Exploring, sweating, enjoying.

The day after Central Perk was The One Where We Walked Round Carouge. Geneva is in many ways a bit like the Crystal Maze – you’ve got the Lake Zone, the Fancy Shops Zone, the Where The Cleaners Live Zone and Carouge could be the Really Expensive Antiques Shopping Zone.

Here Carolan and I loafed for a few hours, buying a charming little woven basket of strawberries from a street market after some discussion between Carolan and the woman on the stall in skilful French about the virtues of outside strawberries versus greenhouse strawberries. There was really only 70 pence in it, and I think that she was showing off. At any rate, the outside strawberries were particularly delicious.

We did some window shopping in cute stationery places and emporia full of fascinating knick-knacks, but we bought neither knick-knacks, stationery nor windows, because they were all so expensive. Those prices really flabbered my gast, but who needs to buy things to enjoy shopping? It’s time we pared the experience back, it has become too commercial.

We descended down into the city like a warm front, hoovering up the atmosphere. We stopped for a drink and sat outside on a delightful terrace – un café noir pour moi and a GCSE-spec citron pressé for Carolan. We enjoyed some licentious ice cream with impossible flavours, like pineapple and basil, biscuit and popcorn and we scared the hell out of ourselves at the most health and safety unconscious fun fair in all Europe. As if the danger of death wasn’t enough, we risked interrupting the important mating rituals of 15-year-olds on the bumper cars.

Carolan had filled me with horror stories of Geneva’s relentless dreariness, but I had brought with me something else – the relentless sunny heat. The place had come alive, making the switch from winter to summer like changing from slippers to walking shoes. We toasted the weather by drinking an amazing organic apple juice next to The Lake and then taking a pedalo out on those tranquil, soothing waters – the real Geneva conventions.

Probably time for a drink.

I walked on in search of my next stop. After 30 minutes of half-lolloping through the blazing heat I found Central Perk. No really. I’d seen it on the internet, the owner having spent much of 2001 sticking it to the Man, in the form of Time Warner.

The logo as clear a rip-off of the Friends coffee house as you could manage, but the enterprising chap managed to secure copyright in about eight countries before Time Warner even knew what was happening. Really serves America right for not paying attention when the rest of the world agrees to do stuff like respect everyone else’s trademarks.

The Central Perk similarities really extended as far as the logo. The place felt like a faded local haunt for equally weary old men who huff and beurgh and boff their way through animated conversations like proper Frenchmen. Gunther was a hawkish old man and Rachel Green a coquettish blonde. There were soft chairs littered about the place for that coffee house vibe, and grand chandeliers if you looked up high enough.

The coffee was severely good, gliding invitingly down your throat, smoothing the way for another cup. I suddenly felt like I should order a brandy and take up smoking, but then I remembered that I was wearing a bright yellow Spongebob Squarepants t-shirt and glistening from sun lotion. I did not belong here.

I go for a Swiss walk.

I arrive in Geneva and drop off my things with my charming friend Carolan, who I have come to visit.

The city is different to how I have imagined it. Smaller, certainly - with 185,000 inhabitants about the same size as Portsmouth - but Geneva is no natural beauty, seeming to consist in equal measure of France, Germany and East Berlin in 1973.

There are the most hideous crimes against modern architecture nestled right alongside the most wonderfully Gallic antiqued beauties that could have been taken straight out of Alexandre Dumas’ Paris.

The Swiss people I see are a bit the same – fairly sickeningly good-looking on the whole, but dressed like extras from When Harry Met Sally. Probably because they still get their clothes from C&A, alive and well on the continent.

I get off the tram and head up a cobbled narrow street, which winds ever upwards, trimmed with antique shops and eventually opening out onto the Cour de St. Pierre, a small square in front of the cathedral of the same name. It is compulsory, I decide, to sit on a bench here, shaded from the beating, broiling sun by a friendly arbre inconnu.

I watch the world go by. At least that part of the world on an organised tour of Geneva’s old town. Mainly obnoxiously loud Italian schoolgirls who take hundreds of pictures and swallow up much of the available space with their hair.

On the plane.

There is still a major thrill to be had in flying. People-watching in the airport, the terror-fuelled thrill of passing through security, sitting on the plane, taking off...

We were a bit delayed sitting on the plane, so I watched some of the other planes through the tiny window. Those dinky BMI planes that look like they’ve been folded out of a sheet of A4, the massive jumbos and their unholy alliance with nature.

