Hanging up or what will Meg Ryan do for work.

I don’t normally get that misty-eyed over dead celebrities, but Nora Ephron took me by surprise this morning. For me, the lamentable passings are the ones who had more to give. Death, for those no-one has seen in public in the last 30 years, is more likely to be a merciful release.

Someone like Nora Ephron, and indeed, like Clive James, who has admitted that he’s not long for this mortal plane, well they make their trade on witty humour, wry observation and the sort of gently piercing insight that gives everyone a little something to think about. I wouldn’t say they have both held a mirror up to society, because what do mirrors show but that which you’re looking for? No, they have both been more fundamentally instructive than that, have sat and thought about what others are doing.

I think that’s important, an element of active reflection on society. Perhaps it’s ironic to mourn the passing of the essayist in a long post on my blog, but there are no standards here, no academic rigour or commitment to challenging society. It’s not just that I love Nora Ephron’s films – When Harry Met Sally and You’ve Got Mail are genuinely my two favourites – but that she made such seemingly frothy material capable of being loved, full of longevity and wisdom.

I love Nora’s lists. I need to make more lists. In fact, that’s number one on my list of things I need to do more. I love Clive’s every shared thought, but short of porting myself into his magnificent brain I shall have to content myself with downloading the podcasts of his Point of View programmes for Radio 4. Perhaps sharing your thoughts like Nora and Clive is a way to achieve a subtle immortality.

I don’t strive for immortality myself, but rather perhaps to be more effective a bludgeoner than a moth smacking into a lightbulb. Whichever way you look at it though, society is the worse off for not having the cleansing pulse of kindly irony aimed at it every now and then.

The cost of milk.

I bought a pint of milk the other day. I don't really buy milk, because it does horrific things to my insides and makes my head feel all stuffed up and gooey. Possibly too information there, but it sets the scene nicely, I feel. I bought some milk because I fancy doing a little rice pudding or something at the weekend - you know, the sort of tasty pudding that you don't mind running the risk of death-through-lactoverdose for.

My pint of milk cost 49p. Personally I thought it was a little excessive, especially seeing as the cow that put all the effort in isn't going to see any of that cash, but it got me thinking back to the posh boys thing a few weeks ago with David Cameron and that Osborne fellow. Magazines often ask celebrities to guess what a pint of milk costs, and politicians seem to think that knowing the price showcases their folksy charm (who buys a pint of milk at a time anyway? Someone tight buying for the office kitchen or a lonely pensioner, I should imagine).

I don't know what a pint of milk costs, myself. Perhaps this rules me out of ever seeking high public office, but my folksy charm lies elsewhere. Then again, why on earth should the prime minister know the price of milk? I would be annoyed if I thought the bloke who was supposed to be running the country spent a couple of hours pushing a trolley round Sainsbury's every Thursday night. We all know that if he slips anything remotely associated with normal life into an interview it's because he's spent about 40 seconds reading through a briefing paper slipped into his suitcase by an eager aide who looks like he should be doing his Sats.

I'm not saying the prime minister is out of touch because he's posh and rich and whatever, because that's largely irrelevant. He's necessarily out of touch with the working man (and who wants the working man running the country anyway? He is invariably a paunchy, pasty, Sun-reading, slightly racist dullard) because he's the one keeping the country solvent, or protected from nuclear bombs evaporating every pint of milk within a 10-mile radius of detonation. I have no such lofty excuses myself - like I said, I just don't buy milk, really.

It's my birthday and I'll nap if I want to.

It is my birthday today. At 5.30pm it will mark 28 years since my mum was rushed into hospital on a daytrip to Kettering and I was plucked out in the middle of an emergency caesarean operation despite the ridiculous odds stacked against me. I do always joke that arriving six weeks early rather accounts for the fact that I'm always late now, making up for my overpunctuality.

All babies seem to hit the ground bawling, with a certain energy and babyish charisma that draws people in from a great distance to coo and admire. All of that charm fades rather quickly, and the energy decays with a mildly respectable half-life which I am already noticing having its effect.

I do think that you get to a certain point - and forgive me sounding old and weary here, but as I am in fact old and weary it's OK - where you relish a good rest, but you use that rest to be more reflective, perhaps a little less impulsive. Where the grand sum of your mistakes is translated into wisdom, ostentatiously ignored by the younger generations you want to help with your sage expression of life's meaning.

Perhaps the right approach to such an occasion would be to get sloshed into oblivion, but I shall face it like a man. And eat loads of chocolate.

Cliff Jones needs a book deal.

Let's just get this out of the way immediately - Cliff Jones' novel needs to be published. If you have it within your power to get it read, printed, bound, boxed, shipped and sold then I think you should get on the case right away.

Cliff has been beavering away for the past few (actually, loads) months on a book, and I have not been able to read his blog as a result, because he has been writing his book and not his blog. I was very sad when he stopped writing his blog, but he did allow me to have a sneaky peek at the first few chapters of Water Runs Slow Through Flat Land (an epic, comic tale of an online news editor who turns freelance and goes to Afghanistan) and I genuinely think it's great.

You can tell I genuinely think it's great because I am writing a blog post about it, and not some tomato I found with the face of Terry Nutkin inside, or the rain, or my sore left foot. Cliff readily admits that it starts off slowly, but I prefer to think of it as a building drumroll, measured pace. I rather hope that the book itself will take off in the same way. And I really want to read the rest of it. Naughty tinker that he is, Cliff is angling to sell the book rather than letting me read it all for free. So someone publish it.