Let me see if I can get to grips with this whole Us vs Them War on Terror Spreading Freedom and Democracy business. It seems to be Us, being largely English-speaking white people who believe Jesus rose from the dead, are the good guys because we believe in Freedom and democracy (if not separation of church and state) and our elected leaders 'liberate' people by blowing them up. They, being largely brown people who believe Jesus was a prophet but not a god, are the bad people because they reject Freedom and democracy, and callously murder people by, erm, blowing them up.
   So where exactly do Hamas and Hizbollah fit in? Like Us their stated aim is to 'liberate' the people, destroy the oppressors and certainly seem to have the whole blowing people up routine down quite well. And they are now also officially elected. In both Palestine and Lebanon these parties have done extremely well in elections. That's more than Bush managed the first time around, and Blair has actually lost a lot of votes recently. Seems to me if somebody can claim to have democracy on their side, it's most definitely not Us.
   Look at what the good guys are squabbling over. The Dutch have called up the Belgian ambassador because one of their politicians let slip the Dutch prime minister is, to put it politely, a wanker, and he looks like Harry Potter. He was offended. Don't know why, because it seemed a fairly accurate description to me, but most of all it seems odd that one of the governments so absolutely determined to bring Freedom to the Middle East and is willing to make great sacrifices to achieve it, would complain a Belgian politician exercising his rights to freedom of speech and freedom of opinion because he compared him to a fictional character. Apparently, when these guys say they are willing to sacrifice they don't mean a wee bit of personal indignation; they mean a few dozen soldiers and a couple of thousand dead children. Far less important of course.

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I have a stunning effect on women. Literally apparently. Wherever I turn up, they just keel over. I think I should get in touch with the company that makes my deodorant, just in case this is a common reaction people have to the stuff. I know its ads always hint women will start acting most peculiarly when they are around you and you have sprayed it on twelve hours previous, but I was hoping for a less dramatic effect to be perfectly honest with you. Potent stuff though. People collapse fifteen feet away from me, facing somebody else.
   It never ceases to amaze me how people react to a casualty at their feet. Just as you are checking the airways some tit spilling his Bacardi and Coke will hover over you, standing in the way and in your light, and will invariably ask “is she alright?” And god forbid she is, because they will sod off on the double. Only if there is a problem will they encroach on your already limited space and insist on casually sipping their drink as the show unfolds in front of them. “What’s wrong with her, like?” You and your buddies are taking up all the air; go and stand outside and try not to breathe, you bloody tool.
   The first rule of practical medicine is of course: if you don’t know what you are doing, stay the fuck away. I therefore have great respect for any doorman –normally hell-bent on being in charge of any situation- who puts up his hands and admits he hasn’t got a clue but is standing by with his mobile to phone an ambulance. Trouble is, all doormen are supposed to be first-aid trained. Odd. Still, I will take an honest doorman holding the door over drunken idiots who step over some poor unconscious sod lying on the dance floor. Shit, can’t be bothered walking around just because this bastard can’t hold his beer.
   As I was casually carrying somebody out of the door of a nightclub the other day, some pratt actually decided to play deaf as I tried to wade my way through the throng in front of the bar, urging everybody rather strictly and at considerable volume to MOVE - FUCKING MOVE. That may not have been his best move of the evening. I’m not sure what the rules are when it comes to injuring other people while treating a patient, but Damien + charge = well over twenty stone of human beings, concentrated on one size 12 infantry boot, balancing on his foot. That must have hurt. Rightfully so of course, but nonetheless I was glad to find he had stopped yammering when I came back in, or ethics would have demanded I carry him out as well. Probably a good thing for him as well. Wouldn’t want to accidentally drop him on his arse now, would I?

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Call me Chameleon. Blend in anywhere, I can. Nobody even looks at me twice. Master of stealth and adapting to my surroundings. With a nonchalance bordering on arrogance I can sway into a place and look like I have been coming there for absolute years, and instantly make friends with whoever I happen to bump into.
   Okay, maybe not. I think there might be a small chance I got a few strange stares when I strolled into a posh wine bar and completely unfazed asked for a pint. Perhaps I should have worn a jacket. A proper shirt maybe. Hell, I think they would have been impressed if I had bothered to wear a T-shirt with sleeves. But you know, we can’t win them all. A few nervous punters did immediately check their personal belongings and probably pre-dialled 999 on their incredibly flashy and undoubtedly extortionately expensive phones, but on the whole I think it went rather well.
   There was the moment where I had to check my eyesight when I noticed a piece of paper that announced some sort of competition, in which you would be entered automatically when ordering –and presumably paying for- a glass of champagne priced at a meagre £5,75. For a glass of bubbly crap some Frenchman with a chest infection made by walking around in it with bare feet. I’m not saying it’s not nice; I am just pointing out now that we have a national minimum wage we should also have a national maximum price for drinks.
   Not that anyone in this place has a clue what minimum wage might be. Apart from the bar staff perhaps. The plebiscites One barks at when One has not had a very good day at One’s office. I actually met a bloke –decent enough guy- who made it absolutely clear he was not a lawyer, but a marketing advisor for lawyers. Spin doctoring for the spin doctors. It’s a shame he was such a pleasant fellow, because he is definitely going to Hell.
   I suppose it was only fair sooner or later some intoxicated middle-aged office dweller in a tie -A tie! At midnight in the pub with your mates! His mother must have suffered in childbirth, pushing out a bairn with a stick already up its arse- would come over and enquire with just that tiny hint of loathing in his voice just why I felt it necessary to bless this establishment with my presence. Which was a good question, so instead of trying to work that one out and relay it in networking-speak so he would understand, I told him I was trying to shag the lassie behind the bar. Instantly accepted into their midst as if I was a long lost sheep finally returning to the flock. I guess I am a natural when it comes to blending in with the rich and obnoxious.

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The world is finally coming to an end it seems. Perhaps not the whole world, but definitely Edinburgh. It has withstood invasions, occupations, bombings and raids. From our castle walls we have fought off many a foe desperate to take it, and we are still here. It is a centre of cultural sophistication, defended throughout the ages by those who live here and refuse to bow down to foreign rule. So it was all rather surprising to hear the end is nigh, and certainly that the cause of this impending doom is a single mad Irishman who looks like there are seven species of bird nesting on top of his head.
   Sir Bob -possibly Saint Bob- Geldoff has urged a million people to converge on Edinburgh for July 6th. And the local law enforcement and planning agencies, are to put it mildly, not best pleased. Put less mildly, they are shitting themselves. Totally irresponsible. We won’t be able to deal with such an influx of people. Except of course that we do, every August. Possibly slightly better-off, well prepared and ultimately more American people, but it is not like we don’t know what it’s like to have to kick people in the shins just to be able to cross the road. And if it doesn’t fit, we’ll chuck Bob overboard first. How’s that for a compromise?
   The biggest fear the organisers have now is the lack of portaloos, the lot of them apparently hired for the Gleneagles G8 and accompanying mayhem across Scotland, and there are no more to be found in either the UK or Ireland, so we are now approaching suppliers on the continent. Left-hand flush I imagine. Ridiculous of course. We have plenty of toilet facilities. Just put a big sign outside the parliament. Even the locals would leave the comfort of their own home just for the satisfaction of depositing a fresh jobbie in front of the main entrance. And while we are at it, I think we should make Bute House a public urinal. Hardly offensive to the neighbours; they see nothing but pricks around that place anyway.
   It’s all scaremongering. They did the same thing in London. The anti-war march was a potential terrorist target, but the England world cup victory parade was not. Fat Yankee tourists stuffing their face at McDonalds is a cultural event, angry Bolivian anarchists chucking bricks through the window at McDonalds a national disaster. It’s all bollocks. We shall be welcoming our visitors with open arms, and woe betide any fucker who tries to actually take over this city. Be it the coppers, anarchists or Saint Bob, we know how to defend ourselves. Bring it on.

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For crying out loud. I know that I am a pre-microwave and mobile phone model, but I am definitely post-atom bomb. I should have been born with at least some sort of ability to operate machinery. It should have been programmed in long before I was born. Normally I am quite keen to let nature takes its course, but you really start considering Aldous Huxley’s nightmare vision of conditioning babies when you come to realise you have trouble operating a dish washer.
   It’s hardly the most complicated piece of machinery. Minimum amount of knobs and buttons, simple function and you can walk away from it while it works. Or at least, that’s what you think. Not when yours truly undertakes to wash a few coffee cups. Seemed simple enough. Stick cups in tray, load tray into machine. Find washing up powder. Powder, powder, powder… No powder. Arse. Ah, fuck it. I’ll chuck some washing up liquid in there instead.
   You can stop laughing at the back. It’s not funny. Christ, all I did was press a button. The last time I saw that much foam spread across the floor of such a vast area was when my brother and I ventured on an ill-advised visit to a local nightclub in the south of France. It looked like I imagine a kiddies performance of the Backstreet Boys would look like. It crawled along, swallowing anything in its path like the Blob. And I know this machine did this on purpose. You could argue machines don’t have a mind of your own, but then you would also think in the year 2005 mankind would have developed to a degree where Western adults know how to work a fucking dishwasher.

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Some people would call me a smoker rights activist. We are not quite as popular or well organised as animal rights activists, we don’t go picketing health spas and generally try not to blow anything up intentionally (though hanging around with smokers does make it more likely), but there is an increasing need for our kind. Some might argue animals deserve their rights and our protection more than human beings silly enough to poison themselves as that is a completely voluntary act on the part of people who should know better, but I disagree with them for the exact same reason. To me smoking is just a very pleasant and slow form of suicide, and as we have no laws against cannibalism in this country, it seems stupid to outlaw something as deeply rooted in Scottish society as killing yourself.
   Besides, smokers you can reason with occasionally. Bears naturally maul and bite, and when you start teaching them circus tricks to tame them these activists will claim it is cruel and against their nature. Well, it is well-documented that human beings are naturally self-destructive, and so putting them through the whole system of withdrawal symptoms (not to mention the suffering us in the immediate surroundings are subjected to when somebody starts craving the nicotine) it is for the benefit of mankind. Torturing animals wrong, torturing people good. Which is why animal rights activists resort to nail bombing residential areas, and smoker rights activists don’t leave the pub.
   There is however one small problem I have with a small minority of smokers, and these people are known as ‘social smokers’. This is the single most ridiculous term ever applied to a person slowly demolishing lung tissue voluntarily. They don’t smoke when they are on their own, but when they are in the company of other people they can poison, they light up. What the fuck is social about that? Seems rather anti-social to me. In fact, it is bloody inconsiderate, that’s what it is. I will put up with your habits and addictions because I know you can’t help yourself, and I will defend you amongst your peers (you won’t be able to; you’ll only run out of breath), but if you do it simply to eradicate my respiratory system and then tell me this is because you are being ‘social’ I will gladly hand you over to a science laboratory where some bloke in a pair of lab glasses can perform tests on you. I’m not that committed to your rights.

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You know, much as I appreciate the National Health Service, every once in a while you happen to come across a doctor you really suspect could better be deployed elsewhere. Something a little less straining perhaps, that doesn’t involve a lot of inter-personal skills. I am hardly one to talk when it comes to that last issue, but then I am not testing people for gonorrhoea. Not on a daily basis anyway. It always seems to me if you are not going to be friendly to people about to find out whether they have contracted an incurable ailment that may lead to a slow and agonising death, somewhere in the world a careers advisor should go back to school.
   So no smiles, no ‘good mornings’ and definitely not the kind of atmosphere you could do with locked in a small examination room with a female doctor and your trousers around your ankles. I’m not expecting loving tender care –certainly not on the health budget we have- but a tiny bit of sympathy would have been nice. She even tried to convince me I was going to pass out. I explained I always look like that in the morning, and having a needle stuck in my arm was not going to knock me off my feet unless she was then going to wiggle it about frantically. I’m a blood donor, for Christ’s sake. After that it would need to be a big fucking needle to scare me. Not to mention I just had the meanest specialist in Scotland manually inspect my testicles and take a swab from the inside of my urethra. Bring on the needle, I say.
   Logical train of thought apparently no longer a requirement when it comes to being a doctor either. Have you ever had sex with another man? Interesting question, considering I just mentioned I am a blood donor and homosexuals cannot donate blood. That would be a no then. Ever injected drugs? See above. Ever slept with a prostitute? Did I mention I was a blood donor? There’s people waiting outside, you know. If you can forego on the pleasantries that would make me feel at ease perhaps we can do without the stupid questions as well. Have you ever been tested for HIV? Erm, I would like to think when they say they test every donation of blood they are not just saying that to make me feel better...
   It’s not even as though these doctors never bump into the nurses from the blood bank. They are neighbours! They share the same canteen. Talk about being clued up on developments in the field of medicine. Next thing you know they’ll be checking if you’ve had all your vaccinations. How many people have you slept with in the last three months? Not very many. Were they all female? No. I am a hetero sexual blood donor who sleeps with blokes. What do you think? It’s like interrogation. Like they are trying to trip you up; making you contradict yourself. So first they let you know the doctor is a miserable sour-faced bint, and then they expect you to lie about your own health. No wonder the health system is fucked.

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I have to stop sleeping with university graduates. Or maybe just intellectual people full stop. Why can't I just be a typical alpha-male and find myself a teenage blonde firmly intent on a hair dressing apprenticeship and with no recollection of either watching the Wall come down, or ever having heard about it in school. The kind that answers she is going shopping for shoes when you ask her what is she planning, not planning a siege of some deviant company testing products on animals or writing a thesis on nuclear proliferation. A nice, uncomplicated girl.
   It's not that it makes me feel stupid when I am sleeping with people better educated than I am -I need no reminding I have a weird fetish for women more intelligent than I am- but it does make me feel like a social outcast. Normal people don't behave this way. I refuse to believe there are other people who can manage to wake up, make tea and start debating the occupation of Lebanon throughout the eighties. Nobody is that screwed up.
   I was actually called Machiavellian by someone. In itself neither very accurate nor particularly polite, but worst of all this was four o'clock in the morning after we had stumbled home from a nightclub! Pillow talk at this stage should be restricted to strictly monosyllabic mutterings. No need to start bringing dead Italian intellectuals into the conversation. Certainly not ones whose names I have trouble spelling when I am sober, let alone half asleep and totally pissed. Being expected to perform to a decent standard both physically and mentally I think is just too much to ask.

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In the United States they have something called Megan's Law. It allows the general public to be informed of any sex offender -mainly paedophiles- living in your area. So you can avoid them, not kill them. Is the general idea. I like this. I want it brought over to Scotland. But not for sex offenders. I want a list of all 14.597 bastards in my area that voted for Labour. Fourteen and a half thousand people! Living on my fucking doorstep! Jesus Christ, I have never been so tempted to buy extra locks and bolts for all doors and windows, or perhaps even sticking bars on the outside. Imagine one of these bloody animals trying to come into your house. I have friends with kids, you know. Don't want them to be subjected to such a horrible creatures at a young age. Why do they have to go and live in my bloody neighbourhood? Can't they live somewhere else? Ramadi for example. According to these people, it is an absolutely wonderful place that needs a lot of British and other Western people there, so why don't they sod off and go and give someone else the willies.
   It's not all bad news of course. 28.043 people voted against Labour, which makes it easier to still walk around the supermarket, but that still leaves a lot of people happily dipping their pencil in that jar filled with human blood and putting a nice big fat dripping X right across that void usually housing a conscience. Quite a few of them not very openly either. I did see the occasional poster in the window, urging passers-by to vote Labour (mental note to self: when passing in middle of night, piss through letterbox), but most people managed to hide pretty well. Actual, with Labour's track record, they probably voted by post. Seventeen times.
   These people scare me. There is something Dickensian about their malice. The people who argue just voting for Labour isn't like actually sending thousands of troops over to rip children apart with cluster bombs yourself. Presumably they also think Operation Ore is a waste of time and money. Hey, all these people subscribing to child porn sites aren't actually doing anything wrong, are they? It's not like they are raping 6-month-old boys themselves; they are only cheering them on! How can that possibly be wrong?
   Throughout Scotland about one in every six inhabitants voted for Labour. That is just scary. People you drink with might have voted for them. People you know, people who are related to you, people you have slept with, people who are paid to look after your children. And still people are focusing their concerns on the BNP. The British Nazi -sorry, National- Party received fifteen hundred votes. That is fifteen hundred people who support the idea of 'voluntary repatriation' of non-white people, the return of the death penalty and a stop to immigration. And another million people who support carpet bombing hospitals, torturing prisoners and execution without any trial. Comfortable thought, eh?

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It's a wee bit difficult to explain, really. Very soft. And bouncy. Extraordinarily bouncy. A bit like Tigger perhaps. Or a kangaroo. The latter perhaps being a more suitable example, as I keep walking around town in a thick sweatshirt with a big pouch on the front. Well, I say walking; it's more like bobbing around town. All because of my new trainers. I have been trying to remember when I last owned a pair, but I gave up once I had back-tracked to the point I was still in school. I recall distinctly I used to do PE in a pair of shoddy red things that could conceivably pass for running shoes, provided of course they were not subjected to any close inspection. And as far as I am aware, they weren't mine. Certainly didn't pay for them, and God only knows how they got to rot away somewhere near the gymnasium, in a locker that was allocated to yours truly. Magic, probably. And, unless somebody got extremely pro-active and very brave, I suspect that is where they are today, if they have not entirely disintegrated by now.
   This new pair I got my hands on and feet into -after spending absolute ages trying to find any distinguishing marks between trainers for men and trainers for women, and perhaps more importantly which side of the shop I should focus on and eventually resorting to asking some blond lass in a shell suit, smelling of hairspray and I suspected of having mastered the art of chewing gum without the customers noticing, who looked so bored and disinterested I almost felt sorry for presenting her with the inconvenience of having to deal with a customer- are a bit of a novelty then. Especially the bouncy part. Usually when I put my foot down, whether strapped into a boot or barefoot, it tends to come to halt upon impact. Not anymore. It's like a bloody yo-yo effect. I keep suspecting I look like some kind of unstable lanky bit of pudding everybody hopes will stop shaking before it keels over.
   Now, if I remember correctly, trainers used to be the gauge of just how cool you were. Or maybe that is just an association I have forced upon myself to somehow attribute my lack of friends to the aforementioned pair of cloth and leather (possibly plastic) I was forced to play hockey in, the lot of us having to play rugby unshod, in case we would hurt one another. Somehow teachers figured it was awfully dangerous to wear shoes as you chased a sphere and tried to tackle each other, but did not have any safety concerns of any kind when it came to handing 20 teenagers wooden sticks and then telling them to swing them about and attempt to whack a ball hard enough to strike a pensioner to death with a single blow, and aim specifically in between two posts, or if that was too complicated a target, the poor sod standing in the middle. It's scary to think the same people told me not to do drugs.
   My trainers I am afraid are not very cool. But in this brave new world of modifications and upgrades, I am pretty sure I can work something out. We're not using the Christmas lights at the moment, so perhaps I can attach them to the sides. Actually, I am not sure what constitutes as the must-have these days. In fact, I can't imagine how you could possibly modify your shoes to make you look good, when you are actually bouncing about, involuntarily perhaps, like a marsupial on amphetamines. Why can't I ever buy anything that will actually improve my standing in society?

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I have strange habits when it comes to picking my holidays. Instead of picking those days of the year that Edinburgh is nice and quiet and then set off for the sun for half of it just doesn't do it for me. I crave conflict. So I take time off to join the riots during the G8 summit. A nice, quiet and healthy way of spending your leisure time. Or perhaps barricading the door as anti-omnivorous maniacs try and batter it down. I swear, if I could afford a holiday in the sun, I'd end up in bloody Lebanon. And considering I can't, I ended up in Morecambe. For a punk festival.
   This didn't seem like such a bad idea at the time, figuring I quite enjoy punk music. It is amazing how quickly you lose sight of the fact I am not, strictly speaking, a punk. For one, punks don't have long hair. Especially male ones. Some fucker picked up on this the moment I boarded the express shuttle for Morecambe from Lancaster -in operation since 1812 and still going strong, if perhaps not very fast- and announced there was a bloody hippie present. Took me a few seconds to realise he was talking about me.
   I was even outnumbered by skinheads! At a punk festival. Black boots, white shoelaces, jeans that must surely constrict the blood flow and red suspenders right underneath a shaven head and a whole bunch of unpleasant tattoos. Proper no-bullshit low-foreheaded skinheads. And these punks are picking on me! It's good to see these two particular social groupings no longer feel the need to try and kick each other in the skull every possible chance they get, but not when it is at my bloody expense, okay?
   Punks are an interesting breed. I knew this already of course, but due to the fact my circle of friends covers a rather broad part of the social spectrum (I even know Christian fundamentalists) it tends to slip my mind. One thing punks do when they are tired for example, is lie down and go to sleep. This may sound very reasonable, but when I say they lie down, I don't mean they find a convenient place that is out of the way and lie down. They will drop on the spot. On the dance floor, in the street, I have even seen two of them lying side by side in a puddle of mud that had conspicuously formed around the portaloos, despite it not having rained for several days. You think hippies smell bad…
   So, with my status agreed from the moment I arrived at the Wasted festival, it drew more than a few sideward glances when said hippie turned up in the middle of the mosh pit during the Anti-Nowhere League, wearing a V-neck rugby top, complete with button at the top and big purple bar across, and energetically started lobbing Mohawks over the crowd control barrier. Isn't bonding a wonderful thing? I am just wondering how being a monarchist will go down in July.

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It is good news for kiddies all over the world. Your adolescent ditties are being sold to confused teenagers and aspiring pre-teens in places I had never imagined really needed it. But then what do I know? I am only a music columnist; I don't actually keep up with any of these trends. So perhaps a wee bit naively I never realised they sold Avril Lavigne CD's in bloody Bosnia. This is a country that advises tourists not to use country roads because of the risk of being blown to smithereens by decade-old land mines. Quite how Avril is going to improve the general atmosphere I am not entirely sure. At least CD's are cheap there.
   The reason I know this of course, is that somebody -my brother to be exact- found the new album by Miss Lavigne in a record store (presumably) and figured it would be a fantastic joke to ask Her Royal Majesty's Armed Forces mail service to fly it to Scotland and have the Royal Mail deliver it to my door. I am sure he will forever regret not being able to see my face as I emptied the contents of the envelope on my desk. Hell, I am sorry I didn't record it. I normally check my mail a while after waking up, when I am somewhere in the middle of having a cup of tea, contemplating having a shower, yawning and scratching myself. All very pleasant and necessary activities, but it does leave you with your guard down, and as such finding dead animals, death threats or Avril Lavigne CD's in the post will unsettle you ever so slightly.
   This joke is going too far now. I used to write about Avril in my Dear Diary column, which hasn't been online for years now. The reason I picked her was because she is incredibly attractive, and -this is an important part of my defence- I hadn't heard her music when I started writing about her. It is a sad fact that years later nobody can remember my lucrative musings about chickens or inventive contemplations of using gravity to hurt my fellow human beings, or in fact what nationality my girlfriend at the time was, but to this day I am getting bombarded with Avril Lavigne material, from all over the bloody world. And silly me, of course I do put the posters up, and play the CD's. Now I now why I don't have friends.

