On wonkiness.

I've just been on the phone to Carolyn for a wee chat, we were talking about her blog. The cheeky minx is thinking about throwing in the towel after five minutes (kids these days, they really lack application), so I was throwing some sage advice her way (not too much, balance it out with salt and pepper - I think she's making stuffing) as well as some blog advice.

I even think I may have said something about being able to write about the handles on my wardrobe, which she then challenged me to. I've decided I can't be bothered, though - they're not that interesting, it has to be said. If I'm honest, examining them in any kind of detail actually quite upsets me as the handles on all four wardrobe doors are set at different heights. Whilst flatpacks might have democratised cheap designer furniture for the masses, there are still some drawbacks to self-assembly - wonky handles would be fairly high on my list. Or of varying height, if I was really bad at doing lists.

Handles are interesting in many ways. They are designed by their very nature to be unobtrusive, not to stick out. Except that they really should stick out or otherwise you couldn't open whatever it is they were attached to. I suppose if they didn't stick out you could argue that they were, in fact, not handles but just something useless stuck on a door.

Now doors...there's an interesting thing, if only I could be bothered.

On Expenses

I only just managed to watch On Expenses, the BBC4 one-off drama about the expenses scandal - which seemed less about the expenses scandal and more about doing a hatchet job on Speaker Martin.

I suppose in more ways than most I'm closer to the political classes under attack than the indignant members of the public, whipped up into a froth-mouthed frenzy by chequebook journalists. I was in parliament whilst the latter part of the business was playing out, I had the great privilege of watching the hustings for the current Speaker from the Gallery. I didn't recognise any of the locations the programme makers purported to be in the Palace and there was something truly odd about the Chamber itself.

For sure there were some heinous indiscretions by MPs who should have known much better, and it has been healthy to expunge the sense of entitlement that had crept in over the years. It was deeply ironic that the biggest scandal to rock Parliament in generations came under Labour stewardship - the party that rode the crest of an anti-sleaze wave to historic victory.

I think the Telegraph were largely wrong irresponsible in their coverage of the issue - there was a timetable for publication of the expense figures that really should have been respected to save unnecessary embarrassment. I don't think wrongdoers should have been protected, but the whole thing made a mockery of an entire political generation, the effects of which will be felt for even longer. In taking the opportunity of this drama to reinforce an image of offensive ineptitude the makers have lent a false patina to history that will only prolong the healing.

A thing.

Well of course, with today being today I would be remiss if I did not wish my sainted, blessed mother a very happy birthday.

Because it's her birthday, which I imagine you understood from the previous sentence but I thought I should clarify just to be on the safe side.

Happy birthday mum. (She's old.)

I hold my breath.

I'm not really keen on beards. I was walking down the street earlier and as I overtook a dawdlingly obstructive fellow pedestrian along the kerb I realised after a short while that I was holding my breath. It was only at this point that I realised that I hold my breath when walking near people that look like they might be smelly.

If I'm honest, dear reader, in Coventry, I should have passed out by now.

And this is my thought for today.

I must confess I am paralysed with fear at the thought of being busy all weekend and not having prepared anything for ALBOWIEB to consume. For as soon as the post-a-day thing is broken that will be it, I'll put all the weight back on. It's been a good run, these 8 weeks, unprecedented in the whole of blogdom. At least in my house.

Can you believe we're 8 weeks into 2010 already? That's 15% of the year gone already. Vanished. Disappeared. Passed and never to return. That is my other thought for the day. You lucky reader you.

Puke and that.

I just don't have a lot to write about today, I'm afraid. I got some work in today - which was due in tomorrow! I am actually brilliant. I found out this week that there are actually classifications for masters-level study. I'd assumed that you either got an MA or you didn't - which means I'm going to have to alter my 51% strategy.

There was a lot of vomit on my walk into lectures yesterday. I didn't know whether perhaps it had just accumulated by being preserved underneath all the snow and ice, or whether there was a big party in Coventry or an Iranian national holiday or something. It was odd. Puke all over the place. Going down Far Gosford Street (I've never found Near Gosford Street - it seems like a redundant mouthful to me) I was beginning to resemble a Spring lamb frolicking about with all the hopping and scotching from one clear patch of pavement to another.

Tonight's walk I can hardly remember. I was lost in thought, but I can hardly remember that either. A wasted half hour, really. Thursday's lectures are quite thinky, which I find physically exhausting. I'm quite a shallow person, so anything beyond gossip is taxing, it requires a substantial physical effort. If the Daily Mail website were to use the Harvard referencing system I would have been much better prepared for this year of academic redux.

A revelation.

My dad has these light brown shoes that he likes. I call them his Skip Shoes. He got them from a skip.

He actually wears shoes that he found when he was walking down the street and saw them in a skip. In my mind's eye he's probably barefoot when he finds them.

All very well - I can sit in quiet (not so quiet) judgement at his strange lifestyle choices, but it turns out he collects other things. Like glasses. Skip Glasses. Our kitchen cupboards are apparently populated by glasses that my dad has found in the street. I have been drinking from abandoned hives of germs and beasts and matter, found in the road and brought back to our house.

It's like we're a sanctuary for crap that people don't want. I feel a knot in my gut. That's 8 months of accumulated ill-health.

Throw something away?! Never.

Another Formspring question, you lucky people. The lines are still open...

