Where do you go to buy the perfect diary?

I had planned to go for a run this morning but didn't due to oversleeping. Ah, the joys of the holiday and no alarm clock. With no real plans for the day, we got up and had some breakfast then took off for the park with an entire unopened loaf of stale bread. Ducks don't seem to be that selective when it comes to best before dates. A mother and two kids came along to our normal feeding point so I offered them a couple of slices. The mother hesitated then accepted our offer. After throwing a slice's worth into the lake she said “Are we allowed to do this? I thought they'd stopped us?”. We felt like secret duck-feeding rebels raging against the system. Throwing it despite the severe consequences of being caught supplementing park-based birds' diets.

Afterwards, we proceeded into town to potter around. Suffering from mild caffeine withdrawal symptoms, I insisted we went into Cafe Nero which has taken the place of Chesterfield's old independent bookshop, 'Peak Bookshop'. I got a takeaway Latte and Lisa didn't have anything. She'd been in before with a girlfriend. And she boasted, they'd sat in for it too.

We scoured the shops for a suitable journal/diary which I could fill with the forthcoming year's ramblings. I had very specific criteria which we had great difficulty fulfilling. The diary purchased needed to:

• look nice
• be hard-wearing and thus, hard back
• be spiral bound so you could lie it flat whilst writing in it (I failed miserable on this front. The only spiral bound ones were either too girlie or they had playboy plastered all over them)
• have lines but not lines that were too close together because that wouldn't give you enough room to write properly

I ended up buying one (the one this is in!) in WHSmith in the sale. I am thinking that I might actually illustrate this diary with photos too to make it extra nice. Watch this space. You have been warned.
After we got back and had some food we popped to Tesco and I bought a printer having decided that I couldn't face looking back at a year's worth of ramblings in my crappy handwriting. Besides I may not even be able to decipher the code in a year's time anyway.

Lisa concocted another curry for tea. It was a really spicy number with lots of coriander and garlic and ginger and tomato. It was “green coriander chicken” from Madhur Jaffrey's ultimate curry bible. Lisa's thinking of making it for Dad and Vally when they come up on the 4th Jan.

This evening we watched a film which lots of people had recommended. My boss, Frances had said it was really good. I was sceptical since it seemed like another American Pie type film which was just about some American teenager trying 'to get laid'. Anyway, we put our prejudices aside and Lisa rejoined Blockbuster and we hired it. I can't remember the last time we HIRED A VIDEO FROM BLOCKBUSTER. Anyway, it was "Knocked Up"

...and it was pretty entertaining even though it took me most of the film to get over the crippling realisation that the main bloke in it totally reminded me of one of my lazy irresponsible students, Brett (Frances calls him 'Bratt') at work.