Week two, and Timmy's started attacking the toilet roll. I think it was the little doggy pictures on every sheet which simultaneously attracted and enraged him. Although frankly anything vicious enough to attack the Andrex puppy needs to be drowned in a sack. Unfortunately we've only got bin liners, and he tends to claw his way out of those.

Anyhoo, you'll be pleased to know that my 170-1 horse was leading the entire field of 30 with two furlongs to go on Saturday. I've still got a sore throat from shouting at the TV. Better still, having backed him each way, I only needed him to finish in the first five to collect. So no prizes for guessing where he ended up. Sixth. By a short head.

But I drowned my sorrows yesterday with a trip to the cinema to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We didn't have a convenient child to take with us, so we went for the next best thing, and took someone who hangs out with them all day - the street-drinking, drug-taking, drink-driving primary school teacher of last Saturday. I was told I'd made him sound far worse than he really is, so it was particularly nice to turn up at his home yesterday afternoon to find him wearing the flannelette cord from his dressing gown to hold up his jeans, on the grounds that "I haven't got a belt". And what's more, we went out in public with him looking like that. To see a kids film. With a high risk of meeting his pupils.

But hey, if your 6 year old child pointed at a man shuffling down the street with a can of beer in his hand and a dressing gown cord holding up his jeans, and said "That's my teacher!", you'd never believe them anyway. Give it another week and he'll be wearing a potato sack.

Anyway, I thought the film was a disappointment. Since when has Willy Wonka been an abused child? And why did he have to look like Michael Jackson? As for the touching reunion with his abusive father at the end, I nearly threw up. But the musical numbers were quite good. And I liked the squirrels.

From there, Lisa and I made our way to Faigans, a cafe in Hove which had apparently caught Lisa's eye with a good write-up in the Brighton Argus. We'd been there for about five minutes before we started wondering how much they'd paid the Argus for that article. For a start all pizzas were off, next the waitress brought us red wine instead of white, then she got my order wrong, despite me having repeated it three times and pointed to it on the menu. I don't think she'd heard the word 'burger' before. It seemed to confuse her.

The food wasn't particularly great, but the main problem was that we seemed to be intruding on some kind of family gathering. Every single person who came in seemed to be an old family friend from Italy, and frankly we were the only people there who didn't get hugged, kissed, and given their "usual table".

So we left after the first course and went to 'The Slug & Lettuce' for dessert. The slugpeople may charge a little more, but they do a damn fine cinnamon waffle. And they speak English, which is always a bonus.