Late Saturday afternoon, another cathartic charity shop trip to Woodbridge and another cuppa Costa. Short walk to the car park and there's a woman asking for help starting her car. Nobody else around: call me muggins. She's got jump leads, which is helpful if a worrying sign. I pull alongside her motor and the leads don't .. quite .. reach. Out and in to the other side. Better but tricky to see for the blinding headlights. Neither of us has a torch. Not sure which lead to attach first. Fails to start. Suggest I push her car down the slight slope. First I have to push it slightly uphill. Finally, she starts, and finally here's last month's Dolmio (Doings Of Last Month Innoparticular Order).

That is to say, an attempt to capture past(a) events before they slip... my... mind. January 2008 was spent:

• watching Christopher Eccleston get his comeuppance in 28 Days Later
• crawling to bed through a bedroom overcrowded with unwanted furniture
• following the misadventures of Malachi Constant through Kurt Vonnegut's Sirens Of Titan
• trying to aid eldest to nail an ollie
• watching the wonderfully watchable Bill Murray in The Life Aquatic
• eating far too many Lindor
• welcoming the return of Torchwood
• breezing through Naive, Super by Erlend Loe: we all need a hammer and pegs
• listening to the before-they-lost-it sounds of Simple Minds Sister Feelings Call
• catching bits of BBC4's Pop On 4
• downloading some "ideas worth spreading" from TED
• being swept along by BBC's pacy Sense & Sensibility

And that was January 2008.