Catch any of The Triangle, the Bank Holiday mini-series on the Beeb? It had everything: extreme weather, special effects galore, lots of people you couldn't quite place, and Sam Neill.

Suitably enough, we watched in a slightly time-delayed fashion over the three hour-and-a-bit parts and stayed the course. You had to feel for poor Lou Diamond, who could never be sure how many sons he had -- they kept disappearing -- no wonder he eventually sought out the reporter, a Michael J Fox lookalike (I should know) played by Eric Stoltz. Who, it turns out, originally had the part of Marty McFly, or so says the IMDb.

One of the other leads, the research scientist with the Oz accent, turned out to be the Scottish-voiced Mr Junior from Thomas & The Magic Railroad. And Sam Neill played not only himself, the medicinal sounding Benerall, but his dead brother Winston, distinguishable only by his cunning moustache.

Final thought: much of The Triangle was set in and around Miami, windswept and boggy. Remined me of Ely.

Not been up to The Smoke with the family for a while. Much pre-planning (the day before) meant we had reserved seats on the loco and knew precisely which bus to catch -- no. 26 from stop L -- to take us to the Bridge of Abba. Seated on the top deck, we expressly made our way along Fleet Street and past St Paul's, then hopped off and down to the riverside.

Don't remember the Eye capsules being swept with metal detectors last time. Good chance to take in some Dr Who locations for The Boy:

• there's the clock tower (BB) that's hit by the Slitheen spaceship ("Aliens Of London")
• in the distance is Lumic's Cyberman factory at Battersea ("The Age Of Steel")
• and somewhere down there is home to the Nestene Consciousness ("Rose")

And back over the water by the front of the HP Sauce bottle, along Buckingham Gate to the Palace of the same name, and into the Wellington Arch just as the rain starts. Up the lift for a frighteningly close view of the largest bronze sculpture in Europe, or so I believe: crazy horses.

Come on kids, you can't be tired yet? Tubed it and walked a v. long tunnel all the way to a busy busy Science Museum. Paid our money to do the Pixar expo: pricey but well worth it. Lots of incredible Incredible designs, plus a stunning original 10 minute film taking a tour through some production sketches, and then there's the zoetrope. It's amazing: read the reviews.

And back on another punctual train in more seats of our own. Top day.

Me and Sven The Svede have bags in common, most obviously that we have a young lad called Theo in our care.

Few pointers for Tord's left hand man: give The Boy plenty of exercise up the local rec, buy him a copy of Dr Who Adventures plus a Tropicaca To Go on the way back, then sit him down in front of Kerching! And make sure he reads his Biff And Chip book to you before heading up the hill to Bedfordshire. Works for me.

So you can't have failed to notice all those standards of St George hither and thither. Not all of us want to play along, so here's my own Top Ten Reasons For NOT Having An England Flag:

1. unavailable in Waitrose, dahling
2. that vertical stripe makes me look fat
3. 99p for the flag, £50 for the Renault flag attachment device
4. not the product of a Blue Peter colouring competition
5. unwilling to endorse all that dragonslaying nonsense
6. if I'm going to splash out, I want more than two colours
7. couldn't cope with loss if snapped off by an undertaking cyclist
8. don't want to upset the small but highly volatile local Togolese residents
9. can't find one with the correct Ingerland spelling
10. would play havoc with my drag coefficient

16 days 18 hours 14 minutes to go ...

Saturday afternoon -- raining again -- so off to the local soft play arena with The Boy and his best mate in the back.

"Dad," says The Boy, "where is Wacky Warehouse?"

"Near the cinema," I reply.

Best Mate pipes up: "Are there many cinemas?"

The Boy strides up to the plate to answer this one: "Well, there's one in Ipswich, one in Australia, one in America, one in Norwich, and one in London. And one in Chinese."

"Oh," he continues after a while, "and I think ... there was one in the Great Fire of London."

Didn't watch the Gooners in tonight's big big footy game -- well, at least not as it happened -- 'cos off to a gig. Been a fan of The Divine Comedy since they appeared on the old Radcliffe Radio 5 late night show years back, when Neil Hannon did "When The Lights Go Out", and they've not drifted from my most-played list.

