Don't look back in Bangor.

My last weekend in London was spent in Wales, funnily enough. I did my first visit in about a year, a trip steeped with memories. Memories I didn't need, incidentally, as Bangor hasn't changed at all in a year, save for a few more empty shops on the High Street.

The train journey was mercifully trouble-free, if arse-numbingly long from London - an epic ride, as ever. There's a little patch of water as you leave Llandudno Junction along the mainline, pass through Conwy and move out into a bay - the most beautiful stretch of railway I've ever been on. There are boats, sleepy little fishing villages (mainly because they have no work) and herons, doing whatever it is that herons actually do.

I was leaving London after a busy Friday's work, I'd helpfully informed the B&B that I would be getting there at about half past nine - I rapped on the door at nine forty for it to be opened by a pleasant woman in her middle ages, greeting me with a cheery "Mr Burnett? You're late." I may have lied about the cheery. You do get what you pays for at thirty pence a night, but here was the friendly Bangor welcome that I remembered.

Tomorrow - I go to the shops.

Some sitting around and that.

I was going to be incisive and insightful today, but I gave up on that. Too much rain. You know, I don't think that I've ever actually seen so much rain - it's been raining since I got up this morning. A solid, constant...more than a drizzle, a bit heavier than a shower...a solid, constant downpour. The back garden looks absolutely sodden, and I'm sure that a group of ill-at-ease businessmen just came floating down the street in a team-building exercise. With all those speed bumps it makes for a lovely set of rapids.

I never thought that sitting at home all day could be so exciting though - I've been following things on twitter - mostly David Cameron using words that Middle England are going to find naughty even if he doesn't, and everyone thinks they're Middle England, even if they're not. I had a bath earlier, I finished off last week's copy of Autocar magazine, I started watching the West Wing for a third time through (oh, how I love them all. Except that stupid Mandy. Oh, how I hate Mandy), and now I just found out that Michael Schumacher is returning to Formula 1! You've no idea how excited this makes me.

Of course, what this does prove is that sitting at home all day isn't that exciting after all - Schumi has been doing it since 2006 and clearly he's got bored. I need to find myself a seat in a racing car somewhere, that'll sort things out...

A citizen of the world.

So, I'm longer a citizen of London, it seems. I've been cast adrift into the Midlands, back to a remarkably provincial-feeling Coventry, a city merely 4% the size of our giant capital.

The air, though, is cleaner, the people a touch friendlier, and I don't have to get a train to get to the nearest thing. On the other hand, there's only one Starbucks and the jobs section of the local paper consists of 8 vacancies for paper boys. Not that I'm looking for a job at the moment - I'm currently running the gauntlet of university application, going for a masters at Coventry. I don't know whether the process is designedly infuriating, but whatever they're going for there they've hit the spot. Politics and academia have a goodly deal in common, and I wouldn't trust a professor to run the National Health Service either.

I did have a succession of terribly incisive and insightful posts planned, whereby I would artfully sum up my year in the most amusing way by looking at various aspects of the life I was leading down in London. I gave up on that because frankly I’m lazy.

Back this time.

I'm back? The irony.

I will definitely be back soon - dealing with truculence on many levels, but it's the internet connection that's a real kick in the balls.

And I'm back...

I've just (almost) this minute arrived home from a lovely evening out with Carolan and Andy to say goodbye to our London phase at a tapas place near Wimbledon punctuated by an appearance on the incredible Angry and Cliff Podcast. I've added the special Angry and Cliff Super Podcast Widget to the blog right down the bottom on the right hand side. Fun times.

So anyway - we went out for tapas, which is great for people like me who can't decide what they want to eat in a restaurant. You pick a little bit of everything on the menu, which occasionally leaves you feeling slightly bilious but occasionally - and this happened tonight - you get such a magic combination of orgasmic bitesize chunks you have a meal so much greater than the sum of its parts that it will change your life. We were literally paralysed in paroxysms of delight with the goats cheese and cherry tomatoes on toast.

