I should have gone out last night but decided that after committing a whole week to Torchwood - and I have, it wasn't just TV, there was talking about it, tweeting about it, obsessively trawling the internet for reviews of it - I felt like I had to stay home and watch the final episode as it happened. It was the right decision, but it was a tricky decision.

I should have been going to see David Gray in Thetford Forest. I know a lot of people find him dull but I've seen him a couple of times and have always really enjoyed him. And it was a beautiful evening to stand in a forest!

But I was going on my own and standing in a crowd on your own isn't always the most fun, plus the parking is bad and it can take ages to find your car let alone get out. So I basically cancelled. This is becoming a bit of a habit with me and I don't like it. Firstly it's a stupid waste of money, but it's more than that. I think I'm so good at being single because I do stuff - I'm not afraid to go out on my own and do things, instead of sitting at home and waiting for someone to ask me to do something with them. Except I think I am becoming afraid, and I don't like it. I know I do stuff, but it's the same stuff I've always done, stuff I know I can do, and I'm doing less of it. I've said it before, I wonder where my confidence went?

Anyway, Torchwood. As I'd been telling anyone who would listen for the last week it ended in a way that suggested there will be no more. This seems entirely appropriate. It was an absolutely stunning five hours of TV so it's going out on a high. I like things that know when to stop, unlike Friends for instance which kept going until the joke simply wasn't funny anymore.

It was of course hugely traumatic and what shocked me is how much it upset me. When it was over I sat on the sofa and sobbed. The lovely Rufus was on Jonathan Ross afterwards but there was no point watching him because I just wasn't in the mood. But it wasn't just me being mad - I had messages from so many people, all of them proper, well-balanced grown-ups, who felt utterly bereaved by the whole experience. There ought to be a support group! I doubt we'll see such good TV again this year, and if that doesn't get showered in awards there is not justice!

Today I have jobs to do, but I feel sad and want to stay in bed and wallow in it. Instead let's finish with a picture of the lovely Ianto, who this week was so much more than a fictional character.

Last night Trish, Janet & I went to Hunstanton to see a film. When we made the plan last weekend it was sunny, so I had high hopes of a paddle, but then the weather changed and paddling would have been madness:



So we settled for chips and a stare at the sea. Despite the clouds it was actually possible to see Skegness in the distance, something I've never done before. Or perhaps it was an illusion...

We went to see Last Chance Harvey, which I hadn't heard anything good about but which I wanted to see as it stars the lovely Emma Thompson and is set in London. It's about a middle-aged woman with a dull job, disappointing romantic life and needy mother who gets swept off her feet by an American who is visiting London for his daughter's wedding and is having an equally bad time of it.

So far so romantic comedy. What I wasn't expecting was the overwhelming sadness of it. The two main characters really were disappointed in their lives and had to endure some awful awkward moments. But of course things got in the way and their relationship was thwarted, thereby confirming everything Emma Thompson's character ever felt about her life. When they finally meet up and he explains she says she'd wanted him not to show up just so she could be disappointed, as it would save them both wasting time getting to know each other and then breaking up sometime in the future because they'd 'grown apart'. At this point I had an "oh my God, that's me!" moment, which was completely unexpected. London looks great too!

Then we headed back to Trish's, but because we had missed the start of Torchwood we had to stay out of the house until it was over, so we went to Tesco and bought cake, which filled the time perfectly. Then time for Torchwood - you could tell it was a good episode because the three of us, who are normally very chatty, sat in complete silence for a whole hour. It was stunning, quite possibly the best hour of TV all year! Completely harrowing obviously, and the ending was so sad it just left me feeling shell-shocked. Bloody marvellous!

Good night out! xxx

Well it's been one of those days I won't be sad to see the back of!

Work was a trial. But then isn't it always? I had a gentleman caller lined up after work, but honestly wasn't in the mood for it. I need to be sparkly for strangers otherwise nobody has a good time, and I was more sullen than sparky. And sullen just isn't sexy. So I cancelled. He didn't mind. I was relieved.

So I decided to use the free time to do a little bit of essential car maintenance. The petrol filler point has a green ring inside it, where you put the petrol pump nozzle. But this had come loose so every time I fill up I've had to fish around with my finger to straighten it up. I posted something in a geeky car forum and someone said it's not a standard part of the car, someone had obviously fitted it to stop it being accidentally filled with diesel, and it was easily removed.

So there I am in Mum's drive - because Mum is inevitably my partner-in-crime in this kind of nonsense. I tie a piece of string to the green ring and the other end to the squeegie thing I clean the car windscreen with, the weight of which keeps the ring at the top of the filler point. The I try to undo the screws using an allen key. It works, but as the ring comes out the allen key slips into the petrol tank.

I stand in Mum's drive, speechless. I imagine the allen key swimming through the fuel system of the car, like salmon or sperm, on its way to the engine, ruining every bit of it on its way. I don't want a new engine. I don't want to cry. I start to put this into words. Mum agrees that surely there must be a filter in the petrol tank and it will just sink to the bottom and stay there. I cross my fingers and drive home, expecting to break down at any point.

Someone on the geeky car forum says not to worry it will be fine. I'm never attempting anything more complicated than washing and hoovering ever again! Pizza, ice cream and a fully-clothed Captain Jack have helped, but I'm glad today's over!

Torchwood

I hoped you watched Torchwood last night because if you didn't you missed a treat! Don't worry, I won't spoil it for you, but I will share my two favourite moments:

When the lovely Ianto visits his sister she quizzes him about his relationship with Jack by asking, "Have you gone bender?"

