Minus twelve degrees Celsius makes my nose hurt.

Depressing national development of the day: OFCOM to allow product placement in UK television programmes. Bleh.

Oh well, I suppose it's not like I watch ITV when I'm not being held at gunpoint, so fingers crossed for no home invasions by, uhm... well, I wanted to name a prominent ITV-based personality, but I wouldn't know the cast of Coronation Street if they were holding me at gunpoint.

I forget where I was going with that little rant. That's happening all too often of late. I suspect it's lack of sleep. My body's latest trick is waking me after about three hours and declining the invitation to more sleep. Accordingly, now more than ever it would probably be best to ignore me. Big ask, I know.

Is half-five too early for bedtime? Heh...

Next time... tea festival?

This weekend's ale festival in Preston had me quite excited. It ran from Thursday afternoon to Sunday night, and had an ale count in three figures. I was planning to head down on Friday, before the best stuff was gone. Then I decided it might be better to stay at home, shivver, and throw up. So I did that. ...In hindsight, though it may have saved me some cash, I can't say that was really an enjoyable alternative.

Oh well, I thought, I'll go on Saturday! But no, snowed in. Eight inches never stopped me doing anything before, but... you can finish this joke on your own time.

Nigella's just said she's, "going to do violence to that" cake or whatever she's making. Why the hell does that turn me on?

So, Sunday. Many people had been snowbound on Saturday, and there were, reportedly, plenty of ales left for the last day. At about six PM I decided to head into town and spend a couple of hours sampling what remained. Oh, but the next bus that can get me to town -though I live close to the main connecting road between the county capital and an adjacent resort town of ninety-thousand people- will arrive there, weather allowing, around eight PM, and the last bus back leaves at around half-past eight. And so I missed the whole ruddy festival.

Next time, I'm going on Thursday, and drinking the ruddy lot.

Instead, tonight, I have been down the local for a couple of pints taken in the armchair by the fireplace. Bollocks to skating about on ice in the middle of the flag market! Granted, walking two miles through said inches of snow at minus ten degrees celsius may have brought me into some disagreement with my circulatory system, particularly as it relates to peripheral parts such as the fingers with which I am so painfully typing this waste of a blog, but I am now pleasantly tipsy. Well, from my perspective, at least. Maybe less so for everyone else, as I've mostly either been telling them why they should be ashamed of themselves, or staring at their tits, depending on relevant factors, but, ultimately, I have a nice tingly feeling, so I suppose that means it's all good.

Beer before wine...

...and you'll feel fine. Wine before wysgi, whisky, vodka, and more wysgi, and... an egg butty is very much required, along with a protracted period of sitting quietly.

I'm not sure where this post is headed. Probably it'll just be about food. I'm hungry, and I've come here direct from drinking, and chatting shite. I've just realised that I initially posted this without a comma, potentially leading readers to suppose that I'd been drinking shite.

Anyway, in the course of the chatting, I learned that, allegedly, "Bean mince is ace, better than beef."

My first thought, and only direct response, was that, well, "Beef is shite."

I've never quite managed to get entirely on board with vegetarianism, though I don't think it's a bad idea, but the world's obsession with beef is not something I can understand, I've had beef three times in my life, and each time it made me angry for a different reason. And at no point was I a Hindu.

First time, it was a McDonald's burger, given to me by a friend -or someone I'd hitherto thought to be a friend-, and made me angry that he'd tried to palm that crap off on me, and that I couldn't even find a tramp who'd take it off my hands. I'm told that I later trashed that McDonalds, but I've no memory of this alleged incident.

Second time, it was Aberdeen Angus, and I was angry that it cost more than a blow-job from Jebus, and tasted worse than giving him one.

Third time, it was raw, and dipped in some kinda seaweed juice, and I was angry that my girlfriend was Japanese.

To slightly misquote one or other Homer, "Yo, goober, why the beef?"

In passing...

Lately, insomnia has ruled. So, yester... wait... yeah, I think it... what day is this? I think that I spent about twenty hours in bed, so hopefully that's... sorted. Hm. It certainly seems that my brain's plenty rested, eh?

I recently read what I think may be the greatest description ever applied to an object. "Aboriginal emu caller" it indicated. "Used to arouse the curiosity of emus."

Okay.

Better yet, the object in question looked to my uninitiated eye very much like what I might have described as a sawn-off didgeridoo, which leads me to wonder... what the fuck were they trying to arouse when they started making full-size didgeridoos?