If you had to throw away either your TV or your computer, which would you choose?

Oh no! Who's going to make me throw away my telly or my computer? I love watching the television and I really do love using my computer to connect with the world. What's even worse is that we're using a computer downstairs as a DVD player and digital recorder. Losing one of those will seriously harm the other.

I could probably manage without the television more than I could the computer - I do crave the interaction with the outside world that you can't get through, say, Ceefax.

On the other hand, I do enjoy watching programmes (I suppose I could just get the DVDs and watch them on my remaining computer...) and I can get my emails on my phone, which would ease the loss of the computer.

I think I'd throw away the TV - especially seeing as I can catch up with most of my favourite programmes over the internet anyway...but please don't make me do it.

A pre-life crisis relapse.

Normally it does of course take me a long time to get through all of my Valentine's Day correspondence - I told everyone to donate to charity this year instead, and the Unmarried Christians In Their Late 20s Hospice was only too glad of the help. I had ulterior motives, of course - because I'm going to end up their in but a short matter of time. Because it's BARELY 3 MONTHS UNTIL I TURN 26. This is old - it actually official. Because at 26 you cease to qualify for any kind of discount with the words 'student' and 'young person' in them. I will officially be an adult. A single adult. A single adult who still lives with his parents. In our society I couldn't get any worse unless I was a 60-year-old woman with lots of cats.

So, to recap - approaching my late 20s, hopelessly unmarried singleton, living with my parents, don't have a job.

I often speak of my pre-life crisis and people often ask me what on earth I'm talking about. Well, this is it. Personally I blame society, for parading an endless array of successful 19-year-olds about the place, forcing me into a series of educational upgrades because everyone else is doing the same thing, filling my head with ideas of limitless potential which becomes extremely limited when it comes to realisation.

I feel like I should give up before I've begun, because there are always younger, more attractive, smarter, harder-working, richer and more attractive people being churned out of wherever to fill my place. I'm nestled on the top of a slag heap of forgotten generations, pondering my options whilst they dissolve in my hands. I should point out at this point that on the axis of dramatic versus depressed I am firmly on the side of the former.

But that's only going to last while I'm still getting my discounts...

Another haircut.

I went to get my hair cut the other day. A rich seam of blogging, if you're me. For some masochistic reason I went to the place down the road that has no pride. Actually I know why I went - I'm too lazy to go somewhere acceptable and too cheap to go somewhere good. I put up with shit because it's at the end of my road. I can see for an instant why people put up with dead-end relationships - although my hair issues have nothing to do with a lack of self-confidence and my not having taken education seriously enough to overcome me a lack of direction. It's mainly just the laziness and the cheapness.

There were two women in there doing nothing this time, as opposed to the usual one. The smell I recognised - of vegetable oil and failure. I could spot the one who brings chips back at lunchtime from two doors down. The haircut - perfunctory. Kicked off with the standard 'not working today?' designed to masquerade as a feeble attempt at small talk, but designed to see whether you get the DSS rate. At this point I always throw in something about lectures and a hardluck story about having an essay due in just to ram home the message that I expect £1.50 off the ticket price at the end of the scalping.

We continue in pained silence, I turn down gel and then I go home, to trim the bits they've missed with a pair of kitchen scissors. And life goes on.

Swans and that.

Odd one out
Originally uploaded by ALBOWIEB

A room with a view.

What would be your ideal view out of your 'office' window?

I've been very lucky with offices so far - in Wales I had the most wonderful view of trees and one side of the valley that Bangor is nuzzled into, looking up at the main university building at the top.

In London the office looked out over the Thames, the London Eye, the aquarium - the most glorious and distracting view in the entire world. To have worked in the Palace of Westminster is magical enough, but a view was just too much.

What would be my ideal view? Something equally inspirational, distracting, busy. I'd love to work in a tower in a huge city, or have a house in the countryside where I could write and look out over an inspiring landscape.

It might be aiming high, but what can I say? You always set your price a little higher knowing you're going to get a little lower...

This question was asked at my Formspring page - what would you like to know, eh?

A distressing semi-colon.

I guess I've always hoped that someone at some point in your life will tell you the secret of getting stuff into a simmering pan of water without taking flesh off your forearm. But that's life, isn't it - a searing row of disappointments. Just joking - I love cooking really. I used to lie awake at night worrying about whether anyone at school would ever teach me how to pay taxes or get gas delivered to your house through whatever complex and nefarious magical purposes they do that. But no - they just leave you to it.

We had snow yesterday - most inconvenient, but hardly a snowpocalypse. More of a distressing semi-colon in the sentence of my week. It started falling, as weather is wont to do, but I put it down to youthful hi-jinks, I never thought it would settle down. Suddenly there's two inches on the ground and my shoes are wet, I'm walking to my lecture and cars are slipping about all over the place, like equatorial entrants in the figure skating. I never got what was so great about Cool Runnings - they didn't win.

The worst part of the snow was the recriminations - I had it on good authority (the local BBC website) that the buses in Coventry had been cancelled because of the minor inclemency and mum was on her way back from a wee jaunt to London. As she walked into town from the train station to get some money from a cashpoint the bus she wanted sailed by. Well, how was I to know? Cold just isn't my thing.

Sticking my awe in.

