I'm not entirely capable of staying on the wagon with my eating, but I think I can safely say that I've not had a particularly binge-ridden weekend. I could quite easily have grabbed a bite to eat tonight, but managed to steer myself directly to home, do not pass jail, do not collect a takeaway or 200 lbs of flab.

Good work, though my stomach will demand breakfast in the morning.

The weekend has been, indeed, multi-faceted. On Friday night I did some DIY and foolishly managed to swamp the house with tons of dust. This was very very foolish. There's dust on everything and that can only mean that all the effort I put into putting sheeting in the doorway of the room I was ripping plaster off, last weekend, was a waste of time, if I'm going to work unprotected.

Indeed, I was working without protection. It's because I started off just intending to take the nails out of the ceiling joists. Then I started messing with some bits of wall and it sort of snowballed. I wasn't wearing my mask or gloves. I started wearing the mask when I felt like I could taste the dust. I put the gloves on after a bit of razor sharp tile dropped on my hand, despite the fact that I was levering it off the wall with a long crowbar and felt like my hands were out of the way - somehow these falling objects can fly.

So, I have a small nick out of a very convenient place in my hand (if such a thing can exist - well, a non-inconvenient place) and a lesson learned the hard way.

I got to the point, on Friday night, of pondering how I feel about life at the moment. In many ways, I'm not really all that happy about things. I'm in the middle of a long and arduous house-redevelopment that my heart is sometimes in, and sometimes not. It will be brilliant when done, but budgets are getting scary and I think I'd rather be doing something else. I'm only ever really on the brink of feeling like I'm making a rousing success of my work life, and the gigging side of things could be better... though it could so easily be a lot worse.

Essentially, though not quite miserable, I felt rather unimpressed with life on Friday night. So I downed tools, in a sudden fit of no-longer-caring, and went upstairs to watch Jeff Wayne's musical version of the War of the Worlds, as performed live. I so wish I'd been to see it. I was very impressed. It didn't cure me, but it made me excited to watch. So that was nice.

I also had a phone call (well, calls) from a friend, who I think is in a similar place in life to me in many ways. He seemed equally downhearted. I think it's something in the air. There have been quite a few shootings and hostage situations recently, so maybe this time of year sets people off. I don't know.

After a bit of thinking, I came to the conclusion that I might have to just write this year off to experience. Assuming all goes to plan with the house, then my prize is to share it with a bunch of strangers, which is bound to make me want to move out, but I won't be able to move out, since I'll be all spent up from the whole redevelopment. D'oh! Still, things may seem different later in the year, when all my stuff is in this one room and I'm out every night NOT doing DIY!

Maybe I'll move into the garage.

Not the most positive of outlooks on Friday night, then.

Saturday
Saturday was better. I woke up with the resolve to go bathroom suite shopping. This proved to be a bit of a disappointment. Bathroom suites are rubbish. I don't like them. Even when I found ones I thought were okay, the prices were nasty. The only shop that looked promising had no showroom, so gave me a catalogue to take home and study, with reference to the internet.

I was, again, a little downhearted, but optimistic, as I had a couple of things to do in London that afternoon.

I ran myself home, grabbed my laptop, walked to the railway station, got my train - standing all the way, then took a tube to the Hyde Park area, and had a nice sit down in the spare 10 or so minutes before I was due to meet someone for lunch.

Lunch then occurred and was very pleasant. It was good to catch up with someone I'd not seen in a few years and put the world to rights.

But I don't get to do just one thing in a day. I had to be shown the way to my next appointment, where I was due to use the laptop to work out what was needed for the next sketch show. With several screens of script/cues/sound effects, I kept track of proceedings and I think I have an idea of how the show will run tomorrow. I've been wrong before, though.

Then, back to Hyde Park for some rehearsing. I was in the role of giving suggestions and feedback. Fun.

Train, home, subway sandwich, bed.

Sunday
I woke up late and decided to write the day off. I had a gig in the evening and I just couldn't bring myself to do any physical labour. Not as such. I went to get a late breakfast and a tank full of fuel from the petrol station. Then I spent about 2 hours doing all my ironing. I thought that I could go to Tesco for some supplies for my marathon paperwork session, but I had to go via my ex-girfriend's house, where I could borrow a charger for my mobile phone, which had run flat over two days!

Leaving the phone charging, I went to Tesco and bought stationery, lunch, and an electric toothbrush. I would later discover that my shaver socket adapter thing doesn't work, which is probably why another device I have also doesn't appear to work. I will have to wait for the use of this super-duper toothbrush.

I hoped to get some help with my kitchen design at homebase. Instead, I accidentally bought a bathroom suite. Impulse decisions. Brilliant.

Back at the ex-girlfriend's house, I played with the guinea pigs. They've grown up into quite pleasant creatures and I rarely spend time with them. Now I sound like a divorced dad. Don't worry. There was no custody battle.

Back home and an afternoon of paperwork, punctuated with cleaning my shower-room, followed by going to the gig.

The gig was fun with a drunken heckler nearly ruining the night... and then I got some material out of it, which I can never do again, since, well, you had to be there, and we were, so we could enjoy it, but nobody else would care. Shame. Still, it was a laugh, which is really the point of the whole comedy thing.

So, ups and downs. Mainly ups, but I still feel a bit melancholic. I guess there's a long road ahead and I'm not a big fan of hard work. Still, I know the journey will be interesting and the end worthwhile. Hopefully, next week will start well and get better.

At least the "L" key has started working again on my aptop - just a joke: laptop. So, if there are any Welsh place names to write about, I'll be able to do it with vigour. It turns out that a house full of dust and debris might have something in it which could get underneath a key and stop it working.