My year in hastily-chosen blog posts.

2009, what a year. I don't do so good with the reminiscing and the trying to remember things - I'm not much given to contemplation and suchlike. But it would be churlish at the end of the year not to look back and see what's happened when you've kept a fastidious and occasionally regular semi-account of what you've been up to, no? 

In January, a saviour was born and I my hobby during my time living in London continued to be moaning about commuting.

February sees me becoming famous and on the Guardian website. Unfortunately there's no book deal involved and I return to obscurity. I also win tickets to go and see a Shakespeare play.

March and the 'atheist bus' controversy is in full swing, to which I am - as usual - able to add considered and erudite opinion and analysis. I also try to come to terms with the deprecession and I get a bit ill. Poor me.

The highlight of April is going to men's gym and putting my washing out. I also decide to practice being thoughtful for a little while. I don't believe it lasted long. By far the highlight, however, is standing outside Buckingham Palace for ages and seeing the BEAST.

In May I get mercilessly mugged on the way home to vicious south east London. I get flashbacks.

June is dominated by an upsetting cold sore on my face. This month also sees me turning 26 and coming up with food-themed restaurant names on the train. Commuting-induced dementia, no doubt.

In July I leave London, for the fair provincial climes of the midlands. I also post my favourite YouTube video ever. IT HURTS, JANICE, IT HURTS! Lmao, etc, etc.

In August I buy a car on a whim and I decide that I don't like camping much. Actually, it's more of an allergy.

September sees me going to Liberal Democrat conference and start a masters course in Coventry. I also compose a brief poem for my new car.

October isn't such an exciting month. I achieve another brief moment of notoriety in Total Politics magazine and there's a postal strike. Also, I GET A HAIRCUT!

In November my life reaches a new low of nothinghappeningness and dulldom. I have an essay to write, and I listen to some Radio 4. The highlight of my month is liveblogging the X Factor. On a Saturday AND a Sunday! Thrills!

December sees me slacking off big style, but perking up somewhat towards the end, ready to launch into a new year. The clear highlight of the year, though, not just of December - why, it's my EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW/PROFILE THING with Angry and Cliff, of Angry and Cliff: the podcast fame [don't forget to read from the bottom there, these confusing blog things]. Showbiz types, eh?

Happy New Year!

Things I have learned today.

I can't taste things when I'm listening to music. I can't decide whether this is interesting biology or slightly mental.

I'm cooking a cauliflower cheese (no laughing at the back there, it's mighty tasty - I do a cracking cheese sauce) at the moment and I had to take my headphones out to taste the sauce because I just couldn't taste anything whilst I was listening to music. Strange.

I'm now about to try and get a handle on the sausages - I just can't cook them, they're my culinary nemesis. I don't know what it is, I've tried many different ways and it's never come good for me. Today I am baking them in the oven at 200 degrees with tin foil underneath. I have not pricked them. I have tried frying with olive oil, sunflower oil, sunflower spray, vegetable oil, I have tried grilling, I have tried pricking them and not pricking them, I've tried flash frying and putting them into the oven to bake. My mum is partial to boiled sausages, but I am not yet that desperate. Well, maybe I am. I'm almost ready to give this cooking stuff malarkey up completely.

My cheese sauce though, that keeps me going.

Spam-alot.

Wait a minute, where was I?

Oh yes. Shopping online.

I only raised those two experiences to explain the upcoming vociferations in the context of have used the aforementioned retailers once and years ago. Oh, I lie - I just remembered that I used Amazon a second time to buy some DVDs just over a year ago.

I keep getting emails from purveyors of goods. It's practically stalking. SEVERAL TIMES A DAY in the run-up to Christmas I had breathless love letters from Amazon telling me about the latest things that I just simply had to have. The shoes from Schuh come tip-toeing into my inbox whenever I turn my head. I remember a sepia-tinged time when cookies were mere biscuits, not rat-tailed informants who told websites everything you had viewed in order to use that information to compile carefully targeted marketing emails of things you might have missed.

I looked up external hard drives a lifetime ago when I had money to burn on the offchance there might be something affordable enough to warrant a place in the Burnett household, first floor, but sadly the match was not to be made. I have consistently not bought an external hard drive since then, but still they persist with the emails each week imploring me to buy something electrical, like shopping is a hobby for me. It makes me angry.

But why don't I unsubscribe, I hear you cry? Mainly because I keep forgetting - a burst of rage followed by a smacking of the delete button in a fit of pique is mildly satisfying, a succour to my soul, the email deleted and the unsubscribe details sink to the bottom of the Atlantic with it - and also because I don't want to miss out. What if I was to get an email with the cheapest most spectacular specialest of special offers the likes of which the world has never seen? What if I didn't get that message because I had just unsubscribed?

So the circle of life continues - stupid emails which I don't read stream through my life and out of the other side. I continue not to buy anything. Sellers continue to live in hope.

