What's on the Hedgey mind today?

Well, it's Samhain, that time of year when the veil is thinnest between this life and whatever comes afterwards. My mother lives across the road from a couple of hardcore Goths and they've done their house up with gravestones and skeletons and the like, so she thinks we should be incredibly excited about it too and cover the house in cheesy immature crap like they have.

Sorry, but I grew out of that phase fifteen years ago, mother. Putting the Christmas decorations up is crazy enough.

I have bought the pumpkin though. Allison wants pumpkin pie but it needs loads of ingredients we haven't got and can't afford, so it'll have to be later. We'll be disembowelling it tonight. Photos will be taken, naturally.

* * *

Bethan's adventures in TV land are continuing. This morning Allison woke me up to tell me that Bethan had her TV on so loud it had woken her up. And indeed she had. This was 5:30am. So, I switched it off, told her off and put her to sleep.

Didn't happen. I ended up turning the TV off three times and taking her back to bed five times betwen 5:30 and 7:30. Then I had to give up because I had to get Allison's packed lunch together.

Now it's 11am and I'm beat.

* * *

I think I mentioned a while ago that we're on a diet. The rules are that we can eat as big a breakfast as we want, as big a lunch as we want and a carb and starch-less dinner. No snacking.

We've tweaked the rules slightly by having the odd takeaway, but other that that, it's been really good. We've both lost about two stones (24lb) in the last three months. Excellent!

* * *

We've been having a few problems with our new PC. I couldn't seem to get it working with any kind of stability. The monitor would flicker incessantly, occasionally so violently that it would reboot the computer. Not that's extreme!

We blamed the monitor and changed it. We blamed the extension cable that lets the monitor sit seven feet away from the PC box. We blamed the Operating System. We blamed the drivers. We blamed the pisspoor amount of memory in the box.

Nothing we did changed anything, so I eventually ripped out the graphics card and went back to relying on the onboard graphics.

Works fine now. D'oh!

* * *

More on my NaNoWriMo plans:

The song lines idea is still working for me and I've fleshed out plots for each of the eighteen stories.

I'm going to make it serialised - the seventeen chapters will concentrate on the stories of four or five different individuals. Some of it is autobiographical. I wonder if anyone will guess which bits.

I've been looking back over some of the stuff I used to write and what I see is kind of encouraging.

I have a few five or six page stories which total around 2,500 to 3,000 words which I remember only took me one night to write, so that's encouraging. I also have a story downloaded from the internet which totals something like 150,000 words. The one section - the first ten chapters - is just 50,000 words. It took me days to read it - mostly because it's actually crap, but also because it's very repetetive. It's an occasional series that was presented on a website over a few months and the recaps sometimes takeup half the chapter. But at least I have a physical representation of what I'm trying to achieve. An 85 page Word document. Phew.

And it all kicks off tomorrow. Woah. Ladies and gentlemen, sharpen your pencils.

* * *

I see the knives are out for Blunkett again.

Y'know, it makes me wonder. I can't believe he's any more crooked than any other Whitehall inhabitant, so what is it about him that makes him a permanent target for the knife in that back brigade? Maybe that he speaks his mind? Maybe that he does so well in his jobs that his replacements are variously described as ineffectual, useless and worse? Maybe his guide dog pissed up the wrong leg?

Maybe he is morally bankrupt, financially corrupt and a bit of a git, but what politician can't you say that about? So, given that it's a level playing field morality-wise, how come all these stories are coming out about him? What are all these challenges and calls for resignation all about?

Usually I hate Occam's Razor - the idea that the simplest explanation is the most likely - but in this case, the simple answer - that he's made to many powerful enemies - sounds to me like the right one.

* * *

And finally...

I need to watch Casablanca again. Not telling you why.

A little note for all the UK bloggers who happen by:

Time to put the clocks back, folks.

Okay, so I have a NaNoWriMo plan:

I have a song in mind, which I really like. It has eighteen distinct lines of lyrics.

My plan is to write seventeen individual stories, using each of the lines of the song as the titles of the stories. I have complete synopses for these stories all ready and waiting to be fleshed out.

