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And then the rain came down. I was awoken this morning at 6am by a Hammer-horror crash of thunder (I had the window open, as it's been so hot and humid at night). It shocked me out of my slumber with such a fright my reflex was to pull the quilt over me, as if for protection. It's weird what you do without thinking. Then the skies opened, and didn't really close again all day. (Mind you, we are in Reigate.) Mightily refreshing.

Another formal complaint from a reader, this time Jon Peake, a nice man who happens to be editor-in-chief of TV Quick and TV Choice, though other listings magazines are available. He has become irked by my apparent habit of "giving away the endings to TV shows." He refers to last week's blog when I revealed that Mr Locke . . . ahem . . . cough . . . Arsenal! . . . on episode 4 of Lost. In mitigation, I was careful to put a spoiler warning IN CAPITAL LETTERS, but Jon was scrolling up instead of down and read the spoiler before the warning. In many ways, that's his fault for being weird, but a blog must legislate for all scrollers and I wish no malice with my overenthusiasm for talking about telly. We're all telly fans here. I will cease and desist, as Mr Peake is a man of good taste: his favourite show is also Silent Witness.

Went to Reigate Screen to see Crash, the much-admired directorial debut of screenwriter Paul Haggis. It's kind of tailor-made to please me: ensemble cast, multiple storylines, all takes place over two days and the stories turn out to be interlinked in a variety of interesting ways. It's also themed, examining racism in all its many forms against an LA backdrop. It reminded me of one my favourite films of all time, Magnolia, and that's high praise. It wasn't as good, because occasionally it felt too pleased with itself and a climactic montage showing all the characters was one broad stroke too far. Nevertheless, it's highly recommended: intelligent, witty, surprising and raw. It stopped raining while we were in there.

The best Foyle's War so far of this repeat run, in which (must be careful here), Foyle foiled an attempt by a food conglomerate to do business with the Nazis (it's OK, you found that out in the opening scene). Unlike similar detective mysteries on ITV, these don't seem too bothered about casting big names. Tonight we spotted Tom out of Reggie Perrin in a minor part, but that's about the extent of it. I like that.

Unfeasibly excited to see Stuart Maconie fronting BBC2's Edinburgh Festival round-up tonight. (I'm really looking forward to my lightning trip up there next weekend.) You'd think by now I'd be more blasé about my friends being on the telly, but I'm not, and I hope I never will be.

Saturday 20 August
Right, let's keep this week's blog under 3,000 words, shall we? Sunny day, pelicans, bulging bag of produce, slick chart show, gorgeous rack of lamb, and another Foyle's War as I think we may be addicted. (Invested in the first series on DVD. One of the extras is an interview with creator Anthony Horowitz, who revealed that the working title was The Blitz Detective and that Foyle was named after the bookshop. Good facts. Interestingly, the pilot episode, for self-evident reasons, had Robert Hardy and Edward Fox in it.)

Sunday 21 August
Another sunny day, got an unexpected lift to the station from our neighbours which I hadn't built into my schedule and ended up getting to Redhill too early for the newsagents to be open, and to London too early for Fresh & Wild. Was thus forced to go into Marks & Spencer in search of organic food - no chance! Thank heavens for Eat and their wheat-free sandwich. Luke Haines was one of the best guests we've ever had for In Your Own Time - urbane, witty, honest and controversial. What a gentleman and a genius he is. The genial Mr Quantick was in to do the papers and we spoke to Richard Herring on the phone in Edinburgh, so all round - what with Sly Fox and Half Man Half Biscuit and Amerie - a vintage Sunday show. The tabloids claimed that Courtney Love was having Steve Coogan's love child. He denies it. And on that bombshell . . .

How am I doing?

Monday 22 August 

Completely gripped by the essays in The Final Energy Crisis, detailing in precise detail (with graphs!) how world oil is going to run out and what are the ramifications. I had to skip a chapter on thermodynamics as it was beyond me (and a bit boring), but I now know all about the "Caspian Chimera" and the subtle difference between a lake and a sea in terms of how the prospective oil under it is shared out. Ask me about it. I might become an end-of-civilisation bore.

Still raining. I got soaked, even with an umbrella, in London today. I was forced to travel all the way in for one job (to record a column about celebrities and golf for Stephen at Front Row ), so I made the most of it and bought rye bread, pickled artichokes and broccoli, visited my agent Kate (who's been in Edinburgh) and bought some new long shorts from Next to replace these, which I've had for about three years and are actually wearing through at the knee and crotch. It's all that walking. I'm not a big buyer of new clothes, so it feels oddly grown up when I do. I am 40.

Actually managed to make some headway with my book. Really enjoying re-living my days in the layout room of the NME in 1988-89.

An old Silent Witness, which we hadn't seen, the first post-Amanda Burton. It was odd to see Emilia Fox finding her feet at Nikki - she was much more posh and ditsy at the start. Now she's a tower of strength, and her hair's up. I prefer her that way. Gave Without A Trace another go, as a new series was starting on C4, and remembered why I didn't like it before (despite the hugely talented Anthony LaPaglia): it's just too slick and flashy. I prefer my US drama a little more obtuse and intellectual.

