Glasgow Police Boxes

The corporate press releases that are circulated at work are usually pretty dull but one that came round the other day really piqued my interest. It related to the Merchant City Townscape Heritage Initiative which is aiming to regenerate parts of Glasgow's Merchant City area. There is some fantastic architecture in that part of the city so it's a really worthwhile exercise purely from a historic point of view but one minor makeover really interested me:

Police Box: Restoration of the cast concrete police boxes once common on the City’s streets but made redundant and surplus to police needs in 1996. Originally used for a variety of purposes – shelter for the officers, temporary prison cell for miscreants and emergency telephone point for the public. First occupying the City’s streets in the 1930’s the boxes are more recently famous as the time travelling TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension in Space) in the popular BBC series Doctor Who. Today only four remain on the public highway and are listed category ‘B’ as of architectural and historic interest. The THI provided a grant to repair the concrete casing of the box, repair its metal windows and reinstate the siren, electrics and signage to these fascinating structures.

There are a few police boxes dotted around Glasgow as well as one in the Transport Museum (which is a brilliant day out in itself). I used to walk past the Buchanan Street one every day for around 12 years on my way to work. For a while it was in a bit of a sorry state - regularly vandalised and at one point painted white with multi-coloured dots which cruelly mocked the thing. Then, it was painted to a vibrant Police Box blue. It was wonderful - not just that it has been restored but it now defines Buchanan Street in a really odd way. I think the reason is that it is strangely anachronistic. The buildings in Buchanan Street date from the time of Victorian grandeur, so it's not that it is entirely out of place in its surroundings, but it doesn't belong to the early 21st Century. It belongs to my childhood and it is as odd seeing this bright blue box on the street as it would turning round the corner to find the family's Austin A40 parked up.

Since Doctor Who has returned to our screens there are now a whole generation of children that recognise the Police Boxes as the TARDIS. The Merchant City box is on the junction of Wilson Street and Glassford Street. It was actually painted red before the renovation (as were most of the Glasgow Police Boxes) but the new paint other restorations are a really handsome makeover. It's nice that they have paid attention to little details like this but it is also a real attraction to any science fiction fans who would like to see what the iconic boxes look like in their original locations. Certainly, I'll be taking my son to see this when we are next in Glasgow.

New Arrivals

My sister has just given birth to twins - a boy and a girl! I have yet to determine which one is ginger.

The problem is: what to get as a present? I think the real answer is a big house and a people carrier but that's somewhat out of my price range at the moment. The standard things seem to be: baby clothes - they have been given a pile anyway; soft cuddly toys - they will shortly receive a house full of them; or Mothercare vouchers. It's all a bit predictable.

Anyway, I've checked out a few websites and I'm surprised just how popular religious gifts seem to be: personalised bibles, bibs with your favourite psalms, "pray with me" teddy bears, cuddly crosses!, a Noah's Ark (which is actually quite a nice toy for older kids), and a baby Jesus doll. They all seem to be rather Christian orientated - are there Muslim or Hindu baby gifts or do other cultures have a tad more taste? Given that my brother-in-law is a confirmed atheist (he even worked in the same university department as Richard Dawkins) I think I'll pass on those.

Of course, it's better than the original Christian baby gifts: gold, frankincense and myrrh. I mean what were they dreaming of? It's just about one up from things that you would buy from a motorway service station. At least they could have bought a pack of disposable nappies or something.

I think I'll stick to the Mothercare vouchers.

The Marty Feldman Experience

Well, I've seen my second full length 3-D film and I think it's going to be my last. I saw Up! in the summer and, whilst I enjoyed the film and felt that the 3-D technology worked well, I found that my eyes were very tired afterwards. At first, I couldn't quite place why this was, but it must be remembered that the 3-D effect is an optical illusion and that the images are really a flat projection on a distant screen. When looking at a real 3-D object ones eyes will move and focus accordingly however with the 3-D film the eyes must still focus on the screen 20 metres away whilst thinking the object is at the end of one's nose. I'm not sure what I look like when this is happening but I expect I must appear like Marty Feldman.

We went to see Avatar yesterday. As my eyes were so tired after 90 minutes of Up! we had planned to watch Avatar in 2-D. Unfortunately, by the time we were able to go to the cinema, only the 3-D version of the film was still showing. I was expecting to feel like my eyes would drop out by the end of the film but what I didn't expect was that I would feel like vomiting half way through.