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You know it is time to start contemplating the meaning of your existence when you find out your nan knows more about technology than you do. Especially if your nan is especially elderly/blind/dead or all of the above. It's disheartening. My friends are drawn between pitying me or laughing at me, and usually decide in the end to do both. But only because they are kind, sensitive and compassionate souls, willing to help their fellow human beings should they ever require any kind of assistance. But they do feel by now I should have mastered the art of sending a text message. It is not uncommon for people in the pub to stare after I have moved over to the door to get reception and in a thundering voice shout over to the back, demanding to know how the fuck you add a full stop.
   Mobile phones are stupid things anyway. They keep spelling my name as Dangen. Dangen is not a word. Never has been as far as I am aware. But I also don't like those flashy hand-held miniature computer diary things. You know the thing I mean, right? Those 6 by 4 inches of lit-up screen you have to tap with a wee plastic stick. That's bloody technology for you. A pad with a stick. Definitely an improvement on pen and paper there, people! With added bonus of the risk of electrocution. And you can't even write on somebody's hand with the thing. Complete and utterly fucking useless, and totally incomprehensible.
   It turns out even technology I carry in my wallet is too complicated for me. I never really realised this. Most of the things I carry around in my back pocket are fairly basic. Money if I am lucky, pub discount card, few phone numbers, condoms and my lottery ticket. The latter two a clear indication though I will not gamble when it comes to coming across one of the 10,000 AIDS sufferers out of 6 million inhabitants and having sex with her, I do still hold hope I will one day win seven million quid. Never been very good at maths.
   The one thing in my wallet that proved too complicated for me the other day was my bank card. Turns out you can use this thing in the pub. I had seen people using bank cards in supermarkets before, but I never realised I could do that too, mainly because every time someone in front of me wants to buy a packet of cigarettes and some peanuts with a bank card and spend the next five minutes punching in codes, signing legal documents and fiddling about with eight different receipts I tend to start eyeing the femoral artery while reaching into my pocket looking for something sharp. It took two friends and the bartender to convince me I could use the thing to buy a round of drinks. It's startling to find while I am utterly mesmerised by the whole process, everybody else seems to think it is about as spectacular as watching a kangaroo taking a shit. I need to get up to speed.

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Is the election really tomorrow? I thought all these candidates were supposed to come round your house to introduce themselves. It's all I see on the telly. Smug, insincere arseholes banging on people's doors to interrupt the family dinner they manage to squeeze in every two weeks because both parents have to work 48 hour weeks to explain their policy on education. Haven't seen a damn one of them around my place. Which is a shame, because I would love to launch a preventive strike on some of these bastards by driving a rusty nail into his skull. Make the day a wee bit more exciting for him.
   We just get the leaflets shoved through the letterbox. Re-elect Mark Lazarowicz says the Labour one. That is typical of them, isn't it? No please or anything. Labour doesn't get elected; Labour informs you you'll be voting for them. No danger of that in my house. I am all for freedom of opinion and secret ballots, but rest assured if anyone in my flat openly admits to supporting Tony Blair everybody else will stand up in unison and stick any and all belongings he or she may have out on the street, possibly urinating on them once they have been deposited next to the bin bags.
   This Lazarowicz (pronounced in Leith as "hypocritical cunt") bloke is a fascinating character. Somewhere inside this tedious and self-congratulatory sheet of bollocks he mentions proudly he was one of a number of Labour MP's who voted against the war in Iraq. Must be an idealist, right? Only then you look at the front, and it still says 'Labour'. He still wants Tony Blair to be prime minister. Clearly not quite enough against the war to actually quit the party. Didn't lose too much sleep over it.
   I think this is a brilliant way of campaigning. Wouldn't it be wonderful if all the far right parties start using the same method of attracting voters? "Well, of course the Holocaust wasn't the best of ideas, but that is not to say Hitler was a bad guy, you know. He had a great past record on creating jobs and the infrastructure was revolutionised by his government. And the public transport! Not to mention these guys were properly tough on street crime." Why let the fact he was a psychotic mass murderer stand in the way of a good reputation, eh?

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Very unusual it was. This is not how I normally spend my Saturday evenings. It started off perfectly normal. I was sitting in Bannermans, as I do quite regularly, drinking a pint of 80 and chatting away to the bar staff after being stood up by the person I was supposed to be meeting there. Perfectly average evening. Okay, there were perhaps a few more skinheads hanging around than is normally the case, but hardly more than I can handle. Besides, we were all there for the same reason: a seriously explosive gig involving Edinburgh's finest ska band. In other words, we were there for a Bombskare. Which for some reason always sounds funnier when my friend from Northern Ireland says it.
   Now the thing is; I don't dance. Ever. I don't find it particularly satisfying and I am absolutely shite at it, proof of which I carry around in the form of a scar about an inch across above my left eye. So it came as a wee bit of a surprise, not least to myself, to find myself dancing away for well over an hour, naked down to the waist in the back of the pub, sweating like a horse and panting like an asthmatic in between songs. I always thought I was out of shape, but while the sweat was flying around from the ends of my hair I managed to keep up with the toughest-looking of skins around me.
   As if all of this isn't bizarre enough, I even managed to end up dancing with a very pretty lassie. I realise in the normal world this is quite common, but usually women, especially good-looking ones, are not too impressed by me, and most certainly not when I am in a dark cavernous pub, half naked, dripping with sweat and breathing heavily. Seems to put them off for some inexplicable reason. There is hope for me yet.

---

Who said jumpers can't be entertaining? One bloke all by his lonesome -too lonesome it would seem- had the city on its toes for two whole days. And in full view as well. If you are going for the high-profile kind of suicide, you can do worse than leaping off the North Bridge. Plenty of room for spectators. Pretty certain way of topping yourself as well. Miracles do happen of course, but if you would survive the fall it seems unlikely you'll make it through the glass roof in one piece, and with just an extra tiny bit of luck there will be train approaching on the track directly underneath that.
   The bloke didn't jump of course. Most of us sussed that one when we heard he had been there for 12 hours. That is not exactly an indication of commitment, though it is also most definitely not a very sure sign of competence on the part of whichever negotiator they sent off to talk to the man. Two bloody days he sat on that ledge! By that time I would have just lassoed the bastard. But then the tactics employed by the emergency services confused me anyway. To this moment I can't think why on earth the ambulance was on the bridge rather than underneath. Guess they didn't read up on Sir Isaac Newton's theories regarding great heights and no support.
   But it did give me an idea. In July thousands of us are going to be marching through Edinburgh, trying to bring the city to a grinding halt. This guy managed to create traffic queues almost as far as Leith. Why do we not get a few of these anarchist nutcases to stand on a couple of bridges for the next protest? Imagine the chaos! Waterloo Place above Calton Road, South Bridge above the Cowgate, North Bridge, Waverley Bridge, Dean Bridge. Fuck, stick a bunch on the Forth Bridge. They wouldn't even have to jump. They could if they really wanted to of course, but that is entirely their own choice. The whole city would come to a standstill.
   I would be a great activist, you know. Bit unscrupulous perhaps, but what can you do? The only thing is of course, you would need to find people who can stay awake for a while. Because as we have witnessed, it is a bit embarrassing to be picked off the edge of a bridge by the fire brigade because you have managed to fall asleep mid-suicide.

---

I am not a very proper artist. Proper artists have artist friends. My collection of artwork is limited to a single drawing, for the very simple reason that is the same amount of visual artists I seem to have acquainted over the years. And he doesn't even count, because he is my flatmate. He's one of those artists that collects old junk and turns it into art when he has a few hours to spare. Many are the times I nearly break my neck over a box obstructing my path to the kitchen and shout over to my flatmate, demanding to know whether this hamster impaled on a bed of toothpicks here is one of his projects or destined for the bin.
   But I don't know any conventional artists. Writers, poets and musicians aplenty to be sure, but no one who can draw to save their lives. If I wanted to have a song written I would have nae bother at all. Should I so desire I can commission within an hour or so a rock ballad on having cornflakes for breakfast. But now that I need to have a tattoo designed I have come to realise my network of friends stretches from professional bridge builders to rodent exterminators, but not a single soul capable of drawing a straight line on a piece of paper.
   I blame myself. As an established (or at least published) short story writer I should really have started acting like an artist. I should have bought a hat for starters. No artist can ever be taken seriously without a hat. And then I should really have started frequenting coffee shops that serve tofu products and complain loudly nobody understands me. And that my work represents the pleas of the ignored masses suffering under the yoke of modern-day life, but I am such a visionary it will not be fully appreciated until I myself have perished. Unfortunately I tend to hang out in slightly rougher pubs, and continuous whining of this kind will guarantee your work will probably never be properly appreciated, though that demise will certainly be swift. Though tattoos are definitely a familiar phenomenon. If only some of these bikers could draw.

---

It's one of the greatest moments of movie history. Huddled together the lads from Spinal Tap chronologically work their way through an agonisingly long list of drummers and their respective causes of death, ranging from choking on someone else's vomit to a bizarre gardening accident. And of course the one that spontaneously combusted. Dozens of people spontaneously combust each year, they explain, it is just not very widely reported. Yet. To this day people believe it. Both that human beings can go up in a cloud of smoke and that This Is Spinal Tap is an actual documentary.
   All my friends in medical, biological or related science assure me that human beings will only blow up if you somehow connect them to explosive material. I find this very reassuring. So it was a bit uncomfortable to read in the papers people in Hamburg are reporting after nightfall the local toads have started exploding, their entrails sometimes sent flying a metre away. And worse yet, one environmentalist has warned they cannot exclude the possibility whatever is killing these amphibians has also infected human beings! Imagine sitting on a bus and all of a sudden the person next to you starts swelling before popping and covering you in internal organs. I am avoiding all Germans for a while, I think.
   All the experts are baffled, which is another thing I would have preferred nobody told me. One theory is the toads are -I am not making this up- committing suicide to scare off birds that feed on them. Sacrificing themselves for the good of the tribe, or whatever a group of toads is called. They are, in effect, suicide bombers. And here we were thinking only human beings are inventive enough to come up with such a practice. It is a trend, spreading across the species. Soon your own pets will start exploding if you don't feed them often enough. I'm greatly looking forward to the self-destructing guinea pig.

---

Fifty years from now:

Grandson: Say, granddad, I have been studying the second Iraq war in school this week, and I am a wee bit confused. Any chance you could help me with this?
Granddad: Naturally, my lad. What is it you would like to know?
Grandson: Well, for starters, it says here it all started because some American general with a record of forty years of killing people lied to the United Nations by showing the world pictures of ice cream vans and telling everyone they were chemical weapons laboratories. Why did anyone listen to him in the first place?
Granddad: Ahem. Well, we didn't really like to mention the fact general Powell had been murdering people all his career. You see, compared to his colleagues in the American government he was actually quite sane.
Grandson: But still a mass murderer?
Granddad: Well, aye. But a very pragmatic one. Once you have helped kill a few hundred thousand on roughly every populated continent you are no longer a murderer, but a well-established politician. Especially in those days. Nobody listened to a word you said unless you had signed a few death warrants. Practically the only way of getting recognition. And our Foreign Secretary at the time was deeply in love with him. In his memoirs he later described how they used to hold hands under the table at international conferences.
Grandson: So nobody cared he lied?
Granddad: Seemed a bit trivial after all those Iraqi children had their limbs torn off, their mothers raped and their fathers tortured. Not to mention all the radiation poisoning they suffered from the depleted uranium that was dropped on them. Still causing birth defects to this day.
Grandson: And why did we help in all of this?
Granddad: Love, my son. Love. Tony Blair was absolutely besotted with the American president. Thought he was a spokesman for God. Killing a few hundred thousand people was just a token up his love for him.
Grandson: How did he get away this?
Granddad: Very easily actually. Ignored the principles of democracy and all protests, crippled the half of the legal system he couldn't bribe, and simply announced he was a good man and would imprison anyone who disagreed with him in isolation cells or concentration camps. It was all very persuasive.
Grandson: So this man was responsible for rape, murder, mutilation, torture, the suspension of civil rights, the end of an independent judiciary, concentration camps, occupation, selling out the country to a foreign power, a war, making us hated all around the world, encouraging terrorism and extremism, lying to the public and the world and basically ending democracy?
Granddad: Roughly. There may have been some pillaging and poisoning involved as well.
Grandson: But what I don't understand, granddad, is why on earth the lot of you then re-elected this man. You can't really have been that stupid. Surely that was rigged? Please?

---

I think I may have found myself a new hobby. Well, a hobby really. Drinking beer and shouting at bands from the back of a dark room doesn't really count as a hobby, and that is roughly all I seem to be doing these days. Internet dating. Previously I had always thought newspaper personal ads were the funniest thing on earth (with the Scotsman leading all other papers by half a mile), but I have now discovered the simply amazing world of online advertising. I'm never leaving the house again.
   Actually, I was looking through these sites for somebody else. Honest. But through some kind of technological wizardry the little gnomes building these websites can detect where you live, and while I was looking for lesbians on a different continent -told you it was not for me; didn't believe me, did you? Probably still don't- all of a sudden I noticed a large banner at the bottom proclaiming: Find People To Fuck In Edinburgh. You just can't help yourself.
   Imagine the space-age that we live in nowadays. Previously you had to go out into town and try to approach people of the opposite sex, seduce them using wit, charm, good looks and, let's face it, a few drinks. Now you just sit around your living room ungroomed and arrange a shag over the internet. Takes the sport out of it a little perhaps, but at least it does show people in the twenty-first century no longer mind the stigma of being hopelessly desperate. I am all in favour of this development. It may mean less time spent in the pub, but sacrifices will have to be made to facilitate coitus every once in a while at least.
   These websites are amazing. You just punch in the requirements (female, 45-79, overweight, bi-sexual, Texas for example - haven't tried that one but I bet you'll get a result) et voila! Fat lesbian pensioners galore. It's a bit like internet shopping. Of course they still have to fancy you as well, so you have to fill out a few forms with so many questions you need your birth certificate to fill them all out properly, but it is all worth it in the name of whatever you wish to call this. The only thing that does bother me slightly are the ones that require you pay for the service. I think setting up a system that allows people to find fuck-buddies in their area and wants cash in return sounds suspiciously like running a brothel. I suppose after the mail order bride the online hooker was an inevitability, but I am not all that comfortable with technology yet. Guess it'll just have to be the pub for me tonight.

---

Well, well. Just as you think television can't possibly be any more boring, they start broadcasting the inauguration of the Pope. What is it about these people that makes them so absolutely sleep-inducing? Even when they are celebrating all you get is a bunch of men in dresses singing drab, dreary and dreadful depressing ditties that sound like they should be sung at funerals, and only funerals of children at that. I'm sure he'll get busy explaining to the devout AIDS is punishment from God for homosexuality and let another few million perish for no good reason, so can we at least have a party while he is pretending to be a nice bloke?
   I didn't watch much of the thing of course. There is something about a throng chanting in unison and a multitude of German flags being waved about that makes me go queasy instantly. Very uncomfortable connotations there. Though I did also see a banner proclaiming Praise To Jesus. You just know there is a Yank at the bottom of that pole. Huge amounts of Germans, Americans and religious fanatics, mixing with politicians from all over the world. I am not suggesting someone should have set off a bomb or two, but I would say the global average ability to think independently would have increased significantly if someone had.
   This new pope isn't terribly afraid of assassination as it happens. The Pope Mobile didn't even have bulletproof glass. That's why I kept watching really. Just in case some nutter with a scope rifle did shoot him. Not that I wish the old man any harm, but you would feel pretty silly if you sat around watching telly when it happened and you missed it. Nothing happened though. Which made it even more boring.

---

Last week American law enforcement agencies all across the country carried out the largest raid in the nation's history by rounding up no less than 10,000 fugitives. According to the Times these people were wanted for murder, rape, child abuse and other crimes. Presumably meaning some were wanted for murder, some for rape and so on and so forth. It would be frightening to think they were all involved in killing, raping and abusing children. The Yanks get enough of that from their military prison guards; the last thing you want is a civilian population beginning to think the army sets an example.
   Actually the fact they arrested 10,000 people is not nearly as scary as the fact these people represent a total of one per cent of fugitives sought by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. One million people they are looking for, apparently. A million! Watching the X-Files and that missing persons show with Anthony LaPaglia always gives off this impression the FBI actually know what they are doing. Clearly not. How many people work for the FBI anyway? I think if you are looking for a million people you may want to hire a decent amount of staff.
   And these are just the fugitives. What about all the missing persons, witnesses, informants and other rabble they are supposed to keep track of? I am finally beginning to understand why they never found me when I was on their database. My guess is I wasn't all that high on their list of priorities if they can find 10,000 rapists, murderers and child molesters to arrest in a single raid.
   At the last count I think there were roughly 280 million Americans around. We will assume, just for the hell of it, that half of these million people are not in the US, tempting as it is to imagine Osama bin Laden in a straw hat and a false moustache living in Idaho. That still means when you are walking around in the United States one in roughly every five hundred people is a federally wanted fugitive. Any airliner flying into or out of the US should statistically speaking have a wanted man of woman on it. This does not particularly make me want to visit the United States. Though admittedly very few things do.

---

You may have heard; we have a new pope. Well, I say we have a new pope, really you may not want anything to do with him. Personally I was awfully disappointed by the choice. Not of the man, but of his name. Benedict the sixteenth. Not very kicking. I was hoping after John Paul we would get George Ringo, but clearly it was not to be. At least his parents were called Joseph and Mary, which in those circles goes down very well, even if he was born around the same time of year Jesus was nailed to a cross. Still, with a new pope there is bound to be a new doctrine, so while the Catholics sit around waiting to see in which fields God has changed Her mind, I figured I would pose a few problems of my own to the new pontiff. Philosophers are invited as well. I am not talking about questions such as the meaning of it all, but more the kind of things I wonder when I am sitting in the pub with a pint of 80 Shillings, waiting for my friends to arrive.
   For example, if God chooses the next leader of the Catholic church, why do they need to vote? And if the pope can speak directly to Her, why does he not leave instructions about his successor? Would save everybody a lot of hassle if you ask me. But then I also don't understand why all these people remain celibate, when God Almighty Herself, or at least somebody carrying an equal amount of clout in that company, told everybody to be fruitful and multiply. And for that matter, if human beings did not descend from apes, why on earth do we have a tail bone? And just at what point in our evolution / divine path of development did we find out snails are not only edible but actually quite delicious in garlic sauce with a bit of baguette and a cold beer?
   I am not just picking on religious people here. Scientists have already identified about half a dozen asteroids on collision course with Earth. Yet as far as I am aware we haven't been hit by anything mildly impressive since before the dawn of script. It seems unlikely, statistically at least, that the moment we invent telescopes all of a sudden we are going to be struck nine times in a row. And on a less technical front, why can't cat food makers invent a flavour that tastes better than any of the household pets? But most importantly of all, why is 'dyslexia' such a difficult word to spell? That's just cruel.
   There must be a reason for all this. But then I haven't even begun to figuring out myself. I still don't understand why I am more comfortable in a double bed on my own, but in a single bed with somebody else. Or why I can only quote Shakespeare when the verse also appeared in Brave New World. And talking of bed, why do I have trouble sleeping before a holiday when I comfortably snoozed through an earthquake once? What really puzzles me is that I can remember the name of the Soviet minister who signed the Russo-German non-aggression pact in the late thirties (and not just because they named a petrol bomb after him - I can also tell you the German bloke's name), but I cannot remember the name of a girl I shagged for several days. It's not my priorities that are screwed up, because I know I will take a blowjob over a WW2 documentary, so something in my head must not be in working order.
   I don't understand why women are attracted to tall men and men to women with big breasts. I also don't understand why when you are drunk you get aroused in a matter of seconds but it takes ages to climax. Nor do I understand why people refer to blokes a in a suit as being 'smartly' dressed. Most people I know dressing 'smart' are doing so because it deflects attention from the fact they are actually quite thick. People have strange perceptions. My ex does not think there is any way we can have a half decent relationship, regardless of how hard we try, but is still convinced she can dismantle a nuclear submarine base if she tries hard enough. That's perseverance for you. But then my grandmother is still proud of me, and I can't even begin to remember the last time I warranted that. I also don't understand why men will never use the urinal nearest to the door, but insist on using the parking space nearest to the door, whether it is marked disabled or not.
   These things bother me, you know. And I will tell you what; the first religion to provide me with satisfactory answers will receive my membership. Answers on a postcard.

---

Last week a court in Lancashire gave a 74-year-old retired teacher an anti-social behaviour order. This is Blunkett-speak, and doesn't really make any sense, as the name implies this woman has to start behaving anti-socially. Not so, of course. In fact, she has been ordered by the court to stop harassing her neighbours. As such she can no longer play classical music at all hours and at a ridiculous volume. Jennie Smith is truly the Granny from Hell. You almost wish you lived around there to have seen it with your own eyes.
   Apart from blasting out music, according to The Times she shouted at passers by, referring to men as 'child molesters' and women as 'whores'. One thirteen-year-old girl was called a 'slag'. Which I think is what kids that age usually refer to one another, so I am not entirely sure how this made things worse. It certainly was serious to the court, because one official was quoted as saying the ASBO was necessary to protect the city of Lancaster. Never mind Al Qaida; here come the wrinklies!
   I have to admit this does worry me slightly. It has serious repercussions on my own plans for old age. I have made a deal with my brother, that if we both grow old, we will live in the same nursing home, and live out our days like the two grumpy old blokes from the Muppet Show, shouting abuse at people and complaining. Any care worker not delivering alcohol or nappies will be verbally abused until he or she leaves in tears. Already I stare at screaming toddlers driving me up the wall, fervently hoping it will choose a career in nursing and will end up wiping my arse while I refuse to cooperate. It's kind of what I aspire to in life. It is frightening to think the courts are cracking down on such aspirations.

