A potato clock

Every night on my bus home I pass the most amazing house – from the outside it looks like something from a Jane Austen novel, and the curtains are never drawn. This means, that when sat in the inevitable traffic jam that blights my journey home, I can afford a little peek in through the shutter-free windows – and what a view it is.

There’s a grand piano with the lid up – ready to be played, regency-style furniture in muted colours tastefully dotted around the living room, and a grand sweeping staircase with a cream runner. All this is illuminated by variety of table lamps and concealed spot lamps and even those little brass lamps that hang over the top of expensive paintings – I somehow don’t think these are prints from Habitat.

But do you know what? In the three years that I have been passing this house, two times a day, even though I am able to see everything with such great detail, I have never once seen a person. It’s like a residential chocolate factory – nobody ever goes in and nobody ever goes out. It’s most bizarre. It’s as though the lights are on but no one is in… quite literally.

Perhaps it’s owned my a mega-rich person who’s never in the country and has all the lights on a timer – in which case, I wonder if he’d like a house sitter!?

But enough pondering on pointless things.

Last night, just before I went to sleep, I was watching Have I Got News For You – it was a repeat of a Christmas special and Boris Johnson was the presenter. I was quite sleepy from my climbing escapades with Fab Friend and Flo so not really concentrating but then I read Boris Johnson saying: ‘Everyone who attends gets a potato clock…’

Eh?

But actually for once, it wasn’t a subtitle error – Boris Johnson actually did say that.

It was meant to be funny, meant to be misheard

See, say it again and it comes out as ‘Everyone who attends gets up at 8 o’clock…’

Did anyone laugh?

I didn’t! I mean it’s hard enough for me to follow TV as it is without people like him trying to confuse me even more.

And do you know the worst bit – Have I Got News For You is on the BBC – so from now on I won’t know if it’s the subtitles or the presenters that are crap… last night, in truth, it was both.