Tuesday 23 August
A momentous haircut this afternoon. Not the haircut itself (neaten up, thin out, shorter at the sides, leave the fringe), but the fact that my preferred stylist - Kate at Toni & Guy in Reigate - is quitting next week to concentrate on being a mum (she's just under seven months pregnant). I have enjoyed having my hair cut by Kate and I wish her well in her new life. No doubt Michael Buerk, whose much publicised rant about the "feminisation" of the world went out on Five tonight (Don't Get Me Started ), would approve of Kate's decision. As do I, but not for the same reasons as that prize arse. (I watched his programme tonight - I'm afraid, for all the veracity of one or two of his observations, he just came across as an old man who wishes things would be the way they were, which helps no-one.)

Went some way to finishing a chapter of my book today. That pleases me, after so many distractions. (For the record, it took me ages to get going on it because of that endless game of tennis with my publisher over what the title should be, and once we'd agreed on That's Me In The Corner, I suddenly found myself with a sitcom to write, which had to come first. I'd also become disenchanted with most of what I'd already written, so I took a unilateral decision, scrapped it and started again. I am now energised by the new approach and all of a sudden, I wish I had nothing else to do so I could write the book full time.

Second part of the repeated Silent Witness about the horseracing syndicate. At the end, Harry and Leo offered Nikki a full-time job. Sweet. (That's hardly a spoiler is it?)

Rented Winged Migration on DVD after seeing a reference to it in a Guardian article on Friday and remembering how ardently Adam Smith recommended it when it was first released. Basically, it's birds migrating for 90 minutes, but filmed like no nature film you've ever seen. It's captivating. And with a big emphasis on ducks and geese! When the red-breasted geese (as seen in St James's Park) stopped for a rest at some godforsaken, Dantean industrial hellhole in Russia, I wanted to shout at the screen, "Get out of there! Fly away!"

Received William Leith's much-admired new memoir The Hungry Years through the post today and started reading it immediately. It's compulsive, which is apt, as it's about overeating. I'd been wondering what happened to William Leith. He used to be famous. Glad to have him back.

Wednesday 24 August
Tipped it down today. I finished the first chapter of my book. I'm confident enough as a writer to know that I like it, but not confident enough as a human being that anyone else will. Here's a sample passage. What do you think?

" It's August, Justin is on holiday and I've been left in charge of the shop. For two weeks! That's two whole issues of the NME under my design jurisdiction. I can't believe it. I've only been here since the middle of June and now I'm laying out the entire paper, unassisted. This means something really heavy: it means that Justin trusts me. I must therefore make it my job to abuse that trust and muck about with all the logos while he's on a Greek island."

Good run of small-screen entertainment: You Are What You Eat (or rather, You Are What You Repeat, since it was an old one), Supernanny, How To Start Your Own Country, the last half hour of Winged Migration (in which we saw pelicans!) and episode five of Lost on E4, which put a strain on my eyes, but was worth it. I won't tell you what the big revelation was. Needless to say, everybody didn't get rescued.

The latest edition of that finely-wrought TV-criticism website Off The Telly is live, including - if you're interested - a piece I wrote for them about what it's like to be in Doctor Who. Plus a long interview by Graham Kibble-White with Gary Russell, the man behind the Big Finish Doctor Who audio adventures. 
 
Thursday 25 August
It may be a Thursday to you, but it was a designated Sunday for me, thanks to my crazy, upside-down week. A day of extreme weather. When our friends Rob and Jessie and their young ones arrived for lunch around midday, it was - to our astonishment - sunny enough to eat outside. Then a shower drove us inside for dessert. It cleared up and was sunny enough for a walk into Reigate and round Priory Park, then, just as we reached the High Street it started raining again, so we ducked into Puccino's for a coffee/tea/lemonade. It actually turned into hailstones the size of Science Diet dry dog food while we were inside. Freakish. Then it cleared up again and the dry patch saw us home. A very pleasant if hazardous day indeed.

The total of seven foxes we saw in the garden the other week seems to have been some kind of peak. We're down to one again now - a new one too, fully-grown fella with a lovely dark, bushy tail. He seems to operate alone.

Listened to the Goldfrapp album Supernature loud as I drove to Waitrose for some supplies this morning. There are lots of interesting noises in it, and she's in fine, breathy voice, but it's not quite as good as Black Cherry or Felt Mountain. Perhaps a little too commercial. But they deserve the success that's being heaped upon them.

Last episode of Extras, and by far the best one. I laughed out loud many times, not least at Stephen Merchant's behaviour in the BBC meeting (he looks like a living Aardman animation!) and at Patrick Stewart's stupid pitch for a film. They won me round. God bless them every one.

Just over 2,000 words. How's that?

The views expressed in this column are the views of Andrew Collins and do not neccesarily reflect the views of the BBC.