When Gwen arrives for work she greets the man who is standing on the quay looking for sea monsters with, "what's occurring?", a catch phrase from everyone's other favourite Welsh thing, Gavin & Stacey.

Another episode tonight - I can't wait!

Morrisons

Exciting local news: there's a new supermarket in town!

When I first moved here the only shopping option was Somerfield, which I never liked as it was dirty and a bit run-down. Then Tesco came to town and we were all very happy! Except they got arrogant, and their customer service went downhill badly. So when Somerfield became Morrisons we were all excited!

But it was disappointing, essentially Somerfield with some new signs. Oh and a mad person from my past works there too. There goes my plan for switching supermarkets forever!

The Fourth Plinth

Yesterday was the first day of Antony Gormley's One & Other on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square. For one hundred days members of the public get an hour on the plinth, a different person every hour for the period it's on. I applied for a place but didn't get one in the first two drawers, but I'm crossing my fingers for the remaining two.

You can watch it online so I've been dipping in and out to see what people have been doing. As yet I've seen nothing thrilling, but that doesn't surprise me - what would you do on a plinth for an hour? My original hope was that they would allow more than one person up there at a time, because I wanted to take someone up there with me and snog for an hour, because two men kissing is just something you don't see. But one person alone on a plinth is more difficult, but I guess that's part of the plan, to get people to think about themselves. It's a pity it's raining on them though.

Yesterday was kind of productive, if you count laying on the sofa for a few hours and going to bed early productive. I came over inexplicably tired, and once I'd discounted that old favourite meningitis and the new favourite swine flu I realised that waking up early is getting really annoying.

But the rest of the day was fine and I managed to get some useful stuff done. I bought a fold-up chair for festivalling, not so I can sit down and enjoy the bands, because I still don't approve of that, but so I can sit down outside my tent and enjoy a gin. And I also got a fab brush to clean the ceiling with! It looks like an oversized toilet brush but is complete genius!

In the afternoon I could have met two men in a tent, or one man in a hot tub, but instead I opted to do four loads of ironing and a little light gardening. Then I finished John Barrowman's autobiography, which was good timing as the new series of Torchwood starts tonight.

But actually it wasn't such a good thing - by the time I finished it I felt like I liked him less than before. I like the cockiness of Captain Jack, because he's fictional, has lived for hundreds of years, and has saved the world so many times it makes sense. But from a man who acts, sings and dances it gets a bit wearing. And he's a bit of a show off too. And he has a love of 'pranks', which I always find adolescent and irritating. So in future I'll let his work do the talking. I would still like to see him on stage at some point, but not as much as I'd like to see Torchwood now. Only 14 and 1/2 hours to go!

I'll leave you with something strange I found on Amazon - cardboard cutouts of your favourite people/TV characters - why would you want a lifesize cutout of Henry VIII in your life?! Or Scarlet O'Hara? Or the Weeping Angel from Doctor Who?

Yesterday was the tricky day this week - at various points during the week I'd been struggling to work out what to do with the day, and had planned and rejected just about anything you could think of. For a few hours on Thursday morning I was definitely going to go to London, but it's probably just as well I didn't as it was Pride day in London so it would have been chaos! Instead I went to Castle Acre with Trish.

Despite living in this area all my life and it not being far from home I've only ever been to Castle Acre once before, when I was a teenager. One summer holiday me and a boy called Simon, who lived two doors down, went for a bike ride. I doubt we'd planned to go far but somehow before we knew it we were in Castle Acre, which is fairly impressive as we started out in Watlington, which is nearly twenty miles away! I don't remember much about it, although I do remember ruins. Strangely what I remember most is trying to cross the South Gates roundabout in King's Lynn at 5pm on a bike, and then getting a bollocking from my mother when I got home.

Amazingly I didn't realise Castle Acre actually had a castle, despite the rather obvious clue in the name! So this is where we started, wandering round the ruins in the sun. There's not much in the way of buildings to see, just outlines of where things were, but there's a moat with a nice, modern wooden bridge over it, and the whole place is lovely and quiet and has great views.



Then we paused for cake. For such a small village Castle Acre is well equipped with catering options - two teashops (one with a deli) and two pubs on the main street! There's something about the place that reminds me of Burnham Market, a small village which has been taken over by people with second homes, which results in a strange mix of local things and inappropriate/useless things for visitors: Burnham Market has a hat shop, Castle Acre a toy shop selling almost exclusively wooden toys. But no grocery shop. I'm not ranting. Well maybe a little. Anyway, the cake was fabulous - a big thick slabs of it, and at the same time light as a feather!

Next stop the priory, which was frankly stunning! There's not much of it still standing - an impressive front, and two buildings, but the rest of it is just the outlines of walls and the bottoms of pillars - enough to make you realise that it was actually huge! I can't get my head round the fact that something so big could have existed in what is essentially the middle of nowhere, and also why it was destroyed whilst comparable sizes cathedrals in Ely and Norwich are still standing. It's all Henry the 8th's fault apparently. Bastard.

The remaining buildings are lovely, with bits of painted ceilings still in place and narrow spiral staircases. The front looks spectacular, and the whole thing is far more exciting than a pile of old stones should be. I'm not actually a great lover of history, thanks to a very poor secondary school teacher - thank you Miss Reeve! - but there's something fascinating about old buildings!

After that there were chips in a pub, then back to Trish's where we found Janet revising/watching tennis, so we gossiped and had more chips. It was an ideal way to spend a summer day! xxx

I got a bit carried away taking pictures, which you can see here.