---

My health concerns me. Or rather, my eating habits concern me. I am sure they are directly linked to my health somehow, and I think this may have been the reason why I decided to adjust them ever so slightly. To be honest, I can't quite remember. I get the distinct impression that though chips and kebabs were bad for my circumference, all this hamster food is slowly corroding my brain cells. Not that this will deter me of course. I very rarely use my sense of memory anyway, and once I have stated with great resolve I will do something, I will stick to that whether it kills me or not. In this case I am beginning to worry it might.
   It didn't really sound all that bad. Instead of deep fried foods you stick them in the oven, and you garnish the whole thing with some fruits and vegetables. Piece of piss. Actually, I am just assuming I am eating fruits and vegetables, because to be perfectly honest I am never quite sure what exactly the difference is. I think one grows from branches and one from the ground, but then where does an onion sprout from? I'm too urban to have ever witnessed an onion in its natural, unmolested state. I have now started identifying health foods as those that are green to begin with, and go off if you leave them lying around for a week. It is a definition I can work with.
   I never realised I was addicted. My body craves food that needs to be wrapped up tight to stop the grease from leaking onto your trousers. I can't walk through Tollcross without subconsciously sticking my nose in the direction of the one chippie in Edinburgh that does kebabs better than anyone in the UK. I have to avoid the Old Town to avoid the torture of smelling it and telling myself regardless of how much salad they will put on it, it will never adhere to my resolve to eat more healthily. Which is all it is; more healthily. Imagine what I would be like on a diet!
   Even in my dreams I am not safe. Curled up under my warm duvet in my extraordinarily comfortable bed I recently found myself dreaming about Pot Noodles. Actually the dream was about some woman in the supermarket telling me someone was threatening to cut off her fingers, but the thing that stood out was this big pile of Pot Noodles on offer. Bloody Pot Noodles. A snack so crammed with additives, preservatives, colourings and flavourings it is not so much a shock to the digestive process as the dietary equivalent of a full-scale military assault on the immune system. Now that's cravings for you. Smokers move over.
   The only reason that dream ended was because it was interrupted by a Canadian lass with chocolate croissants (not plain ones you will note) dropping by to teach me the ancient traditional French art of slow and sensual lovemaking. In all probability this too was due to a bowl of muesli in slimline yoghurt and a brain clearly not capable of shutting down when I am asleep, but I am not complaining. I will take a pretty North American brunette with pig tails straddling me over a Pot Noodle anytime, whether she imaginary or not. Even I'm not that addicted to fast food.

---

Too many of my friends are gay. I'm beginning to feel intimidated by their numbers. I'm supposed to be the norm here, white chauvinistic male heterosexual. We are supposed to be in charge around the place, aren't we? It's everybody else who should be protesting, petitioning and demanding equal rights. According to everything I have been led to believe I should be living comfortably, privileged and free of intimidation. On the off chance I do bump into a homosexual I am supposed to react liberally and not give a fuck. I certainly should not be thinking 'not another one'.
   I know statistically speaking quite a few of my friends should be gay, but if you just approach these graphs from the opposite direction you would say statistically speaking the vast majority of my friends should not be. It is turning me into a complete homophobe. Not because I object to homosexuals, but because it is confusing the crap out of me. I can't keep track of who is straight, gay or bi. If this is the new millennium, fine. But I think people should wear it on their sleeves. Literally. We should all get tags that proclaim our sexuality. Stick your name on there as well, and while you are at it your marital status; it would make chatting people up so much easier.
   Just when I am beginning to be comfortable with remembering people's names, all of a sudden they throw an entirely new challenge at me. Only recently one of my bisexual friends asked me if I was seeing one of my lesbian friends (I'll hug and kiss anyone; I don't care), and when I explained the chances of a homosexual woman and a heterosexual man making it work are slim, I was berated for not mentioning she was into women. What do these people expect from me? "Hello, these are Barry, Billy, Bianca and Beatrice, straight, queer, dyke and bi respectively."
   Now they are even asking me to pass on compliments to one another. Damien's Lesbian Love Line. It's bad enough I am not getting laid; now I am relaying messages for gay people who are clearly having more fun than I am. Can't these people get back in their closets? They are making me feel a very insecure little heterosexual.

---

A while ago I wrote in one of my columns (the extraordinarily thrilling Multiplied by Twenty Three, appearing every fortnight on Muso's Guide - don't miss it) that really there is no point in writing songs to woo women if other people have written better songs about someone with the same name already. You will agree I have a point, as usual. The only problem was, when cross-referencing song titles and my circle of friends and acquaintances, none of them match. All these bands keep writing songs about Julie, Suzanne and Kayleigh, and all the women I would like to impress are called Kat, Claire or Sarah. You know, names nobody writes songs about.
   I was beginning to wonder whether I just have a poor taste in women (don't answer that please) or whether I have been listening to the wrong albums. I'd like to think if nothing else in my life makes any sense, at least I listen to decent music. Why can't these artists go and write songs that I can use when I am on the pull? Maybe I should blame the parents. I mean, who calls their bloody child Helen or Anna? Connotations regarding the most beautiful woman in the world aside, if you give your child a name that common it implies you expect it to never reach above the ordinarily average.
   Whoever is to blame, it is a rather deplorable situation. I can't be expected to impress women though my wit and charm. They'd all run away. I need to find people called Marianne, or at the very least Mary-Ann, so I can play them my Leonard Cohen albums and let the smooth tones do all the work for me. And what do you know? Just as I was beginning to give up hope, I actually met someone called Rhiannon. I was so impressed. Turns out they actually exist. She was a lovely girl, and we all know it is a great song. Still couldn't convince her to come home with me though.

---

I would like to get a reality check here. Is it me that is hopelessly out of touch with the modern world, or it the world of advertising? People in advertising tend to get paid a lot more than I do, but I sometimes get the distinct feeling they read the paper a lot less. I'm not claiming intellectual superiority here, but am merely suggesting perhaps they think we care about things that really wouldn't interest me if they crawled into my left ear and announced they had explosives strapped to their waist and would blow up my brain if I did not immediately agree to their demands.
   Ladies and gentlemen, the news this evening: seven people blown to bits in Iraq, the United Nations are in trouble, there are hospital bugs that make the electorate sick just by having to hear about them, prisons are overcrowded, people are raped in the Meadows and North Korea has launched a nuclear missile. We'll be back after these commercials.
   "Dear Mr Pillock. Who will you phone for this test?" "My girlfriend." Wink wink. Arsehole picks up phone in lab full of people in white coats (telephone infections rife) and girlfriend announces it is over. Same prick picks up second phone, ex-girlfriend repeats it is over. By now you are beginning to wonder if there is a point to life, let alone the ad. But there is. To the ad anyway. It sounds exactly the same! That's bloody technology for you. But wait: the price is different.
   And so it fucking is. BT charges you 5.5p for a call up to an hour, whereas Tele2 charge you only 4p. Which means you save, one-and-a-half pence! For an hour. That's a quarter of a tenth of a penny per minute. Just what you need to know before Trevor McDonald comes back on and informs you it is inevitable someone sooner or later will blow up the London underground. After about 367 phone calls you will have saved enough money to buy a funny hat to draw the paramedic's attention. Makes you wonder how many calls you would have to make to cover the advertising fee.

---

This election is beginning to scare me. The things politicians will come out with to make you feel guilty is simply amazing. I believe firmly that during campaigning, if a politician says something stupid, you should be allowed to slap them. No, let me correct myself here. You should be obliged to slap them. Preferably knock them out. You never know, some sense might be knocked into them with it.
   Take Oona King for example. She's standing for Labour in some godforsaken hell-hole near London, and one of her rivals is Gorgeous George Galloway. He's standing for the Respect party, whose current agenda I think is the war in Iraq was a bad idea. Not much of a plan for the future, but they do have a point. That is not to say I think George should be elected, I just think it would be an even worse idea to elect Oona.
   Fortunately Oona has come up with a brilliant scare tactic. If George stands for election he will split the vote for the left down the middle, giving the Tories a chance of winning. An interesting theory, though personally I am more inclined to believe the fascist vote will go to the Tories and Labour, allowing Gorgeous a chance of winning. Which do you find the more scary? And why is this woman blaming Respect for splitting the vote down the middle? Perhaps she would do well to consider, just consider, the possibility it is not Galloway who is to blame for this, but she herself may have had something to do with it when she decided to agree with mass-murdering the people of Iraq. Being a homicidal maniac does tend to put voters off somehow. Can't think why.

---

How did I get suckered into cooking steak tartare you ask? Why on earth would I try to make something I can't even spell the week after nearly burning my house down? Well, as you probably guessed, I was volunteered for this particular adventure by a beautiful woman, and as it meant cooking for two beautiful women I didn't struggle too much as she twisted my arm. It is not every day you get to visit a pair of pretty lassies in hospital with flowers to apologise for the food poisoning. It seemed promising to me. Even if one of them did decide in the end not to join us, probably more to do with my social than my cooking skills.
   So, as I managed, I thought I would treat you all to a set of instructions on how to make steak tartare. It is terminally middle to upper class, but it does taste very nice. So here we go. Find a recipe. This might take you a while, as it turns out I am not the only one confused about the spelling of this particular dish. Once you have managed to locate a list of ingredients, set off for the supermarket to buy them all. Find on your list something called 'hot pepper sauce', and go ask some depressed-looking attendant why you can find twenty-seven different kinds of pepper, but not one called 'hot pepper'. Be informed the clue is in the 'sauce' part. Find bottle of sauce, stop feeling embarrassed and ask the same attendant what the hell capers are supposed to look like.
   Once you have gathered all the ingredients, pour yourself and fellow chef a large glass of excellent French wine. Find a mixing bowl, and shout over to your flatmate to come into the kitchen and explain how the fuck you separate the yolk from the rest of an egg. Let someone else chop up the onion, lest you cut your fingers again. Drink some wine, and realise you forgot to read the bottom bit of the instructions about serving it with other food. Start rummaging through the fridge for food to go with cold and raw meat.
   When you have found suitable substitutes for toasted French loaf, such as chips, argue with fellow chef what constitutes as a 'table spoon'. Call flatmate into kitchen again to get him to decide, and feel very satisfied with yourself knowing you got at least something right. In your elation, knock over wineglass and send it crashing to the kitchen floor. Find a new wineglass, fill it up again, sweep up broken glass, mix all ingredients and toast to whichever bovine was unfortunate enough to provide your meal for the evening. Enjoy.

---

It is scary to think fifteen-year-olds nowadays were born in the nineties. That was a decade reserved purely for going to school, getting laid and travelling around. People weren't born around this time, they were either young and enjoying themselves or they were getting old. All these in-between generations are annoying the crap out of me. The was a post-war generation, and then another one that was born around the seventies. The next one should be born right about now. No exceptions. All these bloody people born around Woodstock are ruining it for all of us. Having babies in the nineties. Disgraceful.
   What is even more disgraceful is that by missing out on the eighties entirely, they were also never subjected to the musical horrors that were inflicted upon us at the time. In fact, most of them should by rights not remember Michael Jackson. Or Europe. I would give anything to go through life without those memories. So you would say they are all a wee bit more adjusted and pleasant than the rest of us. No such luck. But then I suppose Slipknot has a lot to answer for.
   The other night I went off to review a gig at the Liquid Room, and found the whole place crawling with people not old enough to smoke, let alone drink. I was beginning to feel like a pervert. The bar staff were questioning people at the bar to make sure they weren't buying drinks for minors. Do I look that much of a paedophile, pal? No reply.
   Even my companion felt old, and she is nineteen. Which made her the nearest to my age this side of thirty. At least old enough to have a drink with in the pub down the road instead of queuing up with pimply teens and their squeaky voices. But evidently not quite old enough to be informed about the sixties beyond the usual list of the great-but-unfortunately-late. As such she mentioned there were no guitar players left like the wonder that was Jimi Hendrix, and when I suggested Pete Townshend was still alive, she offered to me the one and only correct answer. 'Who?' she asked. Exactly.

---

I am feeling strangely homicidal recently. Not entirely without good reason, but that is hardly a reason to give into these developing tendencies. After all, if I am going to murder someone, I might as well do it to someone who really deserves it. At the moment I am more in a random mood, staring at a crying toddler in the frozen food department of Tesco's and wondering how hard I will have to kick it underneath the chin to sending it flying into the compartments overhead, and bounce it straight into the freezers underneath to preserve the body.
   Sometimes I don't even need a victim. Hunched over the Times to try and work out the day's su doku puzzle, lining up a pair of threes, all of a sudden I will realise that the sharpened pencil would be ideal to push straight through somebody's neck. If I don't hit the windpipe we can always hope for an artery somewhere, and a lovely spray of blood would decorate the wall as my victim is running around gurgling. It's amazing how many people will smile at you as you stare at them picturing a gaping neck wound gracing their bodies. I must be hiding my psychotic nature very well.
   Is there not some sort of community programme where I can give in to some of these tendencies? I don't really want to go to university to study politics before being able to kill people at will. The whole dishonesty and hypocrisy deal doesn't appeal to me very much. I would never be able to do that for four years straight. My facial muscles can't stand smiling at people when I am lying to their face. It's another character trait I possess. Murderous inhibitions and an aversion to lying. Interesting combination. I'd be shit in interrogation though.
   I could start small. Work for the university, killing lab rats and guinea pigs. Then I could work my way up, chucking chickens into those manglers, and then be promoted to killing cattle or something. Finally, when I have perfected that art, I could go and find myself a human victim. Or I could just seek counselling.

---

It is with great interest I have been reading about the life and death of pope John Paul II. From what I have heard he must have been quite a nice bloke. Champion of freedom and peace, saviour of the oppressed around the world. All over the place people are paying their respects. Fidel Castro, George Bush and Cherie Blair have all been saying nice things about him. Now there's three people whose judgement I trust. Though my favourite was definitely the cardinals praying for his soul. That to me shows a certain lack of faith in his chances of making it to Heaven. If you have to go and ask God for favours something must have gone wrong somewhere along the way.
   And of course things did go wrong. Quite a few. This Friday not only the pontiff will be laid to rest. All over Africa there will be funerals for the people who got infected with AIDS because the Vatican told them not to use condoms. Won't be any cameras there though. And in all probability the BBC will not bring it up either. I find it interesting. A eulogy by definition has to be full of nice things, but obituaries don't.
   So, you have to wonder what people will have to say when you finally fall off a railway bridge as you stumble along drunkenly, and just after you have managed to hoist yourself up you get hit by the last train from Livingston. Probably not that you were a train enthusiast. But perhaps a keen rugby player. That is a very nice thing to say about someone, and it means fuck-all. You could have been rubbish at it. Your team mates may very well be glad you finally kicked the bucket, so you can no longer keep passing the ball to the opposing team. That doesn't mean you weren't keen though.
   There is so much you can lie about. Beloved by many. Well, he did have twenty-seven goldfish he fed the most expensive food at seven in the morning without fail. They will miss him dearly. His neighbours on the other hand are looking forward to living next door to someone who does not watch ice hockey in the middle of the night. And why his ex girlfriend turned up for the funeral I am not sure, because she hasn't even spoken to the bloke for months. I dread to think what people would have to say about me. Glad I'll not be there to hear it, that's for sure. I'd probably blush.

---

Don't you feel relieved? Doesn't it feel like a huge weight has been lifted off your shoulders? I'm feeling positively charged. Edinburgh feels like a better place today. As indeed it is, now that we no longer have any MP's. My friends living in Edinburgh Central no longer have to live with the shame of being represented by Alistair Darling, and my own personal patch of Edinburgh North and Leith has also been freed from its Labour puppet. Three cheers for the Queen! I think it's the best thing she has done in years, dissolve this parliament. Would have been nice if perhaps she could have thought of it a tiny bit sooner, but nobody is perfect.
   Remember these days, my friends. For one day in the future you will find yourself in a wistful philosophical discussion, during which somebody will tell you to imagine a time without arrogant politicians making our lives miserable. And you will be able to tell that person: I can remember such a time! It was a sunny month of happiness and joy. Life was sweet as we bathed in the sunlight and drank cocktails and Mexican beer. Those were the days, my friend, those were the days.
   I think we should have a barbeque. Who's with me on this one? A few nice chunks of meat sizzling away on the grille as we lay about in the grass (or on the patio is you don't have a garden), drinking cold lager with lime and celebrating these times of new. A time of freedom. While all the politicians are shitting themselves about the upcoming election and wondering if by May they will need to find themselves a real job and, god forbid, start paying taxes! They have been in parliament, remember. They know what taxes are used for.
   Come on! We have a whole month of theoretical anarchy on our hands here. We will not see this for a long time to come. In fact, if Blair wins, we may never see it again. So, we need to have a few parties. I have a couple of cold beers in the house. Who has a barbeque?

---

There must be some way of telling how far you have made it in life. Something you can count and match up to a chart somewhere. There has to be. There is a rich list, isn't there? They say money doesn't necessarily make you happy (though definitely more comfortable), but it seems to be quite the gauge. Then of course Ghandi made it quite far in life, and I don't believe he was particularly rich. So there must be something else.
   Maybe bank accounts. That is one step up from money, isn't it? The more you have, the better you have done. Bonus points if they are in different countries, and triple points if one is in Switzerland or the Caymans. Or perhaps cars? That's a sure sign of wealth. Chauffeurs quadruple the total score. You could have a lot of fun with this kind of thing. Or maybe we should aim a bit smaller. You know, the more people you have in your mobile phone, the more important you are. Dominoes pizza does not count. But you do get an extra ten points if you have at least one person for every letter in the alphabet.
   I suppose a more social way of measuring is how many people you have slept with. Or how many people you have slept with at the same time. I don't know. I don't score very highly in any of these, so I have decided the way to tell how important you are is by counting how many e-mail addresses you have. Perhaps doesn't make quite as much sense, but I got myself another one last week. I'm moving up in the world!
   The reason I have added another address to my e-mail programme -no, I tell a lie. Have had another address added. God knows I wouldn't be able to do it myself- is because I have a new job. I am now a writer for the Groove Machine Magazine. Would love to tell you whether it is any good, but as it hasn't been launched yet I haven't got a clue. I write for it, which is always a plus. And I have kind of cornered a market here, because as it stands I am the only correspondent this side of the Atlantic. I'm important! Ish. But I did get my own e-mail address with the magazine, which looks incredibly posh. If a bit long.

---

It's strange that whenever I get confused, I also do a lot of writing. I am not sure if I write a lot because I have just completely detached myself from reality or vice versa, but there is a strange link there. So, there is steady movement forward in my eternal work in progress called Yet Another Day In Paradise, but my private life is suffering a little from my constant detachment form logical thought. My flatmate is considering putting me on drugs. Not for my benefit, you will understand, but for his.
   The last time I had this was a year and a half ago. Which is strangely fitting, because it was brought on at the time by the same person. Slightly different circumstances though. Back then the people I live with noticed something was wrong when I decided to put a packet of butter next to the stove and placed the matches in the fridge. That's not rational behaviour. But very funny. This time round I am walking out of the house while the oven is on. That's also not rational, and potentially a lot less funny as well.
   I'm an intelligent human being. By most people's standards anyway. I am capable of following a logical train of thought, and if I put my mind to it quite a few illogical ones. So you would say I would be able to deduce sticking chips in the oven and walking out of the front door is a very bad idea indeed. You would say, wouldn't you? I mean, I was hungry at the time. That is why I stuck the food in there in the first place. That should have given it away as I was hobbling down the road. The fact my stomach was grumbling away and protesting. So much for listening to my gut instinct.
   And if that isn't bad enough, the reason I went out of the house was to go to the post office. In itself a very reasonably activity, except that it happened on a Wednesday afternoon, when the post office is shut. Has been for years. How do I function in society? With a little help from my friends of course. Or in this case the help of a slightly concerned flatmate who thought the smoke wafting through from the kitchen may very well constitute a direct threat to his general health. Maybe this time he really will drug me.

---

What is this obsession with sofas all of a sudden? Every newspaper, tabloid and television guide I open has people hiding behind them. Because of the daleks. Or is it Daleks? I'm obviously not a Dr Who fan, so I am not entirely sure whether those oversized hoovers I have been seeing in pictures are daleks or Daleks. Hang on, I'll stick them at the start of a sentence. Daleks are apparently very scary. Billy Piper says so. And she was married to Chris Evans, so she knows scary when she encounters it. According to many, all over Britain grown men and women are cowering behind sofas when the creatures appear.
   Seems like a silly place to hide if you ask me. I'd have to move mine away from the wall before I can crawl behind it. Seems a lot of effort when you could just, for example, change the channel. Or hide behind a pillow. A friend of mine watched pretty much the whole of Hellraiser from behind a pillow. How this was going to shield her from a dead man with nails driven into his skull and the ability to control razor sharp hooks that tear your flesh apart only she knew, though at least it saved me the effort of dragging a couch four feet forward.
   Not really much of a barricade, is it? As lines of defence go I can think of one or two more effective ones. A toddler can scale a sofa. They break easily, they tear and you can set fire to them. Not to mention you can just walk around them. Even those tins of baked beans on wheels that apparently scared the living daylights out of previous generations could easily hobble to the back of the sofa and grab you. If they have hands of course. So, now that we are on the umpteenth Dr Who incarnation, do you think perhaps it is time we find a more logical place to hide?

---

Isn't it strange that after millennia of medical research and experience, the human body still manages to find ways of harming itself while doctors have to stand by and watch? It is like we are deliberately fragile. With all the scientific progress and elaborate testing for example, we still haven't managed to find a cure for the common cold. How long has that been around now? Ten, twenty thousand years? I think we sneezed before we grew opposable thumbs actually. Yet while the world of medicine can now transplant a big toe to act as a thumb, the body refuses to be beaten on the sore throat and the headache. Pretty impressive.
   Though by far the most intriguing human condition that continues to baffle the medical profession has got to be depression. I read in the newspaper recently, that doctors keep prescribing pills to people suffering from depression, whereas most of the time it would be more effective to prescribe exercise. This had me scratching my head for a long time. Before you all run out and join the gym by the way, this only works on people with mild or moderate depression. Which is where I got confused. I am unfamiliar with the clinical scales of the disease, but I imagine the lesser forms of depression would involve listlessness, a general feeling of being fed-up, lack of motivation and a constant desire to do as little as possible. How the fuck are you going to get these people to go out jogging? It's just cruel.
   Still, I can see their point when scientists would rather not put people on pills. You may remember more than one anti-depressant has been found to include side-effects such as inducing suicidal tendencies. What kind of a joke is this? It almost makes me believe in God, because there is no way nature would have developed us over the years into creatures entirely resistant to any cure against misery. Only divine creatures could possibly have such a sick sense of humour. And doctors aren't exactly helping either. Telling listless people to go and run around a football ground twice a week is silly enough. But there are doctors prescribing pills when patients can't sleep because of their condition. Think about this for a second. Giving sleeping pills to people suffering from depression. I was under the impression assisted suicide was illegal in this country.

