Glastonbury tickets go on sale today. We are ready. Both logistically (a spreadsheet has been circulated around our group of eight - we've added registration numbers and postcodes) and psychologically (we know the drill - it will be long and frustrating). At nine o'clock sharp we sit at our respective computers, alternately refreshing the overloaded URL and redialling the busy phone line. Constantly. An hour in, and there are tantalising glimpses. Entry onto the holding page. Hope dawns, but is dashed in ignominious ejection. Back to square one. Finally, breath-holdingly, I get as far as entering all our details. It's happening! Cruelly, I am cast out before reaching the payment processing page.
All it takes is one person to get through. And it happens. With only nine minutes to go before all of the tickets are sold. And after an hour and a half of tedium, we are free to go about our respective Sundays.
Lots of people are not so lucky. Twitter is flooded with those who have got as far as registering names multiple times, but never made it any further. Some who never even made it through to the holding page. Of course, statistically, there must be some who sailed through on their first attempt, and who are utterly bemused by all the angst and teeth-gnashing.
Sunday is also enhanced by the sight of a man standing on the reservation of the Finchley Road, holding a sign promoting a carwash. He's wearing a SpongeBob Squarepants costume. It's a bad one - cheap-looking and droopy, with a slot cut out so he can see. He gets a thumbs up (obviously), and waves back in a slightly weary but resigned way. As you would - if you were stood in the middle of the Finchley Road, dressed as a cheap SpongeBob.
Most people have had the eqivalent of a SpongeBob job in their lives. Dispiriting at the time, but character-building (in this case, literally). The grimmer it is, the more cheering a comparative future yardstick it becomes.
Anything that comes too easily is hard to value.
For all the cold, the run is worth it. Sun slanting across the park, catching a chevron of Canada geese, and a Virgin hot air balloon, which is drifting low in the sky. I'm not keen on the conspicuous marketing message, but I like the slow, dreamy progress of the balloon, which pulls my eyes irrestistably skywards. 
An unremittingly dank day, all Victorian Gothic in its chilly gloom. We appear to have skipped the 'mellow fruitfulness' bit and cut straight to late November. 
Although it is Saturday, I am wide awake at half five in the morning. Brain still busy from the week, not registering the freedom to slow down. Sleep will not come back. So I get dressed in the dark, and sneak out of the house to buy a paper. As the garage has been razed to the ground in a radical rebuild, it means walking up to town. The residential side streets are empty, except for the odd purposeful cat streaking across the road, but on St Peter's Street the first fruit and veg traders are starting to set up. Stalls line the street - mostly just metal skeletons, but a few have come to life, with striped awnings, fake turf, and serried ranks of produce - all monochrome in the faintest of morning light. There's the odd hoarse shout and ribald quip, but in the main it's quiet focus. This is a well-rehearsed dance - the way the van is packed and unpacked, what goes where, which goes first. These are the professionals. Things are displayed carefully in vegetable slopes designed to catch the eye. 