Right, now that we're all picturing Big Bird being drawn into an alley off the Street and taken-out with a boomerang...

How about that weather, eh? Windy. 80mph. Fences aren't where they used to be. Police are restraining a dangerous tree. I like the sound of that. More than I like the sound of this £1 ale. It comes with the story of the name, which ends enticingly, "...it was largely beer that had been returned to the brewery as undrinkable by more fastidious customers."

Thirty bajillion days later...

My Dogtanian T-shirt is losing the decal that gives its name, but it's doing it coloured-layer by coloured-layer. Once a happy sort of yellow, now mostly but not entirely grey, it seems as if Dogtanian has pissed on his own shoes, and tried to mop it up with the otherwise needlessly flamboyant feather in his hat. I think this is pretty much the way that I want to present myself to the world.

Lately the fly is back. A depressed feeling that I'd like to dispel with the sort of hand gesture as might shoo off an insect intent on flying repeatedly at my head. I don't know. It's the uncertainty and stagnation that's been building ever since I came back to this side of the world, really. I've no idea what I want to do next, I've forgotten -if I ever knew- how to do it anyway, and I no longer know how to explain what I've been doing in the meantime.

In hopes of at least lifting my mood I decided to finally make an effort at learning -even if only to a limited degree as may suit no particular use what so ever- another language, and doing some regular exercise beyond the current if largely pointless daily walk around the village. Exciting times indeed. Having obtained by entirely lawful means a copy of some popular language learning software, and despite my best intentions, I've actually spent much of the day being cheered-up by repeated listenings to the voiceover-woman's proper Welsh pronunciation of eliffant (I'll leave you to wonder at the possible meaning of that most cryptic word). Alas, I don't think that the Welsh course goes much beyond some basic vocabulary, so I'm trying to decide what to make do with. Spanish seems like it might actually be, y'know, useful, but the CD contains only American Spanish, and I'm still considering the implications. French or German may make a little more sense given that, having studied both in a half-arsed fashion umpteen years ago, I could actually have somewhere in the recesses of my mind a basic understanding of either, waiting to be triggered, and as a bonus the former would mean that maybe I'd finally be able to appreciate Diabologum's lyrics. Decisions, decisions. Likely inconsequential decisions.

As to the exercise, I dunno, maybe I'll just walk faster.

Good news of the day: while the deli still won't bring back butter pies, the bakery across the square has finally got on board with the food that got me through college (sort of).

Moving on, quote of the day comes from the mysterious mind of Líam and reads, quite simply, as follows: "This isn't helping my biscuit-rage!"

There was a whole biscuity debate to provide context for that remark, I must add. It probably had something to do with my lament that invading oreos are inferior, inedible, and in our biscuit tins.

Headline of the day is crickety in nature, which is always good, and reads as such: "Anderson fit for ashes."

All right, he is from Burnley, but come on, that's a bit harsh.

Before I go, a note to myself: In polite company, no matter how dull anecdotes about a recently-heard radio programme may be, if they happen to feature tales about some guy's first job in a lab and his accidental breeding of excess test mice and subsequent shoebox/cottonwool/chloroform -> furnace -> explosion disposal debacle, one's weary reply should not feature the term, "Mousewitch".

After silence, stutters.

Bank holiday Monday. Means more to some than others, but in any event it still feels like a holiday. I am spending its early part drinking tea and listening to False Priest while engaged in this much belated return to rambling into the blogosphere, and plan to spend its later part playing Premier Manager 2, having recovered the Amiga 600 from the attic.

Early 'nineties gaming and not-yet-released music. The way forward, or at least sideways. Tip of the cap to the Doktorb over there for providing the musics, and while I'm at it I suppose to dad for buying the 'puter the better part of eighteen years ago.

What has been going on this month? Some drinks have been drunk. Cricket has been at its best and worst. I became briefly resolved to see through a Pulgasari shadow puppet theatre production after it was suggested to me that Kim Jong-il may be haunted by the fact that he's just no Pol Pot and I began to wonder what might happen if he were. I also remember pondering and discussing the perpetual white-maleness and decreasing age of the Doctor, and while I don't have a problem that he always appears to be sort-of British, I had wondered whether he might manifest a British-Bengali, which I'd be okay with, or even a woman, which I don't think would sit so well, since he'd be all "They're boobs. I have boobs now. Boobs are cool." which would probably get old pretty fast. In short, then, very little has been happening over here.

