I can't help but feel that I'm going to be constantly zooming about between now and my trip up to Edinburgh. There are loads of things to kick into shape before I get up to Scotland, and some of those were tackled this evening.

I would have successfully soldered the broken lead for my guitar, if only my soldering iron hadn't gone missing at the critical moment. The regular iron doesn't work for soldering. It did work for shirts.

I also managed to cram in a cycle ride, trip to Tesco, quick catch up with a friend and some of the emptying of the car that I was too knackered to even consider last night. And I did two loads of washing. And de-scaled my shower head.

Now I must sleep.

I ate way too much fruit last night. The result was that I had an uncomfortable belly all day and was good for nothing more than lying uncomfortably in bed all evening, chatting on the phone, eventually relaxing to the point where I was a blackout with a heartbeat for a while.

Perhaps some of that was recovery from the cycling effort.

Shame I put weight on this week.

A week ago, I cycled 26 miles accidentally. This was caused by bad planning and bad transport. Tonight, I ended up asking myself whether I could repeat the experience on purpose. I'll save you the bother of guessing: I could.

A Marathon is, according to my sources, 26.22 miles. I know this because I googled "385 yards to miles" to find out the decimal bit to go after the 26 miles, having found out that it's 26 miles and 385 yards from wikipedia. Google is very good at numeric conversions, just ask it whatever you need to know.

Anyway, I'm not quite sure when my urge to do another marathon really kicked in. (I should point out that cycling a marathon doen't really count, so all you long distance runner readers can quite happily switch off and call me a lightweight. I know. Legs can't coast.) My original plan was to cycle to Twyford and then back through Bracknell. Along the way I contemplated how far this was - about 20 miles, and then thought I may as well stick on the other 6, and then I thought that it should probably be 26.2 miles to make it a proper marathon. I reckoned I'd be running under, so I'd have to think of detours.

When I set out for the cycle ride, I had some objectives. I wanted to get some exercise. I also wanted to visit a supermarket to by some surface cleaning wipes and maybe some more fruit. I like fruit. I'm eating a lot of fruit at the moment. In fact, having come home and filled my belly with fruit, I'm now, officially, rather fruity.

Anyhoo. I pootled along to Twyford and then onto the country roads that lead to Bracknell through Binfield. I found one hill that nearly threatened to stop me progressing up it, as it still required an awful amount of push even in my lowest gear, but I wouldn't be beaten. Overall, there was a lot of up and down and so I could achieve some high speeds, but I would also get the occasional drop in gear for a bit of a climb.

I had expected to stop halfway round for my supermarket break and maybe some refreshment. As it was, I actually kept steering myself back on course throughout the whole thing. I got as far as the outskirts of Reading, about 20 miles into the journey, before I took my detour to the supermarket. I went to Asda, half hoping to find more of those weird peaches I bought yesterday (all eaten).

At Asda, I bought supplies and took a break, sitting on a wall, to relax and put some liquid into my system. Then I headed home.

I realised as I neared home that my route had fallen short. So I took a slightly long route around the cemetery which sits on Cemetery Junction, just to get the extra point somethings of a mile. I miscalculated a little and ended up doing almost exactly 26.22 miles. I think I was only really expecting to hit 26.

And that was my night on the road. Not a ridiculous achievement, but an evening with enough exercise in it to make me feel sleepy enough for bed. I have a bit of work to do before I turn in, though.

No rest for the marathon man.

I woke up at a reasonable time this morning, which was handy since I had a meeting at what I consider to be an unreasonable time. Owing to the wake-up, I was able to arrive at my meeting and be almost coherent enough to participate. Afterwards, my plan had been to take a slight detour, via my house, to the next office for further work. The detour would allow me to sort out a small problem and do a couple of hours' uninterrupted work from my home.

As it happened, there was no pressing need for me to go anywhere after home, so I worked the rest of the day from my house and had a very productive and useful time in the process. I should do this more often. In fact, I think I will. I'm remote working next week.

After work, I jumped on my bike with a rather heavy rucksack (though heavy rucksacks can teach us a lot about the world) and cycled to the station. Then onto London and to the bar where tonight's Edinburgh Preview would be staged. Camden is a good distance from Paddington. I don't mean it's a long way, I mean that the precise distance it is, is, in my opinion, good. I like that distance. It was far enough to break sweat, but near enough to be local. I had McFly playing on my mp3 player. I couldn't help but peddle cheerfully.

In honesty, I've been very cheerful recently. I'm revving up for next month in Edinburgh and, following my last trip to this lovely city, I've barely had time for anything other that big beaming grins. That's good. I suppose my mood can drop when I get tired, or when my energy levels drop. That's actually fair enough. It's chemical, then isn't it? However, on average, I've been a sickeningly cheerful bundle of joy.

The preview tonight, the inner workings of which I won't burden you with, went well. I remembered my song at the beginning, and the cast's first attempt at performing the closing number wasn't disastrous, though it left room for improvement. The audience still got some of the jokes in the song and it ended well, so I think it proved its point enough for a preview.

I was proud of the results - there's a lot of love gone into that show, and there's more to go in.

I made a sharp exit back to the station, then onto a train and ten I sat and pondered my phone for a few minutes to get me between London and Reading.

Back in Reading, there was the cycle home. The good distance from Camden to Paddington gave me an odometer reading about 10 miles when I returned to my garage. I followed the cycling up with a road trip to Asda.

I bought some donut peaches in Asda. They were bizarre. They're peaches, but shaped like mini donuts (without the hole). They have tiny stones in them. They taste like peach, but you could feign being a porker while getting your five portions a day. Genius.