The film itself is really worth seeing. The story is simple enough - essentially Dances with Wolves set on an alien planet - but the special effects really are special. James Cameron has developed new types of video capture techniques to realise the alien creatures in a way that gives depth of expression and makes the movement so natural that it is easy to forget that it is an animation rather than live action on the screen. Additionally, there is imagination in the make-up of the alien fauna and flora. Whilst it is obvious that Earth animals have been used as a basis for the life forms, there are intriguing adaptations (e.g. separate breathing holes in the body) which have a consistency across species and gives some hint into how these creatures may have evolved. Obviously, the whole thing was fantasy but I'm impressed when some serious thought has gone into this.

But 3-D is the movie industry's latest wheeze - in fact it's their third attempt at it. I can remember seeing Jaws 3-D in the 1980s and it was utterly dire. The latest bash at 3-D still requires the wearing of glasses, with polarised lenses, but the effect is phenomenal - at least for the first 10 minutes and after that you have either become engrossed in the film or lost interest. Unlike Up!, Avatar contains both animated and real life sequences, and it was the real life sequences that caused me so much discomfort. In fact, at one point I had to leave the theatre for 5 minutes for fear of actually throwing up.

I think I've seen my last 3-D film for a while. I can strongly recommend Avatar and I will probably watch it again on its DVD release but I think I'll be leaving the second pair of specs at home in future.

Rammstein!

I have always had a fondness for German music so you would think that having a German wife would be a real bonus. The problem is that we seem to like entirely different genres. I have always liked the likes of Kraftwerk, Neu! and Einstürzende Neubauten whereas my wife likes seems to like any old Schlager and Hitparade fodder or irritating cheerfulness like The Les Humphries Singers. It's not mutually exclusive as we both like Neue Deutsche Welle and some opera but as a general rule, if it's in German and I like it, she doesn't.

So I was quite delighted when she clicked in Rammstein's Live aus Berlin concert on LoveFilm. The disk arrived last weekend and we watched it this week. Now, fingers crossed, but I think she actually liked it. For the uninitiated, Rammstein are an industrial metal act from the former East Germany. Aurally they sound like a cross between The Prodigy and Metallica with a vocal style not entirely unlike disturbing Slovenian art collective Laibach, and lyrical content that varies from romanticism to the works of the Marquis de Sade. I can understand why some people may not like them but my ears pricked up having first encountered them on movie soundtracks. The sound appealed to me and I investigated more - I liked what I heard.

I think Nina (my wife) took more convincing. She likes the odd heavy rock act but more from the rock-and-roll end of the scale, such as AC/DC or Alice Cooper. Her first reaction was that, as they are from East Germany, they must be slightly unhinged (although she likes Nina Hagen). She also found the band name in remarkably poor taste as she was a duty nurse at the time of the Ramstein air disaster from which they derive their moniker. However, I think she mainly applied the old rule-of-thumb - if I like it and they sing in German then it must be appalling avant-garde noise.

I don't think her opinion has changed that much but she gave it a 3 out of 5 stars on LoveFilm which, by her standards, is up there with Citizen Kane. The main reason for this is the stage show. Many rock groups have tried to use pyrotechnics to liven up their shows but very few have had the lead singer actually set themselves on fire for visual effect. In fact, at one point he even performs a human catherine wheel (the firework that is) which is quite a sight. And there is even a novel approach to crowd surfing as the keyboard player sails over the audience in a dinghy. They also have a stunt that involves a prosthetic body part that squirts out a white liquid but the less said of that the better.



I did consider trying to get tickets for their UK tour but the nearest venue is the MEN arena in Manchester and the available ticket prices are outrageous. Aside from that, there is a reasonable chance that they would burn the place down or, at least, toast the first few rows of audience with flamethrowers. So, I'll have to be content that there is some of my music that we can enjoy together - I wonder if I can convince her to listen to Faust?

Kingdom Come

I've been driving to work for nearly a year now. The one thing I do miss about this, compared to taking the train, is that it really cuts down the amount of time I have for reading. However, much to my surprise, this is really the only downside for me. I don't know why I have spent over 20 years putting up with the overpriced, unreliable service provided by greedy operators and their surly, unhelpful and often downright rude staff. Whatever anyone will tell you about the misery of commuting by car, it is nothing compared to the appalling, soul-destroying alternative.