Another good question here. The answers I'm posting here are my first reactions to the ones I've found on my Formspring page - the others I think I've answered fairly adequately, but there's something about this one I'm going to have to ponder. I think I've got the gist, but I'd like to be able to phrase it without sounding like such a twat. More soon, if I find a way...another great question, though.

Who are you in awe of?

I don't know if I'm capable of awe - I'm in awe of God and I'm in awe of the world - all the big stuff. But people? Not so much.

I think the great qualities that inspire awe in people trigger jealousy, drive, ambition in me. I'm antagonised by greatness, rather than left in awe by it. I don't have any real heroes or people who inspire me - not like Mandela motivated a generation, or the Spice Girls inspired women to...oh, wait.

I exist in tension - I have this strange mix of arrogance, self-confidence and crippling self-doubt - I would describe myself as being much like a teenage Hitler. I see great things and feel inspired to do the same, or imagine that I could.

Awe seems to me to be almost a weakness - where you're left paralysed by wondrousness. God - he shouldn't have anything but...people, on the other hand, meh. This isn't to be confused with a lack of respect, which I try not to have - but at the end of the day, even Barack Obama still has to shit on a toilet.

This question was asked at my Formspring page - what would you like to know, eh?

Yum, breakfast.

Of course, this next question refers to yesterday, so it's not the latest in breaking news, but I've not had any breakfast yet today, so it's as current as Sam Burnett Breakfast News can get. Fun times.

What did you have for breakfast this morning? Are you pleased with your choice?

Today I had two slices of peanut butter on toast and an espresso with a splash of vanilla syrup, evaporated milk and 1 sugar. It was tasty, although admittedly hurried - I had to take my mum and my sister to the train station for their wee jaunt to London today.

As for whether or not I am pleased with the choice - in the words of Edith Piaf, non je ne regrette rien. I always try to make the best possible decision at the time, and as long as you're satisfied with that then you should allow hindsight to try and mess with your head.

In retrospect I now know that there were black pepper and cheese muffins in the fridge that I could have toasted - if I were to have my breakfast now, this is what I would have, but seeing as I can't change the past then I am pleased that I made the right choice.

This question was asked at my Formspring page - what would you like to know, eh?

Important to be funny? Only if people will laugh.

Look at that - some toughies there. Thanks for the questions, everyone - I've really enjoyed answering them. The page is still there and I shall still be checking it - please do use it to ask me questions or give me ideas for blog posts you want to see.

What's your top priority - in terms of what is most important to you, not how urgently you need to do something.

My priority is not to compromise - I want to be able to live a life that's meaningful, fun, principled, interesting. My greatest fear is boredom - the thought of being stuck doing something I don't like scares the crap out of me. I do believe, though, that we'll all have to account for ourselves in some way eventually - if I can make a good fist of that, perhaps that's my priority.

What's your fondest memory?

I have trouble with memories, I can hardly remember stuff very well. If I sit and try and think what my fondest memory is I'd never be able to come up with anything.

I really feel I ought to say something to do with my family or something cute like that. I have fond memories of sitting in Croatia at night watching the pink and green lightning storms in the rain, travelling round Germany whilst I worked there on my year abroad, working with Andy and Carolan in Bangor, going to church there, going to motorshows with my dad...any number of things. One though? Just couldn't say...

Alexis Bledel, Kylie Minogue or Natalie Portman?

Gosh, this is my triumvirate of dream women, the opening scene of my Macbeth. Kylie we'll have to discount because she's getting a bit old for me - 41 is pushing it a bit when I'm neither rich nor particularly good-looking.

Alexis and Natalie are also well out of my league, but a guy can dream, right? Alexis is marginally the cuter, first-language Spanish and likes travelling to Europe, but Natalie did take some time out to do a degree in psychology and do some travelling. On the down side she brought out her own range of vegan footwear last year and is friends with Moby. (I did just look all this stuff up, I haven't memorised it)

Alexis swings it because she probably comes with her own box set of Gilmore Girls...

Which children's television character do you think you share the most traits with? And why?

Another tough one. I used to want to be one of Captain Planet's chaps - probably the one with the ring that does the fire. In terms of who I share the most traits with, I'd probably say Percy from Thomas the Tank Engine.

Toby was my favourite one, but I'm not really like him. He's quite industrious. I'm not really like Thomas - he was A Really Useful engine. Percy was well-meaning but often got quite moody...there we go.

Is it important to be funny?

For me, yes - I've not got much else but my wits and animal magnetism. I've always found I see things differently to other people - not better, just differently. My reactions, thoughts - I think I must be wired differently. Or I was dropped on my head as a child.

For ALBOWIEB I don't want it to be another dour, depressing blog full of someone's bilge-y inner emotions. I'm not one for vomiting my feelings out anyway, but I think it's nice to have a place that is a bit of fun, a distraction.

If I can make someone laugh, brighten their day or otherwise distract them from something dreary then I have served my purpose. My misadventurous life can be redeemed.

NEWSFLASH

I have now been to the toilet and my feverish studying is now that much more comfortable. Phew, it was getting uncomfortable there. I also went downstairs and got a toffee crisp out of the machine. Not my first choice, but I pressed C4 three times and that twix was going nowhere. I'm quite partial to the odd toffee crisp now and again, but this was by far the worst I've ever had. The machine was very heavily refrigerated, it came out all brittle and snappy. I nearly choked to DEATH.

