After a few days of extreme temperatures (apparently yesterday was the hottest day since 1989 or something ridiculous - I'm sure we were on holiday at that time, and I got so burnt on the first day that I could barely wear anything other than a very thin pair of tracksuit bottoms for the whole holiday, which made my mum most annoyed as she seemed to believe that a nice shirt and a pair of trousers were the correct clothes to wear for playing video games, something I never really quite understood) today someone has seen sense and given the nation necessary thunderstorms. Apparently half of Scotland is under water, while the lawn bowls at the Commonwealth Games had to be abandoned 'cos it was too wet. (NOTE TO AMERICANS AND EUROPEANS: the Commonwealth Games is an Olympics-style sporting event held every four years, with only the nations who were smart enough to join the Empire and didn't duck out of it at the earliest opportunity invited along. The events are obviously tailored slightly - none of the ones Britain is crap at, for a start - which means the addition of lawn bowls, a favourite among elderly people in parks everywhere and the only sport where matches like Wales versus the Cook Islands or New Zealand versus Guernsey occur with people managing to keep a straight face.)

Except for Ilford, which remains bone dry and stagnant.

We had the thunder (one clap) and the lightning (one bolt) and then... nothing. And this is deeply unfair, not just because we need it because the air is still suffocatingly horrible, but because watching great big gobbets of rain with the occasional loud noise is an excellent thing to do, and because I'd rather have it happen now rather than when I'm trying to sleep.

Dressing for work on a hot day is a perilous business. What to do for the best? Light shirt to deflect the sun's rays? Dark shirt to attempt hide the inevitable sweaty patches that develop around armpit and back? No t-shirt underneath in an attempt to reduce sweatiness and accompanying nasty odours, or t-shirt in place to try and keep those sweaty patches firmly out of sight? The combinations are endless, or at least four.

For the record I have plumped for a purple shirt with nothing underneath, and it seems to be bearing up okay so far, albeit with the afternoon and no doubt nightmarish journey home to come.

Of all the bits of London I hate having to go to, Camden is probably the place I hate going to the most. If you see what I mean. Particularly walking down the high street towards Chalk Farm. It feels a bit like a backstreet in some seaside town, except with an air of malevolence thrown in. Walking down, say, Regent Road in Yarmouth, the most unpleasant thing that's likely to happen to you is walking into a shop playing Irish easy listening music at you. Whereas in Camden High Street there's always a sense that something bad is about to happen - this is probably something to do with the overly aggressive minicab drivers and the vendors of really nasty looking food and the annoying people attempting to be, for want of a better word, cool and, on a Friday night, the goths hanging around outside the Electric Ballroom. I suspect there was a point when I first went there for some gig or other and was quite impressed, but after the first four or so visits it rapidly lost its lustre for me.

But I braved it anyway to go and see Ballboy, who were tremendous even if the singerbloke refused to believe that anyone could possibly not be interested in the final of Big Brother. (NOTE TO AMERICANS: I read an item last week which suggested that, as a nation, you'd never really gone a bundle on this programme, in which case I can only congratulate you on your excellent judgement, unless you like it, in which case I tut disapprovingly. If my niece can spot that this is boring and we'd be better off watching The Aristocats then why can't, for example, people that like it? Particularly when it's someone like, say, Lauren Laverne, who was enthusing about it in a particularly unpleasant manner on the radio this morning. I mean, what happened? She used to be good when she first got a job on the telly and used to make jokes about Lou Barlow to a probably baffled audience of the kids on a Sunday morning. Nowadays she seems mostly indistinguishable from all of the others, and she shouts all the time. It's really quite upsetting.

Actually, Americans, and most other people now I come to think of it, probably lost us somewhere around "Aristocats". Oh dear. It's quite late and I do get upset so.)

Interestingly, Ballboy were supported by possibly the ugliest band I've ever had the misfortune to see. Now, at this point you're probably tutting at me disapprovingly, but really, I know of what I speak here. In fact, as a pig myself, I'm in prime position to comment on the ugliness or otherwise of people. If you're deeply attractive, then you're probably going to draw the ugly line in the dirt a lot earlier than someone who isn't so much of a looker. (Also, you're more likely to use a stick to draw it, so as not to dirty your deeply attractive fingers.) I suspect the band knew that they were ugly as well - it would certainly explain the ghastly facial hair, as clearly they can't bear to look at themselves in the mirror for long enough to shave properly. Their music was awfully loud and not terribly good, so overall the effect was of being lightly battered - say, by a cardboard tube used for mailing a poster in - by some really ugly people, in a hot, darkened room. Nice.

