This is a sort of merged post as it's the summer of... summer and I slept over at Dave's last night. But this baking heat hasn't affected my learning capability, as these morsels of freshly baked brain meat show.

If you set an alarm and get up early specially to go to a cash machine, it is likely to be broken. Furthermore it will not tell you this until it's asked twice for your PIN, informed you it has no reciepts to print, asked how much you wanted, checked if you wanted to do anything else and robbed your account. Upon not working it will print out a receipt informing you that you recievd 0.00 pounds. Whilst this seems pointless, it may be that they can print some numbers on it and trick stupid people into thinking they recieved the money when they didn't. Judging by their reaction to being told the machine was broken, the staff of the Tesco Express store which it is a part of would probably have fallen for the receipt trick.

Giving away £220 pounds in cash isn't at all difficult as long as you just got it from an ATM - as you've barely had the money physically there anyway there isn't the usual heart panging sense of loss when it goes away.

Drink alot of water before walking even short distances on hot days. It seems a simple thing, and it is, but it's easy to forget and can cause major dehydration problems. Better safe than sorry - bring a bottle with you if you can, but use a clear plastic bottle, not a thick bike bottle as they make the water taste horrid and warm and you won't drink it.

Hammock's are genius fun, even if you don't meet the correct criteria for pirateness. You can see how long two people can stay on together for, work out the best positions for two people to stay on it, lie underneath it and prod whoever is on it, tip it over when someone else is on it in all sorts of nefarious ways (including prodding the top repeatedly with a badminton racket.The best way for two people to lie in a hammock is for one to open their legs as if giving birth and the other to put their legs under and round the outside of the former person's torso. Both should then be able to lie back with little difficulty. Don't do this if someone is lying under it trying to prod you - if the prodder is male you will crush their genitals.Two sleeping bags zipped together can hold 7 people.

Ice cubes are fun, easily created and can be hit by a badminton racket up to four gardens away from the one which you are standing in. They are, however, quite hard to aim precisely - don't try and land one on your mate's car (a vintage Beetle called Bertie fact fans) as you may instead hit the neighbour's, and spend the next ten minutes hiding nervously in a shrubbery as they wonder what hit them (the beauty of ice - no evidence!)A number of blankets, cushions, a hammock and eight partially drunk people are a bad thing to have together in a garden. This can first lead to pillow fights, then to pile ons, then to 'how many people can fit in two sleeping bags zipped together contests. Surreal is not the word.

Surreal is the word, however, when you've finally gone to sleep in the garden (because all the other wimps went inside) and wake up at 5 to see a shuttle-cock pinging across your vision. Should this happen you are either having a daytime hallucination of an artistic game of pong or two mates haven't gone to bed, instead electing to walk to the nearest tram station, buy a Cadbury's Double Decker and return an hour later to play badminton over someone asleep in the garden. You are made aware of the fact that they are sleep deprived when one asks why you didn't come on the walk and is puzzled when you explain you were asleep and didn't know they were going.

The french cartoon film 'Twelve Tasks of Asterix' (with English over-dub) is also rather surreal, but good entertainment to those who have been up until five in the morning walking and playing badminton. Apart from Cleopatra cooking lunch for Cesar. That's just stupid.

The guy who climbs the ladder down first always gets eaten by the aliens/monsters/Spanish. Unless that man is Chuck Norris.

Walking a lot in huge heat is irritatingly tiring. You know you've done some exercise, because you're sweating, but you can't seem to get a grip on why you feel so knackered. It saps more energy than usual but because you're powering on to avoid the heat you don't notice how much work you're actually doing.

X-Men 2 is a pretty good film. Not as good as the third, but better than I remember it being the first time. If you haven't seen X-Men 3, I advise you to go to the cinema very soon because it won't be on longer and the cinema effects really do add to it. If you do go, stay till the very end of the credits.