The eighteenth - the last line of the song - will be the ambitious one. In that story, I will attempt - no, I certainly will knit together the other stories into one coherent and wonderfully schmaltzy and heartwarming finale.

That's the plan, anyway.

If I can make each story at least 3000 words, or five/six pages in MS Word, then I can easily reach and surpass the 50,000 word limit.

3000 words at 35-40 words per minute? Between 75 and 90 uninterrupted minutes every day, and I can be finished by the 20th.

I'm quite liking my odds there, y'know?

Everyone else ready?

Georgey Porgey Pudd'n and Pie
Got re-elected and let people die.

Just thought I'd share that with ya.

No, no, no, no NO!

And I had such high hopes after Friday, too.

Ruth Kelly, education secretary has announced the contents of a White Paper which details yet another shakeup of the education system.

It's nothing really new, but it just goes to show how deeply the government just doesn't get the needs of schools.

In short, the proposals are as follows:

* - All schools can be run by 'trusts', with parents, businesses, faith groups and charities taking part
* - Schools commissioner to oversee setting up of trusts and matching them to schools
* - Councils to become pupils' 'champions'
* - Bus subsidies for poorer children
* - Failing schools to 'federate' with better ones
* - 'Easier' for independent schools to 'opt in' to state sector

The idea of these Trusts bothers me - businesses and faith groups getting involved in the running of a school? Bad Idea. Sure, call on them to provide assistance to the school. God knows, every school could do with a tame, competent firm of builders, or perhaps a technology provider, but when those businesses start deciding the focus of curricula, or what teachers are recruited, or whatever, then that can only lead to the same kind of bias we see in other areas, where decisions aren't based on what would be the best option for the kids, but on who the governors needed to keep happy shudder.

"Councils to become pupils' champions? Don't make me laugh! How, exactly? By hiking the rate of insurance for extracurricular activities? Freezing teachers' pay? making the beaurocracy surrounding any activities the school might want to put on prohibitively complicated?

Subsidised bus fares - C'mon, kids don't want to be reminded how poor they are before they even get through the gates - I still remember the stigma of the kids who had free meals. That was bad enough. Also, the best solution would be to make the local schools better, not to send the kids hiking half way across town to the only good (and bulgingly overpopulated) school in the area.

What's the best way of making sure a good school goes downhill rapidly? Overpack it so the previously decent, achieving teachers suddenly find themselves teaching classes of 70 and unable to cope.

From what I can see, these proposals aren't meant to reinvigorate the education system, they're focussed on making sure every school is diminished to the same level of mediocrity.

What needs to be done is this:

Remove the budget stranglehold most schools face. Let them have whatever money they need to get the place running right.

Enhance the "key workers housing" scheme so that teachers can afford to live where the jobs are.

Stop tweaking the curriculum, or scrap it altogether in favour of the International Baccalaureate.

Don't just rename bad schools, remove the barriers to their success - that is, overworked teachers not having time to spend in pastoral activities with the kids, crushing red tape which frustrates every attempt to try new schemes and idiotic legislation which means teachers can't gain control or respect of the pupils.

There's more, but I doubt you're even following what I've said so far, and I'm always struck with the nagging suspicion that I don't actually know what I'm talking about.

Anyway, I've got an idea for NaNoWriMo, it's a good one and I might even make it work. Aside from that, I'm keeping schtum.

Oh, and my driving lesson went averagely. I've almost got the hang of changing gear and turning corners, which isn't bad for two lessons.

It's late, there's no kids around and I've still got a rotten gut. Bliss.

Nytol.

We went to bed at midnight last night.

Bethan had been pestering us quite relentlessly - refusing to go to sleep and coming downstairs for spurious reasons every half-hour.

Now, my longer-term readers may recall some consternation I had over her skill at tuning the TV in her room a while back.

Guess what she was watching when we looked into her room at midnight?

That's right, she was watching The frigging Fog!

So, now guess what happened when I turned it off.

That's right, she said "Don't!"

For a full ten points, try and guess what kind of sleep she got afterwards.

Correctamundo.

Nightmares.

At least until 4am when I gave in and let her sleep in with me for a couple of hours.