But I do miss my books. Over Christmas, I took the opportunity of catching up with some reading and even made a (now very occasional) loan from the local library. For this choice I went for JG Ballard's Kingdom Come. I must admit to liking the odd bit of dystopian fiction and have read the likes of Anthony Burgess and George Orwell in the past. JG Ballard is one of the major writers of this genre but I had only ever read his semi-autobiographical Empire of the Sun before now. I thought I'd give one of his more typical books a go and Kingdom Come was the one the library had in.

Kingdom Come was Ballard's last novel - I hadn't realised that he had died until he popped up on one of those end-of-year lists of people who had kicked the bucket. I gather from the reviews I've seen that this was not one of his best and I can see what they mean. The basic premise of the book is actually quite interesting - in the early 21st century social cohesion has broken down to the point that consumerism is the only reality in peoples lives, backed up by supporting sports teams which have no connection with the local community and are merely consumer fodder themselves - much like the English Premier League. Consumerism has, in fact, become a new form of fascism with St George's Flag shirted sports fans as the new brown-shirts - taking out their frustrations on South-Asian and Eastern European migrants.

This is a really interesting premise and would have made for a fantastic short story, but the problem is that the narrative through which the story is told is just not that gripping in itself. The best dystopian stories usually make their point by telling the story of a pawn or minor character - think of Winston Smith in 1984. The main protagonists in this story appear to have been added in to flesh out an essay on the emptiness of consumerism. That, in itself, would have been worthwhile but for the purpose of story telling it would have been more enlightening to see this told from one of the St George shirted football hooligans or from the Bangladeshi family living in fear of them.

Even so, I thought that Ballard managed to capture a world that did not seem that far away from the one we live in and that is the basis for any good dystopian story - take the trends of the modern world and exaggerate them into a foreseeable near future. On that basis I'd be more than happy to dig into Ballard's past catalogue and see what neurosis he has to offer.

CSI

After the excitement of the holidays has waned into the drudgery of the new year it's rather nice that there are some decent new TV series starting. I'm very much a Sci-Fi geek and I'm being rather spoilt with the choice of Heroes - a world of conspiracy inhabited with super-power gifted humans; Survivors - a post apocalyptic world in which a few disparate individuals have survived a devastating viral outbreak, Being Human - the everyday goings on of three Bristol housemates who happen to be a ghost, a werewolf and a vampire; and CSI : Crime Scene Investigation - life (and death) in the forensics department of the Las Vegas police department.

At first glance you wouldn't really class CSI as Sci-Fi. However, on closer inspection it is a hard Sci-Fi series in which seemingly plausible scientific methods are used to solve the often convoluted crimes presented to the main protagonists. I say "seemingly plausible" because quite often they stray into the territory of the complete bollocks were a lazy bit of script writing sees a single pixel blown up to reveal a high definition picture of the villain's number plate, or a complex partial finger print search find a single hit in a huge database in nano-seconds. It is also noticeable that some of the equipment has been deliberately styled on futuristic detective films such as Ridley Scott's Bladerunner or Steven Spielberg's Minority Report.

It's quite a turn around from the 1990's when one of the most popular Sci-Fi series was The X-files with it's labyrinthine conspiracy theories and outlandish plots in which supernatural entities or shadowy aliens would rule the day. It rather drew the ire of Richard Dawkins who, in a Richard Dimbleby lecture in 1996 noted:

Each week The X-Files poses a mystery and offers two rival kinds of explanation, the rational theory and the paranormal theory. And, week after week, the rational explanation loses.

Whilst The X-Files disappeared up it's own posterior in the late 1990's, CSI has ruled the airwaves in the last decade spawning three separate franchises - some 70 episodes per year. However, quite what Dawkins would make of CSI is another matter. Rather than science being unable to answer anything, in CSI science has ALL the answers. You never have an ambiguous outcome, a lack of data or a lab-technician who just doesn't know. There has also been noted a CSI Effect in the real world where juries and victims' families have unrealistic expectations of what forensic science is actually capable of. It's still enjoyable nonsense but it is debateable whether it provides a reasonable insight into how real science works - obviously 40 minutes airtime is going to restrict what can be shown.