It's a strange thing, being in the library - I've never done this before. I never had a laptop when I was university and I never really did anything about an essay until the evening before it was due in, so it's quite a novel experience. There's nothing particularly fun or comfortable about the whole thing, but it's like having a 4th place where you can focus and get things done. As much as I'm one of those people who is able to focus and get things done. Getting me to concentrate on something important is like getting a meerkat to decorate cupcakes.

Anyway - remember! There are still questions to be asked.. Seriously - it's not like I'm competitive, or anything, but it does look like Cliff is getting more questions than I am.

Here is the latest coming up - and I see that there's a really good one waiting to be answered in a bit:

What one thing are you exceptionally bad at?

I don't know if I should reject the premise of the question, I am of course marvellous at everything. But we all know that would be a complete lie. I'm good at lying though.

I think just sitting in a chair and minding my own business would be one thing I'm exceptionally bad at - I get fidgety after a few minutes and lose the feeling in my legs. I like to look and see what other people are up to, be nosey. I like to move around, I don't like to be stuck in one place.

If there's one thing I'm exceptionally bad at, though, it's physicalities. I run like a drunk patient at a physiotherapist's Christmas party, I can't throw to save my life and have the hand-eye coordination of a limbless blind person. It's a bit sad, really.

I am in the library. I answer a question.

I'm in the library. I've brought my laptop with me and I'm getting lots of work done, but it's hard to concentrate. Mainly because I don't know the protocols. Can I leave my things here and go to the toilet, for instance? I've got around 20 books on the table beside me - it looks like I've started building a fort or something. Could I leave those here for a few minutes without them getting swept away by the library Zambini? The more I ponder these things the more my research doesn't get done and the longer I'm going to be here and the fuller my bladder gets. It's a vicious circle of trauma. Luckily, however, I have another exciting question to distract me for merciful seconds. Viz:

Would you rather be a sparrow, or a snail?

Another fascinating and erudite question - good job, readers.

The snail does come with certain benefits - a kind of forced lazy enjoyment of life, and your own home - which can't be recommended too highly in today's economic climate, it has to be said. The snail remains, though, quite slimy. And that counts a lot against it. And you'd never be able to eat chips or crisps because they're full of salt and you'd melt.

The sparrow, on the other hand, gets to chirrup and most fantastically of all - fly. I would love to be able to fly. Unfortunately my lack of scientific prowess would render the building of a nest something disastrous, but I suppose you could always do a cuckoo and nick someone else's. The price of twigs is also at an historic low, which negates the main benefit of being a snail. You are, though, at considerable danger of being eaten by a cat.

I'm willing to take my chances, though - I'd rather be a sparrow.

Thank you, anonymous reader! Remember, you too can ask an anonymous question here!

Formspring has sprung...

It makes you a little nervous answering anonymous questions - you don't really know what's being asked. Scientists do say (although I don't get to chat to them often) that a bajillion of what is said is actually unsaid. If someone asked me these questions in person perhaps I would answer them in a different way, because I would see from what they were not saying in an unsaid manner that they were really saying something else. Or something.

Keep those questions coming, readers!

Would you rather be a famous musician or a famous actor?

I would be a great famous actor. I'd really enjoy dressing up to go on the red carpet and smile a lot and then dressing down but not really to go to the shops but you've actually called the photographers to let them know that you're off to fetch the paper. A little light plastic surgery...

...but then on the other hand, I've always had a mild hankering to be a swing king. I could rock it like Bobby Darin, or Mel Torme. I love Mel Torme. I am intensely familiar with the oeuvre of Andy Williams. I occasionally sit and daydream about being a crooner on a cruise ship, as silly as that may sound.

I think I would rather be a famous actor - because acting and making films would be incredible. I think there would be some scope there to record the odd soundtrack myself, though...

Dogs or cats?

I've been thinking about this one quite a bit recently - I really can't tell whether I'm a dog or a cat person. This probably counts as a fully-fledged identity crisis.

I like big cats - lions and tigers are probably my favourite land animals, but then little cats are aloof and have claws. Dogs are more characterful and fun, but they poo a lot and require extensive emotional assurance.

On balance, I'd probably say dogs, but it's quite a close one.

Some questions I have been asked.

Isn't this fun? I've been asked some questions on my formspring page already! And I've answered them! And I've pasted them here!

Do keep asking away - the formspring page is here. Totally anonymous, no-strings fun.

Zoe Wannamaker. Discuss.

I quite like Zoe Wanamaker - she has such funky hair. I've only really seen her in My Family, which was good for the first two or three seasons, and then Harry Potter - but every British actor in the universe has been in that. I can't think of anything else she's been in, which screams theatre to me. I can only assume she has done a lot of theatre. Famous parentage, I understand. That's about it, really - she has a lovely voice, I think.

I don't think there was a word count on this - I would struggle to reach 2,000 words with Zoe Wanamaker.

If you could, would you?

Hmm, interesting. If I can, then I tend to.

I'm quite impulsive, so often I do even if I can't. But then sometimes I don't, even when I should.

You're Bond, James Bond, and upon arriving at the evil genius' lair, you have discovered two nuclear missiles aimed at Bangor and Coventry. You can save only one of them... which will it be?

I wonder if I can guess who asked this - lovely grammar.

Good question, anyway - I know I have spent a good deal of time in both places but it's quite hard to decide the merits of why each should be saved. Coventry has been through all of this before and risen out of the ashes, but then Bangor is hardly an Eden.

