The final episode of the final series of Friends was shown tonight on UK television. Early estimates suggest that 16% of the entire British population was watching, which is a pretty hefty ratings score if you ask me. Of course, I was amongst the 8 million-odd feeders at the trough of mass entertainment, seeing as how it's been one of the more intelligent sitcoms to grace our screens for a while (although not in the same league as the unfailingly-sharp Frasier). If you don't give a stuff about Friends, go no further. If you have no idea what Friends is or who any of the characters are, this isn't for you (but I can direct you to a delightful little second-hand shop in Stratford where you can buy a new cardboard box to put your head in for the next decade). If you haven't seen the episode in question and don't wish to have the thrill of revelation ruined forever, stop here! Otherwise, read on.

Okay, so we were all TERRIFICALLY SURPRISED to see that Ross and Rachel ended up together after all. This was actually my main gripe with the final episode; the whole thing seemed designed as a vehicle to get these two shacked up yet again, and the other (far more interesting) characters got left out a bit. I would have liked to see a last stab of sarcastic genius from Chandler - who always had the very best lines - but some of the dialogue did bring to mind the sparky wit of the earliest few series, which I felt had been sorely missing in recent years. I'm rather worried that Matt LeBlanc, in his upcoming spinoff Joey, is going to find himself lumbered with a character who has been increasingly written as simply stupid, as opposed to the childlike rascal we came to love when the show first ran. Time will tell whether it'll be a success, I suppose. Lisa Kudrow, though, gets my vote for a typically spunky top final performance; Phoebe has always been my personal favourite of the six.

Despite my opinion of this as a weak ending, I'm still going to miss the show, which has been a genuine entertainment phenomenon for a very long time, and has become part of the psyche of the Western world. Whatever am I going to do with my Friday evenings now?

It's that time of year again... the Big Brother phenomenon is ready to roll once more, beginning tomorrow evening. Channel 4 have decided, in a masterstroke bordering on evil genius, to screen the kickoff show immediately after the broadcast of the Last Ever Episode of Friends, which is itself getting roughly the same amount of advertising coverage as a World Cup final. Rumours surrounding the identities of this year's contestants include:

• a "busty Page 3* wannabe"
• a gay bloke who only fancies straight blokes
• a property tycoon
• an ex-prostitute
• someone who has hand-reared sheep, ahem

There's also a suggestion that failure in the weekly tasks, which previously affected the housemates' food budgets, will now result in £10,000 off the final prize money, so that the winner could theoretically leave with bugger all. Nasty! Nasty boys!

* For the uninitiated, "Page 3" refers to The Sun newspaper, a scurrilous rag which I hold in low regard, which achieved notoriety many years ago by putting a young lady on Page 3 of every day's paper in a state of advanced undress, and has found no reason to discontinue the practice since it undoubtedly contributed to The Sun having one of the highest circulations of any daily UK paper, which proves that it only goes to show.

As requested, here are a few pictures of Sarah interfacing with assorted fluffy wildlife during Sunday's farm outing:

Note if you will the slightly worried look on the face of the chick. I think it knows what Sarah had for lunch.

We took Sarah to a children's farm and waterfowl sanctuary near Banbury yesterday afternoon, as she's been consistently fascinated by the pictures of animals which appear in her multifarious baby books and we thought that it was high time to introduce her to the real McCoy, as it were. The place was basically a big field containing several wire enclosures, inside which were a large number of feathery clucking, quacking and gobbling objects which mostly seemed determined to rid me of my shins or make off with my footwear. We bought a pot of birdseed, which Sarah tried valiantly to distribute equitably amongst the pecking things, and to her credit she managed to get some of it into the crevices between my shoes and my feet, where it was easily and enthusiastically accessed by the chickens, who were already clustered in that area working on the aforementioned shoe larceny. Also, there was a tin shed containing a very bored elderly lady of the tea-and-cucumber-sandwiches variety who directed us to a collection of wooden crates, inside which were heaps of small furry baby animals wearing rapture-inducingly cute facial (or occasionally beakal) expressions. Sarah gazed at these in rapt fascination, whilst The Missus and I gingerly manhandled the chicks, ducklings, bunnies, gerbils and kittens in such a way as to guarantee (a) Sarah's safety from being clawed or pecked, (b) the safety of the varmint in question from being squashed by Sarah, and (c) that they would crap upon us liberally. Luckily the farm had invested in some heavy-duty detergent, as my hands subsequently smelled like, well, a farm. In any case, it was all worth it, judging from the big grin plastered all over Sarah's face the whole time.