Now of course I don’t want my plane to crash, but there is a frisson of anticipation there. If the worst does happen then I am clutching my digital camera – 15 minutes of fame beckons on the BBC News website if I capture a moment in modern history.

It is, in the end, a most routine of flights – we fly a bit, I read a bit, I eat a bit of a rancid cheese baguette, we land, I arrive in Geneva.

Will the streets be paved with gold?

Every time I go away, even if it's just an overnighter, I always come back expecting something to have changed. I want a building to have been knocked down and a spanking gleamy skyscraper put up in its place, the bus shelters to have be repainted or the streets to be paved with gold.

You always remember your room tidy, too. Perhaps our brains don't have the RAM to factor in all the crap and underpants strewn across the floor, but the place is never tidy when you get back. Mainly because you didn't tidy it before you left, you were turning boxes upside down looking for your passport, or that stupid pillow for the aeroplane you never use anyway. One of the greatest cons of the modern era, that stupid plane pillow.

You expect piles of mail to be sat awaiting you as you heave open the door, despite the fact that you get three letters a month, all bills. Perhaps there's a chance an old friend will be struck to correspond at the very same time I am jetting off to more exotic climes. Or perhaps life trundles inexorably on, no letters, no tidying and no building work. Just normalness.

Ordinary, bog-standard, vanilla, run-of-the-mill, as-it-ever-was, mundane, normalness. Welcome home.

Those lazy, hazy, crazy days of blogging.

I remember in the good old days of blogging when we used to talk about things we had done a bit more. Those were the naive days of you thinking it was just you writing it, followed by the days when you thought it was just some people reading it. There was for everyone a moment where they realised that anyone could read it. Then you had to be more careful.

I suppose that much of the novelty has been taken over by twitter, moving even from things we did today to things we’re doing right now. Ah, the immediacy of immediacy. The visceral edge of sharing things with people and them sharing things with us – it’s like being there, like having an actual conversation.

For me blogging is much more the fine art of correspondence – it’s very hard to keep a conversation going when you have to deal with everything you want to discuss in one go. There’s a storytelling skill there that transcends mere repartee.

Anyone can do it, but not just anyone can be good at it. Of course, I would hope to be able to myself in the latter category, because writing is what I do and the words are my friends, but you never know. What are the measures of success here? A warm sense of satisfaction? Hits, comments and links? An active, contented readership? I would probably fail on all counts of measurability.

But I don't care, because I'm sat in Geneva, where it's probably really sunny.

My best scar.

My best scar is on my chin. It dates back to sometime during the autumn of 2001, that season the world changed. My world changed. It was my gap year. I got a scar.

I was driving along through Coventry on my little blue moped. This was my first mode of transport, a slathering of independence. £175 was a fortune for me back then. My moped could only do 25mph and didn’t have a fuel gauge – I had to remember when I last filled it up based on the mileage, and make sure I stopped at a petrol station before 29 miles had elapsed.

Luckily it was very light to push.

My moped was extravagantly tiny but it did me proud, wheezing about Coventry. Occasionally, make that once a week, I would extend it beyond Coventry and trundle over to nearby Leamington Spa to meet my friend Sarah for lunch. Leamington was an exotic and refined locale, a leafy oasis. Maybe it was simply the fact that I could get there that made it taste so sweet, but I always enjoyed those lunches.

Returning from one such lunch on a mild and sunny day I was heading blithely back into Coventry city centre when the car in came to a stop in traffic and I didn’t notice. Bam. The moped went underneath the car and I went over the top. I dribbled back down onto the ground, someone helped me off the road.

My shopping was all over the place – a curious thing about scooter crashes, that...every time I’ve had one the contents of the top box have spewed about the tarmac – and there was blood coming from somewhere.

And that is my best scar – about a centimetre on the left hand side of the bottom of my chin, an exact match to the rear windscreen wiper on a Peugeot 205.

Viva Geneva.

Hello. I'm not here.

Well, I am here because you're reading me right now, this is my message from beyond the grave. Assuming I've died.

No, I have gone forth to Geneva for the weekend. Or should I say pour le weekend, because they speak French over there. That is about as much of mes Francais as I can remember, ten years since doing my A-levels. I'm starting to feel old. Old and monolingual.

Never fear, however, for whilst I am sipping coffee in a lakeside cafe I will still be appearing on your computer via the magic of clicking some stuff. I needn't even have written this post, in many ways, because I could have written something as if I was here. But I'm not.

