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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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