Today Lisa and I have reached the relationship milestone of a third of a year. Which I believe is Tupperware in the official anniversary listings, but I could be wrong. It's obviously important to celebrate these occasions together, to foster a spirit of intimacy and closeness. But Lisa was eating all the salad cream, so I came home yesterday instead.

To be honest I was getting bored with having to make detours past rotting farm animals in the town centre. I'm no stranger to seeing a couple of prime calves in the morning (see fact 73), but if you're going to dump a couple of cows in the middle of Brighton, you could at least turn it into a barbecue.

Lisa and I did walk scarily close to the bovine death scene at lunchtime (which whetted my appetite for a burger), and saw a policeman with a machine gun being filmed by a TV crew, a sight which had me jumping up and down with excitement, as Lisa strolled on nonchalantly. She's seen it all before in Brighton.

I chose not to join in the pro-hunt march, which was a missed televisual opportunity I admit, but I did enjoy seeing the local TV news reporter doing a piece to camera with a cuddly fox glove puppet on his hand. It's good to see them treating the story with suitable gravitas.

Anyhoo, I was eventually forced to return to Shotley Gate on account of the fact that Lisa can't get Channel 5 (which is her own fault for living in such a remote location, a good half mile from a major city centre). As a shameless fan of reality TV, I've recorded the first three episodes of 'The Farm', so I had to get back to watch them all before tonight's show.

I'm pushed for time though, and not just because I'm busy playing poker. I'm dangerously close to completing a literary extravaganza I started ten months ago, and which I expected to have finished by the end of January. I've settled on a self-imposed deadline of next Friday. I feel that if you start writing something at the end of November, it's always good to finish it before the end of the following October, otherwise you face accusations of slacking and procrastination. And you end up forgetting what you named your main character on the first page.

So that's the plan. Not that I need to finish it - I'm expecting to win the lottery tonight. What with it being our anniversary and all that, I've bought a lottery ticket comprised of mine and Lisa's birthdays, so obviously I can't lose. Mystic Smeg isn't predicting financial success for me today, but then her horse Astrocharm ran at Ascot on Friday and failed to win, so she clearly knows nothing. Incidentally, the Racing Post database lists Astrocharm's owner as 'Mystic Meg Limited'. Don't tell me she's now a registered company? I didn't see that one coming. But then I don't expect she did either. Maybe the word 'limited' is just a description of her powers.