The new series got off to a rather mixed start. I'm quite taken with Laurence Fishburne as the new CSI. His character is an ex- doctor and university lecturer who has (in a rather unlikely scenario) packed it in to work in the crime lab. I'm impressed that the producers have managed to get an actor of Fishburne's status into the role as this has provided a fresh angle into what were becoming rather stale plots. The story last night was of a minor movie star who was murdered in a staged car crash. The motivation for this involved a rather convoluted plot including a stalker and a skeleton-in-the-closet father but it did, at least, end on an intriguing cliff hanger as some unspecified and unsuspected object was found in the chest cavity of an autopsy room cadaver. Quite what this was remains for future episodes but it wouldn't surprise me if it was last seen giving John Hurt a really bad case of indigestion and then chasing Sigourney Weaver around a space-ship.

Cold Weather and EU Tyre Labelling

Given the recent very cold snap in Britain it is interesting to see how different cars are coping with the weather. The small car I use for commuting to work, a Toyota Yaris, has been coping quite well. I've had a few problems with the washer jets icing over but, aside from that, it has stayed quite firmly planted to the road - even when the roads have been snowed over or caked in ice. Like most people in Britain I don't have fully fledged winter tyres on my car - it has EcoContact3 tyres which are meant to reduce rolling resistance but they have done well considering the conditions they have been used in. Others have not fared so well and I've seen a few cars well and truly stuck.

Having browsed the Toyota owners forum it looks like others are finding mixed results. Obviously those with winter or off-road tyres have been OK but amongst Yaris owners it seems to be those that have opted for big alloy wheels and fat tyres that have come unstuck. A Rav-4 owner appears to have discovered that 4 wheel drive is useless when you can't get grip on even one tyre. Surprisingly, Prius owners have been doing well. They have low rolling resistance tyres fitted as standard and these tyres, in common with the winter tyres, have one magic component that may well make the difference: silica. Silica was introduced to tyres to improve wet road grip, reduce rolling resistance and, importantly, to improve the elasticity of tyres in cold winter conditions. It also makes tyres more expensive to manufacture, which is why the likes of Michelins cost so much (aside from supporting their huge marketing and R&D budgets).

The problem is, that when choosing a replacement tyre there is very little information to go on. The best independent reviews of tyres are published by motoring organisations such as Germany's ADAC but this is going to change in the next couple of years. Late last year, the EU agreed to introduce a standard tyre labelling system - similar to the efficiency stickers which are placed on new washing machines and refrigerators. The information will provide a comparative guide on the tyres' rolling resistance, noise and grip in the wet. The last is important and was added at the insistence of Continental Tyres who were concerned that their products may be undercut by budget tyres produced with a hard-as-Hell rubber compound, to reduce rolling resistance, but with all the road-holding properties of Teflon.

I think this is a major step forward although I do have some misgivings on how the standardised tests are to be conducted, as the standard fuel economy tests for cars have come to have little bearing on how well the vehicles will perform in real-world driving. Once the manufacturers worked out how to tune the vehicles purely for the rolling road test, that's what they did - any improvement in the real world is just a by-product. I think that rigging the tyre tests will prove a little more difficult but I haven't found out exactly how these will be done. I'm assuming that the tyres will have a standard inflation, load and ambient temperature. However, from what I can gather, this will be done at 20 degrees Celsius. It would be far more enlightening if this was also done at, say, 1 degree. This would then show the various benefits and weaknesses of summer, winter and all-season tyres.

As for Britain, I'm interested to see if the sales of Winter tyres take off next year - it's actually quite hard even to find them on sale at the moment. Certainly, many people have been caught out by the cold snap but I suspect that memories will have quietly forgotten that by next November. If Britain had the same climate as Bavaria I don't think it would be an issue but as our climate is so predictably unpredictable I think it would take a good bit of convincing to fork out £500 for some seasonal wheels.

Freegle

At one time nobody ever threw stuff out. My grandfather was an astonishing hoarder with a garage and loft filled with ancient toys, half mended furniture and even an old home guard uniform and supplies (well, you never know). If ever there was anything that was no longer required it would be offered around the local neighbourhood or the church would be more than happy to find a deserving cause - an elderly widow or a young couple trying to set up their first home.

Times change and we now live in a throw-away consumerist culture. Perfectly good items are tossed in the nearest skip and the God of the heavens has been forsaken for the gods the shopping malls. Even if we know our nearest neighbours (which many don't) most people would be too embarrassed to ask them if they would like our cast-offs for fear of offending that they may not be able to worship at the alter of Mammon.

