Back by unpopular lack of demand, here’s another extract from The Secret Diary of LFA (mental age 13¾).

Saturday
Writing a spoof diary is a good way of cobbling together a variety of random thoughts and making it look like they are part of some grand plan. In fact they are nothing of the sort. And they don’t really have anything to do with a particular day of the week. Like this entry has nothing to do with Saturday.

Sunday
I remember when I wrote a column in the paper back in the 1990s I included a similar diary and made the assertion that then-councillor Mike Bawden had been out canvassing for votes on a Sunday. Mr Bawden wrote in to complain that he did not engage in political activities on the Sabbath and I was forced to write a grovelling apology. Hilariously I also pretended to confuse Councillor Bawden with the Coronation Street character Mike Baldwin, who was unfortunately killed off in 2006. Whereas “our” Mike is still going strong, as far as I’m aware. Does anyone know if he still drives around in a car bearing the former Mayoral number plate, WWV 1?

Monday
I read that Aretha Franklin was crowned this year’s worst-dressed celebrity by the American animal rights organisation PETA. Apparently this was due to the “vulgar fur” that she was adorned in at last week’s Grammy awards. My theory is that she won the award not just for wearing fur, but more for the fact that huge numbers of cute fluffy animals must have been slaughtered to provide the vast expanse of fur needed to cover her ample “bingo wings”.

http://i180.photobucket.com/albums/x96/rtomkins/aretha.jpg

Tuesday
The headline in today’s Adver reads Vice Girls Fear Rapist Has Struck Before. I don't know, but if I were a vice girl, I think I might be less concerned with the Has Struck Before angle and more worried about the possibility of a Might Strike Again scenario.

Wednesday
Now that more car drivers wear Bluetooth headsets, it’s harder to spot when someone is yakking on the phone while driving – apart from the fact, of course, that they’re doing 50 in the outside lane. I am putting together a proposal that will make it mandatory for headsets to be designed so that they can be fitted to the left ear only (right ear only in the US). That way you will have assurance – as you pass them on the inside lane - that your two-fingered gesture is warranted. By the way, this doesn’t work if the driver is over 85 as they are probably doing 50mph in the outside lane whilst driving against the flow of oncoming traffic. In which case the last thing you want to be looking out for is whether the old codger is Bluetooth-enabled.

Thursday
One thing I was thinking about today while sat on the toilet somewhere was, well … toilets. When you think about it, the toilet hasn’t evolved a whole lot since it was first introduced back in the Victorian era by Thomas Crapper and his cronies. You sit on a seat to do your business and then pull a handle which releases a cascade of water from a cistern into the porcelain pan below, which with luck will flush away anything in the pan around a U-pipe and into oblivion. That still seems to be pretty much a 19th-century sort of thing, wouldn’t you say? Where are all the seats that go up or down at the touch of a sensor, self-cleaning devices, or controls like on a microwave so you can adjust the force and duration of the flush to match the contents of the toilet bowl? Not on my bog, that’s for sure.

Friday
While passing through an airport today I was on one of those moving travelator things and saw a sign that said Stand On The Right. So I did. Then about 10 metres later there was another sign that said Walk On The Left. So I did. Then in another 10 metres – yes, you’ve guessed it – Stand On The Right. By the end of the travelator (some 500 metres long), I was starting to seriously annoy my fellow travelator-ators. Now I don’t mind following instructions, but if some airports could at least make up their mind about what they want, it would certainly make things a whole lot easier for everyone.