Tonight's the opening night of Shotley Drama Group's production of 'Fogies' at the village hall. I've resisted the obvious temptation to attend, due to their blatant willingness to sacrifice the last ounce of any artistic integrity they might have once had by choosing to stage the kind of unrelenting dirge churned out by soulless script factories at £4.50 a time, instead of producing something with a bit of creative merit.

Not that it's any of my business, of course.

Personally I've been busy in Ipswich today, mourning the felling of a tree in Christchurch Park, which has been chopped up and dumped at the side of the war memorial. I think it's some kind of statement on the tragedy of war, using the powerful image of a tree to represent the plight of the fallen soldier. But as an environmentalist of the Dogmatix school of tree-hugging, I was quite upset.

But not as upset as I was when the rear suspension on my car gave up the right to life on the way home. I blame the pot-hole on the hill where Lisa lives. The council charge me a pound a day to park outside my girlfriend's flat, and then destroy my little Skoda with their badly maintained highways. It's an outrage. I may have to write a stiff letter. Possibly on cardboard. I'm not happy.