---

Normally when you get to the end of a contract, you begin wondering whether you should extend that contract, or get somebody else to do the job. You have consider all the pros and cons. So, with the election coming up, perhaps we should call in our elected representatives and get them to answer a few questions for us. They are after all our employees. That is why they have a salary. We pay them to work for us, and we can demand they explain themselves. So, perhaps the good Labour government can come clean on a few issues.
   Number one. How can it be so many people say the Attorney General thought the war was illegal until the very last moment, and why will his advice on the matter not be published? As we have all been informed because of his decision we are now more at risk from terrorism, our army is deployed in some godforsaken hell-hole and we are paying a fortune in taxes to cover this whole expedition, I'd say it would be nice to know what the hell happened. And while they are at it perhaps they can explain to us just how much planning went into the post-war scenario.
   Number two. Where does the Labour government stand on torture? So far they have refused to condemn the American government on detention camps in Iraq, Afghanistan and Cuba, seem to have no issue with people being transferred to torture centres in Egypt, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and have argued in court they should be allowed to use information gained under torture when indefinitely detaining suspects. In addition, Tony Blair went on holiday in Egypt while Britons in custody there were being tortured and did not demand the return of tortured British citizens from Saudi Arabia or Guantanamo Bay. As the UK is supposed to uphold human rights and half our government consists of lawyers, perhaps they can pick one policy and try to stick to it.
   Number three. How much does the principle of 'freedom' apply to Palestinians? At the last count roughly six million of them are refugees, and the rest of them live under occupation. Thousands are in Israeli jails, many of whom under what is known as administrative detention, which means they can be held indefinitely without trial. Their homes can be demolished without explanation or warning, their property confiscated, their movements restricted and they are fenced in behind razor wire and walls, which they are not allowed to approach on pain of death. They are not allowed to defend themselves, return to their homes in Israel and are living in constant fear of an occupying force firing missiles into the street. Gaza is the single most crowded place on earth, and its population lives in abject poverty. Any institution designed to aid the people can and will be targeted regularly. Yet the Labour government happily deals with the Israelis, most notably buying cluster bombs from them to drop on Iraqis. It refuses to release information on the murder of Iain Hook, a British citizen, at the hands of an Israeli soldier, nor does it demand action on the murders of James Miller and Tom Hurndall, both of whom were also shot and killed by Israeli troops.
   Four. Where does the Labour government stand on nuclear proliferation? As it stands eight nations have these weapons: the UK, the US, France, Russia, China, Pakistan, India and Israel. Our own nuclear fleet is based right here in Scotland, on the Clyde. Our position on the other seven is (in the same order): not big enough, don't care, worrying, very worrying, fine, okay, great. The Labour government has agreed to have part of an American missile system on British soil, that has the potential of wiping out all life on earth. That is if they can get it to work properly. Hardly the stance they are taking with Iran. In addition, there are concerns about China having such weapons because of the threat to Taiwan, which is rich coming from a bunch of cowboys who have invaded two countries in as many years. Meanwhile, ever since the unelected president of Pakistan has become so cooperative in violating all the principles we are supposedly defending, his having access to nuclear weapons no longer bothers our own government.
   Five. What the hell is a terrorist? According to Blair the prime minister and Blair the police commissioner, they are all over the place. But the IRA, traditionally terrorists, are now militants. Can we please come up with a clear definition, and then explain why we shouldn't class Geoff Buff-Hoon as one? Six. If there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, what was on all those pictures? Presumably they were taken over Iraq, so whatever they showed must have been there. Was it a sandbox? An ice cream van? And last but not least, seven. How can it possibly be that no anti-social behaviour order has been issued against John Prescott? That is just not credible.

---

I haven't been sleeping very well recently. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it is all the excitement going on in my life at the moment. Maybe it is the worry everybody around my age seems to get. You know, where we are going to die old, shrivelled up, demented, dirty and lonely. Or the other worry, about lumps. Though this is a fear inflicted upon me only by my doctor and the occasional television programme, when they give you this serious look and ask you if you ever check yourself 'down there'. Quite regularly actually. In fact, every time I visit the toilet, just to make sure I don't piss all over my shoes. Oh, you mean that kind of checking. No, not really. But feel free. The latter comment when I am visiting my doctor of course. I rarely phone the BBC to invite them over and fondle my bollocks.
   Though it is of course entirely possible the reason I have not been sleeping well is because two Neanderthals who have just been introduced to the shocking world of power tools, have set up camp in the flat above me, and have for the past fortnight been hammering and drilling in the same seven square feet, which happens to be right above my bedroom. Unless they are nailing live hamsters to the windowsill and removing them when they begin to stink, I fail to see how anyone could do so much DIY in the same spot. Especially for two weeks, with the two of them. However, the constant fear my ceiling is about to collapse and I end up with two simian blokes whose arsecracks are showing landing on top of my record player, is only mild in comparison to the annoyance I am suffering because I can't sleep.
   One of these days I might snap. My sleep is very important to me. I am not saying I am normally radiant and delightful when I wake up in the morning, but I do a lot better when I get woken up with a kiss and a cup of tea than I do when I get woken by the screeching sound of two dickheads with a drill. My eye starts twitching. Maybe I should get one of those three-foot-long drills myself, and just as Beavis and Butt-head start hammering away in the exact same place they were making noise the day before, I could carefully position it against my ceiling, and give it a slight push. Skewered Neanderthal! Sounds like a Turkish dish. I am sure my flatmate has a wonderful recipe for that.

---

It is not every day you are being persistently outwitted by a twelve-year-old. Certainly not one a lot smaller than you are, though admittedly I am yet to meet one that is bigger than I am. Not that I am trying to make excuses here, but in my defence I will say we were playing on his (the twelve-year-old's) home turf. Being a pub in Germany. Still, it remains slightly embarrassing to be beaten by someone not old enough to shave yet. Even if it is just chess. It will drive you to drink. So I did. This at least cheered me up a wee bit, as it reminded me he wasn't allowed to. I'd rather suck at chess than be tee-total any day of the week.
   It's not that I don't know how to play; it's just that my young German opponent knew how to play a lot better. Still, I like a challenge. My female companion not very hopeful of my success, and none of my friends prepared to take out a bet in my favour, I decided to start off with a nice pint of local German beer. Fraulein, ein Bier bitte. And some sparkling water for my esteemed adversary. How hard can it possibly be to beat someone less than half my age? Well, let's put it this way; I'm glad the beer glasses in Germany are as big as they are, because by the end of the second game I was ready to start crying into my pint.
   You know that feeling you get when you have been trying to get the coffee maker to work for over half an hour and one of your flatmates points out perhaps it would work better if you plug it in? Well, that is roughly the feeling I had when about five moves into the third game my worthy opponent shook his head in such disbelief at my strategy it was evident I would be check-mate before I would have a chance of moving a pawn into his half. Fraulein, nochmals ein Bier bitte! Und ein Sprudel fur mein Freund, whom I am about to clip around the ears if he doesn't stop making me look like an idiot me pretty bloody soon-ish. In fact, lace it with some vodka. That'll slow him down a bit.
   After the fourth game or so, I suggested perhaps somebody else around the table would care to try their luck. I was informed however that despite the fact their knowledge of the game was roughly the same as mine, their willingness to humiliate themselves in public was a lot more limited in comparison. Bollocks. Fraulein! And as if being used as a floor mop by someone half my size isn't strange enough, when I retired to the gents to reflect on my strategy (get female companion to distract him and nick his pieces when he is not looking), I found in the urinal a small goal with a miniature football attached to a piece of string. There is such as thing as taking competitive sports too far. Though it did prompt my aforementioned female companion, who in all the time that I have known her has not once expressed the slightest hint of interest in either football or urinals, to go and inspect the facilities.
   I have seen some of the pictures taken that evening. Never really noticed everybody was laughing at me at the time. Must have been too busy getting my arse kicked. And seeking a donor for a much-needed pride transplant. Fraulein! After about nine games of attempting to mount anything but a laughable defence, I think we had established once and for all I am never going to beat the lad. Still, at least I could drink beer, and on top of that I got to crawl into bed with the prettiest lassie there. I'll take that over winning a few games of chess. Even if I do know the smile on her face was probably not a compliment to me.

---

You know, I had heard of intimidation in the building trade, the security industry and at polling stations. But never had I imagined this kind of threatening behaviour could spill over into the exciting world of letting agencies. But it has. I have proof. The other morning, when I had just rolled out of bed, stuck on a nice relaxing CD, removed Rammstein from the CD player, inserted the relaxing CD I had intended and was casually scratching my chest as I opened the curtains, I noticed there was a To Let sign outside my front door. Which is strange enough, as it isn't, but it was from an agency I had never heard of, let alone had anything to do with. Were these people trying to muscle in? I decided to go and explore.
   Actually, I just decided to grab a kitchen knife and cut the thing down before people came ringing the doorbell and demanding tours of the house when I was relaxing in the bath with a glass of beer and The Police on the stereo. I took the biggest knife, just in case any of these people were spying on us and wanted pictures to scare us even more, and put on a pair of trousers. Walking around Edinburgh in boxer shorts and a seven-inch blade will get you arrested, whether you are outside your front door or not. Then I strapped on my boots and a seriously offensive T-shirt for good measure, and boldly stepped out to confront the bastards, or in their absence the sign.
   I noticed it just as I was about to cut the first bit of plastic. Right at the bottom of this post -I kid you not- lay a dead mouse. Not really the place you would expect mice to go and die. I'd find something a bit more sheltered. I'm not a mouse obviously, but it is very rarely I see dead mice on the pavement, and considering there are millions I assume they usually croak it in places I don't hang out in. You know, underground, sewers, mousetraps, libraries; that kind of thing. Did they put a dead mouse outside our flat as a warning? Who are these people; the bloody mafia? I was half expecting Joe Pesci to turn up on my doorstep once the thing had been cut down. So I decided to back off very slowly, keeping an eye on the street. Though I was very happy to wake up the next day and find out that day the pub was to let. Glad to see they are moving on from tenants to publicans. Actually, renting out a pub wouldn't be such a bad idea. I wonder if they let by the day...

---

I wish I had a camera installed in my house. It would have been worth it. Just to see the look on his face. A face, make no mistake, the features of which I will rearrange to a degree even cosmetic surgery won't do any good should I ever find the bastard. And well-deservedly so. There are a lot of people I feel need to be clubbed into a state of unconsciousness followed by a life-long disability with a spiked and studded bat, but few people will blame me if I do it to the cunt that broke into my house last week. If you want to steal from me, do it in the street. Come and stand in front of me and demand my cash, so I get a chance to break your teeth. Crawling in through my window is cowardly, an invasion of my privacy, and it means you did not wipe your feet on the way in.
   So, having established that should I ever find out who did this all my good manners and celebrated calmness will vanish like principles after an election, and I will torture him so badly he will wish he was born in Iran, I still would have liked to see his face. And not just to identify, track and mutilate the fucker. I just want to see the expression on his thieving bastard face as he rifles through all my personal possessions and slowly it begins to dawn on him; there is not a single damn thing I own that is worth stealing. The most expensive thing I own is a pair of army boots, and I was wearing them when he was sifting through my smelly underwear.
   You know what he took, the pilfering arsehole? My fucking sunglasses. My one and only pair of plastic, scratched, five-pound sunglasses. I am not sure who was more frustrated by the total loot; me or him. Is there not some sort of code amongst these dickheads that discourages them from taking pointless objects? I had very little respect for those in this particular profession to begin with, but this is taking the piss. By all rights he should have left me a note, apologising for mistaking me for someone who was worth robbing from. Nicking my sunglasses is quite simply unacceptable. It'll not even feed a junkie's habit. Should I get the chance therefore, I will take great delight in breaking the fuckwit's shins. With the blunt end of an icepick.

---

Occasionally, and I do mean on a very irregular basis with long intervals in between, I feel sorry for Cherie Blair. Her appearance always makes me think of a puppy having been kicked in the face repeatedly and suffering from the inevitable damage to its brain. This is not particularly aided by the way she speaks. I take great pity on dogs like that, even if I do agree with vets it is probably best to put them down for their own sake. So every once in a while when I read about Cherie I feel that same sense of pity. Though in her case a lethal injection might be a bit over the top. A good kick up the arse wouldn't do her any harm though.
   This is why I don't pity her more often, regardless of her unfortunate features. She is supposed to be a human rights lawyer for God's sake. And I don't particularly care whether road builders give a shit about asphalt, but when it comes to doctors, food quality inspectors and human rights lawyers, I want to know they mean what they say. After all, you wouldn't trust your GP with your children if he curled up in bed with someone like Myra Hindley every night, would you? For the same reason it is rather difficult to have any respect for a woman who talks of freedom and rights while shagging the very person taking them away from us. And any care worker will tell you leaving kids in the care of a psychopath is a bad idea, so the fact she hasn't had her own adopted really doesn't say much about what kind of a mother she is either.
   You wonder though. Whether one small part of her still believes in fighting for liberty. It must be tempting. She is in a wonderful position to actually do some good. If she would stop appearing at Australian functions to talk about life at 10 Downing Street, she could make a serious difference in court. Or in the bedroom. Because no matter how many cases she will argue, she will never be able to save as many lives as she could by carefully placing a pillow over her husband's head and sitting on it for a couple of minutes. But then, the chances of her ever finding someone else willing to sleep with her are minute. So it might just be self interest that prevails over conscience.

---

Supposing you had only just met me down the pub, after a few beers and polite conversation regarding abseiling in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, you could very well have come to the assumption I am an approachable and fairly decent bloke. You could even be forgiven for thinking most other people would feel the same about me. But some people should know better. In fact, most people do. The vast majority of people who have either never met me or known me for more than a week are well aware I am neither a decent bloke, and most certainly are aware other people regard me as being highly suspicious. So you would say my ex-girlfriend, who probably knows me better than any other human being alive -not to mention in more ways- would also know better.
   You live and learn. In this case what she learnt is that it is not a good idea to approach a German customs officer with my arm around your waist. The way she learnt is by having every single item of clothing removed from her bag and inspected, before having to stand there and watch all my socks and boxer shorts being examined in a manner I am sorry to say does not happen very often in my private life, but has become awfully familiar when I cross borders. To my eternal astonishment, and gaining my everlasting respect, German border officials are actually quite polite. They still don't smile of course, but then I have never seen border personnel smile.
   Of course there was still something mildly unsettling about arriving in the Republic of Germany for the first time in my life and the first person to welcome me was a uniformed guard whose first word was 'Ausweis', but once it had registered he merely wanted to inspect my passport and not a slip of paper acknowledging my right to exist it all went rather smoothly. Unlike certain other nations I could mention. The Americans are apparently still pissed off with me, and the Canadians do a very laudable job of trying to dissuade you from visiting their country. The Australians weren't exactly as hospitable as the brochures suggested either, though I suppose they at least had an excuse, what with my trying to enter the country with three tubs of white powder and a visa that accidentally showed I was female, while my passport was adamant I most certainly was not.
   At least my practicing German payed off. In all fairness I was expecting to use it around a camp fire in a forest clearing, so I hadn't quite mastered all the technical terms involved with having your underwear held up to fluorescent lighting by a complete stranger. Certainly not at one o'clock in the morning. Still, I managed to voice my pleasant surprise there was no shouting involved, unlike for example at the Canadian border. At which I was politely informed they shout as well, but only if I would give them trouble. It doesn't happen very often, but I resolved probably the best thing to do at this point was to shut up.

---

My having contact with the female sex over the years has turned out not to be a complete waste of time after all, I have found. Not only can I vaguely recall some good times involving killer whales and a paint brush, I have also come to understand some universal truths about the world we live in. And I have managed to figure out a few myths are actually true, and some truths are clearly myths. For example, it is not true you, the male, will always be wrong. 'I am sure you are not pregnant' is one of the matters I have never been wrong about yet. But then there is no opinion involved in that. It is fairly straightforward. But I have never a woman who argues with me when it comes to sports either. 'That was never a fucking penalty' as of yet has never started an argument in my house.
   You will be wrong of course when it comes to most other matters, but the majority of them you won't care about anyway. I have also learned you will be employed as a mule. Whatever needs to be lugged about, carried along, taken away or thrown out will be assigned to your expert knowledge of picking things up and moving them somewhere else. Perhaps a tiny bit embarrassingly, I don't mind this part of a relationship. As I have the annoying habit of going out with lassies a lot more intelligent than I am, it is always nice to know there are still things I can do better. Even if it is carrying a suitcase.
   But the one thing I have learned to be absolutely unequivically true, is that being bossed around isn't all as bad as it seems. Let me clarify this. Being told what to do, how to do and when to have it done is something most of us don't particularly like. But once you have grumbled a little about it, you can very quickly use it to your advantage when you need something from someone else. Normally I don't lie to people when I want something from them. In general people are very unhelpful when it concerns doing something that takes more than twenty minutes. It is human nature. And they are most definitely not going to get off their arse and get creative just because some long-haired pierced stranger asks them to. So I normally blag my way across. I have revived long-deceased grandmothers, only to immediately infect them with all kinds of horrible diseases that will in all likelihood kill them off a second time before I manage to get back to the hospital if this person here doesn't help me.
   I can get quite creative when it comes to these things. My desperation can very easily mask itself as charm and charisma if I really need it to. But nothing, and I do mean nothing, will get you sympathy as much as pulling a long face and announcing a little sullenly, 'my girlfriend told me to do this'. Whether it is picking up clothes she left in the eighteenth shoe shop of the day, all of which you had to subsequently phone to track down the damn stuff, find a record by an artist nobody under the age of seventy-three has ever heard of or rob a bank. The moment someone hears you have been bullied into setting out on this crusade while she is at home watching Sex and the City on DVD, they will take such pity on you they will miss their lunch break to accommodate you. Try it sometimes. It works for me, and I don't even have a girlfriend.

---

You do despair. You have to. It is the only possible emotion when you are watching the Six Nations. Just when you are thinking perhaps you stand a chance, something or somebody fucks up. In our game against France at least we had the referee to blame. Small comfort perhaps, but it is better to lose because the ref was too busy scratching his arsehole than to lose because the full-back is picking his nose. Less fair perhaps, and more frustrating, but definitely easier to get over. And the way things are going at the moment, with even the slightest possibility of good things happening being unusually remote, I will take the lesser of two disappointments, thank you.
   Really I don't mind if Scotland lose to a better team. We are used to it. At least we are still world curling champions. But I got to endure Scotland v Wales in a pub filled with Welsh supporters and an English barmaid all cheering on the opposing team, and there is only so much cringing I can do in forty minutes. Fortunately I have found a name for my misery. It's Chris Paterson. I know part of the reason we lost was because Jason Whyte, who functions as Scotland's mobile brick wall with such effectiveness I am not sure if I will ever be so brave as to get close enough to inform him of my admiration, is injured. But the rest of it is Paterson. I don't like him. In fact, I like him a lot less than I do the players on the other team. There is really not too much difference between them, except the players on the other team have the decency to put on a red shirt before the game.
   To my dismay I was watching the game with a lassie who wants to marry him and have his babies, who insisted he was only having a bad day every time he dropped a ball, chucked it at what seemed to be his real team mates instead of Scottish players, fell on his arse for no apparent reason or simply looked as though he thought he was at the indoor badminton championships. I am not denying he is one of the best kickers in rugby full stop; it is just that he is fucking useless at everything else. Fortunately for Chris, Jack McConnell was also present at Murrayfield (took the day off running the country, again), so in comparison Chris was my hero. Though I almost felt sorry for Jack. When the camera showed the crowds, everybody had their pals with them, except our First Minister. Was standing all on his own. I suppose nobody really wants to be seen with him since he thought he would represent Scotland in New York by wearing a pin striped skirt and a blouse. What's a man like that doing at a rugby match anyway? He should be supporting our team at the international flower arranging contest. Saves us looking at his mug as well.
   It's a hard life, being a Scotland supporter. Still, beats being a football fan.

---

This Michael Jackson trial is not quite as exciting as we had been led to believe, is it? I mean, let's face it: he's no OJ Simpson. Those were the days. I remember walking past a T-shirt stand in California at the time and being offered by the vendor a commemorative OJ T-shirt, featuring on the front a picture of the accused, above which you could print one of two slogans. The first was FREE OJ, the second FRY OJ. The first was of course all the funnier, as Americans use the abbreviation OJ for orange juice, and it was entirely possible while trying to make a socio-political statement of great importance, someone's grandmother would come up to you and claim her free glass of juice.
   It is strange how hard I am finding it to take the whole thing seriously. You wouldn't laugh if anybody else would be charged with child molestation and abduction, would you? OJ shooting his wife and her boyfriend as they were shagging in a house he was paying the rent for may not have been a very nice thing to do, but well, you could at least muster some kind of sympathy for the man. Molesting a thirteen-year-old and then holding his family hostage is an entirely different matter altogether. As terrible as American prisons are, there just isn't an available sentence suitable for people who violate kids.
   So, not a matter to be joking about. Just have a fair trial and get this over with. But it's like watching a bloody circus. First of all, is this man really mentally capable of standing trial? I am not trying to sound mean here, but Michael Jackson has a few issues, don't you agree? When arriving for his first hearing he did the moonwalk on top of his car, for God's sake. Get him out of a court room and into a small padded one. And that's before any of them opened their mouths. The prosecutor is called Mad Dog, the boy's mother is Janet Jackson and he is supposed to be tried by a jury of his peers. Peers! I don't like the idea there are twelve people out there, in one county even, that are like Michael Jackson. No, that doesn't quite cover it. The idea scares the holy fucking shit out of me.
   But, supposing these people aren't actually his peers as such, these are still people in California. They are hoping to get a reasonable and sensible judgement from a group of people picked at random from a state that elected Arnold Schwarzenegger as its governor. I'd rather be judged by a group of twelve chimps. Wearing nappies. And a bow tie. On heroin.

---

These are confusing times in the corridors of the White House. There must be a few intelligent people walking around in there (law of average), who have trouble figuring out what policy is at the moment. Occupation of Lebanon bad, occupation of Palestine good. Weapons sales to Indonesia good, weapons sales to China bad. Nuclear weapons in Israel good, but bad in Iran. Insane undemocratic zealots running Iraq bad, the same running the United States good. Hizbollah bad - Peshmerga good, and on the subject of torture and infringing and/or abolishing civil rights they seem to have a different policy every day. But at least the United States of America has now, as the last country on the planet, ruled executing children is not acceptable. Not only did they not manage to figure this out only after Congo and Iran, but it also took a split Supreme Court decision of five against four. Somehow that makes it very difficult to feel good about it. Anything decided with that small a margin is easily repealed.
   But now we have a different matter to get confused about. With St Patrick's Day around the corner the US is disappointed in the IRA because they continue to mete out justice by shooting people without trial, and they are disappointed with Dutch soldiers, who are now no longer meting out justice by shooting people without trial. Funnily enough in both cases the White House feels the British army should be handling the situation. Well, that's consistency for you. But it's true: the Dutch are pulling out of Iraq. The coalition is crumbling. Well, not crumbling entirely of course. Estonia, Tonga, Kazakhstan, Macedonia and Moldova are all staying, and their combined strength is... 175 troops. That wouldn't fill my local pub of course, but it makes Condoleeza Rice feel like she has friends. What kind of plane did these troops arrive on? A single engine propeller plane borrowed from a local crop dusting company?
   The Dutch are in a bit of a moral dilemma here of course. The population is actually quite keen for its soldiers to kill Muslims, but they are less enthusiastic when they start shooting back. Fortunately occasionally the government accidentally slips up and lets out the truth. So when the first batch of troops arrived back in the Netherlands, the minister for defence stated they had made the difference between stability and instability in Iraq. Which they have. Under Saddam is was atrocious but stable, and after the invasion it has become atrocious and chaotic to boot.
   The Americans are of course not the only ones confusing the world. The Labour government is trying very hard to follow suit, as it has been for the last few years now. So, what we have to realise is that in the current climate (being post-invasion, which they were responsible for), it would be silly for Muslims to expect they will not be targeted by police and the intelligence services. Or, for that matter, to expect any evidence being presented when they get electronically tagged and imprisoned. However, they have also asked Muslim leaders to assist these same police forces and intelligence services in any way possible. So, effectively, they want Muslims to cooperate with their own persecution. What a wonderful idea. How can we make it easier for the police to target the Muslim population? Perhaps they can report to the police station voluntarily before work every day, in case some constable with links to the BNP feels like conducting a body cavity search. How about voluntary internment? Or why not just skip ahead and ask them all to wear a cloth yellow crescent on their coats? Would that be enough assistance for the government?

