Pickle, pickle, all day long. Pickle, pickle, the pickle song.

• The morning after.

• Love is a biohazard.

• An excellent Stephen Hawking lecture. "One of his best, I think you'll find."

• NotN: Virgin Media offers new super-fast Internet at least two days out of seven.

I was called home just as I was leaving work for elevenwords' birthday drinks as arkady had fallen ill. Time to be MAN-Man! The superhero with the powers of a MAN! These involved making sausages, chips and mushrooms for everyone and entertaining Freda. Who also appears to have Arkady's cold.

Freda sat next to me watching CBeebies on redcountess's laptop. Transfixed. That's why we limit her to an hour a day.

Liz found a bottle of bubble liquid that marnameow gave us ages ago. Rainbows in the sunlight. Freda was enraptured. We can't work out how to teach her to blow them herself, though.

Today is housework day. The teenagers have cleared the boxes blocking the spare room, so I can finally hang up wet washing. That sort of thing.