My Dad has one of these in his Scalextric.

Winged beast
Originally uploaded by ALBOWIEB

I do some de-teching.

I saw de-teching named as one of the things to watch in 2011 in some article or other. Actually, it might have been on a website, ironically enough. I have felt ahead of the times, having thought about de-teching for at least several weeks before 2010 came to a close.

The big plan has started to take shape, however - my smartphone has been chopped in for a pay-as-you-go flip phone (for no other reason than I want to look like Agent Gibbs off NCIS when I hang up - slapping a phone shut has much more of a pleasing sense of finality than pressing a button) - and a tablet. The tablet in particular might be considered as re-teching, or up-teching or whatever the opposite of de-teching is, but so far I have been too nervous to use it in public for fear of being outed as an obvious twat. Job done.

My smartphone used to make me nervous, put me on edge - constantly checking for updates, things, information, contact, replies and mentions. Personally I hope that the de-teching phenomenon becomes a thing, spreading across the world and putting to an end the incessant and disturbing voracious desire for constant news.

Raoul Moat might be seen as the point when that culture jumped the shark - an epic display, an orgasmic fiesta of 24-hour-news-fuelled hysteria. The whole situation got worked up into such a frenzy that the final evening became an actual substitute for light entertainment, a venue in itself and not a source of information about other things. It was disturbing, and I was sat the whole time with my laptop on websites, telly on BBC News 24 and phone on twitter, gobbling away.

I have become a more mature individual since then, weaning myself off an addiction to news. I have recently started reading actual books, sitting in my room with simply a lamp switched on and nothing else. The silence is both disturbing and comforting - I could even get used to it. As you unplug from mass culture, that bubbling miasma, you start to feel healthier, as if breathing fresh air in the countryside - gosh, you can almost lift your soul to your ears and hear the waves crashing.

I buy a car.

I bought a new car recently. I am not very good at buying cars. My dad told me to do that thing where you push down on the bonnet and make the car bounce, but I thought he was joking. I am not very good at haggling either. Why would you advertise something for sale at a price you're not going to sell it for? You don't see ONO on a Mars Bar wrapper. "I'll give you 36p!" Could I knock £1.20 off something in Waterstone's because it has clearly been pre-leafed? No, I can't. Because that would be madness.

I would just buy the first car I come across - my mum was giving me lifts to a number of reputable local used car dealerships and was planning to leave me to it, but was forced to emerge from the car in order to talk me out of buying a tobacco-stained Fiat Tipo with holes in the seats. I'm definitely not likely to negotiate on price. "I say, is this model not meant to have, er, wheels?" All of this is odd, because there are many situations in which I would happily go toe-to-toe with people.

This was actually the first time in three cars that I'd actually gone out searching - my first car was kindly presented to me at a knock-down sum, the second I bought by accident on ebay and this third one was becoming necessary for commuting to some work. There's a certain terror in being asked to hand over vast wodges of cash in exchange for an unknown quantity. Of course, these are only vast amounts to me - I do yearn for the days when my car buying budget extends beyond comparison with a long-weekend self-catering in Blackpool.

Bizarrely, with the car I eventually did buy, the dealer actually went and told me all of the things he was prepared to throw in. I'd like to imagine that he saw in me a kind of flinty resolve, but I really think he felt a bit sorry for me. He said he would valet the car, but this was shortly after I slathered alcohol gel on my hands having first sat in it. In fairness, it was bad.

I opened the bonnet and stared blankly at the gizmos and oily bits, just knowing that this was what you were supposed to do. Engine? Check. I think. "Is this your first car, then?" the man asked me. Er, no. I decided to keep the fact that I was a freelance motoring journalist to myself in order to save myself some dignity. I'd like to think there's a certain pattern emerging in my car ownership - safe, outlandish...safe. Two days later I arrive home with an ageing green Ford Fiesta. He even threw in the wheels.

A fantabulous whippersnapper writes.

People come up to me in the street and say "Sam, you're a talented, spunky young lad, why hasn't a top automotive publication (print or online, because you're not fussy) snapped you up yet?" And I say to them, "Good question mum, for I am clearly a fantabulous writer. It's probably racism, or something."