Only other time I saw them live was at The Junction in cosmo Cambridge perhaps ten years ago, and that's where they resurfaced this evening.

• frustratingly, the new album isn't due out for another few weeks
• understandably, they played half-a-dozen as yet unheard tracks
• amazingly, encore included a song from Fanfare For The Comic Muse, his impossible-to-get debut and deleted album

Still, great to hear some of the older songs tonight, esp. Queen Of The South (maintaining that football theme) and an impassioned Tonight We Fly ("this is the best life").

Less taken with some others, inc. Eye Of The Needle, a dirge, and an ambitious cover of The Associates' Party Fears Two: sure he's got the voice to approach Billy Mackenzie, but the chug-chugga-chug backing drowned him out. Eight piece band tonight making plenty of noise: I'd say too much.

Straight out of The Likely Lads, I'd taped the football to watch when I got back and was determined to avoid hearing the result. So it gets to the end of the gig and Mr Hannon, a Man United fan, announces delightedly to the whole crowd that Arsenal have lost. The swine.

Say it loud, say it proud, for I am now 40 flippin' years of age.

Thanks to our petite and bijou footy blog, Next Goal Wins, I know that the last four weeks have gone from cold to fair to sunny to bloomin' boiling. If you consider Tuesdays only, that is. With the odd Wednesday thrown in.

Couldn't play yesterday, in the slot we've been using for about the last 18 months, 'cos someone else had the foresight to book the pitch. I used to make the booking myself, then stopped when we failed to spot anyone else using the pitch, ever. Felt like we had squatters' rights when we saw other kick and rushers on our hallowed all-weather surface, but they wouldn't budge. I dunno, the sun pops out from behind some clouds and suddenly every Tomaszewski, Dickov and Harry Kewell dons a pair of shorts.

Because the sun is much too sultry
And one must avoid its ultry-violet ray
— Noel Coward, Mad Dogs And Englishmen

Fun and frantic 4-a-side today, as ever. Only three of us (injuries, etc.: certain sides would have not played, or perhaps decided to play, lose, then ask for a replay) as opposed to five of them: luckily we were able to nick (arguably) their best player, who happened to be wearing the wrong colour shirt, though that didn't stop us failing to score the first five goals. Then we finally put one in the bag of the onion bag, so to speak, and they visibly wilted -- actually we all were, by that point.

Back in the changing rooms, glowing from our narrow victory, I knew what it was to be a faulty radiator in the back room, the kind you can't turn off. Red face, red torso, and well red generally. That'll be the flush of success.

Back in 2001 -- have those list programs really been going on that long? -- Channel 4 announced the results of their poll to find the 100 Greatest Films. Ever!

(for an alternative, you could always try Barry Norman's 100 top films instead)

Here's their list:

1. Star Wars/The Empire Strikes Back
2. The Godfather/The Godfather (Part II)
3. The Shawshank Redemption
4. Pulp Fiction
5. Some Like it Hot
6. Gladiator
7. It's a Wonderful Life
8. Blade Runner
9. Schindler's List
10. GoodFellas
     
11. Jaws
12. Psycho
13. Apocalypse Now
14. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
15. The Matrix
16. Casablanca
17. The Usual Suspects
18. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
19. Citizen Kane
20. Raging Bull
     
21. ET
22. Taxi Driver
23. The Life of Brian
24. Singin' in the Rain
25. LA Confidential
26. The Wizard of Oz
27. 2001: A Space Odyssey
28. Kes
29. Vertigo
30. Lawrence of Arabia
     
31. Fargo
32. Gone with the Wind
33. Trainspotting
34. The Full Monty
35. The Graduate
36. Alien
37. The Silence of the Lambs
38. Withnail and I
39. The Great Escape
40. Toy Story
     
41. The Third Man
42. Four Weddings and a Funeral
43. The Sound of Music
44. Fitzcarraldo
45. Deliverance
46. The Good the Bad and the Ugly
47. Kind Hearts and Coronets
48. Chinatown
49. The Exorcist
50. Annie Hall
     