And when I return, I shall bring tales of adventure and derring do, which comes from the middle english for 'daring to'. A middle englishman with a cold, I'll wager. Why did we keep some crap from 1000 years ago and not others? I'll never know. Is Beowulf comparable with Eastenders or Tolstoy? You need reference points, don't you.

Again - never fear, for the reference points are here, here and here and marked on the card in the pocket in front of you. Bon weekend, cher lecteur.

A marathon, man.

Our man Cliff is running a marathon this Sunday. I am genuinely full of the deepest admiration for his efforts, especially considering the physical and mental hurdles he has overcome to put himself in a position to run a marathon. It's possibly one of the most glamorous and romantic marathons he could run, too, in la ville de l'amour, Paris.

Frankly I cannot think of anything worse than running a marathon, short of being forced to run a marathon and then have to sit next to Janet Street Porter at dinner. I used to joke that the only thing I ever run for is elected office, but even that hasn’t happened for four years. I am about as fit as whatever the opposite of a fiddle is, my heart must look like a prune that someone has stood on.

I generally do hate talented people too. They intimidate me and stimulate a kind of intense jealousy that completely prevents me from being able to function as a normal human being. But Cliff, he smothers his talent with a thoroughly pleasant blend of humility and panache, like a breaded chicken breast. He’s the people’s runner.

I’m going to be away while he is running his opus, because otherwise I would have been right here furiously refreshing his blog for an entire weekend waiting for updates, imagining Team Cliff with their tour bus and t-shirts and proud smiles. Is it weird to feel so proud of someone you’ve never met? In some ways blogging cuts straight to the crap of finding out about people, but then mine is all banal small talk.

At any rate, I shall have my fingers crossed and I will be excited to hear how it goes. God speed, Cliff.

READER: Do sponsor Cliff if you can - he's running for Medecins Sans Frontier, a hella good cause. Click here.

Being on the television.

There was a man on the telly yesterday evening proudly regaling the news reporter with how he'd had a robotic arm up his arse for several hours working on his prostate. The whole thing was a bit odd - even the surgeon was unusually animated, but I guess working through a computer he could keep his hands cleaner.

I don't think I'd particularly enjoy any job which involved being wrist-deep in middle-aged man either. There was even a prolonged clip showing off the skills of this new robotic arm where it peeled a grape, for goodness' sake. Oh, what wonderful imagery. As if anyone needs a robot to be able to peel a grape anyway.

It's a strange thing, this excitable desire to be on television. I don't know why people get so thrilled about it - perhaps it's the opportunity to be validated by association with the TV glitterati, arse robot or not.

Personally I would be too embarrassed even to tell people I had a prostate the size of a pear, let alone waxing lyrical about it on the 6.30 regional news. Whilst bag carrying for my MP in Parliament I once had to do what those in the business call an 'establishing' shot, where I walked alongside him on Parliament Green nodding interestedly every couple of steps.

It was mildly mortifying, but I gained succour from the fact that it would be going out to a completely different part of the country to mine.

10 songs off my ipod.

I switched on my ipod (the little cheap one - I say cheap, but £35 for a 2GB pansy is outrageous - a faithful companion over the past few years. My first was a gracious gift, the second replaced it when I got mugged in London...), made sure it was set to stun shuffle and here we are:

1. Mel Torme - New York, New York
This is Mel's version of the song from the musical On the Town from 1949, which had Frank Sinatra in it. It is probably my favourite song at the moment to sing along to - the Bronx is up, but the Battery's down. I've no idea where any of the places in New York are, I shall have to visit them one day soon.

2. Kylie Minogue - Celebration
This could be a low point of the list, but Kylie's perky enthusiasm is cheering, I find. Indeed, she is organising a celebration to last throughout the year. She probably looks upon this period with a slight sense of bedazzled shame and yet secret pride, much like the time when I used to wear lime green jeans.

3. Tom Jones and Jools Holland - St James Infirmary Blues
Tom and Jools are a match made in heaven, and thankfully in recent years Sir TJ's soulful side is emerging to eclipse the Vegas hip-swinging (not that I have a real problem with that, Tom Jones at the MGM Grand is the best concert I've ever been to). This for me is the definitive version of a song everyone of a certain age has covered - I'd love to go to New Orleans, they make the blues seem so jolly.

4. Dolly Parton - 9 to 5
I actually love Dolly - I don't have many heroes, but Dolly is definitely one of them. She's a long-time philanthropist and all-round (boy, is she all round) good egg and the lady can sing. I've always thought she looks like Michaela Strachan in the middle of anaphylaxis.

