bee feast

It's been a long, hard struggle. But now the light at the end of the tunnel has become a something something, can't find the quote on IMDB. And now at last, at long last, nothing will ever be the same again.

Yes, folks, I've finally attained the number one position for 'fuck feast'. Perhaps by the time you read this, Sludgefeast - sweary band who coincidentally were once managed by T - will have usurped me. But that's OK. I have sipped the cup of glory.

Driving three nights in a row is paying off. I'm now only moderately totally terrified - and anyway, so much of my thought is just pantomime, going through the motions of excessive self-deprecation; if I take off the thigh-high boots and dubious wig for a moment I know that in reality I'm doing alright. No more than that, though. That's as near as I get to Jonathan King, except for those moments where it is graven on the stone of my soul that I am a Fucking Genius with a capital Fucking.

Yeah.

Last night we managed to get to Kendal in one piece despite the roundabout from hell, which loomed murkily from the darkness like the prow of the Titanic, and discovered - despite the assurance of Joyce in KFC that it had gone bust - that the 1657 Chocolate House is still trading. It wasn't built in 1657 but it's old enough to be wonky and tiny with shit-yourself staircases, and it has a menu just for varieties of hot chocolate, all with names like The Nell Gwynne and The Slave Trader (that's the banana one, obviously - political correctness not having oozed quite that far north yet). And it sells proper, lovingly-made cakes that would make 'Dr' Gillian McKeith's disparaging moue turn into some sort of black hole of dietary disapproval sucking in and compacting all matter around it, except for all the calories in the cake which would start a new universe all their own. It is impossible to come out of there not feeling like you're observing a bloody fight to the death between guilt and pleasure, with a definite sense of sugary nausea refereeing.

Passengering on the way back, munching ersatz tortilla, I feel a slight breeze on the back of my neck. Knowing that there is a bit of a gap there where the removable roof panel isn't quite flush, I take little notice, but do idly start to imagine how terrible it would be if the panel flew off at this sort of speed (70-ish), flying into the windscreen of a meek and blameless Volvo brimming with Prescottian hard-working families. It is then pointed out to me, in as calm a voice as possible, that the panel is in fact no longer in situ. I look around and see a lot of velvety dark sky that shouldn't be there. As shocks go it's almost like - well, finding that a substantial part of your car has vanished. And it did vanish, soundlessly, as if we were in a plane.

We had to find somewhere to turn round and go back and hunt for it. I was told I should prepare for it to be in many, many little bits. I scoured the grass verge with head out of window in classic golden retriever pose only without the flying tongue, and thought I saw it several times. Then we happened upon it, smack in the middle of the right lane, like a small ice floe. Despite having flown off at speed and landed on tarmac, and having come out of the Suzuki factory somewhere around the time New Kids On The Block had their first number one, it was almost fully intact. Bit of crumbling at the corners, meringue-like - miraculous.

I allow myself a moment of smugness that this is the first thing to go at all wrong with the car I chose myself - it has feist, pluck and fortitude, and one particularly hormonal and frosty day I will certainly be moved to tears by its eagerness to start first time - but only a small one. I'm still preoccupied with being grateful there was no one behind us, and am not quite at the point of being able to laugh about it yet. I don't think the roof is going anywhere for a while now, the fixings having been screwdrivered to within an inch of their lives, but I'm going to get some surly sod in overalls to look at it anyway.

Next week involves several months' worth of social flittery in three days, it would seem. Better start taking the vitamins now. Which reminds me, last night some happy shameless soul invited McKeith to try a doughnut. She was brandishing the box as a badge of shame, and he reached in and took one, chewing on it as she lectured him on cholesterol. "Go on, try one," he insisted. "You'll like it." Tempted beyond rationale, the fraudulent nutrition-banshee bit into the sugared dough. A sweet eruption of raspberry jam burst upon her tongue. Her eyes rolled back into her malnourished head, forbidden ecstasy flooding her system, and she collapsed onto the lino. The camera lurched, spun and pointed at the ceiling. Crashes, shrieks, pandemonium. Blank screen. The startled, sombre tones of an announcer. "Er, we seem to be experiencing um, technical difficulties. . ."

Next week at 8.30 on Channel 4, as a change to the advertised programme, Jamie Oliver presents 'Stuff Yerself'.

This is the Garment, by the way. Isn't she lovely.