So little, in fact, that I found myself re-reading archived rantings from a time when I could be bothered to 'blog' on a more frequent basis, and had more than one digit in my regular readership figures. I think that it has given me some insight into why we (well, I, at least) tend to forget dreams within minutes of waking, because -and I know, as I wrote at the time, that everyone loves to hear about other people's dreams- I committed one in particular to text, and, well... turns out, in this dream, I had found a small chimpanze, living in some public toilets with a dead swan, which was once its only friend and was now its only attire. While this Bjork-chimp may have had style it was, surprisingly given its cushy lifestyle, mentally disturbed, and prone to tantrums. The only way to calm it, and I'll be damned if I know how I was supposed to have figured this out, was to have it dance like a robot. Long story short, some years ago I had a dream about a chimp that danced the robot in a urinal while wearing the fetid remains of the swan it had loved. Your move, Salad Fingers.

Well, this has been completely worthwhile for both of us, I'm sure. I'd really rather be spending this, probably one of the year's last days of sunshine, in a beer garden, but without money for beer that's just shite, so Of Montreal and seeing if we can get Southport into the Premiership it is!

Pardon?

"You're just jealous."
"Of what, the Welsh Assembly?"
"No."
"Oh."

So, turns out that starting a new blog dealy was probably a waste of time, eh? I've not done a great job of updating this thing and, to be honest, it took reading that a roided-up ex-bouncer named for a medieval defensive earthwork found the time in the middle of a gun rampage to sit down and knock out forty pages to make me think that, really, I could probably find five minutes between getting a haircut and having another butter pie to put together a few meandering paragraphs. So, here they are.

On the not-very-interesting subject of Mr.Moat, by the way, I predict that this will all come to a head when he tries to shoot another copper but succumbs to writer's cramp and drops his gun.

Meanwhile, in far more important news, Murali's retiring from proper cricket. Can't blame him since he's 38 and playing for five days straight against the best players in the world probably isn't terribly easy, but world sport is just about to get that much less interesting, and I hadn't much enthusiasm for it to begin with. I've not much more to say about it other than that I wouldn't mind going to Galle later this month to watch his last game. Anybody fancy giving me a lift to Sri Lanka? I expect he'll finish just shy of 800 test wickets (in twelve fewer matches than it took Warne to get, what, 708 or so at the expense of two or three more runs a piece?) unless he really rips into the Indians.

Ah well, even without him, and Sanath, and Sachoo, and the lamentable impact of the (increasingly) limited overs formats, cricket will still be more worthwhile than the footy, I should think.

Recently I had one of those thrilling conversations with an ill-informed and strangely irate nationalist deals involving an American chap who was getting into 'soccer' for the first time thanks to the world cup. He was completely carried away by his team's extremely lucky draw with a god-awful England (which, by the by, didn't bother me... I was rather hoping that Slovenia might go through) and, for whatever reason, taking the opportunity to defend America's role in the world. "I dont think we owe the world a damn thing!" he asserted, for reasons best known to himself, "You owe like fourteen trillion dollars, dude." I observed, but naturally he was able to offer a relevant counter, pointing out that, after all, "Without us the world would be speaking German and Japanese.", and though I wouldn't mind being able to speak two foreign languages that would never have had any direct relevance in my home country (since Operation Sealion was abandoned before America even entered the war), I couldn't help noting that, "Without France, Spain, and the Netherlands you'd be spelling color with a u." and then he threw his shoe in a bush and that was that, because well, what else can you say?

Now, if this had been the cricket world cup, I'd not have had to endure that, and nor would you. And that's why it's a better game. And the world cup doesn't even happen in the best cricket format.

Well, that was all pretty dull, hey? There hasn't been much else to tell. I was hit in the face outside that damnable club by random can't-handle-her-drink girl and still have bruises on my arms from being grabbed by her and/or one of her mates, but really this is just another chapter in the debacle-ridden chronicles of nights-out-with-the-Doktorb that we needn't examine in much more detail and are perhaps best to just laugh-off with an, "Oh, Preston..." and the observation that, after all, those 3am chips were pretty good. Oh, and this morning I nearly choked to death over breakfast, and I think mango juice started leaking from my eye. Maybe the Ferret this weekend for't Empire State and a limited number of pints, though last time I was in there I was accused of being a scouser, so we'll just see...

I appear to be listening to Screaming Lord Sutch and the Savages, so it's clearly time to get out of here.

