually appealing sculpture. It didn’t take long for me to change that opinion – I adore it now.

I spent the next two years driving past it twice a day. It took less than six months for it to be adopted as the new icon for the region.

Geordies have every right to be proud of their Angel – it is beautiful. And I miss it. I don’t regret moving to York (much) but the Angel reminds me of everything I miss about Geordieland.

This lunchtime, in the middle of pretending to do some work and generally messing about on message boards and with emails, the “Y” and “6″ keys on my laptop stopped working. Which is less annoying than it could have been because I don’t know any swearwords that use those keys.

However, there is absolutely no reason why they should have stopped working. Nothing has been spilled on this laptop, the children haven’t touched it, and – most curiously of all – they worked all morning. And then stopped. I know that they were working because they are important keys for my game. I was using them while writing my presentation for tomorrow’ meeting…

Anyway, now we get to see just how good Apple Support really is. And, meanwhile, I have nicked the plug-in keyboard from Little Madam’s Mac Mini (she only uses it to watch High School Musical anyway…)

Watch this space.