It's probably unhealthy - and I don't mean bad for the arteries...

YouTube if you want to...

I only thought of the Ariston adverts briefly the other day when I was trying to come up with one of my traditionally irrelevant post titles - they rank, in my most humble estimation, as some of the most irritating adverts of the whole 90s.

This is the advert that I remember most clearly - the nostalgic amongst you will note the Gameboy music in the background that was used - from the Robocop game, I'm led to believe. I used to enjoy playing on that.

The only problem with looking up such a thing is that you end up stuck in a vicious spiralling circle of rampant nostalgia and time-wasting decay. See, for example, the Kia Ora advert (it's too orangy for crows, it's just for me and my dog), Toys'R'Us (there's millions says Geoffrey, all under one roof), McDonalds (McNuggets awaaay!), Shake'n'Vac (and put the freshness back), Vitalite (oooooooh, Vit-a-lite) - and 28 seconds into this video, my favourite ever advert, the Mushy Pea Advert.

Fun times.

Actually not here.

I'm not even here today. My laptop is at home - this is like a voice beyond the grave...ooh, spooky.

And on. And Ariston.

Yep. Still nothing. When I'm tired, the inside of my mind becomes a yawning void, a gaping chasm into which all rationality disappears never to be seen again. At these moments can Man being to bridge the gap and understand something of what it is to suffer as Woman.

...but as you can see, when tired I can still be poncey and rude.

Happy weekend, folks. It's almost here.

Evening.

I'm really tired. I can't think of anything again.

Panic at the disco

Those shysters at Twitter have suspended me! I'm actually outraged, it's utterly outrageous. I do hope that they reinstate me post-haste (whatever that actually means) and someone explains why exactly they've chucked me off.

I'm going to go and find myself a human rights lawyer somewhere.

22.38: UPDATE: Now I'm back on Twitter, yay! Those lovely chaps. Cherie Booth - I no longer need you.

Pod-u-like.

Another week, another webisode of Angry and Cliff, those two jokers extraordinaire. I do hate internet words you know – webisode? Pish, I have bile seeping over my chin. Anyway – AngrynCliffthePodcast is being recorded as I type – I didn’t quite catch the whole of the live video stream as I was watching excellent semi-French film Ronin, but you can watch it each Tuesday evening at www.tinyurl.com/angryandcliffvideo - and if you can’t watch it then you have no excuse but to listen to the finished product at Cliff’s or Angry’s.

So tonight I got to phone in my dubious contribution to this pantheon of greatness and score points by trading on the previous weeks’ threequarter-truths... I talked about Wayne’s World and sliced bread mostly. Did you know that Wayne’s World was filmed in a month and grossed over $100m in cinemas worldwide? Did you know that the term ‘best thing since sliced bread’ started as what was essentially a sarcastic pejorative? The people who first sold it nationwide in the US went so far over the top extolling its virtues that sliced bread was clearly the best thing ever in the history of the world.

I also found out this week that California was part of Mexico for thirty years – who knew? It’s only been part of the USA for 150 years – I’ve had poos that lasted longer than that.

A fat kid nearly dies on a ride. Hilarity ensues.

Today I shall mostly be posting my favourite video on hit video posting website "YouTube", you may have come across it. Genius.

My favourite video is commonly known as "fat kid on ride" - I think it's perhaps the funniest thing I've ever seen in the world, and if ever my funny bone needs resetting or I'm wondering what there is going for the world then I sit down and watch this on teh internetz. Janice, it hurts. It hurts, Janice - mainly because I'm laughing so damn much!

A day out.

Oh no, look what I did - shock, gasp, horror - I missed a day of blogging despite my casual and frequent resorting to cheating I still wasn't able to sneak one in under the line yesterday. I came back to Coventry for the weekend to get some documents I need to apply for Coventry University next year - despite their best efforts I still fancy doing a masters in my home city, I am eschewing political matters for a wee while and taking a different direction. That's if I get accepted onto the programme, of course - I might have to eschew my own words if I don't.