In all, I got two hours sleep. To be honest, that's about the average.

On the upside, I've just questioned her about watching TV at night - she says she won't be doing it again. No shit!

In other news, Allison's been down in the dumps all weekend, I've got agonising indigestion and a driving lesson at midday and Charlie's gone back to bed till half ten.

So all is joy and rapture chez Hedgey.

Oh yeah, and if I'm left alone for a few minutes in the depths of night some time soon (which doesn't seem particularly likely), I might just try and prepare for NaNoWriMo. If not, I'll just have to wing it and either call it Lit Fic or a Kerouac-esque stream of consciousness, or a compilation of whatever 2000 word story I can dream up during each day.

Burned out cars, riot police on the streets, newsflashes on all the news channels.

Lozells has kicked off again.

It's a rather scary suburb some six miles from where I live and to be honest, it's not somewhere I've been - I've travelled through it and seen the scars of the last riots, in 1985, but I've never had reason or inclination to go there.

Y'see there's a high population of gangs in the area - the gangs that were responsible for the driveby shooting of a couple of teenage girls last New Year. And yesterday a woman was attacked. There was a hastily arranged public meeting, which led to racially - and gang - motivated rioting, the death of at least one person and injuries galore.

To be honest, it could have been worse. And it probably will be in the weeks to come as vendettas are repaid quietly and bloodily.

Sometimes it's wonderful fun living here.

The new PC rocks!

It's so good to have a computer that just does as it's told.

And it's all black and stylish - and quiet! Chuffed to bits!

Pic soon, I'm off to bed now.

PS: Half Nekkid Thursday is postponed due to the PC changeover, but I'm working on it.

Imagine my surprise when, trolling my way around Digital Spy's entertainment news section, I spotted this headline:
"Aniston and Vaughn caught kissing"

My eyes! My eyes!

This is what pisses me off about the Government...

On the one hand, Tony Blair screams around the world at supersonic speed, spreading the word on George Bush's idiotic elitist Imperial atrocities and blithely ignoring everything that's going on at home (anyone au fait with British history may see some parallels with a certain monarch of the Lionheart persuasion - me? I wouldn't give him the honour), then we have this happen.

Teachers are to be given the right to use "Reasonable force" to stop things like this happening in school.

RANT ON

How long? How the fucking fuck long have I been saying this kind of law should be in place?

I'll tell you how long...

A very long time!

At last, they've actually done something decent, at long fucking bastard last they've made a good thing happen!

We've turned a corner. I can hear the sigh of relief from staffrooms around the country as we speak. At last the little thugs that have been responsible for screwing up the education of an entire generation are going to get dealt with.

For so long, I've felt wrong for holding the belief that children have too many rights - are too protected. And every day you see the stories of thugs and teenage heavies terrorising another neighbourhood, or stabbing another teacher, or collecting their ASBO's.

Now the tide has hopefully turned and the days of the teen mafia are coming to an end.

Or in short:

Oh thank god!

Rant over, I'm going swimming.

Getting a new computer tonight. Woo.

Blimey!

Just how bad does it have to get?

I'm seeing this badge all over the place.

Two thousand words a day...

Hmm...

I don't know...

In the words of Meatloaf, let me sleep on it.

* * *

UPDATE

Well, I signed up. Whether or not I actually manage to get more than 2,000 words uploaded is another matter entirely.

OK, so these images are everywhere, but I thought I'd just put my oar in and mention how ridiculous this all is. The trial of Saddam Hussein was barely minutes old before it ground to a halt because he refused to confirm his identity.

So he's managed to prolong his life for another few months while he chops and changes lawyers and continues to protest his innocence - or more correctly, his right to do what he did.

I wonder how many people - when it eventually happens, which it will - will watch his execution.

We've had a number of perfect Autumn days lately - days where the morning air is crisp, there's no wind and the cloud is high and white.

We've walked down the canal and fed the ducks, been to play ball in the park, been swimming, gone for strolls over the last couple of weeks or so and had a thoroughly nice time on our doorstep.