Breakfast at Timperley's

This is a butter pie from the local caterers. 'tis a little bland without pepper, but amazingly greasy and crumbly and in other ways good.



While eating it I was bothered by dogs and children, but the blue-rosetted ground-pounders stopped wasting their breath on me for a while. Is pie their weakness? I hope so.

The remainder of the day has been passed in an insomniac haze, wandering around bookshops and sitting in tearooms. I belted my head on the roof of the bus, again. I am begining to suspect that the current generation of double deckers may in fact be single deckers with a second level built-in rather than on. The book shop for which I have previously-neglected Christmas vouchers (and would have otherwise shunned in favour of the little place across town) had none of this, and nothing by him, and they didn't have the other thing I wanted, either, so I got about four quid's worth of Dawkins, because, pff, four quid of anything doesn't seem likely to be regretted. Unless its two and a half pints of that ah, so that's why we can get two and a half pints for about four quid ale. But this wasn't.

In still more enthralling news, I can report having recently enjoyed my first barbecue of the year, all be it a spur of the moment affair that has at least taught us that yes, properly interfaced with a chimenea (sans chimney, which in hindsight should have been removed safely before lighting the fire rather than gingerly afterwards), about a dozen matches, and a broken chair leg/poker, a stack of UKIP leaflets will cook a chicken thigh fillet, some hash browns, and a veggie burger, and to a satisfactory crisp at that. So that bodes well for the future, even if nothing else does (I'm looking at you, Tomorrow Night).

Other topics dispensed with due to tiredness and sobriety include the story of how my great uncle was kicked out of a paragliding club after they realised he was thirty years older than he'd claimed, earning him a few column inches in one of the most ragged of national rags; the story of how he allegedly/arguably left the rest of the family destitute for a generation in making-off with great-granddad's earnings amassed in the course of becoming county welterweight (or similar) champion; the story of how I came, in the course of (what should have been) a simple CD burning process, to hate any number of outdated programmes with which my PC and I are lumbered; a little bit about how I may have finally given up on trying to convince myself that T/20 is sort of cricket and not a fucking travesty unto man; and more FFS don't elect the Tories you stupid, stupid bastards stuff.

I've never voted Tory before, but I wonder if Lorraine Fullbrook's placard could reheat a pie...

Avocado on Everything

This afternoon I am mostly watching Matthew Hayden pretend that the semi-final of a major T/20 competition is in fact catching practice for the fielders... and apparently India bloody well needs it. Oh, no, there he goes. Useless heap of Aussie. This would be an awful lot better with added beer garden.

I don't remember off hand whether or not I've previously been dull enough to mention it here, but since I returned from Aus I've been trying to eat less meat, and for me that means less bacon (cutting out chicken would mean my death within weeks, and I didn't eat beef or lamb anyway). Unfortunately, last week I headed down to a local bakery in hopes of finding a replacement source of butter pies since the deli unaccountably stopped selling them, and though it turns out that they do make 'em (fresh and, I've since discovered, pretty bloody well, so that might be a stop on the next here-to-town pub crawl, if Doktorb's reading) I had arrived much too early, and none were ready... but, of course, bacon was being fried right there over the counter, and freshly baked bread was being brought out, so, in the absence of alternatives, I relapsed. And it was good.

Since then I've been back on the bacon, so to speak. Mostly I look on this as an opportunity to eat more avocado, however. Yesterday's attempted BLAT (BLT with avocado, something that pretty much sustained me when I lived within walking distance of the St.Kilda Galleon) fell foul of a lettuce shortage, and so with the substitution of rocket salad became, I suppose, a BRAT, at least until I realised that a tomato shortage was hot on the heels of the lettuce situation, and a finely sliced red pepper brought into being a BRAP. Definitely the best thing I've ever made, for what little that's worth. Moral of the story, Chiv's adventures with food do not make interesting reading.

Lesson learned.

In other thrilling news, the recycling bin is full, and it's not even the weekend, yet. I understand that the Tories have a bajillion pounds to squander on burying people who'll never vote for them -and have told them so directly- in phonecalls and leaflets, but who the fuck is giving UKIP money to burn in similar fashion?