I'd have to say that I'd save Coventry - mainly because all my stuff is there at the moment.

Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies.

Never one to miss a bandwagon, I have started to run and managed to catch up with the latest craze - Formspring. The idea is that you can anonymously ask any question you like and I will answer. Teh kids have been doing this for weeks, so I thought 'hell, why not?' Cliff's doing it, JonnyB is doing it...and at least several others.

I will answer as many (!) questions as I can and I shall endeavour to post them on here as well - because that makes for a good way to get some blog posts. It's all about turnover, these days. Such pressure.

Anyway - the page is here. Formspring me. Actually, I don't think that verb has been invented yet. Just ask me some questions.

A whale of a time.

Twitter broke last night. I know it's a bit sad to come running to your blog every time its replacement goes up the pipes, but I did let a reasonable amount of time pass by. My gripe is grammatical in nature and therefore universal, however. There's this picture of a whale that comes up when the thing is overloaded - it could be that Taylor Swift is on the telly, one of McFly has appeared somewhere shirtless or Ashton Kutcher has posted another picture of Demi Moore doing the laundry in her knickers (man, the woman is holding up well). Twitter is a nervous beast, it doesn't take many straws to break that camel's back.

But anyway - the whale appears. Oh, how I hate that whale. The 'fail whale' as it has been affectionately named. Not by me, I hasten to add. That whale that stands between me and communication with the outside world. That whale the blocks my vent of creative gases. The needle is slamming up to the red section and my head is about to explode - I have 140 characters of pure wit and humorousness and it needs and outlet. But that bastard whale thwarts my every move.

There's another error page that comes up - 'Something is technically wrong. Thanks for noticing.' I'll say something is technically wrong - that sentence, for a start. 'Technically something is wrong but, well, the Ukraine is happily twittering away so it MUST BE YOU.' The thanks for noticing is a particularly patronising and irritating send-off. As if I through my boundless technological expertise have stumbled onto the most minor of glitches that takes a fiend of niggly and persistent Dan Brown proportions. In fact, that sentence is technically so wrong that he could have written it himself. Thank you for noticing? How could I not notice? You've written it AFTER THE ERROR MESSAGE.

Just one of the many occasional signs with this enterprises that have gone on to conquer the world, that they are in fact the brainchildren of 23-year-old illiterate and socially-backward college students. Thank the Lord they aren't actually running the country. All your taxes are belong to us.

Luge behaviour.

We watched some Winter Olympics last night. Obviously the organisers forgot to order the wintery weather to go along with the winter theme - it was piddling it down with rain when I tuned in. I hear that Colwyn Bay are bidding for the 2018 Winter Olympics, part of their proposal involves 125 million tonnes of snow being bought on ebay.

The lugeing had me fascinated though - man, you've got to have big balls to do that kind of thing. Or perhaps not, you do want to be aerodynamically streamlined and have a low centre of gravity. The whole thing looks monstrous - porky grown men hurling themselves down a cresta run on a tea tray. How on earth do you discover an aptitude for doing the luge? You might do a spot of sledging every third year we get enough snow in the UK, but you've really got to see the luge and want the luge to do the luge. Sitting in the social bar of a luge club in Britain must be lonely - one guy with a lemonade and lime, sat there in his thermal unitard. And even then you only get to see all of your luge friends every four years.

Nice, though, for them to be superstars at the Winter Olympics - because no-one cares the other three-and-a-half years about ice-skating or luge or bobsleds or that thing where they sweep the ice and play bowls. This is their moment. Let's hope the rain holds off.

It's Monday.

So, it's Monday, you may be thinking. Yeah, me too.

Another Monday. Another end of a week, another beginning of a new one. One more notch on a withered bedpost, one more of another 52 to mark the passing of another year. Inexorable time. To me, to you, it's just another Monday - a day we endure, we pass through - we keep our heads down and we get to a Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday. To someone else - it's a birth, a death, an anniversary. It's the day that will make or break their life, it's a tangent, a new beginning. It's not just any Monday, it's today. It's that day, that day of days.

The tide shifts, the moon changes, the sun it rises and falls. If any of them stopped we'd notice, but they won't - they'll carry on. What do we to mark these days, how do we stop them from tumbling down the way into one? How do we make each significant and memorable? How do we not just sit and let life pass by, how do we stop ourselves from taking for granted the miracle of the sea and the sun and the moon? It's just another Monday...what a shame.

At the top of a church.

Steeple
Originally uploaded by ALBOWIEB

A blast from the past. Less of a blast. More of a tinkle.

I was looking through my computer the other day and found an old stash of blog posts ranging from 2005 to the present day. Well, the present day minus a year or two. I think I must have been on drugs at university:

Are there any questions with no answers? This is what I was trying to figure out as I fell asleep last night. I was wondering if when you die all those questions that seemed unanswerable will suddenly become clear, like they were staring you in the fact the whole time and you couldn’t quite work it out.

I was as philosophical as you can be, bleary and tired at half past midnight. Surely if a question has no answer it ceases to be a question? Like light and dark, black and white, Torville and Dean – these things go together. There’s no up if you’ve never been down, how does a deaf person understand loud or quiet? We would never understand and appreciate good without evil. It helps me, comforts me, to think that one day every question I have will be answered. There’s something inexorable about an unanswered question – like time itself, maybe. A beginning…and an end.

