Three is the magic number

Finding action-packed material to fill this column with isn't always easy you know - especially when your life is as uneventful as mine.

I'd love it if I could write stories worthy of a Star Wars subplot every week but, the truth is, the most interesting thing that usually happens to me is accidentally dribbling in public or slipping on some cat piss in my kitchen.

At least this week I knew I'd have something mildly unusual to recount. I had enrolled in a 10km run for charity on Sunday.

"With any luck I’ll break a leg or have a stroke or something," I thought to myself. "That sort of shit can win you a Pulitzer these days!"

But by the time the race came around on Sunday morning, I already had more material than I knew what to do with. You wait a whole year for a mildly interesting experience and then three come along at once.

On Saturday my house got burgled. They took the tellies, the iPods and the laptops (I’m currently writing this on an old Etch-a-Sketch).

I was with my ten-year-old nephew at the football when my wife called to tearfully break the news. In my rush to get home, I lost track of my nephew who managed, somehow, to climb into the back of a stranger's car while I wasn't looking.

He was halfway up the road before the strangers, he or I realised what had happened. A burglary, a kidnapping and a charity run in the space of 24 hours? Imagine the sort of movie George Lucas could make out of that lot! It'd make Star Wars look like Yentl. ·