And the majority of people abide by the law and are happy to "do their bit" for the environment, for the country and for each other by not wasting water at such a hot time of year when water supplies are at their annual low. Except my neighbour. Twice now, in the past two days, I have seen her giving the lawn a spray with the hose. Admittedly, she is not spending hours and hours grooming her lawn, but nonetheless she is using a hosepipe during a hosepipe ban.

Maybe I'm jealous because I don't have a garden and the nearest I get to mowing the lawn is scraping the mould off the cheese, or maybe I'm resentful because I can't use the green garden chair I was given for my birthday, but the behaviour of this woman next door riles me and I'm torn between dobbing her in and letting it be. If I don't say anything, she'll probably carry on hosing down the garden, no-one will notice and she'll think that it's ok to do so. If I do report her, I risk falling out with the neighbours (not that I know them) and that could cause all sorts of problems.

I don't think I would mind so much if she was watering a nice garden, but effectively it's just a bunch of overgrown weeds and a horrid, mossy, brown lawn. But she's watering it during a hosepipe ban and that is wrong. Simon S says he would report her because no-one is above the law. Maybe I should do that, or maybe I should just let sleeping dogs lie. Both options are tempting - thoughts?

Monday of this week saw me return to work - a few hours a day to ease myself back into the daily routine but the heat and the constant sitting are not good for me. Nor is running out of paracetamol. It was stupidly hot though on Tuesday afternoon when I got into my car after leaving work early, so I immediately took advantage of driving a Coupe Cabriolet, put the roof down, noted the 35 degrees on the temperature indicator and headed off towards Pinner with the wind rippling through my widow's peak so that I could visit the local Boots and stock up on Ibuprofen and paracetamol to numb the pain.

Unfortunately Pinner is not blessed with free parking, so a short stay at the local car park was in order, despite the fact that I was going to be a maximium of fifteen minutes picking up my pills. As I pulled into the parking space right next to the parking meter, so that I could spare my back the pain of having to walk too far to pay the parking charge, the traffic warden appeared from behind a 4x4, watched me arrive and began to saunter towards my car, checking the tickets of the other stationary vehicles on the way.

Being a Coupe Cabriolet, I didn't want to leave my roof down while I went to the shops, so I sat in the driver's seat and held down the button that draws the roof back onto the car. It's all done automatically and is really rather clever but it takes about 25 seconds, by which time the traffic warden had appeared by my driver's side window. Once the roof had completed its manoeuvre, I pressed the electric window button to see what the traffic warden wanted.

In a highly sarcastic and rude manner, he said: "Do you HAVE a ticket sir?".

It was hot, my back was aching from half an hour's driving and this idiot was not only being obnoxious and asking bloody stupid questions, but he was blocking my exit from my car. Of course I didn't have a ticket, I hadn't had the chance to get out the car and get to the machine. Utter imbecile.

I managed to avoid losing the plot, but responded with the following: "No, I don't have a ticket. You know I don't have a ticket because I have only just arrived. This is why the roof is going ON and not OFF and besides which, you watched me arrive in the car park less than a minute ago. I will GET a ticket just as soon as you get out the bloody way."

So I marched up to the machine and to add insult to injury, the wretched thing was out of order so I ended up walking half way across the car park to the other meter anyway. I half expected a parking fine notice on my car when I got back, but the stupid traffic warden probably realised that it's not a good idea to wind up an overheating man with a bad back.

Still mulling over his idiocy upon my return to my car, I actively searched out another driver to give him the 40 minutes I still had remaining on my ticket, just so the council was deprived another 70 pence.

That'll teach him.

It was a warm afternoon earlier this summer, just after lunch in fact, and I had wandered down to the post office to send off some e-bay items. But, as is almost always the case, there was a queue. Three people serving behind the counter and there's still a bloody queue, typical. So there I stood, packages in hand, waiting patiently in an enlarging queue for my turn to be served when I realised the cause of the delay. There was a woman, about 60, at the counter, blathering on about nothing in particular and holding up the rest of the queue. Only she wasn't blathering quietly. OH NO. She was announcing her conversation like she had a megaphone to her mouth and the entire queue, all the serving staff and even the guy at the lottery counter over the other side of the building were forced to listen to her latest personal crisis.