There have been a few occasions of late when I've considered that maybe actually owning a mobile phone wouldn't be such a bad idea, because there have been a few situations I've been in that they having one would have been useful, and I do worry slightly that not owning one makes me look a bit crap compared to everyone else in the world who seems to have one. And then, just at the point as I'm about to crack entirely, something happens that puts me off. For example, just before going away for the week, I got myself to thinking that actually I could really use one. Then, after watching my brother-in-law get plagued with calls from his workmates for a week, I realised that being reachable at all times had its downside, and decided not to bother.

Over the last few weeks, my mind has gradually been changed and so I decided that as part of the general shopping trip I was planning for this weekend I would make some enquiries as to the price of the things. And then, on my way home, a group of noisy men got on the train, sat in the set of seats behind me (taking up a block of seats for up to ten people between the three of them) and talked loudly about their phones all the way to Ilford. I know it's too much to ask for a peaceful trip home on a Friday night, but this was so horrifically tedious that the thought of actually having one of the things and having people trying to engage me in similar conversations was too much to bear. So at the moment I remain phone-less and officially crap. So there.

(You can tell it is now officially summer in London because instead of people walking the streets holding their mobile phones in front of them, people are holding water bottles in front of them instead. They still seem to be staring intently at them hoping that they receive a text message on it, bless them.)

I should probably have mentioned Telegraph Text, the latest splendid feature from the excellent Weekly Science Combine rather earlier this week, but this week has been such that I've only just got around to reading all of it. Modesty forbids me from pointing out my small contribution, which is just as well as most of the good jokes on those pages were shoehorned in by the Combine at a latter stage anyway. Hurrah!

Crumbs, is that the time?

I probably shouldn't admit this but, while I do read a few other page-o-things (when I'm talking about other people's I should probably call them "blogs", but I still say that it's a horrible word; there's no joy in there at all. It's too close to "slug" to ever be pretty. Try and use the word "blog" in a happy sentence and see the whole droop like a fat man on a hot day; "I met a fantastic girl last night and she was really gorgeous and she laughed at all my jokes and she likes all the same things I do and we went back to her place and... well, a gentleman never tells, but I'm feeling pretty tired now I can tell you, and I'm seeing her again tonight and now I'm going to write about something in my blog." See?) pretty much all of those that I do are written by people outside this island nation. (Incidentally, while I realise that I should probably have links to all of the other page-o-things I like in the column to the left, I choose not to in case those who write the pages find the link and read my page and hate it and are embarrassed about it all.) This is partly because something written by someone thousands of miles away has a certain glamour about it to my weak suburban brain, even if it's just wittering about tin foil or something. But it's mostly because most British "bloggers" seem to specialise in tedious middle-class angst bilge. And to be honest, if I want tedious middle-class angst bilge, there's enough of it in my archive to keep me company, thanks for asking.

Excitingly, the Blogger front page reveals (well, appears to have mentioned several days ago - this is how closely I concentrate on things: not at all) that this is probably about a special who can wee the highest? competition for these particular people, but instead of the winner being determined by who leaves the longest stain on the wall, it's determined by a panel selected by a left-leaning newspaper. Marvellous.

I was going to comment on the curious way art and life get along, but then I suddenly got worried that Nicholas Van Hoodenstraagen and Nicholas Van Hoogstraten might not be meant to be the same people (well, Nicholas Van Hoodenstraagen might not have be meant to have been Nicholas Van Hoogstraten, I mean Nicholas Van Hoogstraten clearly exists) (and, now I come to think of it, apparently has people beaten up and accidentally killed, so it might not be a good idea to be particularly flippant on the subject) and I'd look a foole, which would be an appropriate way to end this absolutely awful day. So I'm going to going to go to bed instead.

It is 9.09am, and the week is off to a cracking start with me having an argument with a woman on the platform at Maryland over my refusal to move down inside the carriage of the train I was on (a train which had stopped at two more stations than the indicator board at Seven Kings had suggested it would, which would explain why it was so horribly crowded in the first place). She seemed to be suggesting (the argument, such as it was, was conducted entirely by mouth movements and gestures) that I wasn’t thinking about other people, but I was. I was thinking about the people I would have been falling all over had I moved down, as I have no sense of balance and would have had nothing to hold on to once the train moved off, and it didn’t seem worth risking my neck and other people’s toes so that one extra person could get to work a couple of minutes earlier, but I didn’t really have enough room to communicate this very well and I suspect she would have been left to assume that I was just being a selfish cunt. I’m still annoyed now.

You may recall (it seems unlikely, but anything's possible) that last week, I was extremely annoyed at receiving a letter suggesting that I owed some gas company a startling amount of money. I should probably have mentioned at the time that the next day I called the customer queries line, explained my problem to a charming woman in a call centre somewhere, and between us we worked out that it was just a simple error caused by someone not setting the meter up properly when it was installed last December. All was well.