Shopping online.

I bought a few books from Amazon once. In September 2008, I was about to start the leadership programme at CARE and I'd gone to my local good Christian bookshop (good shop, not necessarily for good Christians) to source them. (That's new meedja talk for find.) Needless to say, the local good shop turned out to be the useless shop that's actually further away than you think in the city centre. I came home and ordered the books in my pants. Probably. That took several minutes less than spelling them all to the shop assistant and I could specify not having them all in the most expensive hardback version because I take a markup. Sadly this particular chain of shops has now gone BANKRUPT. The death of the shop.

I bought some shoes from the Schuh website around 2007. Nice shoes - they're still with me, quite distinctive, a talking point when I wear them. Having said that, a six-inch heel is a bit much for me. Just joking, they're not heels. Anyway - I ordered from Schuh, painless process - I wasn't dissatisfied, but I did have to go into town to pick them up because it was cheaper than having them sent to my house. Bit strange that.

All by-the-by really, although I'm sure there are talented souls out there who would end the blog post here.

I'm ready for my haircut, Mr DeMille.

The past few days have reminded me why national holidays are so irritating when you don't have a stand-up nine-to-five gig - I've been dying to get a haircut for a number of days now, but what with bank holidays and religious occasions and suchlike it's been difficult, what with the shops being closed. A day is a day is a day to me, no difference from moment to moment. If I'm ready for a haircut why shouldn't there be an establishment somewhere in the city ready to receive me and my shiny ten pound note? I shall expect change, of course.

I get agitated when my hair gets a little shaggy. It probably hasn't reached the shaggy stage, maybe just the 'long enough to unnerve' stage. Conversations invariably go,

"I really need a haircut."
"But it looks fine."

As if I'm standing on a ledge and need talking down. It's a self thing. If my hair doesn't feel right, I don't feel right. As soon as it's cut I want to go round everyone I've spoken to in the past week and a half and show them that I can look kempt and normal. Here I am looking handsome and well-groomed. Witness my even fringe and hairline that isn't creeping down my neck like primordial gloop. Oh, to be a functioning member of society once again.

Open source conversation.

Is there like a reblog thing I can do? On twitter you can retweet, which is just copying and pasting what someone else said and putting 'RT' in front of it. You look like someone who pays attention, gets the funny stuff and wants to pass it on to your loyal followers. Who are probably following the first person you wanted to retweet anyway, but RTing says as much about you for reposting the tweet than the information actually contained therein. I love all these unwritten maxims of conversation, I like to subvert them. Do you have the time? Yes, thanks. A retweet makes one look discerning and appreciative. Interestingly, the whole concept was dreamt up by twitter users, not the people who run it. That's people power - open source conversation. Twitter is like the air we use to float conversation across the room. They'd like to think it's the end in itself, but it's just the means. It's this fundamental misunderstanding that means they're going to mess the whole thing up like Facebook have. Then there will be the next thing.

But we'll always have Paris. And blogging.

But anyway - RB @me, from 1st January 2009:

Dear 2009,

Happy 1st January, me old mucker - your time has arrived at long last. It's a bit pressured coming at the end of a decade as people get a touch of deadline fever and try and squeeze everything in. 1969 we were on the moon, 1979 we were electing Frau Thatcher, 1989 we were ridding the world of Communism (it's still around a little bit, but mostly for the crack) and in 1999 we got a bit carried away and tried to stop the world from ending. Practical joke by some old bloke called Nostradamus.

2008 was a mildly inconsequential year - in some ways we needn't have bothered, we could have skipped from 2007 straight to you, but after several thousand of you the order seems to be quite important. We could have missed out economic misery and an entire 'nother year of Labour in power, Cherie Blair's book and that sodding Abba film. It even got to the desperate stage of giving everyone cash because our taxes were messed up, lower VAT rates to distract us from the fiscal cock-up and goodness only knows what they expected us to do with an extra second - economic stimulus gone mad, I tell you, especially when the extra second was at night. But no - as it was, the traditionalists had their way.

Please be kind to us - myself, this is my 25th year on the planet and as I approach my Silver Anniversary I feel the weight of history on my shoulders. As in the pressure to make some, even if I only end up with a colourful personal one. I'm not one for resolutions, really, but I might think of some for you - 2009 is an important year for me, it would be nice to have some goals to work towards.

At any rate - welcome, 2009 - may you shine favourably upon us and not be a twat.

All the best,

Sam

Look at all those contemporaneous in-jokes that I don't get anymore. You not even as funny as your last blog post, I don't think - you're only about as funny as whatever you're writing at the moment. Funny dates so quickly, depends entirely on audience, context and mood. Another thought for another day. Has 2009 been a good year? I haven't decided yet. Something to think about for the next couple of days.

Twitter versus blogging deathmatch.

I read this on Cliff's blog today:

"The blogging will go on. Personally and generally. I’m not speaking for all bloggers, but the much-reported battle between Twitter and blogging is a skermish at best, because short-form broadcasting has a place.