51. The Italian Job
52. Sunset Boulevard
53. The Jungle Book
54. Titanic
55. Jean de Florette/Manon des Sources
56. Dr Strangelove
57. Rebel Without a Cause
58. Seven Samurai
59. A Matter of Life and Death
60. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
     
61. Secrets and Lies
62. Blue Velvet
63. La Dolce Vita
64. Spartacus
65. Metropolis
66. Bonnie and Clyde
67. King Kong
68. Get Carter
69. The Searchers
70. The Seventh Seal
     
71. Don't Look Now
72. Brief Encounter
73. M*A*S*H
74. The French Connection
75. Top Hat
76. The Producers
77. Three Colours Trilogy
78. Cabaret
79. Goldfinger
80. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
     
81. The Gold Rush
82. High Noon
83. Saturday Night Fever
84. The Adventures of Robin Hood
85. Enter the Dragon
86. Breathless
87. Ice Cold in Alex
88. Battleship Potemkin
89. African Queen
90. The General
     
91. A Hard Day's Night
92. Way Out West
93. Henry V
94. Easy Rider
95. My Beautiful Laundrette
96. Belle de Jour
97. The Bride of Frankenstein
98. Terminator
99. Saturday Night Sunday Morning
100. Do the Right Thing

Good stuff.

I loved maths at school. I was that kid. It was blissfully second nature for me. Mental maths, marvellous. Though I remember struggling with the concept of splitting a shape in two and the two bits not necessarily being halves, if that makes sense.

So it was flattering to be asked by a friend to act as maths tutor to both her and her eldest in readiness for the latter's impending SATs. The last four Tuesday evenings, 6 'til 7pm, we've been covering fractions, decimals, percentages, subtractions, et cetera. Yum.

If that sounds like your idea of fun, here's the homework that I devised for mother and daughter tonight:

1. 60327 – 5037
2. 30% of £540
3. 80% of £720
4. for this equilateral triangle, what is angle x?
5. for this isosceles triangle, if bottom left angle is 50 degrees, what is angle x?
6. for this right-angled triangle, if top right angle is 20 degrees, what is angle x?
7. list the factors of 80 (e.g. 1, 2, 4, etc.)
8. express 0.6 as a fraction
9. simplify the fraction 48/64
10. 1.02 – 0.7

First person to email correct answers gets a mention. And do show your working.

They say that time only appears to accelerate as you age. Dunno what happened to last month since it's already time for another end-of-month Dolmio (Doings Of Last Month Innoparticular Order) round up.

That is to say, an attempt to capture past(a) events before they slip... my... mind. April 2006 was spent:

• goggling at the meteor shower and the scary droid ("Your robot is defective") in the great fun Zathura
• Dr Who 1: scavenging for promotional DVDs given away with The Soaraway Sun: many thanks to the Martlesham Heath newsagents
• Dr Who 2: anticipating the fortnightly new edition of Doctor Who Adventures: got stationery set and Slitheen whoopee cushion so far
• Dr Who 3: finding the Peter Cushing 1965 Doctor Who & The Daleks a tad lacklustre
• working on a new website for a local cycle shop: know anything about wheelbuilding?
• managing the odd frighteningly early night (though not tonight)
• admiring Douglas Coupland's eye for a phrase in Eleanor Rigby
• listening to the sounds of 20 years ago, esp. Prefab Sprout's Steve McQueen and The Pogues' Rum, Sodomy and the Lash
• switching to flax seed oil for my Omega-3 but still struggling to swallow
• transfixed by more mini aeroplanes, rocking horses and shadowy creatures from Hiraki Sawa at Colchester's The Minories
• not having enough cash for a milkshake at Sainsbury's caff
• progressing from Sudocrem to Diprobase for the skin treatment
• opting for Danny Baker's Radio London show on the BBC Radio Player
• baffled by too many buttons on shiny new Nokia mobile phone

And that was April 2006.