I BOUGHT an old cast iron trough from a car boot on Sunday. I thought it would look great planted up in the garden.

I handed over the cash to discover it weighed more than I had bargained for. I had to haul it single-handedly to the car which was parked about 400 yards away.

I dragged it, carried it, huffed and puffed, changed arms, stopped and rested. Plenty people watched me struggling but not one offered to lend a hand. Thank you nice people.

It was only when I got home, as someone with an average IQ of 109, worked out as a result of being a Saturday evening "Test The Nation" saddo, I realised I should have asked the organisers if I could drive the car up to the stall!

But then that's common sense, and I usually pride myself on having plenty of that.

On this occasion I'm ashamed to say I was sadly lacking -- but I proffer the excuse that it was only 7am.

I enjoyed answering the Test The Nation questions, I've not done anything like that since I was at St Paul's. However, I don't see how the advice to guess the answers you couldn't work out was going to help find your IQ level!

We could have done with bit of a warm up before the test itself to get our brains acclimatised.