I’m not going to get all “scrollier than though”, but bloggers will continue to take photographs with their hearts, which will develop in the laughter that people, me among them, may have forgotten they knew."

Cliff's writing is great, and I hope this is right. I think it is - Twitter has certain useful functions, but the only blow it might have dealt to blogging has been the taking up of useful time. Viva blogging, I'm certainly going to spend 2010 bringing it back.

My Moleskines and me.

I've just returned from meeting my friend Carolyn in town for a brief stop in the city. She was briefly stopping, I'm stuck here for another 6 months at least. I envy people their passing-on-through, their journeys. You forget what they've gone through to get where they are, you only see the here and now. One day I'll have here and now, at the moment I've only got the there and when. More of a question and expectation than a state of being.

I described Carolyn on my MoJo blog ('Everything is somewhere else', available on all good computer screens) - when I used to be able to think of things to write on there, that is - as one of those people who likes to hang around in the back of TV shots calling her mum, but I now understand that not to be the case. She does like to take pictures up her nose, though - the digital camera revolution has not been entirely kind to humanity. She tells me she writes a blog but doesn't publish it on the internet. What has been known in historical parlance as a diary. I'd like her to write a blog because it would be funny, but then I fear it would be better than mine.

The diary thing, though, that's what I was going for - I bought my diary for 2010. Just in the nick of time, really - I've been looking for around three or four months for a suitable diary (I have considerable requirements) and have eventually settled on a week-to-a-page A5 Moleskine diary. It has the diary on one page and ruled lines on the other. I'm quite excited about all the things I could write in there. I'm going to search for a website like the one I found for my boggo Moleskine notebook - a website dedicated to giving you tips and tricks to 'Pimp Your Pad', or somesuch. It was quite revelatory, and whilst I haven't taken up some of the more radical suggestions, every page is numbered and I have a detailed set of contents pages so that I can look up what's on every page and I'll know where I was and when those notes were written. I can keep a running bibliography of books I've read for my course one page and have notes on each book dotted around the notebook referenced on the original bibliography page. I have a page of useful notes full of door codes and passwords and useful numbers and other things I might like to know. This is fun stuff for me.

A diary is a big commitment - we're going to be together for a year, we need to get on together and have a mutual understanding of our respective requirements. I must say that I'm really starting to look forward to 2010 now...

A brief Christmas picture show.

So this is where I was on Christmas Day: playing with someone else's dog on a farm in the countryside. Sort of a farm - they keep horses. Very pleasant, made all the more fun by the world's coolest two-year-old.

Happy war (Christmas is over)

So that's it, Christmas has come and gone. A drawn-out flirtation through December has led to a whorl and eddy, a tempestuous but brief affair. Now we're feeling bloated, dreary and stuck with New Year. She flutters at you with her come hither eyes and sexy baubles, bright colours and her cinnamon and cream and cakes and fun and she spits you out the other side. You never see it coming, she's a pro like that. You know that she's done this before. At least it's not a real relationship - you didn't get married and you get to keep the presents.

Angry and Cliff: behind the men behind the microphones - Mission to Moscow.

(If you've followed the link, don't forget to start from the bottom - this is the final part of the series.)

So far, we have heard from Angry and Cliff on all sorts of issues - but what does the future hold for their enduring partnership?

I come back to the podcast – do the boys listen to any other shows for inspiration or entertainment? Cliff listens to a couple – “Keith And The Girl is usually good, as is Bluegrass With Mustard and NPR's Most Emailed”, but he doesn’t want to become unduly influenced by what’s out there. “I tend to listen to fewer podcasts since we started doing the show because phrases and format is bound to creep in and I'd worry about it not sounding original.”

Mr Angry enjoys a good podcast or two, but like us all still finds it difficult to make the time. “I like the Collings & Herrin podcast, and The Bugle from the The Times with John Oliver is good too. I don't listen to more than two or three in any week because it takes too much time if you're not commuting yourself.” He doesn’t look to other podcasts for inspiration, though – for him it’s more a case of keeping his eyes peeled, a matter of “looking to the simple things that happen during the week. I've always enjoyed the challenge of making the mundane entertaining - going to the supermarket, paying a bill, talking to a relative - these can all provide great nuggets for us to riff upon during the podcast if you look at it from the right angle. Then there is the news, the richest source of humour in the world.”

So what does the future hold for the Angry and Cliff podcast? Another fifty shows? Cliff has some sad news. “I'm afraid not, no. We would like to announce that the show is stopping after number 60. We will continue podcasting separately but we shall not work together again. Angry will continue under the name "The Angry And Show" and mine will be called, simply "Cliff". We hope you will appreciate that while we will continue to broadcast on the Internet, our private lives are our own. We haven't discussed who will get custody of Ben but he understands what is going on and that we both love him very much.”