And it's a pity. Whilst I would not want to create a loft born fire hazard as my grandfather did I hate to throw anything out if it may serve some useful purpose. And this is where Freegle comes in. Freegle is the UK off-shoot of the American grass-roots movement Freecycle. Quite simply, if you have any unwanted goods - or if you want to check if someone may have an unwanted item that you need - simply post a message to your local group and see if anyone is interested. The aim is not so much to save money but to save on landfill waste.

I've just tried it for the first time tonight as we had a small dining table set that we no longer used. It was a little old and had been repaired by me at least once so it wasn't really worth doing the small ads but it was still functional and too good to take down to the tip. A quick advert on Freegle and someone came round and took it away. They were quite delighted with their free find and I've managed to clear an old item with little effort and prevented another needless bit of landfill.

If you fancy giving it a go the website is here: www.ilovefreegle.org

The George Orwell Schadenfreude Show

It's not meant to be polite to mock the afflicted but there is a certain forbidden pleasure to be gained from pointing and laughing at the misfortune of those who truly deserve it. Just think of the absurd moral outrage of people who actually believe anything they read in the Daily Mail or the acute outbreaks of foot-in-mouth disease that accompany Nick Griffin when speaking in the presence of human beings. The Germans have a fine word for it: Schadenfreude.

Such an opportunity at public sneering is now upon us with the start of the new series of Celebrity Big Brother. Named after the unseen crushing authoritarian state of 1984, it can't be as George Orwell had envisioned things. In fact it's a great deal closer to Nigel Kneale's Year of the Sex Olympics in which the mass audience cheers with delight as the psychotic house-mates slaughter each other.

In fact, the celebrity version of Big Brother started innocently enough with a week long fund raiser for Comic Relief featuring the likes of Jack Dee, Claire Sweeney and Keith Duffy - not exactly A-listers but established stars who were prepared to put themselves out for a good cause. All very laudable. However, the publicity created for those that took part proved to be golden. In particular Jack Dee, a long time popular face on the comedy circuit; became, overnight, a household name - the sort that even your granny would know. Other, less scrupulous celebs would take note and, thus, the modern celebrity freak show was born.

Now, I wouldn't normally watch Big Brother and its ilk at all. I'm not just being snobbish here - I really don't find the format in the slightest bit entertaining. It could be - Channel 4 used to do a fascinating late-night discussion show called After Dark in which a group of invited guests would debate a topic in a free-form, open-ended and entirely unscripted format. It was TV gold, mainly because participants had something of interest to say, but Big Brother is just dull beyond belief. However, I find myself drawn to the opening night of Big Brother just out of curiosity of whose career has seriously gone down the toilet. Schadenfreude, my friends. Schadenfreude.

So who do we have for this final circus sideshow:

Stephen Baldwin - I remember him from The Usual Suspects. I wonder what he has done since? Drink, drugs, religion and bankruptcy, apparently. I wonder why he wants to do it?

Nicola Tappenden - A glamour model, i.e. she gets her tits oot fur the lads. I'm guessing that exhibitionism is her modus operandi.

Alex Reid - A cross-dressing cage fighter. At least that sounds interesting - the hard-case Eddie Izzard.

Stephanie Beacham - Ooh! A proper actress. One I've seen and heard of and everything. She's writing an autobiography - nice bit of publicity there!

Lady Sovereign - No, I've never heard of her either. She is signed to Def Jam records - home of The Beastie Boys, Kanye West and Slayer. Just because one uses Twitter does not make one Stephen Fry.

Sisqó - An American R&B singer who has seemingly achieved sod all in this country over the last ten years.

Dane Bowers - An English R&B singer who has seemingly achieved sod all in this country over the last ten years.

Heidi Fleiss - A Hollywood based prostitute and pimp.

Jonas Altberg - You may have heard of him as Basshunter - you probably wish you hadn't heard him at all.

Katia Ivanova - Is celebrated for shagging one of the Rolling Stones. This would be of entertainment value only if it was one of the dead ones. I can't tell as they all look like they belong in a George A Romero movie.