She'll be wanting a horse next.

How are the mighty converted! Appaprently, His Holiness Bill Gates has decided that blogs are a Good Thing and that all businesses should have one. [sniff sniff] Hey, what's that? [sniff sniff] That smells like... opportunity! Yes, it's a new area of technology for Microsoft to try and take over! Wonderful. Just you wait, there'll be an MSN Blog service before the year is out.

In Stevenage, no-one can hear you scream, or at least they can't if they're within five miles of the local branch office, which is picturesquely situated in the middle of an equilateral triangle formed by a large and perpetually busy roundabout, a lorry factory, and the A1M motorway. Beautiful, innit. I'm stuck here for the day with suspiciously vague instructions to fix some misbehaving servers and write some documentation so that others can follow suit in future; unfortunately I smell an imminent shafting because nobody seems to want to own up to being responsible for these bloody heaps of antiquated junk, which leads me to believe that yours truly will end up carrying the can if, God forbid, they should decide to keel over again. To which, I say a hearty "bollocks", as I am carrying several giant-economy-size cans already for this project, and I will be buggered sideways with a roasting tin before I pick up another one. Ha. (Ooh, uncomfortable image.)

Homer would be turning over in his grave, or possibly his urn, if he saw what I saw last night. I entered a contest on the BBC Radio 1 website a few weeks ago, then promptly forgot about it until some unexpected tickets pitched up through my letterbox the other day, entitling two persons to attend an exclusive showing of Troy at the Leicester Odeon (how flash are we?), in advance of the official UK release this Friday. We sorted out a slightly bewildered babysitter and scooted off to Leicester yesterday evening for the big event, half-hoping that some celebs might deign to pitch up, but of course they were all at the London premiere instead, the lousy ingrates. Never mind, thought we, two-and-a-half hours of scantily-clad Greeks beating many kinds of crap out of each other will sort us out quite nicely, thankyou very much. And believe me when I tell you that an astonishing number of varieties of crap are beaten out of several thousand people in this movie. It's a great movie. It is epic in the classical Hollywood-Cecil B. de Mille style, albeit that much of its epicity is computer-generated, and it's not just 150 minutes of battle scenes; there's some good dialogue in there as well, and a thoroughly interesting lead character in Achilles. Brad Pitt is suitably buffed-up and leonine and athletic and struts about in a leather skirt looking coiled and dangerous as hell, which went down rather well with The Missus who spent much of the film fanning herself weakly with her ticket stub. Many of the performances are really quite good; Peter O'Toole is full of doomed majesty as Priam of Troy, Sean Bean is a weary yet wily Odysseus, and Aussie Rose Byrne puts in a cracking turn as Briseis - watch this space, folks, she is very, very good. However, it bears more or less bugger all resemblance to the original Iliad, which is a shame because it's a damn good story. Still, it's well worth watching. We might have had our fill of ancient epics before long, though; Alexander the Great isn't far behind, and I suppose it's only a matter of time before someone decides to do The Odyssey. Hollywood sandal-makers must be having a field day.

There should be a big sign above the cubicle of a certain individual in this office, warning all those who approach that she is a certified moron and that any attempt to engage her in work-related conversation, or indeed any other kind of conversation from which a sensible answer if expected, will most likely cause long-lasting aches in the testicle area. Indeed, the mere sight of this blemish on the intellect of humanity causes my own testicles rapidly to ascend involuntarily into my body every time she walks past, gormless expression at the ready, in case she might stop and talk to me. This person, who shall remain nameless lest the urge to smite her big, squishy head with something blunt should become irresistible to me, has been pestering me all day long with the very daftest kind of questions, which I will not go into (because they are work-related and therefore painfully tedious) but which, I assure you, would be easily answered by someone joining the project a week ago, and therefore one would think, would one not, that a manager with six years of allegedly in-depth project knowledge would have no trouble. Fat bloody chance.