Angry chirps in here, the ‘Angry and Cliff’ patter can’t be switched off. They’re like evil Ant and Dec. “You normally hear couples saying 'it's not you, it's me' - well that's rubbish. It was Cliff.” It seems they do have secret plans to take over at least the podcasting world, according to Cliff. “Seriously, though, we'll probably do more video stuff and I'd like to do the live show thing more, because people think the show is edited a lot more than it is. I'd like to interview more people and have guests in, but we tend to rush to get the thing done.”

Angry gets the last word – “I think we'll keep doing it as long as we enjoy it, and as long as people keep listening, which they seem to be doing at the moment. Also, I'd really love to get higher than our peak of 26 in the iTunes comedy podcast charts. One day maybe...”

And with that, we’re logged off, disconnected. I wait impatiently for the next show.

Special thanks to: Mr Angry; Cliff Jones; the Cliff and Angry Foundation; P&O Ferries

If you have been affected by anything you have read in these interviews, please listen to Angry and Cliff: the podcast, at all good podcast stores weekly.

Angry and Cliff: behind the men behind the microphones - part three.

Yesterday on Angry and Cliff: behind the men behind the microphones, we looked at podcasts and Aerosmith. Today, it's blogging. And will the real Mr Angry please stand up?

The blogs are interesting fodder for discussion – they made their (internet) names doing them, but they’ve fallen by the wayside as other things have come up. They do the podcast every week and Mr Angry has become a successful Web 2.0 entrepreneur with his NewArse.com satirical website which has even spawned a book (Amused By The World - probably available at a good bookshop, if you ask nicely). He has even had an endorsement from Stephen Fry, the ultimate accolade amongst the twittering classes – he described it as “good”.

So they’ve come a long way in a few short years, but it might not have happened for Cliff: “I almost didn't start because I thought there were some very established bloggers who were better than me and I'd missed the boat. I was wrong and there are a lot of good young bloggers who unfortunately don't get the visibility that talented writers got a few years ago.”

I have to ask Mr Angry about his vexed alter ego. Is Angry the real him, or the pretend him? He makes the important distinction that Angry was always meant to be funny, not angry – more of “an exaggeration of my own opinions, than a fabrication. I don't consider myself to be particularly angry in real life, but many things do annoy me, which leads to the odd impromptu rant. In fact, my blog only came about in the first place after a friend suggested "you should write this down" during a night in the pub when I kept them entertained talking about the ridiculous names celebrities choose for their children. Two weeks before my first ever blog post I'd never even heard of a 'blog'.”

Would Cliff do it all anonymously if he had his time over? “Sometimes I do think I would have liked to do it anonymously, looking back on it. There's an odd moment when people realise you have a blog. If you tell people, it looks like you're promoting it, and if you don't it looks like you're trying to hide it or you're embarrassed about something. It's hard to be nonchalant about something that grows at the rate of 50,000 words a year. But it has put me in touch with a couple of old friends and the people on it are incredibly nice, so I don't regret having it.”

I can sympathise with the incredulity that you’re greeted with when blogging under your own name – it’s a difficult idea for people to get their heads round if they’re not into it. Why put yourself about in public like that? It makes for interesting thinking. But, it’s one thing writing a blog – hardly anyone reads those and whilst all bloggers secretly want a book deal they all say they do it for the love of writing – but I’m intrigued by the idea of recording a podcast and sending it out to the world. Why do it? Cliff says they’re having fun, but he wants to get in there before everyone else does – “the easier it gets to broadcast, the more rubbish will be out there. I think we can do better than a lot of other material; we were keen on doing something before the market got flooded, like it kind of did with blogs. I still think the earliest blogs were the best ones, so that's kind of the aim with the podcast.” So there’s still time for someone to listen to the show and ITV2 to commission a programme starring Billie Piper as Angry and/or Cliff.

Angry says that the podcast has become a replacement for blogging: “In the past, something would happen during the week and I would spend time constructing jokes about it for a blog post. Now I get to share all the same things I did before, but it takes significantly less time. You might call that lazy, I would call it efficiency.” His aims are slightly more quantifiable than Cliff’s – he says his motivation is “to make a listening commuter spit coffee out of his nose”, no doubt that will make a great update for Cliff’s recent post about the irritating habits of fellow passengers on his commute.

Is the blog a worn concept, though? It’s a time issue for Angry: “When I started, I had considerably more time on my hands than I have now. I still read blogs, but nowhere near as many as I once did. I think the growth of instant consumption and information sharing through the likes of Twitter and Facebook has made it more difficult for blogs to become popular. If you're sat at a computer and want to be entertained, there are considerably more options for the 'reader' than there was four years ago when I started my blog.”

I ask Cliff if whether blogging is dead or does it have a prosperous future – “I think a lot of bloggers stopped because there comes a point where you make a conscious decision to either get on with life or carry on writing about it. I still haven't learned that lesson or necessarily found the balance. I think that blogging has a future, but I'm not sure if it's prosperous. Rewarding and valued, though, definitely.”