But anyway - yesterday we went to Leeds to visit my brother - mainly because that's where he lives. We had a look round his new house, which is far too good for him, and had a bite to eat in one of Leeds' many non-famous eateries.

I'm not really a fan of Leeds, everything I've seen of it screams dumpy hellhole, but there must be an attraction somewhere. If I'm honest, I don't really like the North - it's not because I'm racist, it's notably colder, damper and more industrial up that way and I prefer a more genteel, green way of life. I don't want to die at 35 from inhaling coal dust, for instance. Actually that's a bit naughty, I shouldn't say that - you're more likely to die at 35 from all the passive smoking at the bus stop.

Oh rats.

I was on the phone to Carolan yesterday evening - just pause there for a second - I nearly wrote @Carolan and just caught myself in the nick of time. How bizarre. #signsyou'vebeenontwittertoolong

Anyway - I shall start again - I was on the phone to Carolan yesterday evening, just having a nice catch up. I was sitting in Embankment gardens, which is a lovely little space by Embankment tube station and out the back of the Royal Horseguards Hotel. I find it is a nice spot to sit and have telephone conversations that I've started on my way out of parliament and over to the train station.

As I was sat on a bench talking a little rat came out of the undergrowth cheeky as you please and, clinging on to the bottom of the bin next to the bench, was trying to get stuff out of the bottom of the bin through whichever hole he had decided was going to work for him. His little ratty legs swinging around underneath the bin, his fat ratty tail prostrate on the ground - this rat was fairly confident, I would say. He climbed down from the bottom of the bin - I didn't see what he was carrying - threw a contemptuous look in my direction (I may have disturbed him) and scurried off back into the undergrowth.

I was relaying all of this to Carolan as we spoke, she was by this point squealing on my behalf - she's had bad experiences with rats in London - but I have to say that this was my first one. I may now have the plague.

Nothing very much.

I'm minded to post a little something just to make sure that I squeeze one of my one a day in before the finish line approaches and I kick myself for not having found nothing very much to say earlier in the day.

Anyway...hello.

What was the year when Jesus was born?

This is an interesting one - I looked into it because it had come up on the Angry'n'Cliff podcast a month or two back and I don't like not knowing things that are distinctly knowable.

It turns out that historically the most common way to decide a year was to mark the years off of a monarch’s reign – we’re in the 57th year of Elizabeth 2’s reign, for instance. The Romans started from the founding of their Empire – around 753BC. But they had a different way of working out what a year was – various Caesars just invented months to show how great they were – July and August, for example.

The Gregorian calendar, which we use now, was invented by some bloke called Aloysius and brought in by the Pope in 1582. It started then to be used all around Europe – England didn’t sign up until 1752, and didn’t even use January 1st as the first day of the year until then either – this was brought in by Act of Parliament.

Interestingly, Scotland had moved to the system 150 years before, but everyone was already using the birth of Jesus as the year by that point anyway. If you went between England and Scotland, though, you would be flitting about between different days. Crazy.

Introducing the system caused all sorts of trouble – here we lost 11 days. It was introduced in Alaska in 1867 when the Americans bought Alaska off the Russians – they skipped 11 days and had two Fridays in a row. You’d think they could have made it two Saturdays, or something.

Using Jesus’ birthday itself for the year was brought in by Emperor Charlemagne in the early 800s – took off from there really. Other interesting fact is that in Japan although they also use the Gregorian calendar, the Emperor still gets to decide what year it is and when they’ll start counting from. The current year is Heisei 21, dating back to the last Emperor popping his Geta* in 1989.

*Those Japanese clog things

My exciting life.

