Stuck at home this morning, taking a half-day's leave to take delivery of a new sofa. Yes, more stuff. It's going to be a long half-day, at this rate it will be 3pm before I get to the office! By rights this should be a pleasant experience - lying in, wandering down town for a coffee, doing some reading, learning a new game - but somehow it feels more like sick-leave - boredom, stuck in the house because the delivery people might arrive, can't start anything because they might arrive soon, bored because they haven't arrived yet!

Still, it will be great to have a new sofa. The old one (Laura Ashley, flowering branch pattern with large oriental-looking birds, circa 1985) is developing concavities and holes that shouldn't be there, places where small guests might slip and fall and emerge blinking years later. It's an old familiar friend, if a grubby and disreputable one, and I'll miss it, but it's going to a better place now - Simon's flat.