Vinnie Jones - You have to admire Vinnie Jones. His talents as an actor are quite limited - mainly he plays Vinnie Jones. But he has managed to mingle quite happily with Hollywood A-listers who would not recognise a good actor even if they were slapped in the face by one - which I suspect Vinnie is quite capable of. Prior to that he managed to convince a succession of coaches in to believing he was a football player - although he fitted in to the Leeds United team quite well with his perfectly timed late-tackles. He gives me the impression of being a complete psychopath and it wouldn't surprise me if he ended up eating one of the less popular housemates.

And so that's that. Morbid curiosity sated. I feel quite dirty now. Time to read Animal Farm once more...

A Birthday Treat and a New Who

Well, so long and farewell Russell T Davis. The man who brought Doctor Who back to our TV screens managed to pull one off one of the best televisual treats I have ever been able to witness - and I don't mean his last episodes of the series which were, in all fairness, not exactly his strongest.

Yesterday was my son's eighth birthday. There are a few days in the calendar which must rate as completely useless for having a birthday. Christmas Day is one of them - although those that have their birthdays on that day usually get a little sympathy from their parents as well as a bumper huge present. Hogmanay is a waste of time as well. A friend of mine found it so difficult to organise a decent 40th birthday party on that day that he held a 40.5th birthday party 6 months later (and a jolly fine do it was as well).

But New Years Day is rubbish. Any much wished for toys will have been received at Christmas and whilst the cheques and gift vouchers are most welcome they lack the wow factor of that brightly gift-wrapped new game - and even the postie won't be arriving for at least another day; Mum is tired from organising the previous nights' festivities; Dad has a stinking cold combined with the hangover from Hell; and, even though there is no school, there is also little chance of organising a party as most other families will be recovering from the previous night's hedonism as well.

So, out of the blue, I discovered that Russell T had arranged for a Doctor Who special to be shown on my son's eighth birthday. In fact, there was an episode on my eighth birthday as well - the long forgotten Seeds of Doom in which a giant tentacled beastie takes over a mansion - but yesterday was not just any old episode. No, it was a regeneration episode in which the Doctor, staring death in the face, changes into a new body. In this case, David Tennant changing into Matt Smith. That is the kind of birthday present that money can't buy and that one eight year old boy will never forget. So, thank you, Mr Davis; job well done.

But what of the new chap? When he was cast most people's reaction was "Never heard of him. Isn't he a bit young?" and, "He looks a bit odd, doesn't he?" I seem to recall that many said that of Tom Baker when he was cast and he didn't fare too badly. I have actually seen Matt in a couple of other productions: a Philip Pullman adaptation and a cop drama which didn't really appeal to me. Matt didn't register with me in either - possibly a good sign as the last thing you want is a ham actor munching through the scenery - although for Doctor Who that can be an advantage. But I think Matt and Karen Gillan, as red-head assistant Amy Pond, look the part. I'm really looking forward to seeing them in the new series.

And I do think the show will go from strength to strength simply because of new show-runner Steven Moffat. He has already written some of the most memorable stories of the new series, such as The Empty Child and Blink; but he also has pedigree with shows such as Press Gang - one of the most intelligently written programmes for children's television - and Coupling - an adult sitcom featuring complex story lines and an unforeseen but satisfying plot twist. So, he can write for the full spectrum of viewers and hopefully this will play well with the family audience that Doctor Who commands.

Now, I'm just waiting for the episode entitled Revenge of the Lesbian Spank Inferno.

Why blog?

It's a very good question. I have never been a particularly good diarist and have never really seen the point of it - either I will retain my thoughts or I'd rather forget them (and certainly not have them recorded publicly). The only real point of a diary, as far as I can see, is to air one's views for the reception of a greater audience. But I don't see myself as a Samuel Pepys - or a Tony Benn for that matter.

Yet, I still find the need to express myself out loud - whether this in letters, online forums or merely talking to myself when walking the dog (or even talking to the dog - but I do find domestic quadrupeds prone to self-opinionated twaddle). So, it's possibly time to give this a try. It's a new year - arguably a new decade - and I'm going to try this "recorded for posterity" lark once more. If you have found this blog in a year or so with two or three entries then I have clearly lost interest - as I did with the pocket diaries which inevitable formed part of my childhood Christmas stocking. Otherwise you will find this filled with my aimless meanderings of half-watched TV programmes, absurd musical tastes, philosophical musings and the little daemons that life throws up to bother me.

Let's see how long it is before I add another entry - hopefully once this crippling hangover shifts!