Luckily, I've managed to persuade the Pointy-Haired Ones to send her on a useful educational course, entitled "Arses, Elbows, And How To Tell Them Apart".

I really, really, really hate dentists. I've just got back from having a shiny new filling levered into my skull by a burly bloke whose idea of precision clinical technique involves large metal clamps and a pickaxe. In addition to the accompanying thumper of a headache I also have a rubber face, as a result of having had a bloody horse-injection-sized needle stuck into my jaw, to anaesthetise me against the pain of having pieces of bone removed from my head with an item of industrial heavy machinery. Every time I try to speak to someone it sounds like I've just spent several hours in the pub in the company of several charming and persuasive bottles of vodka, which coincidentally is what I'd very much like to do right now. Instead, I will be drinking a cup of soup out of the centimetre-wide part of my mouth which remains unbuggered and trying desperately not to spill it down the front of my shirt. I need a baseball bat and two or three squaddies to help me pay a visit to our orthodontic friend; any takers?

...Somewhere Only We Know by Keane. Cracking stuff. I want to hear more of these guys, I just love that melody. Has anyone bought their recent album, and if so, is it worth the hype? I don't like to buy an album just on the strength of a single...

Recent amusing, inexpicable or just vaguely horrifying search engine queries leading to this blog include:

• dubious blackcurrant
• scrumpy colloquially
• those starchy brits
• deer cocaine (this one has cropped up before, and I'm quite worried)
• born with extra spleen
• aroma Stevenage dogs
• poo management
• bollock soup

Anyone able (or, indeed, willing) to shed any light on the last entry is welcome to do so.

...apparently it works! Yet another opportunity for me to exercise my mobile-technophilia, what a shame. ;)

The ducklings are back! Every year, we have a flock of wee arrivals to the pond which sits in the central courtyard of our office, and the 2004 squad have just scurried out of the bushes and made their first public appearance. This is the cue for the usual gaggle of squealing female employees to fight their way out of the building to admire the little scamps, who generally show a remarkable tolerance for being crowded about by so many pointy heels. Naturally, the odd bloke pops out as well, making jocular remarks about pancakes and hoi sin, whilst secretly thinking they're quite cute but of course being far too macho to say so. We have ten ducklings this year; I reckon that's just about enough for a small banquet for four.

Sarah has figured out how to crawl. It's taken her almost eleven months, but she's finally done it. The problem is that she's gone from a few tentative shuffles on Tuesday evening to barrelling about the living room at Mach One yesterday. She doesn't miss a trick, that one. She's been bum-shuffling for a couple of months, so we figured she wouldn't bother crawling at all, but of course now that she's suddenly worked it out, she's also discovered that she can use this amazing technique to get into all sorts of places she's not supposed to get into, like the cupboard under the stairs, and the bit behind the telly with all the wires. We are on constant escape alert at the moment. A mammoth trip to Mothercare is in the offing, I suspect; the house needs to be seriously Sarah-proofed.

I include here a picture of the little tyke shortly after she discovered this wonderful new trick. What a self-satisfied grin that is. Just imagine how smug she'll be when she figures out how to walk by herself. She's already cruising around the furniture, so I doubt it will take her long. [buries head in hands in despair]

Is it just me, or is the connection to this blog a wee bit slower since I moved to the new URL? It might just be when I'm connecting from behind the corporate firewall, of course. Is anyone else finding the page a bit slow-loading? Is anyone seeing it loading faster, even? Feedback is gratefully accepted.

...is seemingly not required in order for the medicine to go down, at least if you ask my daughter, who has taken to her antibiotics (which she's taking to combat a nasty little chest lurgy, poor mite) like a duck to a soggy loaf of bread. It's called Amoxil, it's a bright and lurid yellow, it smells like a jungleful of overripe bananas, and apparently it tastes perfectly ambrosial because Sarah gets very grumpy indeed when I inform her that she's only allowed half a teaspoon of it. Full-blown tantrums are now happening three times a day because of this stuff. I wonder if you can buy the flavouring by itself?