Baked potatoes and that.

My friend Carolan has turned into a Swiss miss, blogging from afar as she does something in that place over at the thing that does some stuff. For some reason Blogger won't let me add her link to my blog roll, perhaps because she has defected to a rival blogging company provider organisation ISP thing. But click that bit just up there, with the red and the text and the stuff. It's really quite exciting. And I'm really quite jealous.

I love the idea of corresponding from a far-off and mildly exotic place. If I were to introduce this element of florid chicanery to ALBOWIEB it would consist almost entirely of missives such as:

"Today I cooked some baked potatoes. Big solid potatoes, the sort of dirty, mean potatoes that probably bullied the other potatoes at school. I pricked them viciously with a fork and zapped them in preparation in the microwave for five minutes, because I have heard that this makes them fluffy and shortens the cooking time when you put them in the oven. Some people don't like to do this, but between taking them out of the microwave and putting them into the oven I doused them in so much olive oil (it's very important to find yourself a good olive oil, I find, dearest Kitty - it's one of those things that rewards extra money being spent on it) and rubbed a bit of salt into the skin. This is for to make them a little crispy when they're done.

I haven't always cared for baked potatoes, but it's the fillings and the toppings that can really make or break them. There is no fun to be had from a mere potato with a sliver of I Really Can Believe It's Not Butter Because It Tastes Like Melted Crisp Packets. You have to smother it in tuna mayonnaise, beans, cheese and whatever concoctions you can muster from your kitchen cupboards until it has breathed its last..."

This is why I have to look so hard for the funny crap.

A letter.

Dear Seasons’R’Us,

I would like a refund on my ‘Summer 2010’ which I bought online from you last year.

1) The battery life was ridiculous. We got some heat and sunshine out of it, but less than half of what we were led to expect from the product.

2) It leaked terribly. We had water coming out of the thing for days on end – not only did it ruin a pair of my shoes, but my tomatoes have been positively bullied into not turning red.

3) It was really quite dull. It said on the box that ever summer comes with a surprise Olympics/World Cup/Genocide/Death in the Royal Family, but I didn’t notice the World Cup was happening until it was almost over. It was most unsatisfying. If I could have chosen, I would have preferred the death in the royal family, they do such lovely funerals.

I’ve ordered an Indian Summer from you as well, which I was hoping to use in late September, but I’m worried now that it’s going to end up being a monsoon season, which I really didn’t want. I may have to move my business with Season’s Palace, or Seasonz.co.uk (despite that Watchdog Special where they’d ruined Anne Robinson’s winter).

I look forward to your reply,

Sam Burnett

I have my day in court.

I visited the Supreme Court the other week, because I’d heard how friendly and hospitable they trying to be – I assumed that like any government institution this would involve giving you a body cavity search and a bookmark before telling you to sod back off to the provinces from whence you came, or that some shonky roadshow would be touring the shires in a second-hand blood donor trailer.

I was frankly quite shocked to be welcomed into the building and given free rein – you can wander unencumbered about the building when the court isn’t in session I told the kindly young woman on the information desk that such openness in a civic body made me nervous, which left her somewhat nonplussed.

It was amazing though – an exhibition in the basement showcases the funky ‘pop art’ carpet and tells you the history of the court. Did you know, for instance, that in 1941 one of the Law Lords said that any detention in the UK was ‘prima facie unlawful’ unless the detainer could prove otherwise? Fascinating stuff - it seems to be the principle, though not the practice, of modern law.

There’s a tremendous pride, patriotism and love for the law present as you wander through the courtrooms, something that can’t be matched by Parliament with its partisan chicanery. The Supreme Court left me feeling perfectly inspired, and more to the point, safe. Though I never did get that bookmark.

Deep waters run still.

So this is that bit at the beginning of the month, where I feel guilty about not writing very much during the second half of the previous month and so I spend a couple of weeks posting every day before I suddenly peter out and go quiet for two weeks for whatever reason and then it averages out at being a really quiet month anyway despite the intense resolution at the beginning of said month that it is not going to be like the previous month.