My evenings are interminably glamorous in London - on Sunday I was up ironing until 1am in the morning, trying to plough through a mountain of shirts that looked like something the EU might concoct - wonky collars and sweat-stained armpits, that sort of thing. I've only got two weeks left in London, incidentally - the shirts I ironed mean that I've got two for every day of work I've got left in parliament with change. Every single one of which will likely be useless in my next iteration as a human being. More on both of these hot topics later in the week.

Yesterday I watched a film (I can't even remember what it was) and this evening I started the essay that I'm supposed to be handing in on Friday (5,000 words on how my life is far too busy to get anything done that needs to be done as long as you ignore the fact that I spent Sunday ironing and yesterday watching a film that was so tepid I can't even remember what it was) and...I took part in a podcast! In all likelihood I'll get edited out like so many star turns that end up on "Before They Were Famous 12!" with Denis Norden...I was going to crack some hilarious Denis Norden-themed jokes there and I went on Wikipedia to check whether he was dead or not first, but he isn't and then I forgot what I was going to say anyway.

But yes - podcast. There's Angry. And there's Cliff. Together, they form 'Angry and Cliff'. They very kindly invited me on to patronise them a little - I gave a new meaning to phoning it in, I truly did. It was exciting, it felt showbizzy and interesting - those chaps sort of reminded me of Russell and Jonathan in their heyday... Links will no doubt follow.

Hmm.

BREAKING NEWS: Jonathan Ross does something else that some people complain about.

...and then the comment boards get cracking. What are they even for? If you're in no position to complain, stop complaining. Just shut up. Try and keep quiet. Remain silent. Try it. Go on.

AgProv
06 Jul 09, 12:08pm (about 3 hours ago)

Hmmm... as a Radio Two listener I happily listen to Brian Matthews' Sounds of the Sixgties on a Saturday morning. After what happened last autumn, I then either turn off or switch channel when the Ross programme comes on, as many other Radio Two listeners do, in silent protest that this bloke is still employed by the BBC and porks so much of our licence money. I don't watch his TV show either, for the same reason.

So I didn't hear the Hannah Montana joke and I'm in no position to complain about it.

But I'm not surprised either.

Nor am I surprised the the BBC and Ofcom fobbed off the complaints, as there were only sixty of them.

A lot of us complained about Ross and that prize idiot Brand even before Sachsgate, so the BBC must have known they were employing trouble. But bvecause the complaints were tricking in in small numbers, they thought it was safe to ignore them. Even though people were complaining about Brand or pointing out his erratic behaviour virtually every week he was on. Just check out the archives of the BBC radio talkboards.

Funnily enough the BBC recently deleted its Points of View: Radio talkboard, thus depriving radio listenens of the platform on which many of us complained about Ross and the puerile Brand .

There is no no place on the BBC's talkboards to raise publicly complaints about BBC radio. I do wonder why...

<<>>

Sirles
06 Jul 09, 12:24pm (about 3 hours ago)

I listen to Jonathan on Saturday mornings; only wish his show started earlier, so that I didn't have to sit through all that tosh from the Sixties (and I'm a child of the Sixties).

Just a thing.

I guess you would see through it quite quickly if I overtly tried to get round my little post-a-day thing by posting silly thoughts as they came into my head and not really saying anything?

Thought so.

It's Sunday,

What a wonderful classic Sunday afternoon - church, invited to lunch, a walk up to Blackheath and a frappuccino from Starbucks and I'm about to watch a film with my housemate.

Isn't it a shame that Monday comes around so definitely thereafter? Or perhaps it is that slow inevitabiliy that makes the fun and the relaxation all the more sweet.

More pre-life crisis.

Regular visitors to this little glob of sputum in the gullet of life will perhaps have noted the long-running theme of ALBOWIEB, that of my pre-life crisis. It started off with verbal dysentery, which I learned to get (would you believe it) a little more on top of when I was president of the students' union in Bangor (big shout out to the staff there) - the pre-life crisis does exactly what it says on the tin, manifesting my neuroses about getting older and the pressures of modern life on young people.