To be continued...

Tomorrow, in our final installment, we talk about inspiration and the future for Angry and Cliff: the podcast.

Angry and Cliff: behind the men behind the microphones - part deux.

So far, on Cliff and Angry: behind the men behind the microphones, we've met the men and we've found out why. Now we go deeper.

I must profess that I don’t really listen to many podcasts myself – there was that one with Ricky Gervais and the baldy orange-headed man the other year and a couple of Formula 1 things that I’ve sat through on the odd occasion but Angry and Cliff: the Podcast is a winner for me precisely because of Angry’s ‘men of the people’ thing – where else do I go to hear the quotable phrase “I don’t mean to piss and shit on your chips”, as I did during their last show?

Aside from the filthy language and merciless ribbing, one of the draws is the chemistry between them – you can sit on the bus all alone and pretend you’re sitting in the pub having a great conversation with people who would obviously be your best friends. ‘Edgy Podcast Reviews’ cites their “incredible ability to play off one another”, whilst ‘Podwatch’, which turns out not to be anything to do with Mary Whitehouse at all, applauds that “their back and forth doesn’t degenerate into juvenile swearing contests like so many others.” Well, not juvenile.

There are stand-out moments in each show – Cliff’s epic introductions, ‘This day in history’, the ‘Aerosmith song or porn film’ quiz and whatever has happened to the chaps during their week. Supermarkets are a rich seam of material for them. They obviously enjoy what they’re doing, and find it difficult to save it all up for when the microphones are running, according to Cliff: “When we're setting up the gear, we'll start talking about something one of us has seen and the other will give a funny opinion on it and then we'll have to go, "OK, shut up shut up, we should save this for the show".”

Mr Angry says the chemistry is all genuine but doesn’t necessarily need to be – “it wouldn't have lasted this long if we were faking it. I'd fake it for money, by the way – in case anyone is interested in giving us money.” They do have fun, though – “lots of it. Some of the best stuff doesn't get recorded unfortunately - either because it's about things we wouldn't want to share in the public domain, or we're a bit uncomfortable with it. I think it's fair to say my boundaries can be pushed a bit further than Cliff's, though.”

To be continued...

Tomorrow: We talk about blogging, and secret identities. 

Angry and Cliff: behind the men behind the microphones.

Angry and Cliff: The Podcast has been going for over a year and just cracked 50 shows – having been a guest on there a few times myself I thought it would fun to get to know more about the show and I have procured for your delectation An Exclusive Interview. You read it all here first.

I wanted to start with all that usual interview stuff – Cliff arrived in a slightly crumpled velvet suit, Mr Angry had some telltale scars around his ears, etc, etc, but reader I must confess that I have yet to meet them. Through the wonders of the interweb we have corresponded from afar. Odd, you might think, but it’s quite fitting given that one of them has a secret identity and the other professes to be a bit shy. This has the feel of communicating with Afghan warlords, except that they don’t tend to live in the commuter belt and their podcasts often have beheadings as a central feature.

But I get ahead of myself. Some background – Mr Angry has been blogging under a pseudonym since 2006 at iamlivid.com – and quickly became the king of the deliciously-composed eloquent blog rant. Cliff has been blogging at thisisthis.org since practically before the internet was invented, in 2004. He describes it as “A blog of occasional daily life with patchy outbreaks of funny, scattered values and the chance of philosophy from the east”, it’s incredibly witty, warm and very often insightful. He’s Angry, he’s Cliff – and together, they’re Angry and Cliff.

I start off by asking them to explain the show to a newbie – “It's two guys talking, but all the reviews say "it's not a 'two guys' talking blog" Of course they are wrong, it's often three guys,” says Cliff. A refreshingly simple concept. Two, maybe three guys talking – regular guest presenter Ben Piears often joins them in the studio come recording time. But why might this thing be successful?

Mr Angry professes surprise: “Honestly, I sometimes find myself surprised that people DO listen to it. After all, it's just a couple of blokes chatting and poking fun out of the news, and each other. Then I realise that this is precisely the sort of podcast that I DO listen to. We consciously try and talk about things that have happened in the run up to the recording, to try and keep it topical - not to educate - but in the hope people will more easily relate to it.”

Cliff looks at it a different way – the pair of them are striking a blow for the little guy (and his podcast), making up for the lack of independent comedy podcasts. “If you look at the charts, a lot of it is taken up by major broadcasters. A lot of those aren't podcasts as much as spin-offs of shows that were broadcast to a massive audience already. There are some good independent ones, but relatively few compared to how many there will be in a couple of years.”

To be continued...

Tomorrow: The podcast. And is the chemistry real?

An apology from me.

