Due to a scheduling cock up on my part, I spent the first couple hours of this glorious fine day stuck in expensive cabs to attend a meeting tomorrow, hmm. I deposited the Brain (or is it Pinkie?) back at school and popped into the Candystore to buy an Indie so I could fritter more of my day away with Sudoku over coffee at the nearby Cafe Latte. The man said they were sold out but I have my suspicions that he'll be sold out tomorrow as well. I settled for last week's Cornish Times, which I knew because the date on the masthead reads

DY' GWENER (FRIDAY) MYS METHEVEN (JUNE) 3, 2005

which, in Irish would read:

DE HAOINE (FRIDAY) MI MEITHEAMH (JUNE) 3, 2005

There was another change of plan at the Cafe when I ordered a vegetarian panini with roasted pepper and feta. Other options were wraps or baguettes so the panini won.

I read about a traffic incident where a vehicle carrying potatoes spilt its load and abandoned the scene at about 5pm in the evening, leaving potatoes up to a foot deep all over the road. Some motorists made their way through the mound but this turned the potatoes to sludge, causing other motorists to get stuck in it. It was 7.15 before the police, the highways department, a JCB and the fire brigade cleared the mess.

The panini arrives and, in addition to the advertised ingredients are pickled mushroom, artichoke and onion that probably came from the same jar as the roasted (maybe I misread the menu) pepper. The salad was generous, simple and fresh and the panini tasted better than it looked.

The roads back home in West Cork are similar to the roads around Devon and Cornwall, where locals travel at breakneck speed along narrow winding roads, daring you to get in their way. Or there's the local who never goes far and takes his time to get there, checking every field along the way for progress. Because he's never looking at the road or his rear view mirror, he can be a tricky customer to overtake.

In West Cork they call hedges ditches and they are about the height of a garden wall. Except when the fuchsia and the brambles and the honeysuckle get out of hand during the summer, you can usually see over the ditches and so, around corners a bit. It makes night driving much easier because you can normally spot the oncoming drunks well in advance.

The roads here, like all English roads, are well surfaced - unlike in West Cork where it is rumoured that the mythical Tuatha De Danaan are alive and thriving in the potholes. When you're a kid, going in the car is like going on a bouncy castle only with harder bumps. When you're eight months pregnant it's like there's a football match going on in your belly. At the end of the ice age, a swathe of rocky deposits built up to the south of West Cork, creating a natural ridge in the landscape. When the melting ice finally tipped its payload into the sea it created northern Europe's deepest natural harbour in Bantry Bay. You have to cross this line (known as a terminal morain) to reach the Mizen and Beara peninsulas from Cork. The match used to go to penalties every time we crossed the line.

I left the last of the panini because I was out of coffee and nobody offered a refill. Walking through the park I muse about the headline story in the Cornish Times - it's stupid to walk and read I know. Huge police search after thieves take quad bikes - 6 quad bikes stolen at 6pmish from a store shed at the quad bike centre - the county is on red alert, helicopters sweeping the area. Following morning, returning to the scene to look for clues, the police discover another thief stealing the fuel from the remaining bikes! Seems five helmets were nicked from them last month but it's OK, they're insured and are buying new bikes pronto. Suggest searching for bikes in back of potato lorry.