As much as I like other times of the year, I love autumn - it's a year in flux, not cold enough to call winter, not warm enough to be summer anymore, the harvest is gathered, the kids are back at school, normality returns to the world after the frantic stream of energy of the summer holidays.

And we have hallowe'en coming up, which we usually enjoy. A couple of days before, I'll clear off the mantelpiece and we'll buy the sacrificial pumpkin, dig out all the candles, scrape a year of wax off the candelabras and make a glowing tribute to Samhain. Don't worry, we'll take photos.

We're off to feed the ducks tomorrow morning, probably in the rain. I might see how close I can get to a couple of mallards.

I've been wondering about this "Peak Oil" thing.

I'm not worried so much about oil getting more expensive, or running out because frankly, there's enough plastic, rubber, latex, whatever in the world and it's all perfectly recyclable. When it comes to fuel oil, well, we'll just have to pull our fingers out and use other things, won't we - like water, or oxygen or sunlight. Damn sight cheaper it will be too.

No, the thing that grabbed me as something to wonder about is the more basic question of where the oil comes from. Y'see, as far as I know, oil comes from vast underground lakes. Holes deep underground. But I wasn't sure how big these holes actually were.

So I had a quick look around and discovered some interesting figures.

The Kashagan field in Kazakhstan has a capacity of 35 billion barrels, and an estimated size of 480 square miles.

The largest oil field in the world is Saudi Arabia's "Gharwar" field, which has something like 80 billion barrels left, which means that after just over 50 years of production, there is still an area approaching 1000 square miles full of oil sitting underneath Saudi. Comparable size fields lie in Kuwait, Chile and China.

So, two miles underneath all of these places are rapidly emptying holes which range from areas the size of Phoenix, Arizona to areas perhaps four times larger. These holes were previously filled with thick black liquid under enough pressure to send that liquid spouting high into the air when pierced.

So it occurs to me to wonder what's happening to those holes, and what effect would it have on the surface if a 2000 square mile hole suddenly collapsed two miles underground?

According to this report from Aljazeera.net, if you extract oil too fast, the hole does indeed collapse. Also, to reinvigorate an ageing oil field, you start injecting the hole with vast amounts of water.

Interestingly, getting back to the subject of Peak Oil, Gharwar field is being water-injected now, and they're currently pumping it back out at a rate of 35-50% a day.

To clarify, half of the liquid pumped out of the largest oil field in the world is water that they pump in to stop the field from collapsing.

According to this report on an investigation into the "Lost Hills" field in California, the land is subsiding by 1.5 inches per month. Sinking. An inch and a half a month. That's just a field a mile across and three miles wide. So let's think about this. The ground at the northern end of a three square mile hole in the ground is sinking by something like ten meters a decade. What on earth is happening to Saudi Arabia? And with the inevitable rise in sea levels, and the inevitable subsidence as a result of oil extraction, won't that see most of Arabia under water at some point over the next hundred years or so? Just wondering, like.

While I'm at it,what's the problem with oil running out anyway? Like I said at the opening of this little diatribe, we can recycle plenty of the currently existing materials and replace fuel oil with cleaner alternatives.

This doesn't seem to occur to some, though. This article outlines the problem as the US economy sees it:

Without oil, the American economy would collapse. Oil is promoted as the vital lubricant of capitalism. Without oil, mobility, open hospitals, moving trucks and trains end. Over 25,000 airplanes take off and land daily at the airports. Millions of air-conditioners drive the American energy need to dizzy heights. On average, every food in North America travels 1300 miles before it lands on the plate of the consumer. More than 850 million cars or utility vehicles are on the road worldwide. As long as there is enough oil worldwide, this wastefulness-mania does not seem to be a problem...

So what happens when there's not enough oil? How do we tackle the wastefulness?

Well let me see...the technology already exists - in its infancy and woefully underfunded - which uses a hydrogen fuel cell to power electric car engines. The byproduct of this technology? Carcinogens and greenhouse gases? Nope, water. Pure, drinkable water. Fuel cell technology is being adapted to power domestic appliances. I've heard that there's a laptop battery in production which could last hours longer then the pitiful and annoying two hours or so that you get these days.