Have a crappy Valentine's Day, chums!

Roses are red, violets are blue,
Valentine's Day is a shallow washed-out pit of commercialised crap,
And I've bought some for you...

No, no, wait...

Violets are blue, roses are red,
I've got some terrible news,
Your cat is dead.

No, no....

Roses are red, daisies are white,
I spat in your coffee,
Just out of spite.

Roses are red, a good first impression,
But my dear don't you know,
We're in a recession?

Roses are red, violets are blue,
Mary had a little lamb,
And I've roasted it for you.

Roses are tasty, violets are bitter,
Took dirty pictures of you,
And put them on Twitter.

But no - do have a lovely day. Just don't brag about it.

An occasional worry about the boiler.

I saw today's news headlines - "major offensive targets Helmand" and I thought 'gosh, they're sending Brian Conley out to entertain the troops? They'll be strapping their papier mache bullet vests on and running out into no-man's land in thirty seconds flat.'

I'm sitting in my bedroom as I type. I get the honourous honour of having the boiler in here, whizzing and hissing and burping through the day. Whooshing and gurgling when someone, somewhere turns a hot water tap on. It's quite exciting, knowing you're in an important household hub - without my bedroom no-one would be warm, or enjoy a comfortable experience when washing their hands. We've had a few hiccups and niggles with the boiler lately, though - inexplicable low pressure periods and then occasional disturbing highs. It's like the British weather. I had to clarify with my dad whether the red zone meant I was in danger of getting bits of boiler and fire in the face - I had a Helen Keller book when I was little, I know how these tragic accidents work.

She was, however, an inspirational figure to millions. I would be quite comfortable in that role, I could carve a niche for myself as an inspirational disfigured blind person. In many ways I would prefer to be an inspirational seeing person with all their limbs and that. The Paralympics are great, but pitching against Usain Bolt is the more satisfying benchmark, surely? It is, of course, not a worry at the moment - I am, and remain, someone who sits in his room blogging, occasionally worrying about the boiler.

These people make me [sic].

The one thing I literally hate more than almost anything else is the over-use of the word 'literally'. It literally does my head in. Or does it? Because if it LITERALLY did my HEAD IN, then I would surely have NO HEAD?! It's lazy grammar gone mad - there ought to be a UN double-negative non-proliferation treaty out there somewhere, but it wouldn't mean nothing.

I crave precisitude in my written and verbal statements, as a person who writes stuff (I feel remarkably uncomfortable calling myself a writer - I was probably never hugged as a child) I feel I have to be as exacting as possible in choosing my words and getting them down carefully because that's all I have to communicate with my reader. We engage not through body language and expression and intonation but by my choice of adjective and the cut of my jib. If I get something wrong (which I try not to do) then I'd like you to know that it's deliberate - of course I know that precisitude is not a word, it's funny, innit.

But oh, how that translates into an intolerance of others. It's incapaciting. And don't get me started on exaggeration. It's literally the worst thing in the world.

I am thwarted in my eating.

I went to Greggs earlier because I really fancied a sneaky sausage, bean and cheese melt. They're extraordinarily tasty, except you have to be careful to leave it for a little while because the innards are a temperature approaching that of the surface of the sun when they first pass the thing to you in an asbestos-lined bag.

One thing I never get about that place, though - why do they never have anything if you go after 2pm?  I know that those ovens are only for show and they really have a huge bank of microwaves defrosting all of their crap that's baked in a huge immigrant-filled workhouse just outside of Slough. They are perfectly and universally  pigheaded about getting stuff out in the morning and not filling the shelves back up. I don't know whether this is good business - restricting availability increases the value of items - or just stupid. I couldn't get a sausage, bean and cheese melt.

Just doing some thinkin'.

In the shower - that's ma thinkin' time. I don't like doing one thing that's boring, when I could do a second thing at the same time that's less boring - for instance, walking = boring, but walking + chatting to someone on the phone = great. Walking is when I like to catch up with people and have nice chats, because chatting to someone on the phone at home whilst not doing anything else = boring. It's quite a complicated formula to work out, I don't know if I could manage all the brackets and that.

I didn't have anything on the agenda to think about this morning, so I had to improvise. Which got me to wondering about toothpaste caps. When did the Great Switch from screwtop caps to fliptop caps happen? It could just be the brand that we have in the house, but I don't remember seeing a screwtop tube of toothpaste for quite some time. It got me thinking what a wasteful activity unscrewing the cap on tube of toothpaste actually is - I reckon that fliptop cap saved me five seconds on screwing the thing off the toothpaste and then screwing it back on again.

Without me even realising, over two brushes a day, some genius has saved me a smidgen over ten hours a year of just screwing and unscrewing toothpaste lids. Isn't that amazing? And what do I fill those ten hours with? Standing in the shower, thinkin'.

I catch a bus.

I had cause to go on a bus today. I don't like the things ordinarily - not the Coventry ones. They're unreliable, always late. If you sit up the front there's the smell of death and the faint tang of urine. If you sit at the back it's the pungent odour of unwash and drugs. On the floor there are pools of vomit and spilled coke from irritating long-abandoned bottles that roll ceaselessly about, backwards and forwards.