These are tough times for a young whippersnapper* such as myself - cutbacks all over the place mean that people have been made redundant and there are fewer jobs for writers than there used to be, what with all the redundant people going to back to work for exactly the same people they used to work for, but as freelancers. This means they can work from home in their pants and watch more telly.

It's more of a punt to go for someone who, whilst awfully promising, lacks the experience of sitting in cars in foreign countries and prodding the plastics. This is the sort of thing you need to build up over time.

As Abba once said however, these most excellent publications clearly need to take a chance, take a chance, take a take a chance chance.

David Cameron makes much of his Big Society (I've heard it's not actually that big), and sure we can be cynical, but what could be bigger and more societal than offering the next generation a helping hand, eh?

*Yeah, OK, so I'm 26. But I'm a whippersnapper at heart. I whip my snap back'n'forth, I whip my snap back'n'forth.

I say all this (mostly) in jest, but do you know what strikes me as I get knocked back? How easy it is to commit social media suicide these days. I try my hardest not to write about the things I get up to on a day-to-day basis precisely to avoid that temptation, but some things feel very personal.

As I get an email back from someone, or occasionally a nicely-headed letter, I want to splat my brains in pixels over the screen and give way to some rash, fleeting thoughts that would make certain I'd never get hired anywhere again.

Wrong move. Chin up, keep calm and carry on, because you're in it for the long-haul.

And I am a fantabulous writer, by the way. Tell your friends.

Reality is, in reality, very dull.

I listened to the Archers last night. The first time for me, that - apart from the accidental times, when I've been a bit tired or concentrating on the road and it's been a good thirty seconds or so before I've realised what was going on. Camilla was on. That's right, Camilla Cornwall-Bowles, future Queen of England (and those other countries) was on the Archers.

Despite the torpid nature of the plot (the most exciting thing that happened in the entire 15 minutes was that some woman was on the loo whilst the Duchess passed through the building) I was unable to ascertain the exact reason for Her Highness's visit - I gather she stopped by for a cup of tea and some shortbread.

I don't get the attraction of dull stuff happening and people wanting to sit and listen to it.

I thought as much this morning as I was driving down the motorway and saw an Eddie Stobart lorry trundling along. I craned my neck peering through the rear-view mirror trying to see if there was a camera crew inside for that terrible Channel Five programme which features people driving some lorries, some people washing their lorries and some people nearly being late with their lorry deliveries, but it actually turns out alright in the end. At which point they wash their lorries. Sometimes there are poor saps who have sit indoors on the phone all day telling the lorries where to go next after when they are clean.

That fills up half an hour nicely, the Archers would kill for that kind of action. I'd much rather watch scenes of illegal immigrants from Afghanistan being pulled vomiting out of an HGV delivery of Tunnock's tea cakes at Dover, or a tractor unit barrel-rolling eleven times off the edge of the M1 into that field of alpacas near Leicester. Perhaps bursting into flames, but I'm not a sadist, I'm just looking for some early evening amusement.

Much better than sodding washing, or the Duchess of Cornwall having a pot of tea.

The thing about Top Gear.

The thing about Top Gear is that you aren't supposed to get offended, because that immediately makes you An Idiot Who Should Not Be Listened To. The whole thing is conceived as being an hour-long chat between manly versions of BFFs - we, the viewer, are the fourth member of this little circle of buddies and we are supposed to be in on the joke. If someone says something you don't agree with or you don't quite understand, then in Top Gear world the correct response is not "I'm going to tell your mummy", but rather "Haha, look at your hair".

Top Gear is most definitely an entertainment show. It's the same with Saturday Kitchen - I don't expect a consumer item on the best spoons to be shoehorned between a kindly old fellow finding the nicest pasta in northern Italy and some celebrity cook making an omelette in 14 seconds. I have watched a number of old episodes of Top Gear recently and they mostly involved Quentin Wilson looking serious in a wax coat and talking about breakdown services. If I had to watch a consumer show like that about cars these days it would make me want to poke myself in the eye with a decent spoon.

We were unenlightened people back in the Nineties, half past eight on a Thursday evening just happened to be set aside for watching people drive eighteen times past a roadside camera in four-minute blocks. Those days are gone, my friends, and have been replaced with days where a comedy show combining all of the things that made Jeremy Clarkson the most money in the past 15 years rules the roost. Someday soon that show will be gone, Clarkson and his BFFs will move onto the next thing and we'll complain that the next thing isn't as good as Top Gear was now.