Domestic energy production is a relatively simple issue, with more renewable sources being brought online daily.

So how do we tackle the global need for air travel? The vast majority of air travel is freight or business related. Of course, there's no quick fixes, and there's time when you just need to be there but it does occur to me that more localised production or shipping by cleaner road or rail routes would cut down most unnecessary air freight inland. And with the exponential speeding up of the internet, and with mobile technology also getting better by the minute, why oh why can't more business be done at a distance?

But the best solution would surely be a replacement for aviation fuel. In that area, there have already been flights of fuel cell-powered aircraft, and there are hints that the US military is working on a fuel-efficient hypersonic technology known as Pulsed Detonation Engines. Nothing, however is currently cutting the mustard. One thing is plain though - they've got about 50 years to come up with a viable replacement.

So what conclusions have I drawn from my little investigation this morning?

1) We're making vast tracts of empty space deep underground, which means that the ground above these holes is subsiding.

2) We have reached, breached and passed the point of Peak Oil.

3) While the world is not yet prepared for oil running out, we could be. Maybe once it's acknowledged, then investment and research into different fuel sources will have to be made. Maybe we won't see these sources truly online, or at least cheap during our lifetime but it will happen and the world will be a better place for it.

4) The end of oil means the end of the world order as we know it, but as the world order as we know it is rotten, corrupt and mostly based on the premise that those who are already rich inherently deserve to be richer and everyone else can go fuck themselves, I say "Bring it on!".

* * *

Have a bibliography:
Indymedia: "E-Day: The Collapse of the Oil Lie"
Alexander's Gas & Oil connection: Radar images help scientists understand oil field collapse
G R Morton: Trouble in the World's Largest Oil Field
Kitco Bullion Dealers: GOLD & OIL

Aljazeera: Bank says Saudi's top field in decline
David B Ottaway: Vast Caspian Oil Field Found

Feeling a touch mortal today...

Here's a question: When exactly does middle-age start?

Meet the new James Bond.
Stylish, eh?

Actually, I've watched Daniel Craig since his first role as Geordie Peacock in "Our Friends in the North" way back in '95. An excellent series and a very natural, impressive actor. Good choice, I'm chuffed for him.

I've been feeling a little antisocial lately, probably to do with the stomach virus I picked up over the weekend.

It kind of knocked me sideways and it's left me in a bit of a funk, whereby I don't really feel like being around anyone.

That's the reason why, upon seeing someone I know well today, instead of waving across the road and engaging banter, I ducked into a shop until my bus arrived.

So even though you'll never know who you are, and I'll never be sure if you'll read it, sorry, I was just being an antisocial git.

Half Nekkid Hedgey!

Oh yes, as promised (or do I mean threatened?) I've decided to jump on board the exhibitionist bandwagon that is Half Nekkid Thursday.

So, without futher ado I present a horror beyond which few are willing to tread!

A thrill so intense, you may need to sit down with a stiff Gin and Tonic afterwards (or, indeed, before)!

Ladies and gentlemen...(drum roll please...)

The Lithaborn Leg!

Don't say I didn't warn you!

Ack! I've been trying to put together a post about what happened today, but I just can't seem to string a sentence together.

Well, in short Bethan flooded the bathroom - one inch of water and twenty minutes to get it off the floor before I needed to get up the road to fetch Allison from school and go to a birthday party.

Joy.

When I get to school, dripping wet with sweat and mucky ankles, totally unready to interact with a dozen or so mums and dads, I find out that Allison's decided that half her dinner would look better on her t-shirt, so on our way to the party - which starts exactly 45 minutes after school ends - we have to go buy a new t-shirt.

Joy (part two, the revenge).

So we head to the nearest shops. Nothing doing. Apart from the rain, which starts in earnest while I'm standing at a bus stop in nothing but a gilet. Oh it's waterproof alright, it's a good 'un. My torso is nice and dry, nice and warm. Arms? Legs? already squelchy shoes? Don't ask.

Luckily, next to the bus stop is one of those ever-present, never-useful tat-for-a-quid shops. In we sprint. I drop a shiny gold coin on the counter and ask where their umbrellas are. Cue flash of evil enjoyment as I grab a big colourful brolly and walk out, looking for all the world as if I'm blatantly shoplifting.