On the impending election... we're told by the 'free' (expensive) press that the process of creating a coalition government would cause the markets to panic, and this would be bad for the economy. Obviously this is an over-simplified nonsense they're trying to feed us. Some people try to argue it down to size. Fair enough. However, I say we respond in kind. If 'they' panic, it's obvious that they did it on purpose in hopes of influencing the democratic process. Thus they are opposed to true British democracy. Thus they are declared enemies of the British people. Thus we tear the skin off their faces and feed it to them. End of motherloving problem. Or just tell the Queen that they're enemies of the people, and that unless she uses some of her powers we're going to finally take them away from her. In any event, wankers lose their heads, everyone else benefits.

I'm watching Empire Records, and it's almost as bad as I remember. But I'm still going to watch the rest of it.

Even when it was the bears I knew it was her.

Ah, for feck's sake. Finding reasons to be glad about returning from Aus to the UK had been difficult enough, and then I read this. Might be time to make up a, "Your sort isn't welcome here!" sign and head for the airport.

Oh... well. On other antipodean matters of little real importance, I recently spent an entertaining evening with family, based on chianti and nostalgia, during which I learned that I'm related to one of New Zealand's greatest ever footballers. Shame the Kiwis aren't terrbily good at football. Still, er, hall of famer with his own Wikipedia article. Lately there seems to have been a lot of talk about how close I came to being born in Aus or NZ (or not at all), which I think is mostly just cruel.

Also, my family hates Malta. Not sure what to do with that information, myself.

Returning to my computer I find that I'd forgotten to set my messenger status to indicate my absence, and after a whole day of that it's a bit depressing to find that nobody's even tried to strike up a conversation with me. On the other hand, as I type this, somebody is trying to educate me about, "The Dali Llama" and all I can think is, man, that's a surreal camelid, and maybe I was happier being left alone.

Back to hot cross buns, tea, and Wolfhounds. After years of refusing to pay attention, I've finally come down with a fairly severe case of YouTube addiction. Of course I'm still refusing to use it to watch/listen-to anything created much this side of 1991.

Doctor, doctor give me a sleeping potion, for I can not close my eyes...

Also, why's it snowing, again?

This is ridiculous. I'm being defeated by a mechanical pencil. Why must I own a mechanical pencil? Why can't I put the damn thing back together properly? Why is life so terrible?

I console myself with hot cross buns, twelve for £1.50 at the Co-op. Splendid. Not sure why they're so well stocked with hot cross buns in January, but I don't have a problem with it.

Am I the only one who assumed that Salinger was already long dead? Last person I asked replied, "For all his productivity, he may as well have been." Which I thought was perhaps a little harsh. Damn freeloading nonagenarians! Ah well, hardly the most depressing news I've encountered this week. "A man suffered a fractured skull when he was attacked with a crowbar during a robbery at a maggot farm in Lancashire." Not only do we have maggot farms, but people who are prepared to use potentially deadly violence to rob the bloody things. It's all go.

Still closer to home and following Sunday dinner with the family, I've just burned myself on a cup of tea that I made before going for a shower and left to cool. Dad, in his words, has, "...fixed the kettle, the way it should have been made in the first place". Brilliant.

I decided not to include in this entry a rant about the evil nature of the five-day week I don't work. Maybe next time.

I wouldn't expect that he'd be gentle with Zippy.

Near endless tea and hot cross buns, finally finishing La Terre after perhaps too many months spent wading through descriptions of farming methods in the Second Empire and Jesus Christ's flatulence -not that it wasn't all enjoyable-, Datblygu on repeat, and a comfy chair. Later, strong ale. Take that, Sunday.

I'm finding regular writing rather less easy than I remember it being. Perhaps you've noticed. Most likely, I suppose, it's because I'm not currently living a terribly interesting life and have been idling for weeks through the most drawn-out case of a head cold I can imagine ever having afflicted anybody whose immune system wasn't compromised by anything I'd very much hope I haven't got. I lack the energy for adventuring, in short, and have been trying not to write just for the sake of booing Chelsea or remarking on how encouraging it is to see the likes of Afghanistan taking the cricket half way seriously and giving the Irish a good kicking. Not that I've anything against the Irish playing cricket, either.

I am tempted to complain about the lack of cricket on free television, mind. Well, internationals, anyway... I seem to have lost all faith and interest in the domestic game. In fact let's count that a complaint in full, and move on.

