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Hawks Ladies beat Banbury 9-0 yesterday. Sat in the stand with Trevor, Malc and Barry. Malc and Barry spent most of the game picking the bones of the men's side's dismal start to the season and discussing prospects for next week's FA Cup tie at Bognor. We all agreed Charlie Oatway is shaping up to be something special. There's a new girl in the squad, Rachael - she came on as sub halfway through the second half and turned in a sound performance in midfield.

No-one said anything about whether they can carry on transporting me to away games. I'm left to ring Lisa midweek and see what the state of play is.

As I was walking home from the ferry it started to spit rain. By the time I'd made a quick dinner of a microwave Chicken Tikka Masala (I'm here alone at the moment, with my mother at a conference and my father on a break in Ireland with his pal), it was bucketing down. So it was on with my rain jacket to walk over to Ness's to drive to Jade's for the repeat of X Factor.

Jade had laid on a nice table of nibbles. We all found the bad auditionees highly amusing. About 20 minutes in, the telly was again relegated to a backdrop as Jade and Ness set an evening of chat in motion - mostly about their past relationships again, though we found time to touch on TV and radio shows, music, work, Jade's academic courses and my ECDL (she's met Pathenia at the Royal Sailors' Rest and had a run-in with her!) and celebrities we fancy.

Ness remembered me mentioning Lady Mélisande, so asked me about her. She advised me to make my love known to the girl. I did point out that Lady Mélisande has nearly two years still to do in the States, and that I don't fancy the idea of telling her I love her by e-mail. My plan has always been to wait until she returns to England in May 2009 before making any move. Ness promptly dreamed up the nightmare scenario of Lady Mélisande meeting someone in the States and deciding to marry him, obviating the need for a Green Card. Erk. All the same, I had to confess that declaring my love by e-mail still didn't appeal. I did mention an alternative idea: next February I could simply use my own handwriting, which Lady Mélisande would recognise, on her Valentine card and send it from here, meaning a tell-tale Portsmouth postmark. I admitted that any enthusiasm I might have for making my feelings known is tempered by my being completely in the dark as to whether they're reciprocated in the slightest. And Jade then raised the issue of whether I could live with Lady Mélisande deciding to end our friendship if I told her of my love and she didn't return it. Affairs of the heart are so goddamn complicated.

We agreed to meet up again in a few weeks and then all get together for the final, prompting Ness to ask "What are we going to do when it's all over?" But then during The Xtra Factor Ness readily stated that we'd ended up hardly watching the telly at all thanks to conversation, and I said that was why I'd taken the precaution of watching last night - much to the girls' amusement. After having Michael Palin's New Europe as our backdrop for an hour (and taking next to no notice of it; only when he said he was in Turkey did Ness tell us a friend of hers had been to Istanbul, and I said I'd like to visit Turkey. Ness then said something about her friend not liking the food, I said I'd love Turkish feta cheese, and that led to me telling the girls about the wrap kebabs in Mariehamn, which prompted Ness to ask me about the Åland pancakes...) we went over to Heart radio on the freeview box. My cold had begun to really aggravate me, and from midnight we were starting to tire, so at 12.20 we decided to call it a night and Ness ran me home.

Got to go water the plants.

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Six hours of purgatory on the phones with this goddamn cold. The first half of the shift was just about bearable (apart from one bloke with a hostile attitude) but from about 6.30 onwards I was really suffering, with the blocked itchy nose and, every so often, the presence of phlegm in my throat cutting into my speech. Worse, during the second half the cold really affected my voice, so for three hours I was doing interviews sounding like the guy in the 70s Tunes commercial who was travelling to Dottinghad. And every interview meant 20 minutes or more of holding in when I needed a blow. At the end of each one, the moment I put the phone down I had to have a massive honk. Yecch.

Looking on the bright side, at least the cold hit me in a week when I don't have work again until Friday. Fingers crossed it won't be so bad by then.

Stood around outside in the cold after the shift waiting for my taxi. When it was five minutes late I rang the taxi company, who said the driver had been unable to find my place of work - he's new to the area - and was outside the Holiday Inn, over half a mile away. The lady in the taxi office wanted me to give directions, but I wasn't sure of the route starting from the Holiday Inn, so I resignedly told the lady I'd walk there.

At that very moment, thank goodness, Sandi drove out of the entrance, pulled up alongside me and asked if I was OK. She ran me to the Holiday Inn, where we couldn't see a taxi anywhere, so I rang the taxi firm again - the driver had now found my workplace! Fortunately he drove back to the Holiday Inn and at last we were on our way.

Home for a hot honey and lemon and Movie Connections, then stayed tuned for Inside Sport as they were doing a little piece on the England women's team. The theme was 'wouldn't it be great if England's top players were professional like the USA's?' It would be absolutely lovely, but what we have to do first is find a way of getting lots more people coming to domestic women's matches. Brian Barwick's suggestion is to play in the summer. I'm undecided as to whether that would help much or not...

I'm feeling about as energetic as a limp rag, and have to be up in the morning for the dentist, so 'night folks.