I put on a DVD.

In a moment of weakness I started watching the West Wing this week. I've written about my love of the West Wing before, and I've watched all seven series at least three times. There was a period there when I watched my beloved box set once a year, but 2010 was a peculiar aberration.

It sounds terribly sad to wax so intensely lyrical about a mere television programme, but I love its warm, many-layered wit and drama. Being irredeemably English I shall never fulfill my ambition to become president of the USA (American dream? Pah!), so the West Wing is my next best thing. Never mind, I can live vicariously through Bartlett and co.

I can walk and talk from the comfort of my own bed and live through moments of international crisis with a cup of tea and pause it for dinner. The big problem, apart from the monopoly of my evenings, is that I do rather get into these things. A film is fine, because although I sink right into that world it is over within two hours.

With the West Wing my entire world for the next few weeks will revolve around a benevolent, enlightened, liberal America. When something happens on the news my first thought will be "What is President Bartlett going to say?"

I can think of worse things.

A busy time.

Hello. You might remember me from useding to write on this blog. It’s been busy, like. Since we last spoke I have come back from abroad, unpacked my suitcase, packed up everything I own, moved to another city and started a new job. It is all terribly exciting, but also terribly busy.

In my first week we took a 70-page magazine to print and I drove a number of excellent press cars. Only now have I managed to clear my not massive bedroom floor of a plethora of boxes, bags, tubs and piles. I still have yet to possess a desk in my bedroom that I actually use as anything more pleasantly geometric storage.

I still have yet to see my new London borough in daylight from beyond the wheel of a car. I think I saw a McDonald’s around the corner from the house, but I suspect it might be a local base for gang warfare.

No longer young.

My young person's railcard ran out yesterday. Like, forever. Last year I renewed the thing on my last day of being 25 and tomorrow I turn 27 (just thought I'd drop that in there). It's like I have now officially become old. I am no longer deemed by society to be either young or deserving of an arbitrary 33% discount on frankly extortionate rail fares.

I imagine following the passing of my YPC, as it was affectionately known, I am fairly certain never to get the train again unless someone else is paying. All the crap you have to put up with and it's still more expensive and significantly less convenient than taking your own car.

I'm definitely fortunate now to be driving professionally, especially seeing as I love doing it so much. Perhaps there are people out there, train journalists, who feel just as passionately about sitting on smelly chairs and being kept waiting outside stations for hours at a time and they're perfectly happy to spend a hundred quid doing it, I don't know.

It's really the 27 thing that preoccupies my mind, I think. This pre-life crisis has been going on for a number of years now because I feel so old and unaccomplished. My strategy is to approach careers like journalism and politics that positively reward being old and wise. I can't really do anything about the being old, but at least I feel like I'm making a step towards being accomplished at last.

And oh yes, that reminds me - I'm in Italy, but you can read about that here.