5. Glen Campbell - Learnin' the Blues
I'm a bit partial to some Glen Campbell too - I like music that I can sing along to and The Highwayman or Rhinestone Cowboy are suitably stirring. I've got a greatest hits of Campbell's though that shows him delving into a spot of big band - Learning the Blues is here, as is an amazing big band cover of Johnny Cash's I Walk the Line.

6. Cliff Richard - Something's Going On
Don't judge me - I bought this album when I was drunk once. I thought I had told the story, but a quick search of ALBOWIEB says no. That's really the story, actually, but I'm sure I could string it out to 300 words. I really like this song, it's got a poppy, brassy vibe to it that really doesn't deserve to be on a ruddy Cliff Richard album.

7. The Puppini Sisters - Old Cape Cod
I am quite partial to sand dunes and salty air, as well as the odd quaint little village here and there. Perhaps that is why I like this song. The Puppini Sisters are a good investment, especially their album that has a harmonised cover of Beyonce's Crazy in Love. Old Cape Cod always makes me want to be somewhere else, it transports me to a paradise of relaxing walks, sitting on the beach and reading books in cafes.

8. Buddy Greco - The Lady is a Tramp
I love a bit of Buddy, and I think we've probably established before that this is perhaps my favourite song in the world ever. It epitomises swinging cool to my unrefined self and always makes me want to be a jazz singer without fail after every listen. That said, I did want to be a mythical Chinese warrior after watching House of Flying Daggers this morning. The one thing I can't understand - is the lady actually not a tramp, and the singer is being mean about people who don't like his girl? I've never been able to understand that. A few dozen more listens might help.

9. Lion King cast - Hakuna Matata
'Pumba - not in front of the kids'. This song takes me right back to my childhood - there is also Cruella Da Vil, Under the Sea and the Ugly Bug Ball somewhere on my Shuffle, all turning back the years with their catchy melodic ways. Disney films have always been iconic milestones for kids since the 40s that I don't think today's generations will experience in the same way. I remember going to see Beauty and the Beast at the cinema, and the Happy Meal toys coming out.

10. Paul Anka - Wonderwall
Paul Anka's Rock Swings album is amegazing - admittedly the only thing I have from the Anka pantheon (or planktheon, if you will), it features a host of rock songs big bandified, which was quite vogueish for a month or two in the middle of the noughties there. Wonderwall, Eye of the Tiger, Hello, Jump - some incredible tunes, all skillfully translated to brass and double bass.

The world has too much time on its hands.

I think it's perfectly incredible how you can lose a whole evening on YouTube without evening realising, it's like a vicious black hole that sucks in all productivity, every spare second and even some of the ones that aren't spare. Especially the ones that aren't spare. Click follows click follows click. You pop on there to hear what Britney's new song sounds like (pretty crap - breathy whining about some bloke underlaid with synthesised whoopee cushions) and soon you're stuck inside a miasma of guilty pleasures.

When it's really late at night I like to look up Mel Torme and Buddy Greco, two of my favourite swingingest swingers. Those two guys are cool. You can even get Buddyrolled, if you like. I find myself trying to trace the entire back catalogue of Dolly Parton, trying to sing along with Johnny Cash and the Ghost Riders in the Sky. Trying to work out if Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash ever did a duet.

Looking up some Tom Jones. Trying to decide if he looks better with grey hair or black hair (definitely grey hair). Looking to see whether Tom Jones and Dolly Parton ever did a duet. Checking whether Tom Jones and Johnny Cash ever hooked up. They can't all possibly have been on the telly at the same time, could they? No. I wonder what Celine Dion is up to these days.

It's an orgy of self-indulgence and that's even before I start to think about racing cars crashing, great overtaking moves or cute animals or the fat kid on the ride who never fails to make my day. It hurts Janice, it hurts. I would hate to link to any of my special places because part of the fun of YouTube is that voyage of self discovery - not discovery of the self, you understand. Unless someone happens to have been uploading covert footage of you. Which would be a bit weird.

YouTube is almost like the total sum of human inexistence - for all the top music videos there are 4,000 talentless trolls who wail at their flipcams and think the world needs to hear it. Why would anyone have taped a McDonald's chicken mcnuggets advert in 1988 and have it transferred to upload to the internet? Or any number of things, for that matter - the Ariston advert, the Kia Ora jingle, side-by-side comparisons of the Milky Way advert from 20 years ago and now... The world has too much time on its hands.

Although that would sound more credible if I hadn't just spent hours watching it all.