That's just the circle of life.

Get well soon, world.

I've been wanting to use a joke on my twitter about whether Robert Kubica's operations are going to be like Britney Spear's 'knee surgery' and he'll turn up at a circuit somewhere with a suspiciously straight nose and perky pec implants. I've been wanting to use it, but there's an air of 'too soon' about the place. Perhaps I'll hang on and see whether he loses his hand or not. I think that should be a solid rule of thumb. Better call that something else though if the old boy does have the thing whipped off.

Terrible accident, his little smash in the Italian mountains. It's a bit of a cliche to point this out, but there's this thing on the back of motorsport tickets that says you might die (and you never get that in the cinema) and it's true - racing drivers know the risks and that's what they contend with when strap themselves into overpowered, underprotected machines that propel them along at outrageous speeds.

That's all given to me, though. The thing that confuses me at points like this is the simpering sympathy that emerges - everyone has to say how awful it is and how truly sorry they are. Messages of support appear on British websites the Polish speaker is never going to look at, and fans are encouraged to send in their wishes to various outlets, as if the guy gives two shits about the fact that some guy from Coventry wishes him well whilst tendons up and down his body are splayed all over his hospital bed and his bones look like pulled Christmas crackers.

I'm not, say, a fricking Nazi, so there's a reasonable assumption that I do wish anyone well who has been in a car accident that saw the roadside crash barrier inserted through the front of the car via the engine. But do I need to tell anyone? I get annoyed when the Prime Minister has to say how sorry he is that someone mildly consequential has died just because he's supposed to. Yeah, and? They're dead.

These things are most often for ourselves - to assuage the rising impotence at bad things that happen in the world that we could hardly influence were we even there. It's an awful gyp though - a bit like poppy fascism writ large. Wear a ribbon, give to charity, update your Facebook status with a pre-masticated statement you copy and paste. Wail, gnash, wear black, tell everyone how sorry you are.

Do you know what? I'd rather be the guy in the rally car.

Another F1 season is almost upon us.

There is much obsession about the place as to whether Old El Schumacher is going to be a force this season in Formula 1 - I'm going to stick my neck out and say yes, for the simple reason that the best in the world does not lose his talent overnight. Or in three seasons of sitting at home watching the Swiss version of Jerem Kyle.

I'm not saying he'll be able to dominate the thing and do some doughnuts around the track whilst everyone else is squabbling in races for tenth place in the championship, but I do think that Michael Schumacher will give the eventual winner a run for his money even if things don't go his way. I would at this juncture like to point out that I was mocked and challenged all the way through last season when I said I was rooting for Sebastian Vettel and the little chap only went and did the thing. Perhaps it was Sam wot won it.

Of course, I was very pleased to watch Schumacher top the testing times yesterday in Jerez - they were probably running the thing on fumes, but being near the front at all is an important psychological boost. Every team launches its car and says that its new racing machine is innovative and that they're aiming for the top three. There are only three cars that can be in the top three, I would tell them all if I could possibly run up and shake them to their senses. Of course, "I'm fairly confident we can grab a couple of eighth places if other people drop out" is not the sort of perky optimism that sponsors like.

At any rate, this year I shall be pumpen der fist for the old chap from Lake Geneva, Germany's finest and the best F1 driver the sport has ever seen (jog on Fangio, Clark and Senna).

'The transition starts here'.

I am most auspiciously sorry about the quality of my recent posts. I do agonise - as much as a sociopath like me can agonise, it's usually done whilst looking in the mirror and practising my 'agonised face' - over what sort of things I should be writing about. Formspring, eh? What a load of crap, that didn' take off like Facebook, Twitter, or reading a book whilst going for a poo. I wonder who the first person that took something to read when they went for a poo was, eh? It must have been an ancient Egyptian - papyrus would have been great, if slightly rough, for clearing up afterwards.

I don't often like putting pictures on here, either - it's not that I'm a snob of the visual form, but I would rather that my words were mixing untarnished with your own particular warped form of imagination like so much internet-sourced fertiliser bomb goo. To me a picture should be left on its own. A thousand words are a thousand words - how can you compare them, unless you're some ruthless gimp-eyed publisher keen to cut down on resources?