Back home for some washing up, and to finish the changing of my bedsheets. Not bad for a day's bimbling about.

After morning ablutions and breakfast (not simutaneous), I headed off to London. A combination of bad traffic and sat nav diversions led me to a long time stuck in traffic, the picking up of a hitchhiker and a great chat about 80's TV.

When my bladder finally stopped complaining and started making threats, wet threats, I parked near a public loo and added about 20 minutes to my journey. The rehearsal wasn't looking like it was going to be soon.

I'll admit that I'd neither learned my song nor finished the backing track for the song the cast were about to learn. However, it turns out that singing along to a recording of yourself reading and singing a song you originally wrote is a pretty good way to get a song into your head. Also, the cast were fairly distracted by how much learning and practicing they were doing with my piano to notice how empty the backing track was.

I'm impressed, mind. We put the big production number together in about 3 hours. It ran ok a few times. It will need more rehearsal, but they recorded one of the run throughs so they can rehearse against that - much as I learned my song in the car with my own voice.

After the rehearsal, I headed home and sat at my recording equipment to add some more tracks. I started with the bass, then the tremeloing guitar, then maracas. Then I had to put a four man Ashley choir in to do the do's and the wah's (well, ooh and dums).

Overall, I was pleased with the results of the day. Perhaps sharing them with my freshly emptied of detritus bed was a bit lonely, but life's not perfect.

I amazed myself by waking up today in plenty of time to do useful things. Before I knew it I was in a Tesco, which, as we all know, is a useful and domesicated place to be.

I dropped in on a friend and provided help where help was needed, company where company was appreciated and then we celebrated a job well done with a good meal out at a Japanese teppanyaki restaurant, where they throw the food at you, after first mesmerising you with its preparation.

There followed eating and intelligent conversation.

If more days were like this, I think my IQ might actually raise. Getting up, doing useful things, having intelligent conversations. That's a remarkable shift from the norm.

I liked today.

A lot.

I should not have behaved the way I did on stage tonight... except... well, it made the audience laugh and I knew it would. I regret some apparently disrespectful lines I delivered to a very placid and pleasant elderly lady sitting on the front row of my gig. In fairness, it was in the spirit of a comedy night and I'm not going to be ageist as such. And she had been a nurse - this woman has seen the world. In many ways, what I said was a reflection of that.

When I got into the middle of one of my songs I believe I called into the wings "Start the car". All of this was an acknowledgement that what we were giving the audience, instruction not to censor it by the organisers, was perhaps not what they were used to getting... but give it to them we did. With both barrels.

I got out of that place pretty quickly. This wasn't because I was ashamed at making improper suggestions to an old lady. I would have been ashamed if they hadn't caused a minute-long-room-sized laugh. I left so that I could get home at a reasonable enough hour to get a night's sleep in time for the fun of the weekend. I'm helping someone sort some stuff out at their house this weekend, and I need to be up bright and early to be useful, plus I've rehearsals and other jiggery pokery to achieve... and I'm not prepared. Not in the slightest.

Correction. I'm slightly prepared.

Don't worry. It's not like the show is on Monday or anything!

A nice relaxing night out. That's what you need in the midst of a big stress-laden week. Actually I'm not sure if the week is stressful so much as just busy. It seems to have late nights and I seem to be even waking earlier in the day than I expect to under the circumstances.

Still, I had the pleasure of a meal out in a small Italian restaurant in a small town. Very nice indeed. Probably not good for the diet, but I think I need a few days off dieting, to be honest. After the cycling the general lack of weight-loss and the sheer busy-ness of the week, I can tolerate forgetting the calorie counting for a few meals. It will all go back to fatty-rations next week.

My gig radar keeps letting me down. I arrived in Derby after a fairly long drive to a room in a "flat-iron" type of building, after a parking nightmare (which turned out not to be so bad after all) to see fewer people than chairs and remark "oh, a quiet one then".

What I didn't expect was for the room to fill with an audience that wants to laugh. It did. They laughed. A man introduced me to his daughter and asked me for an autograph. I gave her a business card and suggested she download me. Weird.

Driving millions of miles for no money to play to five people is a good statement to satirise what stand-up can be about. As it was, I had journeyed far, but it proved worth it to be bathed in the laughter of a good audience.

Of all the things to fall into, I didn't think I'd fall into a marathon. Usually, you use this term to describe something fairly massive. What I'd actually intended was different, so I can say I fell into the marathon, though I can't say it felt so big. It's only retrospectively I realised that, had my name been Pheidippides, I should, by rights, be dead now.

Anyway, the story was this. I arranged "last minute" with my sister, to go and play on our bikes. By "last minute", we actually mean with over 24 hours' notice, but it's all relative, I suppose. By "play on our bikes", I mean that my sister has a new bike, and I offered to come along, have a peep at it and then go for a ride together as a bit of a laugh.

In truth, I'd thought that this might be one "sport" I could comfortably hold my own with in the same space as my sister. She's improved her fitness levels considerably and is always quite competitive (or maybe I am when I'm with her and blaming it on her - either way). Anyway, I had planned to arrive at hers mainly on public transport, avoiding the 8 mile trek from Paddington to her house, which would lose me the edge.

I won't really have to explain much more beyond the fact that the London transport system abhors people's bikes and the rest is obvious. I cycled to her house, tackling the one daunting Highgate Hill as an optional detour on the way to my destination. It was still hard work, but I relished every push, because I could do it.

I arrived, had a quick drink and then we knocked out a few miles together. I ended up cycling back and then getting off the train and pushing myself to the 26 mile mark (pretty much) as I got home. As it happens, I was still going strong at 26 miles. It's not that far on the bike.

I was burning off a fair bit of energy, though.