---

Police in Southend are hunting a group of devil-worshippers. And I am not making that up. You don't really imagine reading that kind of report in the year 2005, do you? It sounds too medieval. You begin to wonder whether they'll be chucked in the river once they are found. Vatican officials will be dispatched to deal with the sentencing personally, I am sure. Actually, it is just the local constabulary hunting them, after a group of them broke into a church to perform Satanic rituals and lift some of the sacred artefacts. I am guessing the church did not have CCTV installed, so I am hoping to find a copy of the poster they will print up for this one. Wanted: people seen acting suspiciously around the church of the Sacred Heart. Possibly dressed in black, with horns and a tail.
   But if the police are looking stupid over the affair, just imagine these devil-worshippers. Are they amateurs or what? What self-respecting Satanist would go and conduct rituals in a bloody church? That would be like holding an AA meeting in a pub. I would have thought a clearing in the woods would be more traditional. A druid circle maybe. A community centre perhaps. A public toilet even. Anything apart from a church. It doesn't take a genius to work that one out. They are giving Satan-worship a bad name, these people. Whatever happened to creeping up to a church and just setting the thing on fire? I am all for multi-religious places of worship, but this is just ridiculous.
   And what do they need these holy items for? The article didn't say what kind of items they nicked, and I am now kicking myself for cancelling my subscription to the Southend Gazette (Tuesdays and Fridays only, singles ads in the Friday issue), but I can just picture one of these guys, probably wearing a cape but nothing else, sticking safety pins into a statue of Jesus. Don't they have their own toys to play with? Seems a bit childish to go and steal someone else's playthings, not to mention highly unoriginal. I bet when they were kids they always had to play what everybody else was, and during their teenage years decided to rebel against their own lack of creativity and turned to Lucifer for help. So, if you live in Southend and have seen your neighbour masturbating with a crucifix recently, please go and report her and her pimply boyfriend.

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Does anybody out there speak Dog? I'm sure it would be a handy trick what with Crufts on in Birmingham at the moment, and I am sure the lovely people there would pay considerably more than I could, but I am in desperate need of someone who can fluently converse with our canine friends. You'd say that is a silly thing to be asking for, but you may remember a few years ago an animal psychologist testified in court (honest) after examining a goat for stress. The goat in question had just been caught having sex with a human being by a whole carriage full of people whose train came to a halt next to the what I am sure what a lovely picturesque scene. I can't actually remember whether the aforementioned animal psychologist concluded the goat did or did not appear to be stressed, though I think he was fairly confident the goat had not in any way dressed provocatively or in any other manner suggested sexual intercourse was welcome.
   Naturally my personal interest in communicating with dogs is of a slightly less erotic nature. I could insert a joke about having slept with a fair number of bitches already, but I am sure by now you will have thought of that one yourselves. No, the reason I need an expert on language is because of John Reid, who was being interviewed by Jeremy Paxman last week. Most people think Paxman can be awfully rude, whereas I think he is not nearly tough enough. In one of his 'rude' moments this time -a 'spectacular live bust-up' apparently-, he suggested Dr Reid was an 'attack dog' for the government. This may very well have something to do with his normal assertion that they will bomb any country they damn well see fit (bear in mind this is the health secretary) and if we don't like it that is tough shit to the lot of us, but he, rather forcefully, claimed it was because he had a Glaswegian accent.
   Which brings me back to the point. I have met a lot of Glaswegians, and have been in very close contact with attack dogs as well. I remember one of them biting me in the arse (an attack dog, not a Glaswegian). But never have I noticed any similarity between the barking of a dog and the grunting of a Weedgie. I had always imagined if an Alsatian could talk it would sound, oh I don't know, German perhaps? Maori with a bit of imagination. You know, when they do the Haka, bearing their teeth and shouting at opponents to scare the living daylights out of them. That is fairly attack dog-esque. Until they start dressing up Rottweilers in shell suits and baseball caps though, I think it is highly insulting to compare Glaswegians to dogs. And I don't think the people of Glasgow like it either.

---

As some random bloke in the United States was being tried for stalking Mel Gibson, he defended himself by saying God had told him to go and pray with the distinguished Saint Mel. As excuses go, that's not a bad one. For one, try and prove God didn't tell him. Especially when it comes to Saint Mel, who himself feels very strongly about doing as God tells you to. And at least God didn't tell him to abduct his daughter or to take a shit on his window sill. If you are going to have a stalker, you'd prefer the praying kind over the defecating type, I'd say.
   It does make you despair about the American legal system though, when judges see no problem in people who think they are in direct contact with God representing themselves in court. It's trouble waiting to happen. Though it does interest me what inspires people to do crazy things. Talking to God is one thing; thousands of kids in schools all over the world do it every day, but some people get seriously creative. John Hinckly said the reason he shot Ronald Reagan could be found in The Catcher In The Rye apparently. I found this a very interesting notion, and bought the book to see if it would enrage me enough to kill a politician or two. A viable experiment, I am sure you will agree, without any possible negative effect on society.
   There is of course one major difference between John Hinckly and myself, being that I am not insane, but that has never stopped me before. The only emotion that book brought out in me though, was dread. Sheer, utter, absolute dread. The narrator is so incredibly irritating you find yourself hoping feverishly he will be hit by a bus and pinned under the wheels is dragged to his painful death. The only people who deserved to be shot after that book -not that I am saying Reagan didn't deserve a bullet in the arse for entirely unrelated issues you will understand- were the author and the publisher. It was rather telling the previous owner of my copy had left a bookmark twenty pages from the end. I can only assume at this point he gave up, died of boredom or went out to shoot someone. Most likely himself.

---

Perhaps I should just stop answering the phone in my house. It rarely benefits my already fragile nervous system. For all the calls I get to invite me round to the pub I must get at least half a dozen from I people I don't know, looking for someone who doesn't live here, trying to sell him/me crap I don't need. These people have no shame. Without so much as an apology they will ring me out of bed and demand to know whether my house is electrically heated. What the fuck do you care? Go and worry about your own winter preparations and leave me the hell to sleep in on my day off. You would threaten them with death and dismemberment if it weren't for the fact there are laws against that, conversations can be recorded and most of all, they know where you live.
   You wonder why these people are so insistent on improving the quality of my life. Why can't they just hang up once the phone rings five times and I still haven't answered. I am clearly watching the rugby, and do not wish to be disturbed. Or in the shower. As a rule I ignore the phone when I am showering, but once it's rung nineteen times you begin fearing a friend is in tears at the airport and needs help, or a relative is dying from a very nasty yet effective viral disease. But invariably when I have hopped through the house bare-arsed and dripping wet, some tit in a Welsh accent informs me a horticultural specialist is in my area and would like to help me erect an ornamental Japanese fish pond in my back garden. Fuck. Off. I don't even have a back garden.
   And why is it always shit I don't want? The law of average really suggests they should by now have stumbled across something I find mildly interesting. Instead they would happily interrupt any activity you might be enjoying -say, about to commit suicide- to explain the benefits of thatched roofing. They are vicious. If you were to inform them, actually this is not a very good time as you were about to swallow half a bottle of pain killers and wash it down with a pint of absinthe, they won't flinch. They will just ask if there is someone else they could speak to. Never mind neds; can't we slap a few anti-social behaviour orders on these bastards?

---

If you have been reading the newspapers -okay, the opinion pages- of late, you may have noticed that democracy is spreading and the cry of freedom is being heard across the world. Hoorah! Three cheers for Bush, Blair and all the other gun-toting monkeys who managed this despite our continued protests. Or so they would have you believe. Well, let me just take issue with this for a moment, using as an example Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and last but certainly not least, Birmingham. The one in the Midlands that is.
   Right. Iraq. Who is in charge in Iraq? As it stands the American military can, and does, arrest, kill, torture or imprison any person it damn well sees fit. It does not answer to Iraqi courts, Iraqi politicians, and certainly not the Iraqi public. It has awarded its own soldiers immunity from both national and international prosecution, has declared them absolved from observing the Geneva Conventions and it is in firm control of almost all aspects of life in Iraq. It is they who rule, and they were neither elected, nor do they represent the people they occupy.
   If that constitutes as a democracy, which according to Tony Blair it does, you have to wonder why the Lebanese are kicking up such a fuss. They are in a fairly similar situation, only without the daily carnage and recent carpet bombing of their cities. Nonetheless Bush, never one for a sense of irony, praised the protesters ousting both Syrian troops and their own government. The demands actually sounded very similar to the ones when Israel was occupying Lebanon, back when Bush and his pals supplied the arms to do so. As for their government, it was as unpopular as it was elected. Sound familiar? You don't see Blair and co packing their bags, do you? It seems Lebanese leaders, even the pro-Syrian kind, have an ultimately better sense of democracy than those abolishing trials over here in the self-righteous West. And while we are on the subject of freedom and armies pulling out of foreign territory; what about the Golan Heights? Belong to Syria, claimed by Lebanon and occupied by Israel. Haven't heard Bush or Blair tell them to stop interfering by any chance?
   Let alone in Palestine. Claiming credit for their election must surely be the most laughable of all. Arafat offered to have elections months ago, but the American and Israeli governments wouldn't allow them, because they didn't like who they would elect. Now that is democracy for you: you kill or imprison all candidates you don't like, refuse elections to go ahead until the president dies, and then pretend to be surprised democracy happens once you remove the roadblocks. It seems to me the less Western influence there is, the more democratic the whole process becomes.
   At the other end of the spectrum this also seems to be true. Cue Birmingham. A court there has heard not only that Labour councillors rigged the vote, but now witnesses are too scared to come forward after death threats and masked strong-men appearing that their homes. They can hold fair elections in Ukraine, but not in Aston. What does that tell you? I mean, what is next? How far are these people prepared to go? I imagine a party political broadcast on behalf of the Labour party, featuring John Prescott with a helmet and flanked by two SAS men in balaclavas, warning anyone who votes against them will be sent to Belmarsh or some other camp they have set up in cooperation with the Americans. And then a quick flash of Tony in front of a naked detainee who has shat himself and is shivering in the cold as a guard unleashes a dog on him. Tony, smiling broadly, looks at the camera and says: 'You don't want to end up here. Trust me.'

---

Look here. I can deal with a lot of crap, okay? You wish to suggest I have trouble with getting a rise out of my trouser snake, that is entirely taken in good humour. I will kindly decline any offer to remedy the supposed lack of activity down under, and instantly forget about the whole episode. You can imply incontinence, homosexuality, bad breath or even chronic diarrhoea, and I will quite simply not give a toss. But you can take it too far. The boundaries of decency and good humour can be crossed, and they have.
   How dare they recommend I read a book by, by, that irritating, sickening, disgusting, twittering runt? I should lodge a formal complaint. And I would if only I knew where to direct it. Long lasting emotional damage I will suffer because of this. Tears came welling up, my pride stung long and hard, and my appetite was ruined. I mean, promotional material from the BNP I can deal with, by an entire book by Jamie Oliver? That is taking it six steps too far, don't you think? With pictures and all! Free and tolerant society is all good and well, but surely we can make an exception for that miscreant?
   He makes me nauseous just by appearing. The sight of him makes me want to hurl. No discount in the world is going to entice me to buy a book that is guaranteed to upset both me and my stomach every time I stumble across it on the bookshelf. Let alone the kitchen! God forbid some leaves it lying around there. I would be forced to vomit violently all over the pasta my flatmate is preparing for dinner. I would rather have anthrax delivered to my front door, thank you. That way the end might be near, but at least it will be swift.

---

It's been years since I have owned a pair of swimming trunks. In fact, I sincerely believe it was in a different millennium. I used to swim every day when I lived in the United States, though admittedly at the time the swimming pool was literally a stumble and a fall forward outside my front door. I had to remember to avoid it on my way to work, lest I trip over the slightly raised edge and tumble into the thing face-first. I haven't swum ever since. Perhaps some repressed recollection of doing my early morning laps while being watched by heavily armed drug dealers who detested me passionately. Sometimes when I sit around complaining my life is uneventful, I should just think back to the days people used to aim guns at me on a regular basis and decide perhaps yawning your way through a Wednesday afternoon isn't all that bad of a life to have.
   But back to swimming. I think the reason I don't swim anymore is my tendency to travel. Good excuse, eh? You see, swimming is universal, but different cultures have completely differing attitudes towards it. For example, in France swimming is an activity associated with fucking about and splashing whichever Gallic belle you hope to drag back to your cave that night. That is an attitude I can deal with, though most of my days in France were spent recovering from rather impressive hangovers, and so a bunch of horny Frenchmen causing a commotion was very rarely appreciated. In Scotland on the other hand swimming is an activity, not leisure. It is exercise, and people take it seriously. Naturally, you can forget about that. I am not trekking all the way across town to the Commonwealth Pool to then wear myself out before dragging myself all the way back home.
   Back in the States people were always confused by my energetic morning laps, because Americans don't take exercise unless it is with a sweatband and in a fashionable gym, and they certainly have no idea how to have frivolous fun with one another. Over there, bearing in mind I lived in the south, you swim to cool down. You bob along calmly and coolly. The fatter you are, the more comfortably you float by disgusted teenagers in fashionable sunglasses sipping drinks at the side of the pool. Nice and relaxed is not really my style really. And in the Netherlands people swim because, well, they have to. Once those dykes break the water level will rise quite suddenly and anybody not able to swim upward a good fifteen feet will have to grow gills in record time should they wish to survive. But as I live on a hill I don't really think I need to practice my skills. So really there is no point to swimming for me.

---

Every few months I remember I still have an e-mail account I had to create when I was in college. They were stressful days, so most of my memories have been violently suppressed by years of alcohol abuse and deep denial, but for some reason when I least suspect it, it comes to me. Old e-mail address. People I haven't spoken to you in years may very well still be using it, so I have to go and check through the 856 e-mails that have appeared in my inbox since the last time my memory was jogged for no apparent reason.
   Naturally none of these are estranged friends or long lost loves. My friendships normally have a lifespan not quite covering from my college days till the present day. What I do get are a shocking amount of offers to buy a Rolex. Somehow I have come to fit a profile suggesting I would be interested in these things, despite the fact I don't even wear a watch. And quite how these people have come to the conclusion I am in need of medication to achieve an erection I suppose I will never figure out. I haven't had sex in fucking ages; I can achieve an erection by thinking about whipped cream.
   I am sure these people mean well, but one Kristine Carroll is offering me a Green Card to come live and work in the United States. U.S.A. is welcoming 55,000 people every single year! Not sure how that is supposed to entice me. The last thing I would want is to become some sort of sheep following the herd. Least of all a herd that thinks the United States is the place to be. We'll not even go into the fact my setting foot on US soil may very well lead to my arrest by the FBI, and quite frankly all the New York tourist attractions and Walt Disney theme parks in the world aren't worth risking that for.
   Moving on from this wonderful offer, one Ferdinandlandis gets straight to the point with a subject line Date me and I'll blow you, and hopefully the word 'up' has not been excluded from that line due to lack of space. I don't particularly like the idea of being blown by someone called Ferdinand to begin with, but then the sender can't have been too confident I would reply, as I am only one of five people the e-mail was sent you. But the absolute fucking best one has got to be someone who quite persistently sends me e-mails, the subjects of which consistently begin with SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT. This is then followed by 'teenage sluts', 'transsexuals and girls' or other such appetising categories of pornography. I deleted them all, unread, until I came across one that stated SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT: anchovy. What on earth can be sexually explicit about something you use as a pizza topping? I was actually quite disappointed when the e-mail didn't contain any pictures.

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Good news from parliament! In an effort to save us from ourselves, the government is banning happy hours. It is an enormous threat to the people of Scotland apparently, and it is costing us a billion pounds a year. Which you have to admit is quite an impressive amount, though the same government sees no objection to spending similar amounts on murdering Iraqi children, so you have to wonder what is so despicable about us having a drink for half the price. What the hell does Jack McConnell care how much money I have to spend on a pint of dark ale? Please don't tell me he is interested in either my finances or my health, because I will only have nightmares involving him and Cathy Jamieson kicking my front door down and as they put me on a pair of scales at gunpoint start checking my bollocks for testicular cancer.
   They are putting the cart before the horse on this whole binge drinking. We don't have binge drinking because we have happy hours, but we have happy hours because we are a nation of drinkers. And let's face it; Jack and his buddies are hardly helping matters when it comes to fighting the urge to drink. But even without them, look around you! We spend most of our time in darkness, and the rest in twilight. We get two weeks of summer, 350 days of rain, sleet or snow, and it is permanently freezing. We live in one of the most depressing climates on the fucking planet. We need something to alleviate this pain, and curling quite simply doesn't do it.
   As they are also about to ban smoking, it seems the objective is to get us out of pubs altogether. Some sort of way to stop us all from, I don't know, socialising. Having a good time. Instead, we are supposed to go and sit at home and stare at the sleet coming down. If that won't drive you to drink, I don't know what will. I think it has nothing to do with binge drinking. It's because nobody likes our government any more. If they don't get to have a social life, neither should the rest of us. Perhaps they themselves should go and have a look at the inside of a pub some time. You never know, they might just enjoy themselves. Scary thought.

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In a valiant effort to keep us all safe from harm and protect us from all the evil that is surrounding us every minute of every day, lurking from dark alleyways and seemingly respectable public schools, the good people of London are going to be informed through posters and adverts they need to be aware of unattended packages lying around. In addition to paying close attention to their neighbours, in case are up to something suspicious. You see, it has been brought to the attention of our omniscient and ever-wise government, Islamic extremists are planning to blow up the UK capital, preferably taking with them the largest possible amount of inhabitants. So they had better be aware.
   What is slightly suspicious about this campaign is not so much it is a little bit of a coincidence they start frightening the crap out of the electorate just before they are asked to vote for the most xenophobic and torture-supporting parties around, but its existence itself. As far as I am aware, the IRA has blown up a fair few places already. In addition I can remember one right-wing extremist lobbing nail bombs into bars around those parts as well. It seems odd to me that even though being killed by a bomb planted by Muslims leaves you just as dead as being killed by one compliments of Catholics, it requires a lot more attention.
   It does seem to suggest the idea is not so much our safety, but merely our reaction to the campaign. We can't have people phoning the coppers every time wee Paddie starts shooting squirrels with an air rifle, but the moment Mohammed starts praying with the curtains drawn, we would like you to immediately assume he is up to no good. It makes indefinite detention, house arrest, torture and invasion so much easier the next time. Just keep reminding people that any Muslim living in your neighbourhood may very well be the next suicide bomber to strike, and this time it may very well hit the East End. Never mind you are ultimately more likely to be raped and murdered by a close relative, stabbed for your mobile phone or kicked to death at a football match. We can't go round demonising everyone.
   Does it not strike you as particularly naive the chief police commissioner warned people the anti-war demonstration in London was an ideal target for Islamic extremists, and so perhaps it would be an idea to stay away, but no such warning was issued when the England rugby team won the world cup and was to have a procession through the English capital? Apparently, in the mind of the people paid to protect us a large crowd waving Palestinian flags, full of Muslims and people sympathetic to the plight of Arabs and Muslims all over the world was a more likely target than several thousand beer-swilling English blokes in rugby tops waving St George's Cross. Seems unlikely they are really that stupid, and if they are, I want somebody better instated immediately. You may have noticed that while the people of London have to deal with concrete barriers and should be on the lookout for the attack MI5 are now saying is inevitable, the government is still quite happy to bid for the Olympics. It would help greatly if they could just let us know whether we should panic or relax, because I am getting confused by the whole thing.

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Occasionally I worry I am going to run out of things to write about. After all, there are only so many things you can discuss, and only so many of them you can mention more than once. I could of course update people about my life, but really it is not very interesting. If I were say, a drug dealer, or a professional prostitute, then my daily adventures would be worth chronicling. But in my case I would pretty soon have to resort to telling you I very much did not enjoy reading 'The Catcher In The Rye', but finished it nonetheless because, well, I paid three quid for the thing. And I am pretty sure the subject of nasal hair is best avoided in my columns, especially the painful-looking device one of my friends has lying around his house. I'll save it for a short story.
   Sooner or later then I am bound to be completely out of ideas. Or so you would think. And then you find an instruction manual with directions on how to fit batteries into a remote control. Is there anyone on this island who needs detailed step-by-step guidance to this, with illustrations. I am pretty useless with electronics, but from what I can remember every remote I have ever owned was not only fairly self-explanatory when it came to fitting batteries, it also always had the pictures on the inside of the battery compartment.
   But what really worried me was not that some twit with nothing better to do sat around for days, drawing out in painstaking detail the shape of a piece of plastic and wee arrows to help you with this challenge. What worried me is the manual I found was opened on this page. Someone had been reading it. Now if I had lived in Rwanda, that would have made sense. But it somewhat scares me there are people that are not only not aware of how to fit a bloody battery, but are also too anti-social to simply ask the person next to them to help them out. This sounds like a very scary individual to bump into on the street.

