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2005-05-24 - 7:55 a.m.

Yesterday I was coming home from the train station after a jolly weekend hooning around the Peak District in a real live car that I was driving myself. Yes, a terrifying thought given, well, just about anything concerning my relationship to mechanics, engineering and high speed vehicles that could plough into other unsuspecting road users.

I�d dropped off the (rental) car after a relatively crash-free few days, and was stood at the crossroads. Not the metaphorical one where I decide what the bloody hell to do with my life, but the actual one outside my house where the actual buses go past.

Part of the weekend had been vaguely surreal. For fans of the TV programme The League of Gentlemen, I�d spent one morning in the real Royston Vasey, quizzing various baffled locals as to their feelings on their infamy. (�It�s amazing where people come from. You�d never have believed it was possible. We get all sorts�Americans, Japanese, people from Oldham��) I had a cup of tea in Caf� Royston, and assumed they were cashing in, but the owner was adamant that the name was just a bizarre coincidence. �It�s been the Caf� Royston for as long as I can remember, and as long as I�ve been proprietor.� How long is that then? �About nine weeks.� You�ve got to love villages.

But anyway. As one bus went past, I absent-mindedly caught the eye of the passenger on the back seat, who was a scary, drug-addled lunatic making cut-throat gestures at me and had eyes that hinted at the promise of an imminent painful death. I almost flicked him the V�s, but stopped myself just in time as the next stop was just seconds away, and he could have easily jumped off, caught me up (I was laden with luggage) and sliced me into fourteen separate bin bags. Luckily I just blanked him, but it made me think how fine the line is between going about your normal existence and unwittingly inciting bloody, head-stoving, random violence.

TV has been great today as the BBC have been on strike, and so news reports are being read out by people not trained in newsreading�Jane from accounts, Peter the man who cleans the bogs, any stuttering dullard off the street with a basic grasp of English, etc. It really is hilarious, and I think they should do it often. Payment of your Tv licence should entitle you to a couple of sessions presenting whatever programme you like, in fact. I�d love to do a Newsnight or a Late Review, or anything where I could come across as the clueless dimwit that I coincidentally am.

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