We have whittled the guest list down to an acceptable number – by which I mean a number that the venue will hold and/or the budget will allow.

Still lots to do though. Every day we seem to remember something else to add to the list – and every one item on the master list hides a sub-list of several items that are needed to get that done.

One of the headlamps in my car blew. I had a quick look and, surprisingly for a modern car, the bulbs are easy to access. I wasn’t going to lose man-points by paying the car parts store to fit it; I can do it myself. If you’re thinking, “this is going to end badly” you are ahead of me.

I walked to the car parts store where a helpful assistant looked up which bulb I needed. Tbh I could have found it without help – I think it was a slow day and he wanted something to do.

Back home I started to fit it – rested my coffee (I’d been to Costa en-route) on the roof as, hey, this would only take a couple of minutes.

As I expected, it was easy to get the fitting out – but the devil’s own job to remove the bulb from the fitting. “Squeeze the spring ...” What spring, and how? Eventually I resorted to prising it out with a screwdriver.

So far so good – ish. New bulb fitted, and I tried to put the fitting back in the lamp. Yeah, right. I could not get the fitting to fix. After numerous attempts, I decided to pull the bulb out and have a closer look.

I dropped the bulb.

That ruined that one. I’d probably wasted about 40 minutes of my time (but had remembered to drink the coffee). Borez ceci pour un alloute.

I drove back to the car parts store, got a strange look from the assistant (“yeah, I dropped the first one”) and paid £8 for them to fit it. It took them ten seconds.

Friday evening, CS3 was flicking through the TV guide to see what to watch. The film “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” was one of the options. “Yes, let’s watch that,” I said. “I’ve not seen it [yes, I know it is 25 years old – I’ve not seen Star Wars either, and that’s even older] and it’s only just starting, so we won’t miss any of it.”

So we did – switching to the channel just as the pre-film commercial break was finishing.

The following morning I looked something up about the film on IMDB. Odd. The synopsis talked about rescues from French dungeons and sailing to England. We’d not seen any of that. Had I slept through the first part?

After a while, we realised that we hadn’t seen from the beginning of the film at all – the commercial break must have been the first in-film break not the pre-film one.

“I wondered how everyone knew each other so early on,” remarked CS3.

“Yeah, and I wondered why there weren’t any opening credits” I replied.

Out to the pub on Saturday evening with various friends. There were four couples there (including us) and the conversation turned, as apparently it does when several mothers are together, to childbirth. Despite the fact that it is about 15 years since any of the mothers gave birth.

It turned out that two of the mothers had had several caesareans (seven between them – prompting the comment from one of the men: “It’s not a zip, you know”) and were able to compare notes.

“They open you up; lift out all your innards to get the baby, then put them back in again” was one description.

“I kept the screen [between eyes and abdomen] up – I didn’t want to see any of that,” commented the other.