Two minutes passed and my tapping foot was beginning to kick harder and harder at the metal pole blocking me from the counter. Eventually, the woman broadcasts the fact that she had "better go now because there's a queue" and she collected her things from the counter. But it is what she added to that sentence that is so bizarre. Taking half a pace towards the door, then turning back to the counter again, she proclaims to the assistant "and if you're wondering why I've got plastic bags on my legs, it's because I've got a skin disease", at which point everyone in the queue looked further than the bottom of her dress to her feet where, sure enough, there were two Tesco carrier bags quietly rustling away.

Some were stunned, most didn't know where to look and I just grinned in disbelief. She had been standing there for several minutes, jabbering and babbling away without a care in the world and nobody had noticed the fact that she was wearing a pair of carrier bags around the bottom half of her legs. Only when she announced it did everyone actually take stock of that fact and why she aimed the comment at the assistant who couldn't see her legs anyway because there was a COUNTER IN THE WAY, I'll never know.

Besides which, why didn't she bloody well just wear trousers?

Rory the lion has been my friend for fourteen years - he's a floppy, balding lion that looks more like a monkey but is better travelled than a lot of people. He's been on holiday to Greece and Venice, travelled across the USA, spent a day in Canada, relaxed in the Balearics and lived in France for a year. We've been through thick and thin together and I would be utterly distraught if anything happened to him, which is why I decided that Easter time in an empty flat in London was not safe for him and that he should accompany me on my visit to Mother's.

Everything was fine until Easter Monday morning. I'd been assisting my stepfather with computer issues early doors when Sophie announced she was going shopping in Bicester for the whole day, would not be coming back to Mother's before going back to London and would therefore say her goodbyes. Having waved her off, I eventually finished helping with labels, print quality, spam email, Macromedia Flash player and other such queries and decided that I too would soon make a move. Mounting the stairs once more, I entered my bedroom to find that Rory's head had been shut in a drawer so that his little, helpless hairy legs were dangling over the side. Poor little mite. Consoling myself at such a needless and cold-hearted act of toy terrorism, I plotted my revenge. The trump card, I concluded, was that Sophie had gone out for the entire day and was not planning to return for at least a week.

Creeping across the landing so as not to alert Mother to my whereabouts or to disturb Mike from the wonders of fine quality inkject photo printing, I sneaked into Sophie's bedroom and the plan began to unfold. Being a girl, her bed was laden with a large quantity of soft toys - the pick of the bunch being the large, cuddly white bear that Eds her boyfriend had bought her several months before.

Noting that she still had four overhead storage cupboards above her bed, each with hinged doors, I selected four of her most precious soft toys and shut their heads in the doors, giving an extra shove to the door just to make sure they didn't budge. Next I grabbed the large white bear, tied Sophie's dressing gown cord tight around its neck and hung it from one of the handles of the storage cupboards so that the bear dangled helplessly in thin air. But this wasn't enough, she needed to be taught NOT to mess around with Rory. So I grabbed the Cadbury Mini-Eggs easter egg that she had eventually unearthed as part of the Easter Egg Hunt the previous day, ripped the cardboard off the top and wrote a suicide note from Teddy on the grey cardboard underneath stating that he "just couldn't take it anymore", also adding in a short PS saying "thanks for the mini-eggs, love Teddy" and with that I pocketed the bag of mini-eggs that Mr Cadbury had so generously included.

A flash of brilliance then struck me. Knowing that she was out shopping in Bicester, some 100 miles away and powerless to do anything to rescue her beloved toys, I took out my mobile phone, snapped a photo of the four toys whose torsos and legs were flailing in the light wind whilst their heads were jammed in the storage cupboard doors, with Teddy in the foreground dangling morbidly from the straining cord, and send her the photo message.

Revenge can be OH so sweet.

(this website does not condone happy slapping, except on this occasion...)

It was touch and go for a while as to whether or not the Hunt would actually occur, given that multi-bottomed Ben and 2004 winner Carole had jetted off to another continent for a relaxing break. Despite Ben's pleas for a Hunt cancellation, the organisers insisted it go ahead since his non-participation was self-inflicted. And go ahead it did.

Once again I was nursing a hangover thanks to an Open Mic night the previous evening but despite that, when we went under starter's orders, the adrenaline was pumping and the determination to take advantage of Ben's absence was there for all to see. We'd set off at a frantic pace before the countdown had a chance to finish and all competitors headed for different areas of the garden. Fortunately for me, I headed straight to the tree where my first Egg was hidden and sprinted back to the front porch with my prize. It was a fantastic early lead, leaving Sophie, Jane and last year's victor Olivia struggling from the start. Sophie shrieked and waddled her way back towards the house as I sprinted across to the old wendy house for a quick butcher's in one of the organiser's favourite hiding places. Result! There, underneath an old tarpauline was the second of my three Eggs, the white sticky label affixed to the top of the box confirming that I was taking a very strong position in the Hunt with only one Egg to find and the other competitors lagging some way back.

