A rather too slimy start to the day...

Today started badly. Nothing to do with the claps of overnight thunder, lightning and subsequent power cut and not, as Alanis Morrisette might say, anything to do with 'black flies in my chardonnay'.

No, today started badly with a largish beigey-black slimy slug stuck inside the bottom part of my stovetop espresso coffee maker. We're told to be thankful for small mercies, so the small mercy I am thankful for is that I saw the offending slug before I cooked my coffee (or perked it, or espressed it, or whatever it does).

You see the cold water goes into the bottom, the coffee in between in the funnel/sieve thingy, then the jug bit gets screwed on top. I could have, quite unwittingly, have add 'eau de slug' to my morning coffee. I would only have found out tonight when I cleaned out the pot. And that would have been Very Bad Indeed.

As it was all I had to do was turf out the slug, which meant leaning out of the kitchen window and banging the coffee pot on the sill.

"What on earth are you doing?" said Mr PM, who was cleaning the cars in the rain at 7am. Like you do. Well he does. Anyway.

"Woof!" said the dog, as he always agrees with His Master.

I explained about the slug. The slug was still stuck to the pot.

"Poke it with a skewer," Mr PM added helpfully.

"Woof," ditto dog.

I poked. Slug fell out. I then put water in the pot and boiled it, adding salt as it seemed the right thing to do for a sluggy sort of a problem and I scrubbed it and scrubbed it.

I then cooked the coffee.

That was why it was a bad start to the day. Was there suspicious looking scum on the coffee? Best not to look. It tasted okay, but I can't say that I totally trusted it.

My coffee was ruined by a stray gastropod mollusc.

Things didn't improve with the addition of BBC Breakfast. Since when did we start to say IrARnian, not IrAYnian? I'm sure when we had that to do at the embassy in 1980 it was the IrAYnian one not the IrARnian one? Or is it that I have been happily saying IrAYnian all these years, when in fact, everyone else was saying IrARnian and I was looking like an idiot?

At least they don't say Eye-ranian, like the Yanks. Yet.

But heading back to 1980, remember the SAS storming the building? How fantastic was that? We could do with a bit of that again to make us feel properly British. Forget Armed Forces Day - a bit of men dressed in black leaping from a helicopter down a bit of rope into a building full of terrorists is what we all need to feel patriotic again.

That or a Brit winning Wimbledon. That would do too.