Now that we have all returned, stuffed full of Easter chocolate and emerging from our Bank Holiday torpor (I say that - I imagine not everyone was torpid. I just like the word) it's all hands on deck. With EAE on holiday and therefore not at the helm (I'm going for a nautical theme here. I like a good extended metaphor) FCR is acting captain, meaning we're a man short and scrambling just a little bit harder than usual.

Just a little bit, mind you.

The scene is probably similar in offices the land over - doing the work of three days (that is, Friday and Monday, plus Tuesday) in one, bringing everything back up to date, generally dashing round in a frenzied manner. And, as FCR pointed out, the tea consumption of a whole week, plus the two days off, plus six weeks off in my case, having given it up for Lent, has to be crammed into a much shorter space of time. This is very, very important, make no mistake - for like a well-oiled machine, nothing works better than a newsroom adequately supplied with hot beverages.

This week, or perhaps I should say this four-fifths of a week, rather than raging infernos and tragic death, we've got to contend with traffic chaos and...well, more traffic chaos, it seems. National Grid, in their infinite wisdom, will be digging up hundreds of streets in the borough over the course of the next year to 18 months in order to replace all the old iron gas mains, and people are not chuffed about it, let me tell you.

This is one of those stories that starts off as one person grumbling about the inconvenience of their own street being dug up and then grows to three more people grumbling about their streets and worrying about how they'll get to work etc. and then turns out to be 300 roads (I kid you not) all over the borough, including big ones like Forest Road and Lea Bridge Road.

Obviously, the work is necessary (something about health and safety?) and there has to be some rhyme and reason to it - they won't be digging up every single street at the same time - but it is going to cause no end of bother, not least because the roads in question will be closed to traffic while works are going on.

Finally - and this has no relation to the WFG or life in Waltham Forest whatsoever, but it made me sad - Sir Clement Freud has died, aged 84. At some point today I propose we all spend a minute talking about some obscure topic in honour of the broadcaster, former MP and Just A Minute legend.

Without deviation, repetition or hesitation, of course.