I dashed back to the front porch, deposited my second Egg and headed for the undergrowth in the front garden. The organiser trained the camcorder on the hedgerow as I dived in, yelped with glee and sprinted back to the porch with my third find in three locations to claim victory in what was a momentous victory in an unbeatable record time. Since the rest of the field were very slow in searching out their prizes, there was ample time for excessive goading, unnecessary boasting and needless showing-off which I carried out with appropriate aplomb before accepting the Whitehall Easter Egg Hunt Trophy from the Queen (grandmother) once the other competitors had finally been successful (although they did require assistance) and making a short speech.

The only retort they had was to load the 1992 episode of the Easter Egg Hunt into the video recorder after the race and show footage of me aged 13 dancing around the garden singing Right Said Fred's 'I'm Too Sexy' in a prepubescent squeaky voice and excitably throwing my arms and legs in all directions. "Such a tosser" Sophie exclaimed and did her impression of my high-pitched squeal, "his voice hadn't even broken" she smirked as she took delight in laughing at me. I mused for a second then shut her up with a winning retort in the form of "yeah, well at least I didn't need surgery on it".

(Readers that do not know me personally will be flummoxed by this final remark - you will need to have been kept abreast of a previous situation in order to understand the significance)

And there was still enough time to send an intercontinental text message to Ben announcing my victory and informing him that the Trophy will be engraved with the 2006 result by the time he gets back from holiday.

SO, the winner of the Easter Egg Hunt 2006 was your esteemed and not very honourable author, ME.

Mwa ha ha ha haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

(I win very graciously don't I)

But for those of you that have stuck with me over the past six months and checked back to the site every now and again (when are you going to fix the Subscribe option Simon?), you may remember this post in which I described how a cyclist crashed into the side of my car, blatantly disregarding the Highway Code's laws on protective clothing (point number 45) and the Road Junction rule (point number 57). Well, after yet another uneventful day at the office, I was in the car on the way home when I spotted a cyclist pelting down the main road at a fair speed, with NO helmet, NO reflective clothing and NO idea about the rules on road cycling.

I was stuck in a traffic jam, there were some roadworks or red traffic lights up ahead and the traffic was at a standstill. Having overtaken the cyclist a minute or so before, it wasn't long before he came hurtling down the inside of the lane whilst the cars to his right waited patiently for the jam to clear. 'Uh-oh' I thought as I saw a BMW turning across the lane of traffic just three cars in front of me. 'That cyclist looks like he's going to...' BANG! The cyclist went straight into the front wing of the BMW at a rate of knots and I kid you not, the bike went twelve feet in the air. I momentarily lost sight of the rider and feared for his life (despite the fact he was an irresponsible prick) until seconds later I saw him charging at the driver's door, fists clenched, shouting obscenities as if it was the BMW's fault.

I therefore had a decision to make - should I stop and act as a witness or just ignore the incident? If I stopped, I would have had to deal with an irate cyclist and probably get involved in insurance claims which I could frankly do without - after all, the cyclist was unhurt and hadn't assaulted the BMW driver so I made the split-second executive decision to pretend it never happened and drove on. Those of you about to criticise me for this, let me just point out that I was potentially dealing with a knob-end cyclist and a BMW driver - neither of which I have any desire to assist.

Did I do the right thing?

It had taken me SUCH a long time to work out why that Pivot Table wasn't returning accurate data and why as a result the performance and turnover information I had been studying seemed desperately low and just would not match the figures generated by my colleague. Not only that, but the vlookups had been a bit of a challenge, particularly as the if(iserror) formulae in the midst of the lookup complicated things even more so. Having immersed myself in Excel spreadsheets for the fourth day in a row, my mind easily slipped into how the file I had been working on was constructed and how the separate worksheets interlinked. I stood there in a daze whilst my mind cast itself back to the 27,000 lines of data I had sourced from the invoicing files and how I had created a detailed, colourful and, finally, accurate report under quite a lot of pressure. I began to question myself, was the data right? Did I do that chart correctly? Is the year on year data undoubtedly correct considering the permutations it is subjected to?

"Come ON!" I growled and aimed a kick at the bloody thing. Not that the kick would have done anything, all I was doing was taking out my irritation on the paper trays. Thirty seconds to go before I had to have the report on the head of department's desk and the damned printer STILL hadn't got round to spurting out my report.

