For those of us who do fairly dull, repetitive jobs with little opportunity for doing anything creative, when a moment comes along that allows us to kick back and enjoy ourselves come along, it's a shame not to take it. The driver of the train home I boarded tonight was clearly aware of this, which is why he offered us these explanations for the train having half the usual number of carriages than it should have had:

• because of the weather being rain followed by sunshine followed by rain again, the train had shrunk; or
• global warming; or
• Tony Blairs using the other four carriages for his farewell tour of the country.

Oh, maybe you had to be there then. Anyway, the point is that rather than try and pretend that nothing was wrong he decided that he was was going to enjoy himself and hopefully defuse any unpleasantness that might occur (which was highly likely, given the general lack of consideration the London commuter shows for anyone other than himself), and this was all rather infectious. Well, apart from the bloke opposite me clutching his Clarkson paperback, but then if you're reading that then things that are fun probably aren't going to amuse you ever. Eventually, after asking to make the best of it, he revealed that the reason that there were only four carriages was that the other four were broken, and off we went.

Hmm, this is just some funny things a train driver said that aren't really that funny at all. Maybe if I give it an inexplicable title it might seem a bit crazy and dangerous. Yes, that might work.

Of course, the really exasperating thing about the feeble behaviour of the Apple "customer services" people is that, if they'd not been busy banging on about my not being under warranty and pouring scorn on my query as to whether my problem was a fault that was eligible for a free repair, they may have noticed that the problem with my computer was a fault that made it eligible for a free repair.

Actually, no. The really exasperating thing about the feeble behaviour of the Apple "customer services" people is that the people in the Apple store at the hideous out-of-town shopping centre that I eventually managed to take the computer to were unfailingly excellent. The bloke who looked at the computer in the first place had to put up with the bloke who was supposed to be before me but turned up 20 minutes late grumbling at him and wasn't rude or sniffy. The bloke who phoned me to tell me that I was getting a free repair seemed more pleased than I was about it, although I was half-asleep at the time and so perhaps didn't get my gratitude across very well. And it was just as well that I had a sensible adult relative with me this morning, for otherwise I fear I may have said something unsuitable to the woman who returned my computer to me this morning, so helpful and generally lovely was she.

Normal service resumed, then. Phew.

Bus Shelters of Romford

I'm waiting for a bus outside Romford station. On the end of the next shelter along I can see a poster for a soon-to-be-released film. The poster looks as if around 27 seconds were spent on the concept for it - "yeah, so, it's something to do with weddings, so we'll have her with a headdress thing and carrying some flowers, but otherwise dressed normally and he's dressed normally as well and they're, oh, running maybe?" "Oh, that'll do, anyone for lunch?" I'm trying to think of any reason whatsoever why anyone, upon seeing the poster, would want to go and see the film. At least with that one that had "Justin Timberlake is a revelation" as the best quote that they could come up with might have appealed to people who like Justin Timberlake; the best you can say for this one is that the girl with the flowers is quite pretty, but then people in films tend to be quite pretty as a bare minimum.

The bus arrives, and then gets held up by a woman who doesn't seem to have grasped that she has to make some sort of payment upon entry. As she rifles through her bag looking for money or an Oystercard or something, I find my mind drifting on to shower gel. I'd never questioned shower gel before, not even when I showered at my ex-girlfriend's and was confronted by her shower gel, which came in a range of fruit flavours and probably had the word 'essences' appear several times on the label and a woman jumping into a pool below a waterfall in the advert. I was slightly self-concious about using it, as I'm not sure men are supposed to smell of lime, but nobody ever pulled me up about it; maybe my natural stink is really that strong. And anyway, she always smelt delightful, and her skin was... actually, let's not go there.

Shower gel, then. I'd been thinking about shower gel a lot. This had started when I'd begun my relaxing extra-long long weekend by going shopping, because I know how to have a good time. I'd intended to buy some shower gel as my supply of it was running low, and noted that one of the varieties of shower gel was "For Men". And this aroused my suspicions, as any product advertised as being "for men" tends to. What marked this particular variety of gel out as being particularly manly? When I arrived home I compared the ingredients with the list on the back of the "Refreshing" flavour of shower gel that I'd been using, but only the order of them seemed to be different. Is there something about a larger amount of Sodium Benzoate that makes something particularly masculine?