So I go through these slightly anaemic phases, where I don't have a massive amount to say and I'm not angry at anyone - personally, I think it makes for dull reading. But then by the same token it spurs me onto more pithy and bile-infused invective in following posts. I'm in one of those moods, and I shall be working harder over the next few days. I'm not much given to this dull self-reflection either, so I apologise meekly for that too.

It's quite apposite that I brought up the proverbial ancient Egyptian just there - my brain works in a similar way, stimulated in a nutritious manner and coming up with the most heinous, foul-smelling crap in return. I always keep a notebook with me, much like that papyrus of yore. I will take hold of that papyrus, and present you with the nuttier bits over the next week or two I am sure. Bon weekend, dear reader.

I have been Formsprung - question 8.

Q8. If you could eliminate one thing you do each day in the bathroom so you never had to do it again, what would it be?

There are a number of obvious suggestions that would be perfectly valid answers to this little poser, but seriously - I do some of my best thinking in the shower, my best reading on the toilet and I quite enjoy a spot of cleaning if truth be told.

No, the thing I really hate is shaving. It certainly isn't an everyday occurrence, but I shan't be telling you how often I shave because it will only end in embarrassment for me. I imagine I have female readers who wax their upper lips more often than I have to take a razor to my poor face.

Shaving is a barbaric act, I find - a token of oppression against men, slaves to the tastes of woman and her delight in a silky smooth jaw. Oh, to break the bonds of slavery. Although having said that I hate beards. I look like the Saturday boy at Maplin if I don't shave often enough.

Remember - you can still ask me a question here.

I have been Formsprung - question 7.

Q7. If you had to live in a country that wasn't Britain or Germany, where would you go and why? What would your life be like there?

So many tough questions to answer. I don't know what country would have me is probably the most pertinent answer.

I've always seen myself being a literary type and living in the upper west side of Manhattan, writing in the day and going to swanky parties in the evening or having Woody and a few others over for dinner.

I can see myself walking round LA in sunglasses carrying a perpetual Starbucks, or in a charming high-ceilinged apartment in the centre of Paris - I'm quite an urbane and cosmopolitan fellow, so obviously I would be able to settle down into any suitably urbane and cosmopolitan environment.

My life anywhere would have to be busy and full of entertainment but also capable of enjoyable relaxation. I would want to live somewhere I could have people over for dinner and ideally with ample off-street parking. Unfortunately questioner, and you've wittingly or otherwise hit the nail on the head here, I'm not sure I'd feel entirely comfortable anywhere other than Germany or the UK.

Remember - you can still ask me a question here on my spiffing little Formspring page.

I examine my notebook.

I have these passing thoughts as I trundle through life, these fleeting observations. It’s like I could be profound and intellectual and closely connected to the world, but the signal is bad, the reception is worse and I’m wearing some kind of metaphorical tin foil hat.

I find it irritatingly ironic that time after time I have some useless, disposable, throwaway thought that somehow ends up on a piece of paper and long after I’ve forgotten what I meant it retains some level of significance merely through its legibly permanence. And so it gets its shot as a blog post, a dash at the big time.

Because there is still a profundity, I think, in committing something to papyrus and pixels enjoy almost the same permanence with Google’s efforts to archive the universe – sticks and stones might break your bones, but words will come back and haunt you. I managed to string this one out into a whole post, no real significance to the thought and I’m not even sure it makes that much sense, but there it is.

And then it must be important, because that’s the one thing that I decided to write about that day. Hmm.

Photos off my phone - birds.

 You might remember when I was forcibly forced by my mother to go birdspotting in a nearby country park. As you can see from the pictures, it was cold. Apparently birds can be fooled if you hide in a giant wooden box with some climbing plants on it and stick your head out of the middle of it.

We traipsed through rain and mud to a number of little wooden boxes, from which vantage points I was able to distinguish a number of rare and exotic species - coots, swans and a pigeon which I think was lost. More often than not, however, you can see from the photographic evidence that there were sod all birds in the local bird sanctuary.

The little avian ingrates. You give them somewhere nice to live and they don't even bother to show up.

I have been Formsprung - question 6.

Q6. If you could go on a road trip with any person, dead or alive, who would it be and where would you go?

Oh, what a good question. It would have to be someone who was alive, I don't think a dead person in the car would really be all that much fun.