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Without getting too soppy about the whole subject, can I just babble on about falling in love for a while? Actually, I am going to anyway. It is only very rarely I bring the matter up, and it is usually in a condescending way, so those of you of a cynical disposition may want to go and eat their cornflakes reading something else. I just had one of those nights last week, and since my recent bout of throat aches, sneezing, coughing and looking unwell has driven most of my friends to a safe and comfortable distance I am going to have to share this by inflicting it upon all the poor souls who type in Benito Mussolini scratching his nose photograph (six times last December), and through some bizarre logic end up on my website.
   Some things are quite simply so amazing that even though you had already fallen in love with it, and you are well aware that you are, but you just fall in love with it (or him, or her for that matter) all over again. Chinese food for example. You already know you love the stuff, and yet every once in a while you have a meal so good you involuntarily groan in delight. That sort of thing. Well, I fell in love with live music on Saturday the 24th of June 1995, standing slightly to the right of the stage in a soggy field in Friesland. And every few months or so I go and see a band that are so good I get that same feeling, that same ringing in my ears, all over again. I may be going deaf, but at least it was for a good reason.
   I fell in love with the Levellers on Friday the 23rd of July 2004, standing slightly to the right of the stage in a soggy field in Dumfrieshire. I have since had the pleasure of falling in love with them all over again in slightly more agreeable circumstances, and also some that involved bleeding heavily from the head. If you can fall in love with a band while nursing a gash above the eye you know they are good. And last but not least I fell in love with my ex on Friday the 21st of November 2003, standing, you guessed it, slightly to the right, but of a bar this time, in a pub in Edinburgh. And I have had the pleasure of doing it all over again several times, perhaps unsurprisingly including an occasion where we were camping out and trying to make tea in a soggy field. I am nothing if not consistent.
   Well, on Friday I fell in love with all three again. Even though one of them (my ex) objected to the fact another one of them (the Levellers) were singing anti-globalisation songs while drinking Diet Coke. In Glasgow no less, which is hardly the most likely place to fall in love with anything or anyone. Fall over drunk yes; fall in love, not very often. And I was even standing to the left of the stage. Only goes to show; miracles do happen once you have had a few pints of beer. It was right in the middle of passionate screaming as my sweaty body was pressed up against the equally hot and steaming body of my ex girlfriend (sometimes life is just too awful to contemplate, isn't it). I think it may have been the smile that made me realise. Of course, we can only speculate as to just how little live concerts, the Levellers and my ex were impressed with me.

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I'm beginning to get concerned about my alcohol intake. I have this suspicion it is slowly degrading my ability to react as quickly as I should. See, I always thought drinking caused liver failure and Korsakov, and I always figured life would be all the more pleasant once I would start forgetting to turn up for work and without fail be amazed to find just how wonderful masturbation really is. As for the liver failure; if my liver managed to get through the summer 1997 without rupturing, exploding or quite simply stop functioning there is nothing in this world that will so much as make a lasting impression on it.
   Strangely enough my reaction speed is fine when I am actually drunk. Only the other week I sat in the middle of the road (as you do), thinking how wonderful it was my brain had noticed both my legs slipping from underneath me on the ice, but deciding extending my arms might cause fractures, whereas my arse would probably be able to deal with the blow of me landing quite squarely on it, in the aforementioned middle of the street. I suppose one could argue it was a good thing nobody was around to see me, but really it seemed a great shame to me I should suffer a wet bum without anybody getting any enjoyment out of it. No point in me quite literally freezing my arse off without at least one person benefiting from it somehow.
   So it is not that kind of reaction. It is receiving signals something is going on, and somehow not being able to process any of the information before acting upon the information. My body is faster than my brain. That can't be right. It is part of the reason I open my mouth before considering the consequences that are likely to ensue. It also means when I wake up I have trouble figuring out what actually happened, and what I have just been dreaming. I wake up convinced I have missed a vital rugby match that is actually to be played for another three weeks. Normally I can tell I have been dreaming when airborne candyfloss was attacking me while I tried to do the Times crossword on the horse-drawn cart to Dublin, but even that takes me a good few seconds. I am afraid if I don't cut down on my drinking one of these days I'll come wandering out of my bedroom, demanding to know where that leggy blonde went, only to be informed by my flatmates the last time a leggy blonde came out of my bedroom was not only several years away, but was also unlikely to return. I want a more convenient disease resulting from alcohol abuse.

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Normally I wouldn't venture into anything of a scientific nature, because it normally confuses me to the point of going dizzy and it is in my nature to question everything, even if I have just proven it myself. But sometimes you cannot help yourself. I was rather disappointed to find despite the electrical current coursing into it through the lead, no sparks flew off my keyboard when I, in a single fluent motion, poured a pint of beer all over it. Not quite as spectacular as I had hoped for. After all, if I can't do any work on the thing the very least it could offer me is some cheap thrills in the shape of a small house fire, or perhaps even a miniature explosion. Absolutely fuck-all happened.
   Well, obviously not entirely fuck-all. I swore quite a bit, for quite some time as well. For some inexplicable reason all the blame rested not on myself, or even the computer, but from my cursing I managed to gather the glass was to blame, and it seemed entirely unfair while the keyboard was well on its way to that place in the sky where all electrical equipment invariably ends up, the glass was entirely unaffected by this tragedy unfolding right on my desk. I would have smashed it if it weren't for the fact I was too busy scrambling for the nearest towel to prevent the slowly spreading dark fluids dripping into the stereo equipment, which in my mind at least was both more likely to catch fire and less easily replaced.
   Life is quite uncomplicated when you don't have a computer. Occasionally you start wondering how to fix it, but soon plans fall through. You could order one online if it weren't for the fact typing in 'keyboard' is suspiciously complicated without an actual keyboard to do it on. You could go to the store, but it's cold outside. And you would ask all your computer-obsessed friends if they have a spare one, but as you probably guessed you always contact them by e-mail. So it came as no surprise when I did get a new keyboard, and a very fancy one at that, it was over a cold pint of dark beer, in the pub.

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I read in the paper the other day two bouncers, not exactly a breed known for their tact or intelligence (I used to be one), had been arrested because they informed three people they couldn't come into the place because it had a 'no coloureds' policy. You are not supposed to laugh, I know, but you do. You can't help yourself. It hardly comes as a surprise there are disgustingly bigoted doormen out there, but you wonder what made them think they would get away with actually turning people away because they are not white. Of all the things they could have come up with. No trainers, couples only or, an old Edinburgh favourite, no colours (as in football colours). Either these bouncers had misread that last policy, or we really have to address the number of South Africans coming over.
   Actually, quite a few clubs and pubs operate a no-coloureds policy. They just don't signpost it. You have a look at how many people voted for the BNP and UKIP the last election. You truly think these are only mindless skinheads? Bigoted arseholes are all around you. Bank managers, doormen, club owners, newspaper columnists, politicians and policemen. And they all have a policy regarding people with a darker complexion. They just don't let it show. Okay, some of them do. But they either do it just within the bounds of legal, or they pick on Muslims, who have no recourse to the law anymore.
   Really when you think about it, these two bouncers who will probably have to appear before the Sheriff, and quite rightfully so, are actually operating roughly the same policy as the Labour government is at our ports. You may have been following the build-up to the election, during which the Tories and Labour have been vying for the most disgustingly racist attitude towards people with a different colour. You will have noticed there will be no change towards Europeans, and in Scotland we are even trying to get more Americans and Canadians to come over. Traditionally white people. So if you refuse 3 people from a club you are a criminal, but if you refuse thousands from the country for the exact same reason you might win the election.

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When I grow up, I want to go out with a barmaid. Not just because it means you get to have the odd free pint, lock-ins and all your mates will fancy your girlfris instant awe in me. A certain quality. A certain je-ne-sais-quoi. Actually, I know exactly what it is. It is the ability to be roughly the same height as a barstool and yet manage with a single flash of the eye and a raised fist to shut up any bloke who happens to offend. I find it strangely attractive.
   My locals are the best for this. They seem to employ mainly short-term, short-arsed, and most of all short-fused female bar staff. For a good reason. Only the other week two rather large gentlemen started an argument, which culminated in a fair few punches being thrown. When I enquired which of the two, both of whom I knew vaguely, had won the dispute, the assistant manager looked at me strangely and, as if it should have been obvious, informed me the barmaid had won. She may have needed to wee step to reach up to their ears, but by the time she had managed to grab hold of them, out they both went.
   I have stopped leaving the bar. Quite casually I will hang around at the side, hoping someone will do something stupid and be set upon by one of them. It is a sadistic streak of mine, and possibly just a tiny bit perverted, but I can't help myself. I don't even want to sleep with them; I just want to enjoy them threatening someone with a spray bottle of toilet cleaner while holding on to the scruff of their necks and making it perfectly plain they can either walk out or limp out, but leave they will. It's like a fetish. I wonder if there are any websites that will cater to this particular taste of mine.

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I don't know what possesses people to have children or get married, but normally I will go along with it. When however my friends start taking drastic steps like that I begin to get worried. People I used to sleep with are having babies now. Babies! The screaming, crying, smelly things that are very painful to push out. All this time I had so much respect for them. Clearly I am not quite as good a judge of character as I would like to believe I am. From now on before I get involved with anyone I will demand written confirmation they are never intending to have children. I don't care whether it is mine or not.
   This is where I differ from most people. Generally, as long as they are not involved, people don't particularly care what the rest of the world is up to. I suppose in one twisted way this is a fairly sensible approach to the matter, though naturally not in the slightest like my own. I get more upset when I am not involved. Though admittedly it is not a hell of a lot, I do have a very small amount of control over what happens in my own life. If I stop and think about matters for more than a second and a half, I can decide not to do something stupid. I rarely do, but that is hardly the point. I have never been confronted by the choice of marriage or kids.
   But when other people, friends of mine, start becoming respectable members of society, parents and spouses, there is nothing I can do to stop it. Even if I were to stand up at the back of the church and shout I object, by the time the vicar has wiped his spectacles clean, I will have been bundled out of the place and chucked into the street. It seems I am the only sensible one of the lot. Yet nobody listens to me. At least they make me feel young.

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It's a good thing I don't live in Cumbria. I'd get worried by now. Normally I am quite relaxed when it comes to British nuclear activity. Not only because I tend to believe even our government will check all its workers rather stringently when it comes to working with World War Three weaponry, but also because my ex-girlfriend and her anti-nuclear buddies are keeping such a close eye on these people that if something does happen to go boom I am sure she will let me know immediately to put on an aluminium hat and sit underneath a white sheet for a couple of weeks. So it came as a bit of a shock when I read at Sellafield no less than 30 kilos of plutonium are, erm, well, kind of, a bit, sort of, missing.
   Begging your pardon? Missing? I would get worried if a clipboard goes missing in a nuclear plant. The smallest item I will let go is a pencil, provided it is worn down to the eraser. It seems absolutely vital to me in installations like this we do not fuck around when it comes to inventory. If people are removing stuff they are not supposed to, I don't want them anywhere near nuclear material. So just how the fuck do you lose thirty kilograms of bastard plutonium? That is enough to wipe out seven major cities. Oh, and by the way, while your mouth is on the floor, a further sixteen kilos of depleted uranium is also gone.
   Now, I am not a power-lifter, obviously, but I find it hard to imagine how half my body weight in weaponry can just disappear. Surely somebody would notice Billy leaving at the end of the day, holding on to a glowing lunchbox with both hands. And if that doesn't scare you enough, the people in charge at this DIY centre have defended themselves by saying it is not really missing; only on paper. So it is not on the streets of Cumbria, some secretary has merely filed it in the wrong cabinet. This arsenal is supposed to make me feel safer, if I am not mistaken. I'm beginning to think my ex may have been right. I hate it when she does that.

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Whoever said I have no sense of adventure doesn't know what he is talking about. I laugh in the face of danger. Or at least into the mirror. Which at the time was fairly dangerous. During the average week I will stare into the mirror a minute or two, max. That'll do. I don't do hair gel, aftershave, facial cream and other such products, and am perfectly capable of brushing my teeth without staring back at my ugly mug. What I do need a mirror for is trimming my beard. Which I have found is rather tricky when you burst into coughing fits every two minutes. Before you know it one half the kitchen scissors (you didn't think I'd buy special ones, did you?) has wedged itself in between your windpipe and the spinal column. No need to go to Iraq or Glasgow for impressive scars; my bathroom is the place to be.
   Why shave? Well, it was getting to the point where I was spending as much time in the morning trying to untangle my beard as it would have taken me to shave every day. And I was kind of beginning to look like Davy Crocket. I was half expecting my friends to turn up with a skinned tame hamster to wear on my head when we went into town. And little as I am concerned about fashion, strutting around resembling American war heroes and wearing dead pets as headgear is not really my style. So trimmed it was. Now I am back to resembling Jesus, I have been told. I'd hate to think what kind of accessories my friends can think of for that one.

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Ah, it's good to see Alistair Campbell is back. We've missed him terribly these last few months. And he is as magical as ever. This time he has been behind a campaign to show the Tories are apparently promising money that doesn't exist. Quite extraordinary for a man who said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Still, I won't hold this against him, if only because he will send senior law lords after me if I do. After all, why fight your own fights when you have the entire legal establishment in your pocket? If the man had any balls he would not have sent other people to die in the Gulf, would he?
   At the moment the Tories are accusing Labour of racism (I have forgotten which is the pot and which is the kettle by now), because they are using tactics that could be regarded as anti-Semitic. So, what does Ali have to say about this accusation? Well, one week after we remembered the liberation of Auschwitz, Mr Campbell suggested the media fuck off and cover something important, you twats. Because obviously the idea our government might resort to stereotyping Jews for political gain is completely unimportant.
   Where do they pick up people like this? And if that is not bad enough, the e-mail that contained this rather baffling advice was both sent to the wrong person and looked more like a text message typed by a nine-year-old than an e-mail by a main advisor to the Prime Minister. The man can't even spell the word 'political'. No wonder they couldn't find all those weapons of mass destruction he had been babbling about. He probably meant Iran.

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I think I may in the past have mentioned my undying love for my bed. Whether it is filled with pretty women or beautifully serene in its lack of them, my bed is the place to be. It brings warmth and comfort to my otherwise so desolate and chilly heart. My bed is as close to Nirvana as I am going to get this side of LSD. Except of course when you are suffering from a cold the likes of which would have felled mythical monsters of old. Three fucking duvets and a hot water bottle, and still no amount of drugs, tea and chicken soup could make me comfortable in the slightest.
   Isn't it strange that when I am physically capable of, say, running round a tennis court with people, I get annoyed when I am sitting all by myself listening to Led Zeppelin and people phone, yet when there is not a bloody chance in Hell I will be able to so much as lift a tennis racket I keep staring at the phone, wondering why none of those bastards who dare refer to themselves as my friends can be bothered to pick up a handset and check whether I am still alive. I guess I will have to start being nicer to people when I am not writhing in my own cold sweat and wishing my nan lived closer.
   Being polite is not easy when you are feeling ill. Especially when people start diagnosing you from a distance, and announcing you are suffering from the flu. I've never understood how people can say this as if it is a good thing either. You have the flu. Just stay in bed and drink lots of fluids. I hate to be the one to point this out, but influenza kills people. I had just been reassuring myself I was merely suffering from a severe cold, when people start predicting my imminent demise. And still the bastards won't come and bring me a bowl of soup.

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Hands up who forgot about Valentine's Day today. I bet nobody in the A&E forgot. Though I have never been able to get figures on this, I am completely convinced today is the day fifteen-year-olds are most likely to start cutting their forearms to shreds, swallow painkillers with vodka (and orange if you are a girl) or otherwise express their grief of not having received a single pink postcard they can pretend not to give a damn about. I miss that classroom atmosphere of exhilaration and utter dejection every fourteenth of February. It was so much fun.
   Unfortunately I have now reached an age where people honestly don't give a shit about it anymore. Now the only people upset when they don't get a card are the ones who are in a relationship and expected one from their partners, on whom they are free to vent their frustration with full approval of all those around. Nobody expects to find a letter from a secret admirer. I'd be happy with a letter from my bank manager, announcing my credit card bills have been paid in full. Fat chance of course, but here's hoping.
   Still, as it rates pretty high on my Pointless Holidays We Should Celebrate Anyway list (just under Boxing Day, and slightly above the Chinese New Year to be exact), really I should make an effort in the morning. You know, act excited as I go to collect the mail. Unfortunately this year the gods have scheduled Valentine's Day on a Monday. I don't do excited on Mondays, and certainly not in the morning. So I am afraid those few precious moments before the inevitable disappointment will be filled not with a thumping heart and sweaty excitement, but with yawning and scratching my bollocks. Exactly my level of romance then.

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This whole exercising nonsense is getting out of hand. People I am talking to leave after announcing they are going for a quick run. Or have a date at the gym. One week you are sticking them in the back of a taxi because they are too drunk to walk home, the next they are Olympic athletes. The only thing lacking is people turning up with sweatbands around their heads when you meet them in town. In which case I will deny having ever seen them before.
   My personal fitness regime is a bit more relaxed. It's more a case of drinking in a pub that is slightly further uphill. That's the kind of commitment I am willing to dedicate to my health. I have nothing against jogging, provided I am going somewhere that is interesting. I'll be more than happy to go and run around Holyrood park and head straight up the Royal Mile to end up in Bannermans. But I am not wearing myself out jogging along Stockbridge, only to end up at my own front door. There should be a purpose to the whole thing.
   And even if I wanted to take it more seriously, I wouldn't be able to. Half of this stuff doesn't make any sense. For the life of me I can't figure out what on earth can be the difference between a push-up and a press-up. I know there is a difference between pushing and pressing of course. Pressing a stuck door will have very little effect and pushing your girlfriend up against a wall is assault, but when it comes to lifting all fourteen-and-a-half stone of Damien off the ground I have no idea whether I am pushing or pressing. And frankly it would just be silly to do an exercise you don't know the name of.
   There's a good reason to lose weight by the way. Never mind reducing the risk of heart disease and extending your life; the less weight you carry around, the less you have to lift while you are dangling from a bar somewhere. It seems unfair to me that skinny people have a natural advantage when it comes to exercising. You'd say they don't need it as much. Isn't nature cruel.

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Remind me never to visit Walton-on-Thames. It sounds like a disturbing place. Two women, aged 18 and 19, were sentenced this week for murdering a forty-two year old man there after a party at his flat. This is not something I would expect to happen after a drunken get-together with two lassies in their late teens. Here in Edinburgh it's more common to either shag up against the kitchen sink, or part ways after a quick peck on the cheek. Certainly not being clubbed to death. That's what happens when you visit a football match. Clearly in Surrey have a different approach to the matter.
   This is reverse domestic abuse you know. Not only is the woman beating a bloke to death, but they actually come round to his house to do it. I think we should start a campaign to eradicate this behaviour before it catches on. In the meanwhile I shall be bolting my door. And never again will I invite English girls back to my flat for a drink. I don't want to risk dying of brain damage after being set upon with a screwdriver and a video recorder.
   A video recorder! Now there's a murder weapon you don't hear about every day. How the hell do you kill someone with a video recorder? Apart from repeatedly playing Evita and Titanic of course. I have had a morbid imagination for as long as I can remember, which is roughly the same length of time I have been around video recorders, and never had it occurred to me to use it as a blunt instrument to batter someone with. Actually, it seems a very impractical tool. My video is plugged into all sorts of other electrical appliances, some of which have to be unscrewed before you can take out the cable. What kind of killer spends fifteen minutes disconnecting the wiring before hitting someone over the head with the thing? Not to mention these two were women; they are not supposed to know about technology. Scary times.

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Some people who read my column occasionally contact me to ask me if I am feeling alright. Not in a concerned medical sort of way, but more to test whether my mental condition still allows me to live in modern-day society without posing too much of a risk for those in my immediate surroundings. Apparently, people worry about me. Which is kind enough of them, though I normally assure them I have plenty of friends, both imaginary and corporal, that I am sure would advise me to seek help if ever I begin disturbing them beyond reasonable levels.
   I have encountered a small snag in this safeguard. My friends are insane as well. One of them, the main techie on my website, for example, is obsessed with the patent-pending on the double mouse-click. If that didn't make any sense to you, don't worry; it's not supposed to. I think. But as soon as you will bring up either patents, mice or clicking, his mind goes into overdrive. I only realised recently this is not healthy, but it seems relatively harmless in comparison other problems we encounter amongst our friends. As a result I can't help but wonder whether other people treat my behaviour the same.
   But what is worse, it seems to be contagious. It is now getting to a point where my ridiculous morbid fantasies are based on other people's irrational behaviour. More specifically, I am inexplicably drawn to the idea of killing squirrels. In a horrible manner. Now I never liked squirrels to begin with, but I do recall I didn't always hate them with as much fervour as these recent daytime flashes of graphic violence suggest. This I inherited from another, female, friend of mine. Just to prove men are not the only creatures capable of wanton and horrific violence. It's actually the first thing we ever talked about. Not my best chat-up line -'what about them squirrels, eh; aren't they bastards'- but then probably not exactly my worst either.
   The other week I was watching the new BBC series Tribe, in which an Englishman named Bruce Parry spends a month living with remote tribes, spending an hour of television time complaining about the food and moaning about their traditions. After about a quarter of an hour you wonder why he doesn't just leave, or even better, commits suicide. Just as I was getting ready to change the channel, his companions began shooting squirrels from tree branches with their rifles. And to make it even more appealing, they then wrapped them in vine so they looked like Christmas presents with a bushy tail sticking out of the bottom. It was at this time I remembered I still needed to buy my friend a birthday present. Ever since I have been looking around trees in case I see one of the little rats, so I can strangle and gift-wrap it.
   You'd say such intentions would trouble me at clearer, or possibly more sober, moments of the day. But it is greatly comforting to know the pleasure I would get from giving a murdered squirrel as a present is far outdone by the pleasure my friend would get from receiving it. As long as my friends remain as disturbed as they are, I have nothing to worry about.

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If you live in bonnie Caledonia you may have noticed over the last few weeks posters proclaiming Scotland backs the bid. The bid in question is of course the one to host the Olympic Games in 2012. By, erm, London. Which is not only not in Scotland, but actually of all major British cities the single furthest one away from both Scotland and Northern Ireland. If you live in Inverness or Aberdeen you have to travel the entire length of this island to get to London, and small as it may be in comparison to say, Africa, that is still one hell of a daytrip.
   I am a little suspicious about this whole slogan anyway. How do they know Scotland backs the bid? Nobody asked me. Nobody asked anyone I know, and I know a lot of people. So how on earth can they get away with a slogan that is blatantly untrue, unfounded and absolutely without reference? My guess is by 'Scotland' they really mean Jack McConnell. He probably came up with the idea of backing the bid while he was sipping wine in a villa in Spain. It'll benefit Scotland tremendously of course. Tourism will soar. Or at least increase. Well, it may go up a wee bit. Actually, it will probably draw tourists away from Scotland to go to London instead. The chances of me benefiting from the London Olympics are roughly the same as Jack McConnell properly declaring his finances. As it stands my tax money is only funding the back the bid campaign. How is this helping me? The only Scot being helped is Blair, who can rent out his flat around the corner for a few weeks to make some extra cash.
   At least at the moment I am only funding a few posters going up. If the bid is successful, we, the people living several hundred miles away, will be financing the rebuilding of the city of London. Now London at the moment is one of the most prosperous cities in the United Kingdom, with the richest citizens living there. The decision to propose it for the Olympics only means people living in absolutely dismal shitholes such as Birmingham, Newcastle and Belfast will need to pay an absolute fortune so the posh bastards down south can do up the last few dilapidated back neighbourhood blemishing what they believe to be their otherwise so modern and lovely city.
   Now let me make it perfectly clear I have nothing against Londoners. Provided of course they stay in London, and pay to clean up their own mess.