I feel in some way that I should apologise to all of the people who end up here by virtue of typing something into a search engine - it's nothing to do with me, honest. I do believe that this particular corner (why do we say corner? Like there are only four websites on the whole internet? What might be a reasonable alternative?) of the internet is the worst place to come for answers to any question you might have. Second perhaps to Wikipedia, because I don't pretend to actually have all the answers, but I'm actually psychotic and have no friends and how could I possibly know the exact details of everything there is to know in the whole wide world?*

I can't even remember where I was. Oh yes, sorry. If you ever feel like you need an answer to something and my blog has been undoubtedly useless, do feel free to leave a comment. I should like to try and make it up to you by finding the answer to whatever it is you've been looking for. Unless it's existential, because then we'd both be screwed.

*Citation needed.

I go back to Bangor.

I went back to Wales back in August, the first time since I left in the summer of 2008. Five months on and just the other week, it still hadn’t changed any more. The docile calm and pathological lack of importance was far less appealing so long after leaving London behind. As much as I criticised the city that never weeps, I think I miss it. More than I ever did Bangor.

There’s a tendency I have, to cherish the past, to embellish the things that weren’t the best, to remember fondly what didn’t fondle at the time. It’s a good thing, in its way – I just have to know that I can’t always trust my memory, that I shouldn’t try to recreate what’s past. It tends to foster in me an urgency and an excitement about the future, because...y’know...I don’t..have, areversegear. Once I’m done with something I’m done, it’s time to move on. I want to do lots of different things – every job, every country, every book.

It’s strange revisiting old things, because you feel like you’ve changed so much but they haven’t changed at all. It’s an arrogance, that thinking – you know you’ve changed like a fish out of water knows it’s been out of the water when it gets back in. That’s not to say that the other things, the other people, they haven’t changed. We all change, that’s life. The status quo is time wasted, but no human being could experience a second more of this life without being a completely different person than a second ago. I like that.

An exciting reminder.

TOMORROW, there will be AN EXCLUSIVE first part of the INTERVIEW with ANGRY and CLIFF!!1!

Is this not EXCITING??@

I wait for the snow.

I really hate snow. I’ve probably mentioned this before, but it’s an essential plot point. It’s a mark of this character, something significant. Or maybe not. But he doesn’t like the snow.

When I spent my year abroad in Germany there was a three-month permasnow, a metre of it that just wouldn’t go away. It does something to a man, that relentless torture. Constantly there, the cold, the wet, the traipsing backwards and forwards. It is literally like that dream where you’re trying to move and you can’t. The freeze, it crawls up you, grabs and claws. The snow makes everything beautiful, but it’s so superficial, deceptive and dangerous. You don’t know what’s beneath, like the proverbial pile of leaves artfully draped over dog shit.

I’d been hunkering down this week – not literally, but inside. Waiting for the snow. Hoping that global warming would hurry up and get a move on. It’s been really quite cold, and I really quite dislike the cold too. Snow is the poster child of cold, its insidious front man. Luckily it has not showed up in Coventry, too scared to face a maniac with a pocket full of salt and a hairdryer.

Bordering on the unseemly.

We went to Birmingham today to do some shopping and pick my brother up from the coach station - Christmas really isn't the best time to go shopping, ideally if one were well-organised all such chores could be completed in August when everyone's on holiday and not in the Bullring.

But having said that, we know already from this morning that this will never happen for me. For the rest of you, doing all of the shopping in the week before Christmas is the human condition. I try and avoid areas where there are going to be a lot of people - I like to move swiftly from shop to shop, I don't need wretched fat women underfoot. And people really turn on the stupid in crowds, do they not? You could stick a thousand PhDs in Debenhams and they'd still wander dumb from rail to rack to shelf to rail getting in each other's way, stopping for no apparent reason in the middle of the aisle and being rude to one another.

I left my mum and sister crowd surfing in Debenhams and made my way to Borders, which I knew was having a closing down sale. This leaves literally no non-evil widespread bookstores in country, which upsets me greatly. Also, they had great magazines. I ambled aimlessly throughout the shop, picking things up and then moments later coming to my senses and putting them down, trying to make sense of the piles of books that had been dumped about the place. Bodies were thronging around them, plucking away. Where the more threadbare shelves were, people tucked in forensically, grabbing items of interest before anyone else could. I felt like I was among condors, picking at carrion.

It was a faintly sad occasion, the most unseemly side of human nature emerging from this brief tableau. Motoring on at the thought of 80% off people were chugging about arms full with books they didn't know and will likely never read. Taking this once mighty bookshop's misfortune in their stride they were making the best, taking advantage like so many gold diggers at the execution of a rich man's will. I felt waves of melancholy, thinking about the humility of it all - the posters from administrators on the wall, the people who have and will lose their jobs, the suppliers out of pocket and the lives ruined.

But then I went to the till and I got some great bargains, so it was OK.

I get there in the nick of time.