I do love a good road trip though - I am a big fan of driving, the adventure of speed and the romance of travel combine to make you feel like Sir Walter Raleigh or that bloke in the Antartic that Kenneth Branagh played that time.

I could say Jesus, and I bet he'd be great fun antiquing in Maine, but I would be constantly worried about going over the speed limit.

Funnily enough, I'm sat here thinking about all the cool cars I could have and fun places I could go - for just as the clothes maketh the man, so doth the car maketh the road trip - but in many ways I'd rather do it on my own. Unlike many people I love my company, I find me a fascinating and erudite person, a real catch.

At the end of it all, however, I think - and this might be weird - that I would quite fancy driving across the old great capital cities of Europe in a Bentley with Clive James, and we would write a book about it together.

Remember - you can still ask me a question here.

I watch a silly film.

I watched the most appalling and yet fascinating film recently, called The Special Relationship, about Tony Blair coming to power and trying to get in with Bill Clinton, the tease. The PM might have been Bush’s poodle, but you go by this little TV film then he was like a slathering Shih Tzu around the previous incumbent.

It’s always so hard to know how much you can read into these things though – the script was clearly written by someone who didn’t like either of the Clintons and nowhere does it reach Sorkinian levels of wit and compulsion.

In fact, I found much of it hard to watch for the simple fact that Dennis Quaid playing Bill looks like a recovering burns victim and save for fairly keenly-observed mannerisms, not a lot like number 42 at all.

I am fascinated by US politics though – I have been thinking lately that if I were ever allowed to build my dream [read: hubristic and monstrous] home – a glass outer skeleton with buildings inside, an Eden-esque project – I can’t think of anything more amazing than having a replica of the Oval Office inside for my study. Sad but true.

My love of the West Wing is well documented too – it grieves me that I didn’t get round to watching it in 2010 as I have done in the three preceding years. But I do intend to rectify that – in fact, my idea was to try and watch all seven seasons in a week and blog about it, but I don’t think I’ll have the time to do that soon. But if that isn’t a special relationship, well then I don’t know what is...

I have taken a fence.

I think Top Gear has set a fairly standard tone for itself over the past ten years or so that it has been on the air. No-one who watches it regularly will ever be particularly surprised by what they're doing on there - you expect the unexpected, and if you're a fan you're normally delighted. If you're not, you probably don't watch. A solid principle for much of television.

It's funny, though, that in an episode last week that contained insults towards the Germans, many derogatory references to Australians as part of the main feature and a joke about Richard Hammond's profound head injury, it was passing references to Mexicans that would really have any special attention paid to them. I don't know anyone who has even been to Mexico, and I don't think I've ever met a Mexican. The Top Gear comments could very well be true

The Mexican ambassador's feigned outrage was probably the first thing he's had to do in this country in the past seven years save for a keynote speech at an international tequila distributors' convention at Heathrow airport, and ample opportunity for the 'offending' words to be played over and over again on radio and television. I would far rather the man had admitted to being humiliated than offended.

In today's papers Steve Coogan weighed in - not a funny man, but a comedian nonetheless. A man who has made a lot of money out of getting people to laugh at him and others too. If him sticking his nose into the debate that's raging between third-rate commentators in second-rate newspapers isn't offensive, I don't know what is.

But Top Gear? It's benign Sunday evening entertainment - Bruce Forsyth, not Jonathan Ross.

I don't want my Mummy.

There was something that had me puzzled over Christmas - I don’t know what it is about The Mummy series of films that makes them so repeatable at festive times of year – they are the filmic equivalent of that bowl of peanuts and tin of Roses that sit on a coffee table near the telly at the same times of year.

Both are accessories to mindless chomping. I find myself trying to think of films that demonstrate how mindlessly forgettable Brendan Fraser’s career is...but I can’t think of any. What puzzles me with crap films is that people must spend a good 12 months at a time working on them – why do they do it? Is it simply a matter of paying the bills? Where is their self-respect?

That dreary film represents 1/40th of your working life, one of 40 chances you might get to impress history and earn a place on Wikipedia. It’s like spending four months going for a poo, or something. Although over a lifetime, we probably do.

But then what do I know? Brendan Fraser is rich, and I’m...not.

