This morning my eyes opened to a steaming cup of hot coffee sat on the bedside table. A 'byeee' made its way through my subconscious as my mouth finished a sleepy: “Drive carefully”.

The apartment door closed, then the landing door. Silence, save for the wind and trees playing together outside. Today was Saturday and it was entirely my own. As such I immediately fell back into a deep sleep.

Come 12:30 I swung weary legs onto the wooden floor, pulled on jeans and t-shirt and then headed towards the kitchen, via the bathroom.

The kitchen surface was still littered with the remnants of last nights chicken fest, courtesy of Tesco's clearing the last of the daily cooked stock. I had brought two. Pushing all the old plates to one side, the second chicken was speared with a carving knife and carefully manoeuvred from bag to clean plate: breakfast. The microwave pinged and the steaming cup of coffee that started the day had been resurrected, and didn't taste too bad at all.

The downside to having a whole day to yourself, is knowing where to start. So I sat down with the Sky remote and channel surfed. The Sky box had been left on MTV Dance, not of my own doing but one of the more palletable music channels. I sat through three videos of hot pants, reflective sunglasses and tanned skin bottom wobbling before moving on. During the week I had glimpsed what looked like a new Spice Girls video at the gym and had hoped I might catch it in its entirety. But my desire was not that great. I spent a few more minutes checking out the sports channels and turned it all off.

Next on the itinerary is the study and computer. I don't care what anyone says; given a completely empty house and enough time, a kept man's thoughts will fairly quickly turn to porn. For this male the conscious mind finds American porn an affront to the concepts of 'beauty' and 'erotic'. So we usually find ourselves drawn by stunning eastern European females getting the good news from a well endowed male without hairy buttocks. A satisfactory conclusion is reached after a few minutes of fast forwarding to the good bits and we proceed to the remainder of the day slightly clearer of thought.

Having stashed a bottle of diet coke and a book: 'Marley and Me', along with hayfever tablets into my 'man bag', said bag is hoisted over the shoulder and we head out into the now brilliant sunshine of this Berkshire afternoon.

It always amazes me when you see TV programs showing teenage children that have never seen real live country animals just because they live in cities. How can that be with few places in this country being more than a portion of one hour away from green fields! As such, a break in the traffic has me trotting across the road, through the Halfords car park and onto the canal path. A world apart.

The sun is high in the sky, so shadows are still short and everything is bathed in its magical light, the warmth working its way through my skin. This canal is lined by large dense trees shimmering a glorious mid-summer green, the recent rains making the colour depth seem more vibrant than usual. There is something about these mighty towers of wood and leaf, wherever they stand, dancing to the beat of the wind. You really can get a sense for how Tolkien came to the idea of living trees. I sometimes imagine that whatever forces might have created the earth now live in the trees, silently watching us and judging us, swaying from side to side talking to one another.

The walk into the town centre is no more than fifteen minutes. Right up until you emerge into the town you would never imagine you were in the middle of a busy suburbia. Through the journey I have been accompanied by hopeful swans regally keeping pace against the busy current, their signets erratically following behind.

The quest of the swans is not without reward. My bread carrying days are currently at an hiatus but there is an army of parents lining the canal as we near the town. Each seems to be in partial control of an unsteady child, which uniformly emit high pitched squeals of excitement at the sight of the swans before raining a barrage of bread onto every part of water not occupied by a swan.

There is a football pitch sized park of cultivated green attached to the canal as you enter the town, which is usually very popular. This day is no different, indeed more so as it seems the local barge social group are having their annual shindig. Barges are four deep tethered to the side of the canal and there is bunting everywhere. But apart from that, and a number of tables that each seat two or three middle aged humans set around a bottle of red wine, there is no other sign of related festivities. Occasionally a couple corralling a dog will stop by a table for a brief chat, while parents with prams and harnessed children head past towards the swans, occasionally pausing to point at the bunting.

The park is its usual cacophony of colour, bare flesh and pre-mating rituals, being almost exclusively occupied by groups of young teenagers. Some of the groups are focused around an older male outwardly displaying the appearance of cool and hip, sometimes older males loiter around the fringes, hoping for leftovers.

A row of tall trees separate this from the pavilion, which during the summer weekends often serves as a stage for local bands. The bass and the frequently tortured voices can be heard from the open windows of my flat. Right now a band that sounds very much like the 'Cure', which you may never heard of if you are under thirty, are banging out a number of songs that play easily albeit loudly on the ear. All around the pavilion groups of older but still young people somehow talk and laugh despite the noise. I have never understood, even when I was this young, how humans can effectively communicate while surrounded by such noise and can only assume these have no clue what the other is saying.

Boy shopping is a little different from girl shopping. At the moment I am working my way through season 2 of Battlestar Galactica, which I am enjoying despite its increased leaning towards religious hokum. It does have great characters and a good style. Battlestar Galactica is at the head of a long DVD backlog which vies for my leisure time along with three whole rows of a bookcase, so I avoid HMV and Waterstones and half heartedly window shop. I soon find myself at a crossroads. One direction takes me to the pasty shop; another to the Lock, Stock and Barrel and the last to Starbucks. Having put on a kilo, or two as the result of too many summer evenings in the Lock, Stock and then the pasty shop, these two are out of the question. It takes a few long moments of dilemma while standing in the sunshine to motivate legs towards Starbucks.

With coffee in hand I head back towards the canal and the park where I find a space on a bench and spend the best part of two hours sipping the coffee, occasionally looking up at the throng of passing humans and reading 'Marley and Me', which is a very good read indeed.

As dark clouds begin blotting out the sun and sky blue, heralding an evening of lazy rain, I head over to oddbins. Red wine is my only alcohol vice right now and then only at the weekends. Usually I will pick up a couple bottles from Tesco's during the Friday night shop, very often this will be Banrock Station and very nice too.

Standing now in Oddbins I find myself dwarfed by floor to ceiling wine, looking at a whole bunch of names I don't understand. Fortunately the manager comes over and asks me what I am looking for. Having told him that I have no idea, but like a smooth taste, I am led over to a tasting table where I sample a very nice 'Syrah from Chile'.

Carrying two bottles and heading homewards the air is suddenly filled with the sound of the Serenity movie end credits. This means my phone is ringing which in itself heralds the imminent end to my day alone.