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Every once in a while you get this feeling life is being suspiciously kind to you. This inkling springs up, telling you God is either rewarding you for something nice you have done recently, or is really setting you up for something exceptionally mean. Knowing Her, probably the latter. Still, I have had a pretty good week, so if I do have both my legs sheared off by a runaway milk float in the near future, just remind me I said that. I am sure it'll make me feel a whole lot better.
   What a week. The Six Nations have started, and we are not even doing badly at all. And if that wasn't good enough, the bloke who poured a bucket of shit over Kilroy has walked free from court! No knighthood unfortunately, which is well-deserved if you ask me, but the tanned miscreant has announced he will do less public appearances. So the streets are a wee bit safer now than they were before. Does anybody else find it strange by the way he leads and anti-European party with an Italian name? Or is that just me?
   Okay, the Pope was feeling a bit under the weather, but as I have no feelings either way towards the man I really couldn't let that bother me too much. Besides, it's not like they are going to run out of successors any time soon. So I was free to enjoy the fact I got some seriously cool and very free new albums, my editor has emerged alive and well after disappearing for a month or so, and I read an article saying research had shown dyslexic people react just as slowly as drunks in a car. You may wonder why this would possibly cheer me up; it is because I am not dyslexic, but I am a sadist. And I can always explain to any arresting officer the reason I was driving under the influence was merely because my friend was in an even worse state on account of having dyslexia. Try and disprove that one by the side of the road. Lift you left foot six inches off the ground and spell 'diarrhoea'.
   Oh, and I had to punch another hole into my belt. This, I have been led to believe by medical professionals and TV adverts, is a good thing. Though personally I just have this horrible feeling next time I will put on my kilt it'll slide right down my arse and leave my willy flapping around in the wind. In addition to all this bliss I was treated to a whole range of legalised drugs. First I spent a day sipping beers in the pub, and then I was knocked out cold by a smiling anaesthesist in a surgical gown. That alone was worth the penis enlargement operation. I'm going to find more excuses to be injected into unconsciousness. Though equally enjoyable is waking up next to a beautiful woman, which happened to me not once but twice last week. Actually, that's a lie. I woke up next to her a few times, because she was lying on my arm. But two mornings. You get my drift. Last time that happened to me was, well, a while ago. A long long while. So, I am greatly looking forward to how I shall be paying for this. My guess is it will involve being bitten by a gigantic rabid squirrel on steroids and acid. But hey, well worth it.

---

This penis enlargement operation is giving me a great deal of joy. I am not even sure which is more fun; the idea of having a bigger penis, or the fact people actually believe I am going for such an operation. When I returned from Livingston (which, incidentally, I do not recommend as a place to go and visit) and someone asked me why I had been there I quipped I was being examined for my upcoming penis enlargement. As they believed me I have decided to maintain this illusion.
   It's just the thought people who know me, usually fairly to highly intelligent people, would not only believe the NHS would fund a specialist surgically enhancing my cock, but that really the fact I am such a loud-mouth is merely a way of disguising my lack of self esteem caused by a very tiny prick. And that I would seek medical help to rectify this deplorable situation. This suggests either my friends have gone bonkers, or I do not inspire as much faith in people as I have secretly been expecting.
   Admittedly it is even more worrying when people believe you who not only know my personality, but are also quite intimately acquainted with the anatomical area concerned. If you are not insecure about your manhood before, you can rest assured a few doubts will creep into your head when people you have slept with ask you whether you really intend to have your member enlarged in a tone of voice not only devoid of doubt, but also lacking surprise. Now I know why I don't have a girlfriend.

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I'm already looking forward to the G8 meeting at Gleneagles in July. Not really because it will bring the world's richest bastards, I mean politicians, to Scotland, but because apparently a few hundred thousand people are planning to protest. And not just your ordinary give-peace-a-chance save-the-children protesters with a slightly left-wing agenda. No, I mean hardened anti-capitalist and anarchist groups ready to chuck bricks through the windows of any McDonald's they can find. And they shall be marching along right on my doorstep.
   No way am I missing this. They are drafting in police from London for it. That's in a different country! This is going to be so much fun. I mean, I know Edinburgh is a multicultural city, but the thought of South American anarchists facing down English coppers to demonstrate against Japanese politicians, I mean bastards, on the streets of the Scottish capital, is one race-riot I want to see. And I am bringing my swimming trunks in case they use the water canon. Actually, I think I may take a banner that says Save The Chipmunk. Just to confuse everybody.
   People are far too squeamish when it comes to rioting. They don't realise just how much fun it is. And McDonald's is well insured. Just because some poor sod gets shot every once in a while doesn't mean the rest of us can't enjoy it. Hey, some of these people are flying over from some of the poorest regions of the world, just to pick a fight with our local constabulary. It would be rude not to accommodate them. And why do you think these people joined the police force? To stop people littering? To reduce crime levels by talking to the community and making young people aware of the dangers of drugs? Bollocks. They want to drive cars really fast and beat the crap out of punks. It will effectively be a scheduled pitched and running battle right in the middle of our capital. Just like in the days of Robert the Bruce. Bring it on, I say.

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You know how there are certain things you just can't get used to? Simple things. I keep switching over to BBC 2 to watch the Simpsons, even though they have been on Channel 4 for months now. And every time I walk up to the Pubic Triangle in the Old Town I secretly hope the Spanish wine bar has mysteriously disappeared and my old local will be there instead. And I just can't get used to the idea Charles Clarke is the Home Secretary. It's just odd. The Home Secretary needs a dog to lead him along, just like all those SS officers in World War 2 movies.
   At least the rhetoric hasn't changed much. The terror suspects in Belmarsh still don't have any rights, though perhaps they will be able to be incarcerated in a safe house rather than a prison soon. That'll be a relief for them. My bet is they would rather be informed why exactly they are being held. This of course has been withheld even from their lawyers, because their knowledge of their own crimes is a grave danger to our society. And if that doesn't baffle you, try and work out how these people can possibly be certain to be terrorists and yet are still referred to as 'suspects'. Apparently, even the Home Office isn't sure what the hell they are.
   It seems our government doesn't have much faith in our legal system. Not when it comes to terrorism anyway. Because of course for Labour there was no terrorism before 2001. The IRA never happened. Really they don't trust the courts when it comes to Muslims, because technically under the law we are all equal, and that doesn't quite correspond with the Labour philosophy. They are perfectly happy to use the same legal system to prosecute other terrorists, such as Irish republicans, Irish loyalists, animal rights activists, far-right extremists and so on and so forth. Groups, incidentally, responsible for far more damage and carnage than Islamic fundamentalists. I will bet you a sausage roll last year more attacks on government and army installations were carried out by people with a Greenpeace membership card than by Muslims. Animal rights protesters are fire-bombing research laboratories, yet you don't see the Metropolitan Police infiltrating dog kennels and pet shops, do you?
   Of course if they manage to get away with locking up Muslims without a trial now, they could always expand later. The filing system at MI5 headquarters is a lot more elaborate than most of us think. They had files on Jack Straw years ago. Shame nobody thought of indefinite detention back then. But even if they don't keep an entire file on you, chances are your name will be in their system if you have ever been arrested at protests at army facilities, have a criminal conviction, are a member of a far-right or far-left movement, been deported from an allied nation or were born in the Middle East. Half my address book should correspond with their records. Wouldn't it be fun if we were all detained without being told why?

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My lifestyle is beginning to trouble me. I am showing classic signs of yuppie behaviour. This transformation has to be stopped before it can do any lasting damage. Before you know it I will be tasting wine before filling up a glass, swivelling it round and loudly testiculating, pretending to know what I am talking about. I might even learn several different ways of wrapping a tie into a knot, or start winking at people for no apparent reason. I may start caring what kind of aftershave I put on, and wear underpants with the brand name painted on in big letters. Or even worse, iron my pyjamas! Actually, just the thought of wearing pyjamas gives me the willies. Somebody please shoot me before I stop going to the pub and join a gym to socialise with people instead.
   Actually I am only showing one sign of yuppie behaviour, but it is a whopper. I am flying to Germany for a birthday party. I have gotten on a train to go to a music festival before, but you have admit flying to a different country for a birthday bash is pretty posh. It's just strange to think I need to properly identify myself and be searched by uniformed personnel just to get to it. But then, as I mentioned, it is in Germany.
   Much like the average yuppie I too speak bits of foreign languages, and German happens to be one of them, but unlike the aforementioned average yuppie, my lingo does not relate to ordering food in a restaurant. Which is probably a good thing, because the party itself couldn't be further from how yuppies tend to celebrate. Actually, I am just guessing that, because I have no idea how yuppies have a good time, if at all. They normally strike me as people who love themselves so much they don't really need any friends. Bad thing is of course most of the German I do speak I have learnt from history lessons and German literature, which almost invariably regards its history. Spiky subject, I'd say.
   So, I have a few weeks to brush up on my German. This should be interesting. Somebody taught me how to say 'do you speak English?' in German once, but that to me has always been the dumbest possible sentence to learn. After all, if the answer is yes, you may as well have asked in English in the first place. And if the answer is no the conversation is over anyway. It may seem polite, but especially in Germany such courtesies are considered inefficient and a waste of time. And so they are. I have never wanted to learn 'do you speak English' in any language, preferring instead 'pardon my ignorance, for I am an illiterate stupid fucking foreigner'.
   One thing I do remember is 'wo ist das Bahnhof?'. A clear, curt and highly functional question indeed. Trouble is, the chances of me requiring the services of the German Railways are exceedingly slim. Unless this party really falls to pieces of course, but in that case I am sure I can find a bicycle to nick somewhere. Really what I need to know are such handy phrases as 'what a lovely home you have here', 'is this edible?' and 'please stop waving that screwdriver in my face and shouting at me hysterically; I was unaware this was a skinhead pub'. The stuff I learn in every other language.

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Generally laws exist for a reason, but sometimes you get the feeling they are used solely to deny us those pleasures of life we all so desperately crave. So I have great sympathy for one David McGrath from Manchester, who will have to appear before magistrates this week. And for what, I ask you. Did he strangle an old lady at the bus stop? Well, actually he may have - the article didn't say. That is certainly not what he shall be standing trial for. No, his crime was an attack in which a bucket of manure was thrown at Robert Kilroy-Silk.
   How could that possibly be against the law? What else are you going to throw at the man? Manure is the perfect substance. As odious as his policies, and the pigment even matches his tan. I think Mr McGrath should be congratulated on his fine choice of weapon, not dragged before a court. Everyone I know would love to throw a bucket of crap at Kilroy. And that includes my grandparents. Now if the bucket had bounced off his face and broken several of his teeth (tempting, very tempting) I would agree assault charges are in order. But this is only a bit of fertiliser. He probably has this stuff rubbed on voluntarily at his local salon.
   No to mention the attack took place at a girls' school. What exactly was he doing there in the first place? Traditionally this is a place for women. Young ones. I don't have any daughters, but would you feel comfortable knowing a bigoted broadly smiling politician with a bad tan and a scary speech impediment was allowed to roam freely around an institute filled with young impressionable girls? If I had a child attending I would have left the bucket of shit at home and fended him off with a baseball bat.

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There are some people in the world who are so good at their jobs, you wonder whether they have been conditioned while in the womb, Brave New World style, to do it in later life. It becomes difficult to see where the job ends and the person begins. I suppose there are social advantages to this, but I do wonder whether people land jobs because they fit in them, or turn into that kind of person once they are there.
   For example, are parking enforcers, or the traffic Nazi's as they are better known around Edinburgh, born to be bastards, or do they simply assimilate? I had always assumed there was a questionnaire that includes questions such as 'did you have an unhappy childhood' and 'have you any convictions for sadism', both of which would have to be answered in the affirmative to land yourself a job with a silly hat. But that would be discriminatory, and the Executive would have put a stop to it. So it stands to reason nice people are hired as traffic Nazi's, and yet you never seem to meet any of them.
   It must be the idea of power that turns them into bastards. The idea they could let you get away with parking half your tire on a yellow line just before six, but they won't. Because they don't feel like it. People get all screwed up once they have realised they can make other people suffer for their own miseries. Just because her husband spends Sunday mornings at Easter Road instead of having breakfast in bed, on Monday morning your bank manager will refuse you a loan.
   Sometimes I get the feeling this attitude is slowly creeping up in editors. It's disturbing. I am not used to dealing with editors with an attitude problem. A few incompetent ones to be sure, and the odd illiterate one here and there, but never mean ones. So in general my view of editors is quite positive. It came as quite a bit of a shock then to receive a barrage of semi-abusive e-mails from people I had never met, and was therefore very unlikely to have ever offended.
   I don't mind particularly if you don't like my short stories. I can live with a few rejections. What does irritate me is if you keep hold of a story I can't re-submit for copyright reasons for several months longer than you are supposed to, ignore my inquiries regarding this and then send me a rejection based partially on a failure to submit in a standard format that a) you didn't ask for and b) doesn't exist. If you manage to do this in a fashion that is so snooty I can hear the contempt while I am reading plain black letters on a computer screen, I get annoyed.

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You know you shouldn't be watching it. You realise very well it is only ghoulish voyeurism and you shouldn't give in to it. But you do. Well, I do anyway. I actually watched Anatomy For Beginners. Episode one covered movement, and to prove the brain does indeed control our extremities, Gunther von Hagens cut out for our enjoyment the string that connects the brain to the toes from an actual human body. In the name of science and education of course. However, spending thirty minutes slicing open the skull and sawing into the spinal column to show us there is indeed a chord running inside it felt about as educational as watching a train derailing in slow motion.
   In fact, the only part of the show that contained any educational value at all was the expert knowledge of pathologist professor John Lee, who can be watched without the feeling you get whenever von Hagens appears, being that you suspect the man spends lonely nights spying on lovers having sex in graveyards. As professor Lee didn't actually do any cutting it seemed to me the programme intended only to shock and awe us all. And yet I kept watching.
   Mostly, I will say in my defence, because I was hoping fervently Gunther would miss the chisel as he was slicing open the cranium and accidentally hit his thumb. Or maybe saw into his assistant's finger as he was working the circular power saw. Really what I wanted was to see some blood. This was strangely lacking from the whole procedure. The 'fresh specimen', as the strung-up corpse was affectionately referred to, seemed suspiciously lacking of fluids. I am not a doctor, obviously, but I was under the impression the human body was filled with all this red stuff. Last time I had my lip split quite a bit of it started leaking out of me. This guy was cut open from the top of his down to his toes; didn't spill a drop. For an educational programme I think it would have been appropriate to mention the corpses used had been drained before coming onto the show.

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The authorities in Iraq fear that insurgents are stepping up their deadly attacks ahead of the election on Sunday. To most this will sound fairly frightening. Nobody likes the idea of more suicide bombings than we have seen already. I however am particularly worried, because I, unlike most reporters it seems, remember previous news reports regarding attacks. For over a year now I have heard nothing else than the report insurgents are stepping up attacks over Ramadan, Christmas, the anniversary of Saddam's takeover/fall or any and every other major date on the calendar. Everything was going to calm down after the handover of power (a curious term for exchanging a stack of papers), yet the moment it had happened the US military had found another event for which the insurgents were going to step up attacks.
   If they were telling the truth, by now the whole country should have been blown up. But they are not. If you read the news carefully you will find ten columns dedicated to the statements attacks are increasing and will do so even further, while a single column somewhere in the middle will mention there is actually a lull in attacks. That doesn't correspond with the official line though. They are bad people, and whenever something good comes along they will try and wreck it by becoming even more depraved and evil than they had been before. And if they won't, we'll just say they have.
   And why is nobody telling us anything about this election apart from the candidates and the voters? For example, why is nobody pointing out these people will not be in charge? So far we have had a few major periods. After Saddam (rape, murder and torture), came that retired general and Paul Bremer, whose job it was to tell everyone things were going great while American troops happily raped, murdered and tortured the Iraqi people. He handed over to Iyad Allawi, whose job it was to keep smiling while American and Iraqi troops continued to rape, murder and torture the people of Iraq. The people elected this week are charged with writing a constitution while troops continue to rape, murder and torture people. The actual people deciding what happens (such as the aforementioned rape, murder and torture), remain the same. These are the likes of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, Jack Straw and Geoff Buff-Hoon. And they do not appear on any of the tickets. Or trial transcripts. They are entirely above the law.
   And why are all these people pretending Islamic militants are such backward people? You may have heard this. Islamic extremists are opposed to elections because it puts the law of Man above the law of God. Personally I would much rather live by the rule of Man, but only because I believe the law of God was also written by men, just not very up-to-date ones. Nevertheless, can we honestly say elections are working out well for us in the West?
   Jean-Marie Le Pen was only just defeated in French elections, and this is a man who believes the Nazi occupation of France was a good thing. The Dutch elected a similar racist. The Israeli people continue to support a man responsible for raping and murdering several thousand refugees. The Australians just elected a man who believes in concentration camps for refugees. And the Yanks, well, we have all seen how seriously they take freedom when they voted last. Not to mention it seems entirely likely we will re-elect Tony Blair. What does that tell you about the society we live in? If that is the result of free and fair elections, perhaps we would be better off without them.
   Though I do have some hope for the Iraqi democratic process. In neighbouring Iran there has always been strong support for parties demanding reform and more freedom. And in Palestine the people have demonstrated they too prefer peaceful leaders rather than warmongering ones. All without our help and all. The fact we in the West seem incapable of electing a decent set of leaders clearly doesn't mean people in the Middle East can't.

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I am quickly losing faith in our media. I read this in the Times the other day. A man, who has threatened to kill a woman, escaped from psychiatric hospital and is now believed to be in the Edinburgh area. The public have been warned not to approach John Hill, 32, as he could be dangerous. First of all, no we have not. I am a member of the public and nobody came knocking on my door to tell me about this bloke. Would have been nice. But didn't happen.
   But here's where it gets even more frightening. The Times prints this at the bottom of a column, where I am most likely to miss it, and more importantly, does not print a picture. How the hell am I supposed to know what John Hill looks like? This makes not approaching the man a fairly theoretical task. I may well have been standing next to him waiting for the bus. Does this mean I have to stop asking people for the time, just in case it is the man we have supposedly been warned about?
   I'm sure the tabloids would have printed a picture. And one of the reasons I generally do not read the tabloids is because I am not all that keen on pointless sensationalism, but when the police start telling me to look out for people, I think it helps to have at least a general description. And what does it mean when they say he 'could' be dangerous? He has threatened to kill someone and has been in a psychiatric hospital. You would say by now some doctor has figured out whether or not the man is dangerous.

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I missed most of the American inauguration, because I was playing chess in the pub. On the whole a far more entertaining and useful activity. Still, I caught glimpses of it, as the Jekyll and Hyde pub tends to show horror on its televisions, and it was by far the most scary thing on telly. I noticed some young GI, probably shot in the arse in Iraq if his face was anything to go by, sing a hugely patriotic song in honour of good old W, who was also endorsed by the senator of Mississippi. Just the man you want to be endorsed by. The man elected solely by distant relatives of himself.
   And they prayed. All of them did. You could see them standing around with their heads bowed, deep in prayer. This seemed stupid to me at first. If you need to pray for a successful four years, you can't be too confident about your abilities. Yet before I knew it I too was addressing the Almighty and all Her sidekicks. It began when the camera panned in on Dick Cheney. Oh holy Mary, mother of God, please don't tell me this man will be about for another four years. Soon Donald Rumsefeld appeared. Sweet Jesus, surely this is not when you intended when you came to save us from evil. I mean, look at the man! He was surely put on this earth merely because even Satan didn't want him hanging around.
   It just got worse and worse. Condoleeza Rice. God in Heaven, how could Thou be so cruel as to inflict this monstrosity of a being upon the human race? Hast Thou truly forsaken us? Please God, I will mend my ways. I promise to stop taking Your name in vain and will start recycling my rubbish, I swear. Just for the love of Yourself and all Your prophets, please let loose a storm of acid rain that will decimate all this cabinet and the several thousand morons attending to support them. Please?
   As you may have noticed, nothing happened. I just hope She didn't listen to their prayers either.

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What would we do without the European Union? Besides find something equally daunting to do for Peter Mandelson. It is just such a wonderful institution. I like it. I am a supporter of the European Union. I am just not a very big supporter of having to do everything the same everywhere. As it stands I do not feel very represented at Holyrood, and certainly not in Westminster. So the idea of some career politician from the north-west of the Ukraine making decisions on my behalf scares me a little. Jack McConnell happily went on television to announce Scotland was in favour of the Iraq war, despite 80 per cent of the country being opposed to it. And he lives around the corner from me. If he can't be bothered to figure out what we want, what chance do we have some Portuguese public school boy gives a toss?
   So whenever the European Parliament convenes to debate something, I get suspicious. Especially when it involves bringing foreign laws to our shores. Since our very own Prince Harry decided to go to a fancy dress party as a Nazi, European politicians have been up in arms. Over here it seems the general consensus is someone should have warned him this was a bad idea. I think he should have figured this out all by himself. But I have a soft spot for insane royals. I love the idea Charles talks to plants and Harry smokes them. It provides us with a great deal of entertainment. I am greatly looking forward to the first knighting that results in somebody's head accidentally being chopped off.
   But back to Europe. In Germany and various other European countries, anything Nazi-related is banned. You may remember one man ending up in court for teaching his dog to raise its right paw. And now MEP's, in their ultimate wisdom, want to ban these symbols throughout Europe. This is not the first time a group of people have tried to ban symbols throughout Europe of course. A bunch of Germans tried it in the forties as well. Didn't go down well.
   Now let's be sober about this. Harry wore a swastika on his arm to a party, not a Roma festival or a Jewish funeral. Now that would have been offensive. We need to distinguish between the symbols and what they stand for. Nazism is an ultra-violent movement preaching the destruction of communism, racial equality and religion, seeking to eradicate all Jews, Gypsies, disabled, homosexuals and Jehovah's witnesses. The swastika is a Nordic symbol comprising of six straight lines at right angles of one another. See the difference?
   And it's not like Hitler is the only man in the last century to have killed millions. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot ring any bells? Are we going to ban all fancy drawings they used during their reigns? I have an Israeli flag pinned on top of my computer screen; I can think of a few million people who are living in sheer terror of that symbol every day of their lives. As it stands half the countries in the European Union are happily and voluntarily supporting torture and mass murder in Iraq; I really don't think these are the people to determine what we should be allowed to wear when we go out on the piss.

