Yesterday there was a thunderstorm on my road. I'm not sure if storms can be that specific, but the walls shook, the noise was overwhelming, and a papergirl got struck by lightning. The word on the cul de sacs is that her mum had rung her to see if she was ok in the storm, and, as when you have ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife, the phone acted as a conductor and she got struck in the face. It's funny, though, and you're allowed to laugh about it, because she's not dead or anything.

I went to the pub to watch the cricket in the afternoon. I went on my own, and was surrounded by people who weren't on their own. They had other people to talk to - friends, acquaintances, families and the like. I had a newspaper with me as a psychic shield, and sat fairly happily at my table, watching the humans around me (and the cricket).

Humans are really strange. They wear certain clothes and talk about things in a really odd way. It almost seems like they're acting; pretending to know what to say, what to think, and what to do. When I'm sat on my own, and surrounded by humans, I feel like I'm one of the mass observation people from the 1930s, observing the habits of these mad creatures in their natural habitat, marvelling and wondering at their ease of conversation, mating rituals, and indoor hat wearing.

I presume I'm not the only person that feels like this sometimes - like an alien from a different, though not necessarily more advanced planet. It's not like I sit there going 'puny earthlings, with your pork scratchings and inferior carbon-based barmaids'. I just sit there, happy and calm enough, but expecting someone to jump up at any moment, point at me, and say: "LOOK AT HIM! HE'S AN OUTSIDER! HE DOESN'T UNDERSTAND US AND OUR WAYS! HE'S WEARING A WOODEN DUCK ON HIS HEAD! THROW HIM IN THE STOCKS!".

They never do. But they're thinking it.

Anyway, we won the cricket.