What I hate most about Coventry buses are the signs on the bendy buses - "the twice as long bus". They are quite clearly not twice as long as as normal single decker buses. Those stupid little ones that go round the countryside, maybe, but not normal single-decker buses. I think they should call them the half as tall buses, or if they're going to be precise about the extra length in a bendy bus, they should call it the one-and-a-third as long bus.

I can't really see the benefits of bendy buses - you can't really fit that many more seats in, what with the extra set of doors and the bend. It's like with bendy straws - what's really the point? I'm quite happy with a good old-fashioned straight straw that just sits there all straight and simple. It's not any longer, the bendy straw, just bendier. 'The more bendy bus' - that would work for me.

What cheek.

Man alive, I just bit the inside of my cheek. I say bit - it was chewed for a little while there, as my lazy synapses got their fat arses into gear and let me know what was happening.

I have a plethora of cheek, in many ways I am over-cheeked - cheeky, if you will. My dentist said to me years ago - in fact, around 8 years ago, when I last went to the dentist - that my cheeks were unusually plentiful and putting pressure on my teeth, which was why they had been in disarray.

It's not an obvious disability, they don't look bad from the outside, but that's precisely the issue. They fill my mouth, ready to be chomped on with every chew. It's an occupational hazard, I suppose - of eating, that is. I shouldn't complain, really - think of all the African kids who don't have enough food to get their jaws going enough to bit the inside of their cheek. They'd probably welcome the sustenance, I imagine there must be at least some nutrients on the inside of your mouth.

Yet another thing to put on my mental list of things to ask the relevant expert should I happen to sit next to them at dinner.

Oh man.

Hello, dear reader. I totally forgot to blog today because I was busy and got distracted. I am of course an obsessive-compulsive who can't go a day in this Year Of Our Lord two-thousand-and-ten without posting something to his blog. Or else I might die. Which is why find myself in bed tip-tapping away at my phone instead of going straight to sleep as I should.

This is, no doubt, as they say, the beginning of the end. Some kind of end. But ends are good, they lead to more beginnings. Night!


Sent from my HTC

Bitchen in the kitchen.

Good evening, dear reader. You catch me as I’m about to commit a horrendous crime against cottage pies. It could be a shepherd’s pie, but since he hasn’t come forward to claim I have resprayed it and renamed it. Actually I think it might be about the meat you use for it, but I don’t know what meat I’ve got in the pot so it could be anything. The motive is too many potatoes...the crime? Putting a layer of potato into the oven dish before I stick the whole sorry lot in the oven to be browned about and cheesed off.

This is the thing about me in the kitchen – and I’m literally in the kitchen, I got bored waiting for the potatoes to come to the boil and so I fetched my laptop from on high – I like to get a recipe and thrash the knickers off it. I’ll learn it how the recipe book people say you should do it (and they all say completely different things, cooking and religion have much in common – in fact there ought to be a common book of cooking. Can we get that dead medieval dude out of Anglican church retirement to work on it?) – that is, learn it by heart, and then I’ll start to mess about and play with it.

It’s the recipe for greatness. Until it goes wrong. So farewell, dear reader. By the time you get this message, it could be too late for me. But save yourself.

My future home.

More Warwick Castle
Originally uploaded by ALBOWIEB

Don't touch my blog. It's not your blog, it's mine.

A few months ago I was out in the car on a journey. I found myself peering out of my morning cloud - it descends like a fog whether I'm awake and active or not, dulls the senses, renders me perfectly useless. This was an early journey. An early journey that saw me needing coffee and petrol at the same time.

I sat sipping my latte at a table next to the magazines, a pastries and rank coffee counter rudely shoehorned into the middle of a station outlet that could have done without the demand on its floorspace. The table to my left was threshing about in the pungent aroma of the toilets, the table to my right leered at by a pile of oils.  I was reading a book with my coffee - I always have a book, something to read - my greatest fear is boredom.

When I had arrived to pay for my petrol there had been inoffensive poppy muzak garbling out of the speakers, but as I made my way through the strata of coffee (froth, hotness, tastiness, bitter, dregs) the music took a turn for the worse. Or rather, the East. Whilst I was sat there blithely unawares someone had apparently switched the guitars and crap CD for a Polish truck driver's mix tape. A number of blandly cyrillic tunes whistled by as I autotuned out, reading away. I became aware after a few minutes of some bizarre europop nonsense.

Don't touch my boyfriend,
He's not your boyfriend,
He's mine.

A bizarre refrain, repeated endlessly over and over. There were other words, but they paled into insignificance. Once in a while you come across literature so crassly and badly written that it can be nothing but completely and utterly fantastic. I finish my coffee and go on with my journey, taking the stupid song with me. Miles down the road comes the ecstatic innovation of substituting the word boyfriend for whatever the hell you like.

The coffee kicks in, the cloud lifts, and all is once again well with the world.

Don't...

Don't touch my boyfriend,
He's not your boyfriend,
He's mine.

Don't touch my boyfriend,
He's not your boyfriend,
He's mine.

More later.

I ate a rabbit.

Phew. And that's not simply a dramatic flourish - lots of phew. I'm so tired I could eat a horse. Every which way to Sunday. 'Til the cows come home. And ask me what I'm doing eating horse - I'm not French! I actually had horse in France when I went there on a French exchange. They also fed me rabbit, which still had the spinal cord attached, vertebrae and all. If I'm honest, I think the Frogs got the better end of the deal on all that - my French exchange partner was really spotty and had lots of curly hair, he looked like a badly-maintained toilet brush. He could hardly speak Engleesh either. Whereas I was witty and sparkling and terribly polite. I am in many languages - although perhaps not English.