So now I'm not in any immediate fear of drowning on my feet. While we wait for the bus, another two families have the same idea. For some reason, the bus took ages to turn up. So we get to the next batch of shops with 15 minutes to go. No problem. The place is only five minutes round the corner. The rain really means it now, so even with the new umbrella aloft, it's a good idea to leg it.

Two shops later, we have a new t-shirt and we can finally head off on the last leg of our journey - and we'll just be in time.

Only there are a couple of problems:

One is a car crash not far from where we live, which has caused a traffic jam right up to where we are, three miles away.

The other is that we're caught a mile from the centre of Birmingham's...Moseley's second tornado of the year.

Let me tell you what it's like to be stuck in a tornado-type storm. It's like someone got a really big bucket and tipped it over you. It gets really heavy, then as heavy as you've eevr seen it, then heavier again. It gets so heavy that your cheapo umbrella stops working. It starts raining inside that umbrella and you're left standing there looking up, wondering what's going on and looking stupid because you're standing under a crap umbrella that doesn't keep the rain off. Drivers turn into sadistic twats as they aquaplane gleefully through the two inch deep lakes that used to be roads, soaking anyone insane enough to walk within ten feet of them - which is, of course, everyone, because the pavement is wide, yes, but only ten feet wide.

The bus took another 40 minutes to arrive. We eventually got to the party with five minutes left of the first hour - the hour she was looking forward to, where you get to race unstoppably around a jungle of soft shapes and slides filled two feet deep with big plastic balls. She dives in, jumps on her friend, heads for a ladder...

And is called out for part two - food and party games. Very unsatisfying. Tears ensued.

All was eventually well though. Not wanting the party to be a faliure, the nice people at the Wacky Warehouse gave her a free half hour go in the ball jungle after the party, so all was smiles and balloons and slushies all the way home.

And I tell you, it's a day I'm really glad to call "over".

Y'know, "unsatisfying" is an excellent word for everything that's happened today. Unsatisfying and tiring and unsettling. And wet.

G'night.

P.S. - Thanks to Swiss Toni for reminding me how crap I am at Pub Quizzes. And congrats to T'Urban Fox on the first anniversary and the shiny new home, too.

P.P.S. - Yeah, well it started off being short, didn't it?

In case you're wondering, the pics in my photostream can be found in the photosets below:

A Few snaps of the aftermath of Hurricane Stan
and something a bit closer to home, Flooding in Scotland, Cumbria and Wales from yesterday.

And I do promise to do something personal soon. Maybe something for the fabled Half Nekkid Thursday.

"Half whatnow?" I hear you ask...

Oh, you know:

Ever feel like you wait a long time in the take-away?

Whoever wanted these noodles is still waiting four thousand years later!

Well waddya know, I've found a template I like!

Apart from the obvious, there's some smaller changes, too -

The "Donate Now" button now points to the DEC donation form for the South Asian Earthquake, and I've made my photo feed a little more prominent - the plan is to shift the balance away from web-sourced photos and towards more personal stuff.

Whether it works out that way, I don't know, but we'll see what happens.

For now, isn't this template lovely?

Blogger just ate my meme!

I just completed the iPod Oracle meme from Swiss Toni's Place, then Blogger crapped out on me and lost half the post.

As I'm not nearly organised (or bothered) enough to use Notepad or something to draft my posts, you'll just have to wait until I'm not being leant on by a clingy, permanently hungry three year old.

So, everyone's posting pictures of their bookshelves, then:



This is the one from our living room.

We do have a few more books than that, however - five bulging banana packing boxes full of them that will eventually go on not-bought-yet shelves in the bedroom. Amongst the unseen collection are loads of textbooks from my Uni days, a 160+ strong collection of Doctor Who novels, quite a few teen horror books and a few hundred more books that could be described as "eclectic".

Yes, that pitiful and unsorted pile on the left is my CD collection - easily recognisable are "Never mind the bollocks" and Peter Gabriel's "Us". Upstairs, we have a cupboard full of classical CD's and a whole stack of others. Can't even remember what's there to be honest.

