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I have just returned from a week long holiday in Tunisia and I must say it was bloody marvellous.

Tunisia is a North African country bordering Libya to the east and Algeria to the west. 40% of the country is in the Sahara Desert while the more prosperous and fertile north is divided from the south by the Atlas mountain range.

I stayed in a package-holiday hotel just outside of the tourist town of Hammamet. The hotel was rated four stars and had all the usual things such as pools, bars, sauna, spa and hammam. The beach and the Mediterranean Sea was only a short five minute walk away.

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Yesterday a total of 5,567 people turned out in London’s Trafalgar Square to take part in the world’s largest coconut orchestra - and I was there!

Led by Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam the orchestra clip-clopped along to “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life” and set a new world record, beating the American total of only 1,789 people.

• Photos of the event
• Video of the orchestra

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I am off to Tunisia this week, if you want a post card then send me your address I can’t guarantee it will be of a camel.

This morning I rang Albany, my uninsured loss recovery company, to see if I was ever going to get the cheque for £150 that they told me they would send me to cover my policy excess from the car crash last year. The nice lady told me that they had received the money from the third party insurer on Thursday and that the cheque was in the post.

I arrive home this evening and lo and behold the cheque was there waiting for me. Huzzah.

And so ends not only a rather annoying chapter of my life but also an otherwise uneventful Friday.

My friend Norman is doing a sponsored bike ride form John O’Groats to Land’s End later this year. He is trying to raise £500 for the charity Asthma UK. You can sponsor him here:

• Sponsor Norm to wheeze across the country

Tickets went on sale today for Bill Bailey’s new tour “TINSELWORM”. I have managed to scoup up two tickets for Cardiff on the 21st November!

Went round to Becky and Dave’s last night and had a lovely chicken stirfry followed by summer fruits desert. Nom. Becky presented Rosie and me with a lovely bunch of coconuts. On Monday we are off to London to take part in the record attempt for the worlds largest coconut orchestra!

Getting quite excited about Tunisia now, I want to go camel riding in the desert!

My guide book to Tunisia arrived today, along with the Rough Guide map, a spare memory card for my camera and a very dangerous looking travel charger for my iPod and mobile phone. I have just spent the last 20 minutes reading about the city I will be staying in and how to turn down sexual advances from Tunisian men! I am really looking forward to the trip abet with slight trepidation of going by myself.

I also ordered the book “Wall and Piece” by the famous graffiti artist Banksy. I have been flicking through some of the pages this morning and I really find his work quite exciting. He has managed to place very thought provoking artwork in some very original and inaccessible places.

Transport for London are giving away 100000 free Oyster cards that let you travel around London for half the usual cost. The cards normally cost £3 plus whatever pay-as-you-travel money you top them up with. However for the moment TfL are giving them away, all you need to do is top them up with some cash for travel.

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/tickets/oysteronline/freeoyster/

In two weeks time I am off to Tunisia, a country in North Africa, for a week in the sun!

Late last year Roz and James won the holiday as part of a call-in and win game in a magazine. However the holiday was only for one person and they were not allowed to pay for a second person to go along. Roz very kindly donated the prize to me and sent off the claim form in my name.

A few weeks later I received a ‘holiday voucher’ in the post. The holiday voucher entitled me to a 4* all-inclusive holiday to Tunisia that would be allocated to me at some point in the following 18 months. All I had to do was reply within 14 days to confirm that I wanted to accept the offer. It was fairly obvious that they didn’t want people to accept as you had to: meet the 14 day deadline, be prepared to travel on your own, travel with a minimum of 7 days notice, the dates you were allocated were the dates you had to go and you couldn’t choose your own dates and finally your dates would be sent to you by letter at some point in the following 18 months. I decided that I didn’t have anything to lose by filling out the acceptance form and sending it off.

Nothing happened for several months and then two days ago I received a letter telling me my allocated dates and flight information. If I wanted to accept the holiday I had to confirm within 7 days and pay the new Gordon Brown fuel duty of £40. I quickly logged into the work computer, put in a request for time off work and wrote a cheque for the forty quid. I noticed that the return address was in Chippenham so the next day I dropped the letter off at the promotions company office during my lunch hour.

Then today I received a call from the travel agent telling me that I had been accepted and that they were processing the booking! I get my letter of confirmation in the post either tomorrow or Monday. How fab is that? A free holiday to Tunisia! I hope I get to see where Star Wars was filmed and also Life of Brian.

Need to go and buy a guide book and some sunglasses now!

Nick stayed over at my flat on Monday night on an air-bed in the lounge. I had to leave him my keys when I went to work at the ungodly hour of 7.50 on Tuesday morning so that he could lock up before heading off to the house of Becky and Dave. On by return to Bristol I dropped Judith off on the Gloucester road before driving off to find Nick.

Nick turned out to still be at Becky and Dave’s house and I was cunningly invited to stay for dinner. Becky cooked a lovely chilli while Nick and Dave went off to Tesco to buy some sort of pie. The pie was good, it was apple pie.

At some point in the evening we came up with the Gloucester Road Pub Crawl™ which will have to be performed at some point. For the sake of reasonableness we have limited the crawl to only pubs, licenced bars and cafés between the Texaco garage opposite Sommerville Road and the point where the Gloucester Road becomes Cheltenham Road (aka The Arches). In vague order this will cover:

1. Robin Hood’s Retreat
2. Yellow Café
3. Bristol Flyer
4. It’s A Scream (The Rising Sun)
5. Halo
6. Foresters Arms
7. Hobgoblin
8. Some new café bar just before The Prom
9. The Prom
10. Prince of Wales
11. Hush Hush Bar
12. Bishops Tavern

Rosie then arrived and we went on Secret Mission 2 (which I shall write about at some future date) before trundling off home.

Oh, and I might be off to Tunisia at the end of the month!