I tapped the screen, then knocked it harder until it yelped and protested with a defeatist whirr and a click. "BLOODY THING!" I seethed as I took a deep breath, unclenched my fist and inhaled a long, deep breath.

Whoops. That would explain it.

I took a step to the right, picked up the three crisp pages sitting proudly on the printer and offered my sincerest apologies to the photocopier.

But some items are impossible to describe and to sell. Effectively it's just another useless piece of junk that you really don't want anymore but it might just have some kind of value, so you sit in front of your computer and sell, sell sell. Just like I did with my latest e-Bay auction...

The day came and went, the sun and what little heat it generated soon disappeared and night time descended once more as I ambled through the front door to my dark, empty flat by a noisy London crossroads. So I sat down to my computer and whiled away the next couple of hours on various projects and several hundred emails. But there was an interruption. It sounded like the banging of doors downstairs, or the sudden closing of a window but it kept repeating and repeating. A very odd sound, almost like someone knocking on something time and time again and it eventually disturbed me so much I got up to investigate.

I passed the window at the top of the stairs and despite the reflection in the glass from the light in the hallway, something caught my eye. I ducked down below the window sill and crouched my way back to the light switch where I extinguished the light and hid myself in a doorway. There was a man with a ladder at next door's window. Bearing in mind that this is the end of January, the "Russian freeze" is here, it's eight pm and very dark, it struck me as a very odd occurrence.

The banging I had heard was the ladder knocking against next door's upstairs window and as the noise was continuing, I crept forward from my pitch black doorway and peeked out the window to see what was going on. There was a man there, that was for sure and he was making his way out of next door's flat, that was also a given. But he was making his way UP. Yes, UP. Onto the roof. There was no balaclava or bag of swag, or even a sense of quiet or urgency, just a man climbing out of a third floor flat in the depths of winter and in the middle of a cold spell.

But that wasn't the oddest part, that was yet to come. I was intrigued by this whole situation and had by now prised myself away from my concealment and stuck my face to the window, trying to catch a glimpse of what happened next. Within seconds I had my reward. The man on the ladder grabbed a chair from somewhere inside the flat and took it up the ladder with him. He took a chair up a ladder and onto the roof. Quite why anyone would wish to do this on such a bitterly cold night I do not know, but this character decided that he wanted some quiet time up on the roof.

By this point I had assumed that it was actually my neighbour on the ladder and not some burglar, but the reasons for carrying out such a bizarre act continue to puzzle me. Is this man a keen star gazer? Judging by the number of emergency services sirens that blare away all day and all night, he can't have been going up there for the peace and quiet, so why was he going up a ladder onto the roof with a chair? Maybe he wanted to smoke something illegal and not leave the smell in the flat, maybe he wanted to see the local sights from a half decent vantage point, or maybe he just wanted to practise escaping up a ladder... either way, it's a mystery to me but as I have been writing this, the banging has restarted which I can only assume to be the noisy product of his descent.

Strange neighbourhood this one...

But me doing the job I am doing is the definition of irony. I am the Product Manager for a brand of car paint, so I am involved in marketing this paint brand to the UK market, deciding where to install new paint machines, which products to put on periodic promotion etc etc. I am the point of contact for the whole UK field team and I am partly responsible for developing the brand and gaining market share.

So what? Where's the irony? Well, it's as simple as this:

I am colourblind.

"7 Across" Debs said, "Stand Firm, six letters".

"Have we got any letters already?" I asked, to which the response was "yes, the third from the end is G"

"G?" I queried, puzzled at the odd positionin of the letter 'G' in this mysterious word. "Not sure, let's have a look" and I took the newspaper from Debs and studied the word. The 'G' was indeed in a strange place. I was convinced the answer to the clue was 'insist' but that meant that the 'G' was wrong and it should be an 'I', so I went back to the clue with the 'G' in it and read the clue.

"3 Down ... 'Snow Runner', three letters". I mused for a second before coming to the conclusion that the answer to this clue was 'ski', which would mean there was an 'I' in the right place for 'insist' to go in. But where had the misplaced 'G' come from? Well, it had come from the bizarre brain logic of Debs. When contemplating the correct answer to the 'Snow Runner' clue, Debs had not reached the 'ski' conclusion that had popped into my mind. Oh no. The answer that Debs had come up with that she thought was the correct response was .... DOG.

Further interrogation deducted that Debs had thought 'snow runner' had meant the husky dogs that pulled sledges in the North Pole, because they run in the snow. Bless her.