Photos off my phone - Llandudno.

I went to visit my friend Melanie and her new cottage in the slatey foothills of Snowdonia - this must have been the last great glorious day of 2010, but it was wonderful to be back home in north Wales where I spent so many years. We went to Llandudno, that great Victorian resort - a great hark back to a golden age of walks by the seaside.

I couldn't persuade Melanie to engage me in a spot of crazy golf at the fake Austrian ski chalet halfway up Llandudno's Great Orme, but we did climb to the top. For all my bluster about not liking exercise (I do generally find recreational walking pointless and oppressive) there's nothing better than a good walk every couple of years, especially in the company of an old friend who doesn't mind you moaning every step of the way.

I have been Formsprung - question 5.

Q5. Have you broken any bones? If so, how?

I have never broken any bones, thankfully enough. It's not that I am not accident prone - merely absorbent of malign energy waves.

The most traumatic near-breaking incident is undoubtedly when I split my head open as a child. I forget how old I was, but my mum was driving a gold Mini Metro at the time, so I reckon it must have been at about six or seven, and I was playing on a low set of railings by a pond and fell backwards and landed my head on the kerb. I was driven at toute suite to casualty in Coventry and had to have stitches. They hurt. I leant forward all the way there in the car because my dad told me my brains would fall out if I didn't.

I have a number of accidents on scooters - one time just outside Caernarfon, which merely involved picking grit out of my back. There was another time when Matalan was opening in Bangor and I worked there setting it all up (must have been autumn 2002) - I was leaving university having finished lectures for the day and misjudged the distance between my scooter and the concrete bollards underneath the main building. I hadn't brought my legs up yet and stopped the scooter with my leg jammed between the fairing and the bollard. That hurt, but no break.

Remember - you can still ask me a question here. Thanks muchly if you have already asked me a question - some great ones on there, the answers to which will be appearing here over the next few days. Do ask more though - answers are only available while stocks last!

Tomorrow on ALBOWIEB: the first in a sporadic series of posts entitled 'Photos off my phone'. Exciting, eh?

Contains scenes of a superfluous nature.

There was a warning before Silent Witness yesterday evening that it contained scenes of a sexual nature - this, despite the extended scenes of murder, family rows, bodies splayed open and guns being waved around. The short scene of a sexual nature was fairly mild for a quarter to ten, merely involving a spot of humping viewed through a shed window.

Personally I wasn't that offended. 

You do have to wonder where our priorities are with all of this stuff though - maybe you could have a little rolling credits sequence at the beginning of programmes detailing all of the naughtinesses that might crop up during your viewage. Warning: contains scenes of extended stuff.

Do you know what though? I don't want to be warned of upcoming nipple slippage, or extraneous fucks - I would simply rather programme makers were more discerning and didn't put these things into their programmes in the first place. I wouldn't mind if Silent Witness just managed to stick to people dying and they try and work out what happened by doing some tests and that.

I would also be quite happy if Eastenders was a mildly interesting reflection of real society - Jeremy Kyle is fruity enough, we know these things wouldn't be dull, but dodgy baby storylines? I think these scriptwriters are bored.

Either that, or they have a sweepstake going with Jeremy Clarkson as to who can get the most complaints each week. Feckless Mexicans indeed.

The plumber always rings twice.

I had a plumber in my bedroom for most of yesterday evening. Obviously I have tried as many ways as possible to stretch the inherent innuendo in that statement to breaking point, but this is a sophistimacated blog I'll have you know.

Besides, the boiler is in there and needed a good seeing too.

I was very nervous, having a plumber round. I don't have a natural affinity with tradesmen. I think they are jealous of my youthful good looks and smooth hands.

I did give the house a ruddy good tidy before the wee chap came round - there's nothing worse than clumps of dust on the stairs when you're bringing an outsider into your inner sanctum.

Years ago you could perhaps rely on a code, the handyman's discretion, but these days they all have blogs and they're sitting in the van updating their twitter status on the Blackberry.

I don't think I left any pants out, but you're never certain as you sit downstairs unable to focus on anything, letting the professionals do their thing. It's the upheaval, the singularity of it all. Not having a routine can become a routine, but this is well out of the routine, something unnerving.

As the plumber leaves I nervously inspect the new boiler that has been installed. Phew, no pants out.