I have this complete inability to do anything more than five minutes before I need to have it done. Like meeting someone, getting out of out bed – or writing an essay. I had a number of bits of work I had to hand in on Thursday, fortunately I had been a bit better at preparing some of it in advance. Gosh, some of it I had even done several days before.

I can’t figure out why I’m like this – it’s not like I want to leave everything to the last minute, I’m just physically incapable of not. My brain could not contemplate writing an essay that’s not due tomorrow morning, time does not have any context in a world where there’s more than fifteen minutes before I need to be there. Where I am now is far more important than where I’m going to be. It’s the concrete versus the existential. Right now deserves my thought and attention, otherwise it’s just wasted.

I have a similar difficulty in reminiscing or thinking about things that have gone. It affects my work just as badly – I find it interminably, excruciatingly dull to attempt to read over something I’ve written. I don’t really proof essays I’ve written, I’ll never read this blog post again once I’ve got past the first couple of sentences. I like to take the care at the point of committing my fingers to the keys. If a post isn’t coming together by the second sentence (and I’ve usually got the whole thing pinned by then), it has to go.

Which explains why last Thursday at 15.57 I was submitting my portfolio and reflective essays online for a 16.00 deadline. It’s not because I particularly enjoy living dangerously, I just had other things to do at any other time. By 16.01 I was drinking a coffee.

More number two than number one.

So this whole Christmas number one thing, it's basically one group of people sizing another up and saying 'we're better than you' - does it really matter what gets to number one? Rage Against The Machine's lead singer, speaking at the end of the Radio 1 chart show today, said that it was the mark of a new 'grassroots civil movement'. Coughbollocks. Couldn't this wonderful civil movement have put its collective effort together to solve malaria or poverty or something? Alternatively I'm sure we could find them something equally noble that would still allow them to remain smug.

I certainly don't think this is the dawn of a new age for social media as some people (mainly the ones who don't pay attention) will tell you - Twitter getting Carter Ruck to drop the gag on the Guardian about the Trafigura toxic chemical dumping scandal was a big deal, the outrage against Jan Moir an omen of the spittle-lipped anger-channeling to come. The MP I worked for last year was the first one to hold a surgery for constituents through the medium of Facebook chat at the beginning of this year - again, that would be a breakthrough for social media.

A bunch of cynical crusty-eyed poopers getting a second-rate rock band and their 17-year-old single to number one at Christmas time is not. 17? Almost as old as 18-year-old Joe McElderry. Wow, they really showed him too - that'll teach him to have a dream, enter a talent show and win a public vote by a massive margin because he's Actually Quite Talented. His song might not be everyone's cup of tea, but that's what coffee was invented for. They pushed all that tea in the harbour in Boston to do a revolution, not to teach PG Tips a lesson. That nasty, rich Mr Cowell must really be crying tonight.

I was told this evening that the idea of the RATM single-buying was to cock a snook at the establishment, the monopoly of the media and declare that people aren't going to do what they're told to do. The first thing that irritated me about this was that precisely none of the people who I saw saying this could exactly say that they were off the grid. I think it's peculiarly sad when people are still claiming to fight the machine when they became a part of it years ago. Secondly, you don't get to call yourself Rage Against The Machine when you've had a number one and you're managed by Sony. If you're successful, you are the machine. The third thing was the point I made in the last paragraph - literally millions of votes were cast in the final of the X Factor, which Joe won by over 60%. That's not to mention that the public had a choice of 12 people chosen by experts.

I love the idea of the people flexing their muscles - but for goodness' sake show some discernment about it. This was a freak show, a novelty act, it was hardly the storming of the Bastille. All of those thousands of people putting a pitiful amount of effort into securing a number one single in the same week that world climate change talks went to shit. There are kids starving, countries going bankrupt and our own economy is being mishandled by jaded politicians who have lost all sense of perspective. I'm no left-wing crazy, but surely in trying to prove that half of society has its priorities wrong, all the other half have confirmed is that everybody does?

A look at what's coming up.

I had a week at home on my own the other week – my family jaunted off to North Africa for a wee holiday, frolicking in the sun, scuba diving if you were my dad and reading charity shop books if you were my mum. Talking a lot and getting quite annoying if you were my sister. I couldn’t get away, see, what with all of the deadlines and not having a passport. I’m sort of stuck in the country.

It was a pleasant week, filled with all the television I wanted to watch, which wasn’t a lot. A number of films, a Jurassic Park marathon and loads of chips. I like chips, why ever not? I was also quite ill that week, which removed the patina of thrills and replaced it with a raging sore throat and pints of phlegm. It started off with my throat swelling so much my epiglottis was stuck to the roof of my mouth – fun times, eh? Chugging ibuprofen and paracetamol certainly helped. I lost my voice, but I wasn’t sure whether it was through lack of use or the raging sore throat.

But alas, reader, what with the lethal terminal illness and the deadlines and the whatever else has been keeping me away from you, I just haven’t been here. But I am now.

