I'm still really tired. I drove 100 miles there and 100 miles back, staying in Cheltenham overnight. That doesn't sound too much you might think, but we got to the hotel (the nice owner made us a cup of tea!), unpacked and were straight out the door to go to a very interesting talk about the Shakespeare history plays, with Michael Woods (off the telly) and Michael Boyd of the RSC, chaired by James Naughtie (pronounced noch-ty).

A quick bite to eat and we grabbed a taxi out to the Centaur at the racecourse, which we could've walked quicker - it's only a mile from the centre. But we didn't know that at the time.

At the Centaur, we sat and watched/listened to the Times debate - Tony Benn, Douglas Hurd, Ian Hislop and Matthew Parry (?), kept in order by Libby Purves. It may sound like a yawn-fest, but no! It was very interesting and Ian Hislop doing his day job is more interesting than when he's just sniping on Have I Got News For You. The two ex-politicians were refreshing in that they were actually saying things you could understand instead of saying nothing at all in a lot of words like politicians generally do. Although there was a tiny dig at Gordon Brown for not calling an election.

After that, we walked back into town to meet a friend for dinner and we finally got back to the hotel at 1am, what time I fell into bed and passed out.

Next morning, a quick breakfast and out to the Centaur again, this time on a free shuttlebus, to see and hear Professor Stephen Hawking talking about black holes, using language for the dense! Apparently matter can escape from a black hole, and it's better to fall into the biggest one you can find so you don't turn into spaghetti. And if someone is watching you fall into a black hole, they won't actually see you do so. Their view of you becomes trapped on the event horizon and you will seem to just fade away. I DON'T KNOW!

Back to Cheltenham town centre and a quick lunch, which turned out to be even quicker than we'd thought because the restaurant couldn't get it's arse into gear. So with upper palates burned by hot crispy potato wedges, we ran to the Everyman Theatre where we were embarrassingly late into the John Barton Shakespeare Masterclass, which was again extremely interesting.

Finally, dinner and into the car for the drive home. I may have a 2000 Ford Fiesta Finesse, and she may have done 122K miles already, but she's a little trooper and I wouldn't exchange her!

What was the highlight of the weekend for me? Apart from Kimi Raikonnen winning the Grand Prix, it was sharing the same space as the awesome Professor Hawking. He has a very lively sense of humour and it speaks volumes for his knowledge that he could reduce what must be a hugely complicated subject into something we could understand - um, sort of...