Not exactly the DJ-class uber-collections posted by some, but there you go.

Have a picture of my main collection:

Much kudos to anyone who spots an individual album on that.

It was National Poetry day yesterday, and to belatedly celebrate, I'm going to regale you with one of my favourite poems.

What is it, I (don't) hear you cry:

That one that starts "They fuck you up, your mum and dad"
or maybe one of Waggledagger's sonets?
a Psalm (as if!)?

Nope, one of my favourite poets is John Keats, who wrote some of the most achingly beautiful verse I've ever read.

He lived a full, but unrewarding life of make and mend, poverty and debauchery, succumbing eventually to consumption and died at the tender age of 26.

Rather than subject you to a full rendition of Endymion, or La Belle Dame Sans Merci, here's one of my all time favourite Keats poems:

Give me women, wine, and snuff
Untill I cry out "hold, enough!"
You may do so sans objection
Till the day of resurrection:
For, bless my beard, they aye shall be
My beloved Trinity.

I sometimes wonder, after reading the latest posts on my favourite blogs, whether I shouldn't post something a little more soul-searching, delve into my psyche and get all my worries and fears out there into the great beyond.

I used to. In my teenage years, I wrote copiously, spilling all of my angst out on paper, then sharing it with no-one but the bin in my room.

I think since then, I've been sort of spent, like I've maybe used up my quota of literary soul searches.

Also, I'm someone who tackles problems quietly, doesn't make a big deal of them. I can sit down and fret about something quietly to myself for a couple of hours, come to a conclusion, make peace with my worry or panic or uncomfortableness and get on with the job at hand. Now this infuriates Charlie because I have invariably dreamed up a solution to any given problem before she's even realised how much of a problem it's going to be. But no, I'm not really someone who airs his linen in public all that much.

Besides, from the look of what some of you are writing, you've got more than enough troubles of your own without me laying any more on you. This is supposed to be entertainment isn't it?

I actually had my first driving lesson today. Oh yes. Me. In a car. Driving!

Never thought it would happen.

And mighty scary and exciting it was too.

Highlights include:

Being told to pull away and drive just ten minutes into the lesson.
Making my first right turn like I was in a rally (what brake??).
Shifting down from third - THIRD GEAR! Woo! - flawlessly.
Managing to not quite completely drive directly over a mini-roundabout.
"You look quite relaxed." "You should feel my muscles!"
I only stalled twice. Once at a junction and once when pulling over.
Driving on the wrong side of the road and not realising.
The instructor has the same name as my mother.
She also tried to pull the seatbelt off the wall.

At the end she told me I'd done quite well for my first lesson. I was still shaking and glowing with pride two hours later. Chuffed as a steam engine!

I could get used to this driving lark.

Next time, she's threatened me with three point turns. At this rate, I'll have passed my test by christmas!

Some idiot's hiding comments in my archives, so I'm reluctantly turning that cursed verification on.

Now I've got to trawl back through two years of posts and prune them out.

Bollocks.

"G...G...Granville! F..Fetch a cloth!"

Ronnie Barker, Comedy genius
1929 - 2005

Thanks to the 100% cloud cover, I didn't even notice this going on.

Boo!

Yeah, I've gone a bit quiet. That's because I've got genuinely nothing to talk about, apart from Lordy B requesting a fillum review, which fills me with trepidation as a) I can never settle on a favourite and b) the other reviewers are scarily loquacious.

Not to let the side down, I'm trying to narrow it down. Here's the shortlist:

Lord of the Rings (too obvious)
Weekend at Bernies (Waddya mean worst film ever?)
Contact
Serenity (Haven't seen it yet, but I bet I'm gonna have something to say about it)
Judge Dredd
The Breakfast Club
Monty Python's "Life of Brian" ("'E's not the Messiah, 'E's a very naughty boy!")
Galaxy Quest ("I see you managed to get your shirt off")
The Last Starfighter
Logan's Run
Casablanca
Dogma

Sorry, did I say shortlist?

I may have to watch them all over again to decide between them. I'd be open to taking votes from you lot, too.