What have we got to look forward to over this festive period? Much introspection, I’m afraid, for ‘tis that time of year – on procrastination, the snow, revisiting old lives. I’ve got thoughts to share with you on cod philosophy, space, spiders and Impressionism. I’m cultured like that, me. There will be things happening over Christmas, I’ve got plenty of time to get worked up over something. Maybe there will be lots of repeats and a central character dies on Christmas Day, but I’ll try and avoid both of those.

Excitingly, coming up this week I have AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH ANGRY AND CLIFF. I have profiled them – not for the FBI, but for you dear reader. If you don’t know who Angry and Cliff are you certainly will by the end of this week for I shall introduce you to the delightful workings of their life-addled minds. Actually, I’m not that good. But it’s something to look forward to.

I'm totally still here, I'm just hiding.

The laptop. Bringer of freedom, crusher of dreams.

My laptop is very irritating. Maybe I'm just being the concerned parent, but I hardly ever let it off the plug-in adaptor. I like to keep it within my sight at all times, you just don't know what these things are getting up to if you  cast them loose and leave them up to their own devices.

What's also irritating is that when I do let it off the plug-in adaptor it runs out of juice in about the same time as it takes to drink an admitte

GAH, THE THING JUST TURNED ITSELF OFF WHEN I WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF WRITING THIS VERY POST. I HATE IRONY.

Now, where was I?

It runs out of juice in about the same time as it takes to drink an admittedly large cup of tea. I start off and the little picture of a battery in the bottom-right corner is full and it says I have 4 hours. Then a few minutes later I look at it's at 88% - OK, a little on the consumptive side, but bearable. Then a few minutes after that a little box comes up and warns me that BATTERY LEVELS ARE CRITICAL - 10% AVAILABLE. Ten per cent, a little pop-up thing tells me, is a helpful twenty minutes' worth of use. What it is in reality is a 45-second warning.

I feel a little disillusioned with the whole laptop-owning experience. In my head I was going to take my little 12-inch bescreened marvel with me to coffee shops, where I would write a book and read cultured blogs about the arts and literature and maybe a little bit of celebrity gossip off the Daily Mail website, but not too much, just enough to be slightly ironic. It's cool. I would carry my laptop with me all over the place and be a modern man.

I took it somewhere with me just the once, I think, my crushed vertebrae have never forgiven me. Far from being liberated to take my PC into all the world I've migrated from the desk to my bed. I check my emails in bed when I wake up, I check my emails in bed before I go to sleep, I watch DVDs in my bed during the day and either side of that I check my emails. Luckily I can check my emails from my phone, otherwise I would have no reason to get out of bed. My bed is not only comfortable, but it's a communications hub. It's more powerful than an entire 1960s corporation with its own typing pool.

The laptop is genius. But it's also oppressive. With the illusion of freedom that came in a cardboard box (and had to be sent back twice, incidentally. Idiots) I got a 2-metre long chain that plugs in at the wall. So far, and yet so near.

AIDS and that.

Interesting - through a combination of bizarre wordplay I'm noticing that people are searching a lot today for X Factor cancer badge or somesuch combination and ending up here. I think it was some crass joke about cancerous children in the liveblog - but I did clock the badges this week, a sort of half-joke.

Poppies I understand - it's that poppy fascism that Jon Snow talks of; absolutely everyone on television has to wear one or they'll have to leave the country. And possibly end up in a concentration camp. This week on the X Factor they were all wearing little red ribbon badges - which is fair enough as well, it's nationalworldinternational AIDS awarenessmemorialcommemorationsupport day. A noble cause.

Seeing everysinglepersonontheXFactorincludingthecontestantsandthepresenters wearing their AIDS badges, which I'm sure none of them bought/donated for individually, it left a sort of funny taste in my mouth - is it right? Were they actually being sponsored by AIDS day? At the very least it's a weird idea from their PR people that everyone should have had them on. Did ITV get money from AIDS to wear the badges? It's all quite strange.

On a brief aside, I remember taking part (twice, in fact) in the Remembrance Day ceremony in Bangor when I was president of the students' union - I was given a poppy to put on my coat as we processed down the High street. I thought it odd at the time that I should be given something to wear for free that people are asked to donate money for. At that point it became more than a symbol of a person's generosity, it was something a little more sinister. The second year I got myself a white ribbon to wear, one that apparently memorialises the dead but stands for peace as well. It was mainly for badness rather than ideology, but I wasn't brave enough to wear that one over my coat, I hid it away.

I have always objected to giving money to a charity that wastes it on a free pen through the post, or a load of primetime television adverts designed to make you cry. Why do I want my fiver going to make other people feel guilted into giving a fiver? I think charities should have to publicise an exact breakdown of where your money is going to be spent, but that's neither here nor there. What are the ethics of X Factor, brought to you by AIDS?

Is it nearly Spring yet?

Happy December!

Doesn't time fly when you're...well, alive?