Have you been out today?

Continuing rubbishness despite a certain amount of getting out of the house lately. Very sorry.

I should have told you about the inaugural outing, a week ago, of Mr Richard Tolley's most excellent Bike Club which took a select band from Jesus Green, Cambridge to the Navigator pub (purveyor of fine Thai food and excellent sleep-inducing ales) in Little Shelford by a route so cunning that we barely used a road until the last 5 minutes or so. Like a tour of secret Cambridge, down hidden trackways and alleys, through proper outside countryness in the last golden hour of daylight. Fabulous.

But I didn't tell you about that.

And I should have told you about hearing Billy Bragg talk about Progressive Patriotism and seeing (my favourite purveyor of short fiction) A L Kennedy doing her stand up comedy act for the first time south of the border (it was good but she needs to work on her swearing - although I suspect she may have been mistakenly toning things down a bit for a literary festival audience).

But I didn't tell you about that.

And I should have told you about joining the latter part of a poker night at Adrian Reynolds's place at which I won a big hand early on and roughly quadrupled my stake money but then lost steadily to end the night a financially crippling 60p down on the night (it was high stakes stuff as you can tell). Big winner of the night was Adrian's missus, Beccy, who, despite having to be told that, no, actually her flush beat the straight she was up against, ended up about a hundred quid to the good.

But, again, I failed you.

And I certainly should have mentioned a splendid day out in sunny Brighton catching the excellent John Vernon Lord exhibition before it closed, visiting my very dear friend Pam in Lewes and meeting up with Mr Michael Chester for a quick drink and fine talk.

But no, still I remained silent.

And as for anything else, well I'm not telling you about that...

so here's a picture.