Anyway - this wasn't supposed to be a blog post, merely some snivelling bunch of excuses as to why I was not able to provide you with any good material in the last several days. Hence the dramatic flourish - phew - I'm not holding out on you, dear reader, I have merely been remarkably busy engaged in business of the most busy order. In-between twittering. But I have some cracking blog posts coming up, let me tell you. I'm going to be musing about the state of journalism any time soon on my mistress blog and I'm going to be funny as hell on here. It's effortless, you know. People might say you've really got to work at it, that you need to read loads of crap and practice, but that's just so you don't try and get in on the action.

Jokes.

On the street where you live. Not really.

Some parked cars
Originally uploaded by ALBOWIEB

I am sitting on my bed.

I'm sitting on my bed. It's dim. There's but light coming from my lamp and its useless EU-spec but energy-saving bulb. Seriously, this thing couldn't light its way out of a paper bag. I can barely see the other side of the room in the murk.


I take my Kylie calendar from last year that was given to me by my sister in August for my birthday that was in June. I change the month from January to February. Whether the dates are right or wrong is largely irrelevant - I wouldn't be able to see them anyway. February Kylie is coquettishly baring her forty-year-old armpits in a fancy vest top and sequinned trousers, slackjawed and sultry.

A nice little moment there, I think to myself. I sit on my bed some more, trying to think of some way I might be able to stretch these few seconds of insignificance into a wider post about some important social issue or other as I normally do.

I can't.

Another quick letter.

Dear Channel 4,

I am now aware that Slumdog Millionaire was on in January.

I am in fact catching up on films recorded in January that looked a bit boring but warrant further inspection. Curiously enough, many of these seem to have been on Channel 4 and Film Four, hence why I have been seeing a lot of Slumdog adverts.

Apologies for any confusion,

Sam

A quick letter.

Dear Channel 4,

I know you're great and all that, and it's simply wonderful that you were involved with Slumdog Millionaire but please - if I liked it that much I would have seen it at the cinema and bought it on DVD. Oh wait, I did. So just the one or adverts for the orgasmic, earth-shaking, history-making event of it being shown on the telly with adverts. OK? Every single ad break is a little much. It's just a film showing, I'm starting to think you want me to move in with you. It's two hours out of a week - what are you going to be showing for the other 166? Sorry - not counting repeats - 12? This should be a long-term relationship we're getting into, not a quick fling. I'm simply not that kind of boy.

All the best,

Sam

What to do, when in Rome.

My friends Carolan and Andy are going to Rome for the weekend. I am very jealous of their Roman roamin'. Although it has given me the opportunity to commit that heinous crime against puns.

I haven't been away on a wee trip like that for ages - a few years ago I went away to Budapest for four or five days - it was marvellous. What a grand city, the feeling of being part of something with such a rich legacy, faded grandeur and chipped glamour. It's so wonderful to be able to spend time somewhere else and let it soak in, like a long bath. A weekend probably isn't enough to do Rome justice, but then it is full of Italians so you don't want to be there too long.

I spoke to Carolan yesterday on the phone - I wanted to know if she actually knew what the Romans do. I've looked. It's practically a law that you have to do as they do but nowhere is there any particular guidance as to what Romans specifically do. Not even the CIA website, which is normally so helpful, can aid you in this futile quest.

Perhaps the Romans do normal things, like walking around, going to work, eating stuff - those I've been practising for a goodly while. They might do other things, like rifle shooting on a Thursday night, self-flagellation, chugging espressos - those I would need some notice for to be on top of my game.

I'm guessing, though, that if it's a hard and fast law there would be some sort of guidance available at the airport. At any rate, I'm hoping if we ask very nicely that Carolan will put lots of cool pictures on her marvellous blog for us when she gets back.

MORE WEATHER CHAOS.

I'm not saying that telly news types are desperate to jump on any easily-formed news bandwagon, but man am I sick of all this crap about the weather. There was a full INCH of snow in PARTS of the Midlands overnight and it warrants several minutes of conjecture about grit and vox pops with people who have been FORCED TO ABANDON their cars in the middle of roads in the middle of nowhere.

When people had to do that on the motorway and slept in their cars overnight - now that was fairly interesting. My tip would be, however, that when you get several days of the same thing happening it becomes harder to describe as 'news'. What today's local newscasts are essentially saying is 'IT'S WINTER! WINTERY THINGS BE HAPPENIN'!' - and this makes me want to throw the television out of the window. How rock and roll.

Only if I open the window, it is freezing outside.

Another month...

It's February, yay! It's nothing personal against January, it's nice to be the first one out there, but January is really the unknown month. People come barrelling into it with hangovers, feeling fat and miserable. They resent it for shoehorning them back to work where December had been so generous with its holidays and its Christmas and its sparkling. January is the lay-it-on-the-line, brace yourself month.

February is a little more coquettish - teasing you with her weather. Is it going to be wet, are we going to be plunged back into an icy Winter encore, or perhaps Spring is going to come early and the daffodils will spring out of the roundabouts and give News 24 yet another global warming angle?

What I like most about February is that it's short, sharp and to the point. Just rush on through with your head down and it'll be warmer in no time.