Another distinct worry of getting older, which fully ranks alongside career, marriage and fulfillment is what I refer to as post-puberty. Even at 25, your body starts to fall apart, you turn into a wheezy git more prone to take the lift than stairs, bus than walk. You're eminently depressed by the thought that you reached a physical peak at 22. And worry at every point that your life is never going to be the same again, that's it downhill from here.

The only time that downhill is good is when you're cycling, everything else is an uphill struggle. Life constricts you on all sides - have you started a pension yet, are you doing the right savings, are you on the property ladder? Let's be honest here, I've not even found the property key to the property shed wherein lies the property ladder.

Even worse and slightly apocalyptically, hair begins to sprout out of odd places, bits of pudge get tacked on to your sides like bad pottery and odd growths, welts, scars and lumps start to appear. Forget that swine flu party nonsense, I'm thinking of organising a biopsy party. Not that much fun, but think of the goody bags.

Raweurgh.

I had some Pepsi Raw the other day because I'd been given a voucher and I was quite curious - if I'm honest, I can only assume the reason that it's being advertised so heavily is because people aren't going to choose it for some trivial reason like taste.

It's difficult to pin down at first, which is how they make you get through a whole can even though you don't really want to - it sort tastes like a melted cola ice lolly, no particular flavour or fizz to set it apart, just a lingering aftertaste that makes you think you might have had something nice earlier but you can't quite remember.

I can see what they're doing - all-natural ingredients is the high moral ground, and better than that it allows you to charge a whole pound more than anyone in their right mind would normally be willing to pay to have their teeth fall out. I've thought of a new slogan for them: Pepsi Raw - drink it, you'll never complain about the other stuff again.

The fun that never stops.

One of the supreme pleasures and utmost responsibilities of my job is opening the post. We're on a number of mailing lists (which are the hardest things to come off when it comes to promotional material and political lobbyists), perhaps the dullest of which is 'Civil Service World', a regular newspaper that gets sent through. I say dull not referring to its content, which I mostly don't get the chance to read, but its title - doesn't it conjure up an image of the most awful theme park in the world?

I imagine a visit would consist of a quick ride on the Risk Assessment Waltzers (they don't go too fast, don't worry) followed by a go on the Workplace Harmony Rollercoaster, which has a few dips but mostly goes up and it doesn't let you off until you're 65. After a quick lunch at the Management Cliche Cafe, where the fare is mostly hard to swallow, you can get lost in the Maze of Targets and get drenched in the Reshuffle Rapids. Fun times.

Keep your socks on.

The one particular thing about these waves of hot weather (or 'heatwaves' as they've come to be known) that I don't really care for is the feet. I'm not a feet fan, I think they're ugly things and should be removed at birth. Or at least a couple of months in, babies' feet are sort of cute.

What aren't cute are the collections of ravaged, yellowing talons and encrusted hulks of hard cheese that are being daily encased in inappropriate footwear and waved about by their owners as if, shock, they're proud of them. I can scarce believe.

The inexorable tarch of mime.

What on earth happened to June? I don't remember her being so short, it's like she only reached my knees! The year is frittering away and I've done nothing with it, it's gathering dust on a shelf next to All The Books I Planned To Read. February you expect this kind of thing from, but not June. June is sedate and gentle, easing you into summer in a lolloping sort of way - a sort of tall, clumsy blonde who everyone loves. June 2009 had a fiery temper, fits of depression and the sort of attitude where frankly I doubt her commitment. Oh well.

I didn't do very well on the blogging front - 21 posts? That's the worst performance since February and on a par with the average for 2008. Which only had one month of blogging in it, actually. I'm catching the statistics disease that seems to infect everyone involved in politics. At any rate, I'm going to try that post a day thing that made May such a memorable occasion - for me. I managed 29 posts in May, which is clearly pitiful but a high benchmark nevertheless. Onwards.