Bearing in mind the lack of genuinely interesting things going on in my world at the moment, and the fact that while Sunday's televisual broadcasting features nothing I really want it does offer lots and lots of Star Trek franchises, please forgive me a moment of foolishness as I admit that I may have recently made the mistake of using this wonderful internet we're both, you and I, not enjoying right now to ask a stupid question in relation to one such franchise. "So, these Ocampa" I started -and I may have spelled it with a K, initially, but was soon put right, of course-, "am I right to take from this episode that they have two genders, male and female, only the latter of which carries young; that they have only one child-bearing cycle in their lifespan; and that a single birth gives them no cause for alarm?". On being told that, yes, this does seem to be the case, I wasted a little more of my life by adding, "So they haven't died-off because?..."

And that, son, is why I can never go back to Starfleet.

Granted, given that I've certainly not seen anywhere near all the available episodes, I may have missed something that would shed light on the matter, but heck, I asked the internet, and if nobody there knows about these things... Doesn't Star Trek hire nerds to spot and correct these gaping holes in their logic? What are Trekkies for? The most interesting response I got, and truthfully a large part of my motivation in recounting this non-event, read, "Yeah, they'd of died off... Leave it Star Trek to get physics right, but horrible bungle sex."

Which just made me wonder... well, I don't see the relevance, but is there any other kind with Bungle?

Still, I've heard more troubling things. On the latest flare-up of the alcohol debate and specifically what a mess Scotland's alleged to be, one mad Scottish bint was heard to declare that, "A Scottish woman is now more likely to die from alcohol-related causes than an English man, and that's just not acceptable." Well, unless she was just informing us that lone Englishmen don't kill as many Scottish women as booze does -which, I would think, is not necessarily a bad thing in any case-, this Englishman certainly won't be letting her anywhere near his pint.

Sunday is the day for sitting about and picking holes in sci-fi and the legitimate concerns of responsible citizens, isn't it? Or am I just thinking of blogs in general?

More when I'm drunker.

And another thing, if oranges are orange, shouldn't you fuck off?

"...For instance, my employer forbids me from taking tips on threat of termination, but they're legally not allowed to do that. I need to check with a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that I can sue them for the balance and toss in some emotional damage as well."

"You're a more reasonable man than I. Unless by, 'check with a lawyer' you meant, 'buy a sword', in which case we're pretty much the same."

"Ha! That's the exact difference between a Democratic Socialist and a Revolutionary Communist!"

Hello, I am enjoying some insomnia. I hope you are well, unless you are Mark Watson, in which case I hope you choke on your fecking pear cider and get the fuck off my television.

Here at [couldn't be arsed to come up with an original name/address/title so went with the Solex track that happened to be playing on Spotify when I signed up] I shall be mostly absent and neglectful of any readers I may inexplicably acquire. Other than that, expect the odd drunken rant about things that don't really concern me. And possibly (probably) some similarly drunken assertions that I don't care what you say, Fairuza Balk is lovely.

Let's seamlessly weave in a sample!

After a fortnight of worryingly persistent if otherwise mild illness I am now feeling somewhat better (as I'm sure you'll be delighted to know) after having a couple of ales and ranting at my antipodean brother about how much I hate all these phone in and tell Cat Deeley what you think about a prancing wanker shows he's missing. A bench full of degenerates saying the opposite of what just happened is only funny for a finite period. "You were great", as I helpfully explained, seems to have become Beebish for, "Dick Dickington couldn't be more of a dick on the dickingest day of his life if he had an electrified dicking machine."

So, we're on the cutting edge here at Good Comrades. Slicing to the heart of meaty issues, of course.

As for me, I like tea, and terrible little rhymes, though I prefer alliteration, most of which I'm keeping to myself. I do not like rabbits, mushrooms, or weilders of unelected authority. I am much older than I look, unreasonably skinny, and kinda a Communist. I am not a crook. I have a Dogtanian T-shirt, a nervous habit of tapping or scratching the middle of my chest (which has ruined said T-shirt), and an unexplained fondness for the Welsh. I do not have a job, leprosy, or a girlfriend. You are not surprised. Pod can explode. Pod does not understand, "go fuck himself". I have been to Ireland, Canada, France, Australia, and Bulgaria when it was still a People's Republic. And yet I've never been to me. I rode a bear. I did not ride the walrus. I can touch my nose with my tongue. I can not drive (so far as I'm aware). I plan to learn a new language. I do not know whether it ought to be Welsh, or something useful like Quechua or Serbo-Croatian. I am glad to suppose that I shall never work another day in an asparagus packing shed. I miss Melbourne, a bit. I watch cricket. I do not play. I think that's pretty much the sum of me.

Oh, and once I saw a blimp.