And I was baffled by the label on the back making a big point of it being 100% soap free. Was this always the case? I understand soap; you apply the soap, wash it off, and then you're clean. Now here's this non-soap, and this apparently gets you clean as well. How does it work? Does it work? Has several years worth of grime accumulated on me, begging to be soaped off, and all the time I've been perpetuating it by using shower gel instead?

The bus pulls off, and the playlist I cleverly worked out before my computer conked out of songs unlistened to since last June finds itself competing with the voice of the girl behind me, who is talking loudly into her mobile phone in the way that people tend to do on public transport. She's having a conversation about her mobile phone, which I suppose makes some sort of sense; I would imagine that somewhere there are marketing people who dream of little else. In my headphones Chris T-T implores someone to turn their bloody phone off. Too late

I'm reminded of those people with their petition about stopping kids from playing music through their mobiles on buses. Granted, this is quite annoying, but then there's all sorts of bus-related behaviour I find annoying - middle-aged women talking at the tops of their voices, or teenage boys having conversations across the aisle, or screaming babies whose parents seem to be leaving them to it, or indeed people bellowing into their phones - and you can't get up a petition about them. Well, you could try, I suppose, but it's unlikely to have much effect.

As if on cue, a small child begins to scream its head off. The bus driver manages to shut it up by good-naturedly shushing at it, and then engaging in a game of peering around his partition at it while we wait at a bus stop. After everything else, it all feels rather sweet, and I leave the bus with as much of a skip in my step as I can manage.

While idling my lunch hour away researching (or, in what passes for research these
days, 'looking up on Wikipedia') terrible bands that my chums might have discussed while idling away their lunch hours in the sixth form common room while I kept quiet - no particular reason why I might have been doing that, dear me no - I was horrified to discover that Back To The Planet are preparing themselves for the bust festival season.

And I feel partially to blame, as while I had my doubts about the Bis 10th anniversary shows I still went along and, ultimately, is there that much difference? Well, there is some I suppose - Bis never sounded like Josie Lawrence doing a parody of The Levellers on a particularly weak episode of Whose LIne Is It Anyway? for a start - but then I'd imagine that people who attend Back To The Planet reunion gigs probably feel much the same way.

Today, as far as I'm concerned, is the first Saturday after the football season. Granted, there is football happening today, and indeed I'm going to be going to my last game of the season tomorrow, plus there are various one-offs for the next month or so, but nothing that's going to distract me unduly. For the next couple of months, my Saturdays are my own. (Not that they aren't my own the rest of the time, of course, but then at no stage over the last nine years of holding a season ticket for one club and regularly watching another much of the rest of the time, I've never felt that I could be doing something else with my Saturday afternoons instead.)

And I had plans for today. The first part of my plan to do useful or constructive or interesting things with my Saturdays for this brief period where I'm not in thrall to some football team or other. Today, for example, I was going to look for and possibly purchase some shelves to put books and computer games on. This is something I've been meaning to do for some time, and it seemed like an excellent start to my Summer Of Usefulness, Construction And General Interest (note important capitals).

Yet I'm here writing this instead. Because this morning I was woken early by the distinct sensation that any sort of movement in my right leg would cause my calf to be wracked with pain, and because simply lying there all day wasn't really an option, I had to move and thus caused myself to be wracked with pain. Which was good in terms of self-prognosis, but bad in terms of being wracked with pain.

(The reason I was able to predict this was about to happen is because it's not the first time that this has happened. The first time happened several years ago; you can tell it happened several years ago because the night before I'd been to see Idlewild and (a) it's been a long time since Idlewild were worth going to see; (b) it's been a long time since Idlewild were capable of inciting such vigorous activity so as to leave you with an injured leg the next day; and (c) it's been a long time since I was up to engaging in such vigorous activity at a gig so as to leave me with an injured leg the next day.)

I'm not sure quite what causes this leg-o-pain. Vigorous activity has been responsible for it on occasion, but last night I did nothing more vigorous than have a drink or two after work and then come home and have a belated tea. I must have worked myself into some sort of curious position while sleeping which could only resolve itself in a painful fashion. At any rate, it has rather spoiled my day; I managed to make it to and from Sainsbury's on a mixture of adrenalin and Deep Heat (although, strictly speaking, some buses were also involved), but since I now have something to have for tea, the urge to go out has been replaced by the urge to not move around very much. Which is all terribly lamentable, and is not helping my books and computer games any.

Oh well. I suppose that next Saturday could class as the first one after the first Saturday after the football season, if I try and forget the ignominy of this one.