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In these insecure times we all need a little protection. Barred windows, alarm systems, police escorts, a big fucking Alsatian. My favourite remains the baseball bat. Low-key, low budget, high efficiency. So, what would you spend two-and-a-half million pounds of protection on? That would have to be something seriously valuable or important, wouldn't it? The main hospital in Glasgow perhaps. The houses of parliament. The Queen's carriage. 2.5 million quid is a lot of money to be spending in protection.
   I have to admit guinea pigs were not the first thing that came to mind. But they did. Police in Staffordshire have spent two-and-a-half million pounds sterling to protect a breeding farm for the fuzzy little creatures. Whatever happened to the days when little boys and girls would have these animals in cages in their bedrooms? Breeding farms. That is basically a whorehouse for rodents, isn't it? Much be an awfully exciting place, Newchurch.
   So what do you protect a guinea pig from? Cats I would say. Electrical wiring running around the house. Great heights. It turns out none of the above. The breeding farm for guinea pigs is under constant threat from animal rights activists. I am not sure what kind of rights they are demanding for them (voting perhaps, or maybe a state pension), but the activities they organise in their name include bomb attacks, mutilated voodoo effigies and sleep deprivation. Presumably they keep the staff awake, not the guinea pigs.
   Bomb attacks! That sounds fucking spooky to me. I wonder if these people run around shoving letter bombs through the mailbox when little Sally admits in primary school she accidentally dropped her hamster over the weekend and one of these activists' child overhears it. Imagine that. It must be bad enough to be blown up for Irish freedom, but to have your face ripped to shreds for budgie liberty just sounds wrong. How do you explain that in the obituary? It's a good thing I don't have any kids; I'd have to deprive them of the pleasure of having pets first, and then explain to them it is only for their own safety. What's the world coming to?

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Isn't it wonderful to see the Americans finally dishing out some justice in Iraq? A clear sign to the rest of the world just how serious they are taking the matter of justice and human rights. So, what do you get for murdering an Iraqi child, plus an additional charge of conspiracy to commit murder? Three years. Which is strange, because in the United States itself that would carry the death penalty. In fact, the US military also still has the death penalty. How do you get three years? Well, apparently the sixteen-year-old they murdered was seriously injured, and it was a mercy killing. Comfortably omitting the fact he was seriously injured because they injured him first. What was it they did when those American contractors were murdered again? Oh aye, they bombed an entire city. Roughly the same as a three year sentence.
   This is laughable. For a country with so many lawyers you would say between the Iraqi tribunals, the kangaroo court at Guantanamo and the court martials they would get at least one that is not a complete joke. Did anyone listen to the report on this Charles Graner? Ten years he got for systematic and sadistic torture of dozens of inmates. The court didn't even mention the fact people died in that prison (you may remember Graner grinning over the corpse), yet nobody being tried for the killing. That was just a side-effect of the torture you see. Oh, and it wasn't really torture; just abuse.
   I continue to be baffled by the BBC. When he was sentenced its reporter pointed out Graner's defence argued he had merely been following orders, but offered no evidence of this. Is it just me, or would this have been a good time to point out even if he had just been following orders, torturing people is against all laws concerning soldiers, prison guards and every other human being in the civilised world, plus most of the not-so-civilised world? Strangely enough neither the court nor the BBC cared. All of them seemed quite happy to accept the good old principle of 'Befehl ist Befehl', provided of course you can prove this.
   Just how far does this go? I mean, when you look at the list of accused and then count the number of feet in the pictures it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the majority of the people involved in this haven't been charged and are probably still about. Clearly they would have a similar attitude to orders. So if Donald Rumsfeld comes sauntering over and orders them to push Jews into gas chambers, will they obey?
   It is amazing that nobody has picked up on this. Not one single report I have read or heard about the 'abuse' scandal (strangely enough the same abuse is torture in South America), mentions that about 60 years ago it was decided the following of orders is never an excuse. And here an American army court martial, the same people to bring peace, stability and the rule of law to Iraq, dismisses it on the grounds it cannot be proven! Who fucking cares! The judge should have thrown the lawyer in jail for daring to bring it up.
   And incidentally, this death penalty the US army still has; exactly what do you have to do to be sentenced to it? If murder, conspiracy to commit murder, torture and sexual abuse do not even come close to a life sentence, I would like to know what warrants the death penalty. Perhaps the same charges but with a white victim?

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Women are strange creatures. In a good way. They are a bit like record players. Absolutely indispensable, but how they work is a complete mystery. Naturally I would never suggest women are a bit thick -in fact it has been proven they are a lot smarter than we are- but sometimes they do come across as slightly naive. Or maybe that is just the ones I bump into from time to time.
   Contrary to what some people think, I do communicate with the opposite sex on a regular basis, and not all of it involves them inflicting grievous bodily harm on me. I enjoy hanging around with women. Smug as they may get about their superior mental capabilities, they are not as determined as men are to remedy your lack of knowledge. They simply enjoy the fact you cannot understand a word they are saying. Men insist on explaining what constitutes as a hand ball in football whether you want them to or not. And let's face it, if I wanted them to by now I would have remembered it.
   Naturally it is quite a challenge to not only engage women in conversation but also maintain their interest. In my case this involves spending most of the time attempting to mask the fact underneath my nipple piercing and witty slogan on my T-shirt I am an incredibly boring individual. I deplore popular music, actually enjoy Dickens, have a big comfy seat I have trouble getting out of and I drink whisky without adding fizzy drinks. If only I smoked a pipe to go with my beard and woolly jumpers I would be in the dictionary under 'boring'.
   So boring in fact that I do not dance. Well, that is not strictly true, but the last time I did I ended up with a gaping gash in my forehead (God, I wish I made that up), and have since reverted to my old rule of not dancing, ever. Instead I stand at the edge of the dance floor and with a cold pint of ale blatantly stare at all the half naked and beautiful individuals who are. Some call it perversion, I know, but if it is, well, at least I am not alone. I am normally not one to follow popular trends, but I'll go along with this one.
   The danger of this is of course people might spot you and want you to come and dance with them. And this is where I fail to understand women. To begin with, why would you want to dance with someone who is neither very good at it nor interested in it? Is this a humiliation thing? Or perhaps just a challenge. But here's what I really don't understand. When you politely refuse to put down your drink and join some lassie on the dance floor, sometimes they will try and persuade you. This involves pouting lips, sexy suggestive dancing, tugging at your clothing and occasionally even a combination of the above, with the girl suggestively rubbing up against you as you stand your ground.
   Again, I am not suggesting women are stupid. But how naive do you have to be to think anyone would rather go and make a fool of himself than stand at the side and watch some lassie give him a private performance he would have to pay for any other day of the week?

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We have some strange customs as human beings. Stuff that makes no sense whatsoever and is practised as though there is nothing wrong with it. Take circumcision. Circumcision involves taking a knife and slicing off human skin for ritual purposes. Doesn't sound right to me. In fact, it sounds very much illegal to me. Mutilating someone is still against the law isn't it? Not to mention a child. A newborn! How many newborns do you know are capable of giving their consent to a medical procedure? Hey, how many adults do you know that would sign up for it just for a laugh?
   And if mutilating children isn't bad enough, we are talking about the kid's penis here. That's sexual, isn't it? Taking pictures of it is illegal, touching it is illegal, but slicing part of it off is not. What kind of a justice system do we have in this country? As it stands we have laws concerning teaching homosexuality in schools and just how much head you can put on a pint of beer, but nobody has thought to ban paedophilia involving ritual corporal sacrifice.
   If it was for medical purposes I would go along with the whole idea. And I realise religions should be allowed to practise their traditions freely and openly, but as we do not allow death by stoning for adulterous women I really don't see why we should allow genital mutilation for newborn boys. And I am fully aware the foreskin is not the most useful part of the anatomy, but I was born with two earlobes, two nipples, a nasal bone, an appendix and that round stumpy bone sticking out on either side of both my feet for no apparent reason and nobody ever offered to saw any of them off. In fact, try it. Get some druid to cut off a boy's nipple for religious purposes. He'd be in court before the end of the week, with protesters outside throwing bricks at him. Whether his parents consented or not.

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I don't know who came up with the idea that exercise is good for you, but I bet you he has a T-shirt that says No Pain - No Gain, a kitchen tile that states What Doesn't Kill Us Makes Us Stronger, and a No Fear bumper sticker. What a load of bollocks. If exercise were really for you, God would never have invented cars, cherry-pickers and sub-machine guns. One afternoon of exercising and I feel like I am ready to have a bleeding heart attack. And how is that going to be good for me?
   Really the reason I am so interested is that I have recently noticed I am a wee bit out of shape. I remember a time when I was able to run ten laps around the rugby pitch without too much hassle, though admittedly that was in a different decade we live in today. Nevertheless, I am sure up until fairly recently I could run to catch a bus without spending the next twenty minutes panting down somebody's neck and risking a slap in the face. So bad is it now that I am considering taking up smoking. That won't help, I know, but at least it'll mask the fact I am just a lazy bastard.
   I think I have figured out why I am in such a dreadful state though. As I was wheezing and sweating on my way up a flight of stairs not much taller than the average stepladder, I was reminded of something my ex-girlfriend once told me. According to her, two people having sex use up about as much energy as a small town. Or a house. I forget which one, but it was fucking impressive. And I certainly wasn't going to argue with her. She has after all, as she did then, a university degree in biology, and my only experience with academic biology comprises of a trainee doctor shining a light down my throat in front of a video camera. Before you ask, it was for medical purposes.
   That is it of course. Since I am no longer having intimate relations with the opposite sex, or my own sex for that matter -come to think of it, I don't really have any other relations with people either-, my endurance and fitness are slowly degrading. Logic suggests I spray on some disgusting aftershave (even though I have a beard at present), swing by a nightclub and in my most seductive of voices ask the nearest pretty lassie whether she would like to power a small town with me. But then logic has never been my stronger quality. So I thought I would try some exercise instead. It hurts. That'll teach me.

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This is a breakthrough in scientific research, I am telling you. Hold on to your hats for this one. You will want to make a note of it. You shall remember this day forever. And don't forget it was me who told you. Ladies and gentlemen, lads and lassies, it is now official: rats can tell the difference between Dutch and Japanese. And as you will know, this is very exciting, because previously the only two mammals to have shown this ability are human beings and tamarin monkeys. Which implies they have tried this on several species.
   This is just what we need, isn't it? Half of Africa is dying of AIDS while the other half is quietly being butchered away from our television cameras, there is starvation, earthquakes, flooding and disease, and what do scientists in Barcelona do? They experiment with rodents by reading them excerpts from what I am sure are masterpieces on the subject of samurai swords and fucking windmills. Why would a rat need to distinguish between Dutch and Japanese anyway? How likely is it this will come in handy?
   And don't forget, this is research carried out in Barcelona. What possible use is Japanese going to be there? These people don't even speak Spanish. When I was there I was hard pressed to find someone who could string together half a sentence of English. How many people speak Japanese or Dutch in the world? Forty, fifty million, combined? What are the odds of two of them coming across a lab rat in Barcelona? I think by the time people finish university they should really stop talking to their pets like they can actually understand them.

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The internet is a truly wonderful medium. You can find all sorts of useful guides and quizzes to inform you what kind of individual you are. Usually before elections you can log on to a site to tell you how to vote for. Sounds like a wonderful site to hack into. I would love to see confused hippies voting for the BNP because some twelve-year-old managed to rig the questions. Less damaging perhaps is the serial killer test. You click whether you wet the bed and like to torture animals and at the end you will be informed which insane and very much executed mass murderer you resemble.
   It seems to me these are two programmes we should be combining. You answer a list of questions and it tells you which psychopathic politician you are most like. Think about it. It would be the most popular website after Ilovestarwars.com and naked-cheerleaders.net. Spend fifteen minutes of your time and we will tell you just how much you should worry about yourself.
   For example, if people keep coming up to you asking whether you are feeling okay because you look about to cry, you feel strangely turned on when the neighbour's kid gets hit by a car and you are a natural liar you would be Geoff Hoon. If you have a funny accent, get into trouble with bullies and are very patient you would be Nelson Mandela. And if you like shagging around, do not play well with people of another colour and you enjoy torture you would be Hermann Goring. Or David Blunkett.

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It is comforting to know even in this day and age you can still be dragged into court by the hair and charged with blasphemy. It just seems like a wonderfully traditional charge with all sorts of possible punishments available. I would go for burning at the stake myself. Though I imagine chucking someone in a river would be fairly entertaining as well.
   I had never even thought about this before, but it appears blasphemy is absolutely rampant on this wet and windy island of ours. Some Christian group in Scotland wants a theatre company to be taken to court for it because they put on a play depicting Jesus as a practising homosexual, and in Birmingham a play had to close after angry young men in turbans started chucking bricks through the window. Obviously feeling upstaged the Christians have now started issuing the BBC with death threats over the Jerry Springer musical. It would seem Satan Himself is running the theatre.
   What exactly constitutes as blasphemy anyway? I have never looked into this. For all I know I could be a blasphemer. I swore in church once. Does that count? In some more conservative circles it used to be considered blasphemous just to point out, quite rightfully, that Jesus was a Jew. So where do we draw the line? Repeatedly shouting 'Jehova' at a Bar Mitzvah? Or perhaps a graven image of God in a bikini. Allah in a party hat! We could be having a lot of fun with this. Until we get arrested of course.

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Medical advice is there for a reason, I know. And usually I do tend to do my best to adhere to at least the most common directives. As such I do not stick toothpicks in my eyes, wear a helmet when I go abseiling and avoid toxic substances whenever possible. Should it come to happen I also know not to remove any foreign body that may lodge itself in any part of my anatomy. In other words, I do pay attention to what medical professionals tell me.
   I am just a wee bit selective about listening to them. Of course they know better than I do. That is their job. But it is my body, and looking after it is my job. So after you have donated a pint of blood you know you should only drink tea and fruit juice, but there are only so many cups of tea you can order in a pub before the bar staff start eyeing you strangely and begin hinting perhaps it is about time you leave. So you feel obliged to order a beer. And well, drinking tea after a beer doesn't make any sense, so you just have to stay on the beer, don't you?
   One could argue perhaps the pub is not the most sensible place to go in the first place, but then after a complete stranger sticks an inch of metal into your forearm to drain your blood into a plastic bag really the pub is the only logical next step. As it is when you have just been tattooed. Where else are you going to go? You can't swim or sunbathe for weeks after anyway. And apparently for a day you shouldn't drink any alcohol either. I never knew this. Nobody ever told me this. And this is hardly the first time I got tattooed. Though it was very reassuring to find the barman was himself covered in tattoos, and after inspecting the handiwork of the artist happily poured me a pint. When I am in hospital I will listen to the doctor, when I am in the pub I will listen to the bar staff. That's how it works.

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They haven't even finished clearing up, and already people are pointing fingers in all sorts of different directions about who was to blame for the tsunami. If I hear one more person talk about climate change I am throwing something not terribly lethal at my television screen. I don't care how bad global warming is, earthquakes have been happening since the dawn of time, both above and below the sea. And I admit it would have been nice if the Americans who had spotted it had alerted not just their own military base in the area but also everybody else affected, but then it is hardly American policy to look out for other people, and we all knew that already. Besides, apparently they did not have a phone number for the Sri Lankan government.
   But now people are bringing God into it, and that is taking it seven steps too far for me. What are these people expecting? That God will come down and explain just why She did or didn't do this? Seems very unlikely to me. Besides, does it really matter whether She actually sent the wave or was merely snoozing when it happened? If this really is a test of faith I would say the result is a big fat F. But then I have trouble understanding these people of faith anyway.
   What confuses me most is the people who believe everything it says in the bible, including the bits that contradict one another. If you want to live by this, fine by me. But I have read the story of Noah, and I recall this bit all the way at the end where God decides She will never flood the Earth again. And that was after She forgot about Noah and his family altogether for a good few weeks first. I don't know how theologians tend to spin this, but that sounds like admitting God made a mistake to me. In Genesis! Before Moses! This is where it all started. If She was happily boozing and snoozing all the way back then how can we possibly expect Her to have dried up by now? I don't think God is to blame for this. You try and do several things at once. Especially once you've had a few.

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Is this obsession with diets a new thing, or have I just not been paying attention over the last few years? Like most other cultural phenomena it is not exactly something I am gauging, and it may very well be it has gone right over my head in the past. But now it is becoming a menace. The only ones who should be on a diet are supermodels, diabetics and fat people. Everybody else needs exercise. It's a completely different thing altogether. I do not want to watch a show called Celebrity Fit Club, which contains not a single celebrity and makes me ill. You cannot make a health show that makes people feel sick; it defeats its own purpose.
   In addition, a darts player needing to lose eleven stone requires a diet, some other poor sod with a craving for kebabs and television appearances needing to lose a pound and a half should be made to run around the studio once. That will do the trick. Don't bother me with this crap. I pay a license fee and expect more for it. Diets are unpleasant enough around you, the last thing you need is Anne Widdecombe getting involved with these things. You may have noticed as of yet not a single dietician has been airing ads featuring Anne in a bathing suit to show off the results of the programme. And thank Jesus Christ Almighty for that.
   Even my friends are getting into the whole diet thing. It makes me realise I have reached an age where it is no longer considered odd to sit around talking about coronary disease and fatty foods. Cancer will be next, I am telling you, and I am already dreading it from the bottom of my clogged-up and struggling heart. Though at least when you get cancer you just deal with it. Diets you have to choose to go on. It scares me. People suffering as they deliberately starve themselves sounds like something Medieval clergymen should do. Certainly not my friends.
   It comes with a whole range of instructions and all. Charts and schedules and the like. A lot of effort for something you do not enjoy if you ask me. I think if you really want to lose weight, you should do it properly. Buy a bike. Preferably if you live in the Highlands. You get some great views up there, and racing past in your four-wheel-drive you don't get to enjoy it as much or as long as you would trying to catch your breath while you are vomiting violently by the side of the road after a lorry has nearly knocked you off your two-wheeler. If you don't live in the Highlands, try falling in love. I mean proper, head-over-heels kind of falling in love. People who do that always seem to stop eating. And if that doesn't work you can always try depression, which by some strange coincidence comes with almost identical symptoms. Failing that, and you can't afford liposuction, buy bigger clothes.

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It is astonishing to see even in the face of catastrophic events they had nothing to do with, the Labour government still manage to come across as a bunch of hypocritical bastards. The more they try to be civil and humane, the more they creep me out and the more I wish some freak natural occurrence strikes just as they are debating education quotas in the back garden of some governmental retreat. No matter how much I would want to, even I can't blame Tony Blair for tsunamis killing 150,000 people. I can't even blame him for not cancelling his holiday for it. With Asia very much in the news for a week or so everybody forgot about Iraq, and it was probably the first time he got to relax. And for a man of Tony's stature that is well worth watching a few thousand brown people die.
   What pisses me off is to see all this scum appearing on television and saying what an awful sight it is. 100,000 dead Iraqis was the right decision, 100,000 dead Asians is tragedy. And now they want an early warning system to prevent gigantic waves from pounding shorelines, but not one to stop B-52 bombers dropping high explosives on the people of Iran or Syria.
   But what really makes my blood boil is when these ministers tell the press they are considering raising their contribution to match the amount of money provided by the British people. What the hell does that mean? If I am not mistaken the government has access to only two kinds of money: their own personal wealth, and the tax money that we put in and according to all principles of a democracy still belongs to us. Now which of the two do you think they will tap into when it comes to raising 60 million pounds of aid? I will bet you anything Geoff Hoon spent more on Christmas presents this year than he contributed to the relief fund. In other words, they will not match the public donation, they will double our contribution. With our own cash.
   It's a great publicity stunt. Sixty million of your cash will be sent over to help the people recover, and Blair and co are going to take all the credit for it, even though they have contributed next to nothing to it. The only tax they pay is from their pay check, which was 100% tax money to start with. And when next year a new super-virus swamps our crummy hospitals, guess who gets to cough up the extra money? You haven't noticed Gordon Brown losing any weight recently, have you? Of course not. While he gets to stuff his fat face he is playing saint and saviour by sending over cash he won't miss because he gets to increase taxes again next year.
   Isn't it strange to think that had this government not gone to war in Iraq two years ago we would have saved several billion, which we could have used to help these poor people wading waist-high through sewage and what used to be their homes? We would even have had several thousand troops available to go and help them, and we would have had 100,000 less dead in the Middle East. But then, that wouldn't have made any sense, would it?

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I was watching television the other day, and came across a documentary on King Herod. You know, from the Crucifixion story. Not entirely sure how he fitted in again, but I do seem to remember Mel Gibson portrayed him as being gay. But then he also portrayed Pontius Pilate as a very understanding character, so perhaps had I bothered watching the documentary I would have learned a slightly more accurate version of Herod's life.
   I didn't, as I had better things to do with my life, but I did catch something about him suffering from some sort of disgusting scrotal disease. Perhaps that was the reason I didn't watch the whole thing actually. Some things should not even be thought about. It just seems strange to me that decades, or occasionally centuries, after these nutters die, we learn they suffered from some sort of rare disorder affecting their behaviour. The madness of King George for example. I am sure there was something wrong with Elizabeth as well. And didn't Hitler get the clap from a Jewish prostitute or something? I seem to remember that is one of the many theories about his hatred towards Jews.
   It makes you wonder what we will find out about all the callous pricks fucking about nowadays. Maybe by 2020 we can watch a documentary depicting how a horrid disease causing penile dysfunction combined with a hint of paedophilia made Donald Rumsfeld obsessed with sending other people's children out to die. And you just know some disgusting viral infection is the cause of the thing we call John Prescott.

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It's only been 2005 for a couple of days, and I am already confused about the new etiquette we are all supposed to be living by. Obviously I am desperate to fit in, and I am terribly afraid some fourteen-year-old will look at me as I am shoving a kebab into my mouth and tell me kebabs are so 2004. I don't know these things. I am not very well informed. So where do we stand on football violence, domestic abuse, alcoholism, smoking, drug taking and bombing foreign countries in 2005? And for that matter, what is the latest on combat boots, earrings and mini-skirts? You know, just out of interest.
   Now I can vaguely recall way back when in 2004 it was not necessarily very rude to walk up to someone in a nightclub and casually enquire whether they would mind having a shag in the alleyway, provided of course you did not mind should you get slapped across the face as a rejection. A polite 'no thank you' also sufficed I do seem to remember, though one certainly couldn't complain when one came home with a red hand imprinted in one's face. This always seemed like a fair deal to me. It seemed like the kind of arrangement I could go along with.
   It seems in 2005 we are doing things ever so slightly differently. Don't know why exactly, but it seems that Dylan was right and the times are a-changing indeed. I am just not exactly sure whether I like this whole new trend. It seems it is still acceptable to approach a random drunk (in this case me) and demand sexual favours in a rather forceful (and quite pleasant) fashion, but a polite 'no thank you' seems to have become totally out of order.
   What is the world coming to? Last year I only had to worry about getting clobbered when I was harassing poor lassies trying to have a good time with their pals, now I am getting thumped in the chest for failing to accept such a proposition. I mean, are they purposely adjusting these unwritten rules just so I can get beaten up more often? It's worrying. Slapping people who do not want to have sex with you reeks of scary North African tribal law and I want nothing to do with it. Least of all when the person getting whacked in the head is yours truly.
   I managed to get through 2004 relatively unscathed. By midnight on Hogmanay I really had only noticeable scar, be it right above my eye. Three hours later I had been punched in the chest, nearly poisoned (that one with the best of intentions though) and bitten in the arm. Therefore I suggest we abandon all new trends that involve me getting injured during the course of this year. Your cooperation in resisting their introduction would be greatly appreciated.