Just so we're clear.

Blogging is an unpredictable mistress these days. I do it because I love it, because I have the freedom to write about things here no-one would want to hear from me otherwise. But sometimes economics get in the way and you have to prioritise the stuff what's going to pay your bills.

But I've got a feeling about this month. In my bones. Wouldn't that be something? ALBOWIEB has managed to chart a steady path through whatever waters I've been through, so it'll definitely be in my suitcase wherever I end up next. But that's the excitement of life, isn't it? The change, the progress, the possibilities. It could all go tits up, it might never happen in the first place and I could very well be back here at the beginning of October lamenting the twists and turns that never were.

But that's the journey. Fun times.

Living it live.

 We watched The Bourne Ultimatum last night. A classic film - which would be even more classic if ITV didn't show it at least twice a month at the moment.

My mum kept asking me what just went on 'because you've probably seen it about 20 times', and I probably have. But it's not quite the same watching a film on DVD as watching it live, being fed in through the back of your television from some satellite signal that has bounced it halfway round the world from a broadcast centre to a cable station that then zaps it through to your living room. That's not a film, that's an event.

There's something about live anything, though - I don't enjoy the Formula 1 so much when I'm not see it unfold as it unfolds. When I do my job at the weekends selling furniture and suchlike I have to watch it after the fact - it's like someone else has watched it all unfold and then tried to refold it. There's still a bit of a crease in the thing no matter how good you are.

Besides, I like to think that by the sheer force of will and the power of prayer I can somehow influence a multi-billion dollar live sporting event. It's one of those odd things, but it just shows you how important the very fabric of time is to us. Like in one of those Lenor ads.

We are the terrorists.

"Customer information. Please do not leave bags or personal items unattended."

What are personal items, anyway? Family photos, underwear, feminine hygiene products?

But just wait right there. That's not customer information, that's just an implied passive-aggressive threat. You're claiming the right over the tannoy to do a controlled explosion on my man bag if I just nip into WH Smith for a bottle of coke and forget to take it with me. We've made criminals of the absent-minded, every bag assumed guilty until the fragments are proven innocent.

Do you remember the days when you didn't get a frisson of scare and then feel guilty about it when you saw a middle-eastern guy with a backpack? Back when a stray carrier bag was someone's forgotten shopping and not a reason to evacuate the building? Back when you could ride the London Underground without it being in the back of your mind that it could erupt into a fireball at any second?

I don't think it's necessarily any kind of latent racism, but we are guilty victims of our own carefully-crafted media narrative. We've shaped this terrorism ourselves - those tannoy messages, however kindly and supportive the intentions, have terrorised us all.

Another month eases by.

There are two elements of irony involved in the slow August posting - 1) is that I have not been writing much here because I've been writing quite a lot just over there. There where you see a blood- and sweat-soaked hard-bound 50 pages of dullness. My dissertation took me somewhat by surprise - not that I wasn't expecting it, it had loomed for quite some considerable time, but the problem with something looming is that you get used to its looming presence. A loom can fade into the wallpaper of your life despite its loominess. I hadn't realised how tired it was making me - three days before it was due in I had been feeling a little funny all day. I was chopping a salad for dinner and put the knife through the tip of my thumb, then I passed out. Never done that before. It's all in now. And never again, which is satisfying.

2) is my five year ALBOWIEB birthday. This blog should be starting school this week - a bit of light education wouldn't do it any harm. Five years since I decided I had enough time on my hands to rant stupid about whatever was going on in my miserable little student life. Just going into my final year of university, I was - a constant stream of consciousness. Before twitter came along, before Facebook, before you realised that you probably shouldn't say that on the internet and people can read it. I'd written diary things on my own personal website before, a proto-blog if you will, back to around 2003, but this was software, man. Something serious and exciting and worth getting into.

So here I am, five years later, still going in a manner of speaking. Different but not different, better but no better. And this is the long way of saying hello - I'm still here. It's not that I have nothing to say, I just haven't had the time to say it. Speak soon.