Until yesterday, when I received a much nicer note telling me that in fact I was in credit by around £117. This was terribly exciting, and I resolved to give them a call on Monday to try and work out once and for all whether I owed vast sums, was owed vast sums, or (as seemed most likely) someone who isn't me had made a horrific bodge of something somewhere.

There was another twist to the fun today when, attempting to put further credit on the meter, most of the sum was taken to repay my debt. Following the instructions given for checking the balance (if I told you it involved holding a button down until a beep sounds, then pressing it a further 24 times, inserting a card and then pressing the button 3 more time, you may assume that I was exaggerating for comic effect, so I shan't bother) revealed that apparently I am in debt. By £149.89. I'm actually rather looking forward to the phone call I have to make this time.

There are some places where employing a fellow to stand by the sinks in the toilets to offer passing people soaps and towels and such and such is a worthwhile thing to do. Posh hotels, say, or upmarket wine bars and restaurants, and lots of other places of that ilk where I'm unlikely ever to go.

None of these places are likely to be holding an evening of what, for want of a better term, we'll call indie-guitar pop. Even if they were, they really ought to give the sink-fellow the night off, because your indie-guitar pop fan isn't really all that likely to be taking much care over washing his hands. He might run them under the tap, maybe wash some water around his face if it's a particularly sweaty show or he's a particularly sweaty individual, maybe even briefly put his hands under the dryer or take a paper towel to dry them off a bit before finishing the job off by wiping them on his jeans, but things like soap are a definite no-no. Not in this situation. Hygiene is a wonderful thing, but that's just not how these situations work. No.

And yet, increasingly, they seem to be appearing at gig venues. I'm sure I recall such a fellow at Dingwalls, there was one the last time I visited The Forum at Kentish Town, and then another at the Metro Bar last night. I'm sure all these places sometimes cater to slightly better dressed crowds (I hadn't been to the Metro before, and it struck me that it was the sort of place where ordinarily I'd be horribly out of place, in my clumsy, awkward, relentlessly non-cool way) but really, you think they'd know when to give the staff a break.

And the problem is that, despite all of the above, I really did want to wash my hands. With soap. And using plenty of paper towels afterwards.

Y'see, on the way into gigs you often get a little stamp on your lower arm somewhere, so that if you happen to leave the building you can return simply by showing off the little inked logo. Except that, on the door at last night's show, there was no stamp. But there was a girl with a marker pen, and a penchant for drawing little smiley faces on peoples hands to show that they'd paid their cash.

I don't want to seem miserable, really I don't, but about twenty minutes later, whilst in the act of raising a bottle to my mouth, I caught the smiley face looking at me and more than anything it creeped me out a bit. And so I resolved to wash it, not so that it disappeared completly, but so that it was slightly less visible. Except that in the toilets was a smiling, horribly polite fellow, only to eager to help with the hand-washing process.

What was worse was that he wasn't really up to speed on the job. The water was only coming out of the tap at a trickle, and he didn't give me nearly enough time to get the soap off before turning the tap off, and no matter how much I pawed at myself with the paper towels he proffered it didn't feel like I'd gotten it all off. I put some money in his little saucer, otherwise I would have felt like an absolute arsehole, and then he offered me something from his little tray of Tic-Tacs and lollipops (no, really). I declined this kind offer, and fled, and resolved that if needing the toilet again, my hands would remain unwashed.

It occurs to me that I have no idea if the same service was offered in the women's toilet, and further occurs to me that this would have been an excellent thing to say to the really nice girl who seemed to end up standing next to me during the various bands. "Erm, could I ask you something? It's just that there's this toilet attendant in the gents helping people wash their hands and offering them Tic-Tacs and Chupa Chups, and this seems a bit weird to me, and I was wondering if the same thing went on in the ladies?" You always think of the best lines 15 hours too late. Oh well.

One of the few things in the world that annoys me more than local radio DJs who seem to think that the temperature is never quite hot enough (the only suitable punishment for local radio DJs who insist that, no matter how pleasantly warm the day is, they'd prefer it to be hotter, is to be placed in an oven pre-heated to 400 degrees for an hour and then, upon removal, being asked "was that hot enough for you then?") is local television news reporters who say idiotically cretinous things in an attempt to puff a story up. Which they often do, because it's local news, and local news is seldom that important. If it was that important it would have been on the national news, where everything you can conceivably say on an issue will have been said, leaving the local news to either repeat what's just been said, or come up with their own, cretinously useless, angle.

There's a tube strike in London tomorrow. (Well, technically there's a tube strike in London now, but that's not important for the flow of the story. If I said it was going on now I'd have to explain the situation in more depth, and this is supposed to be whimsy, not topical comment. If you want to find out more, try a reputable news source and stop bugging me.) And so the first story on the London local news featured a reporter stood outside a tube station, with commuters entering the station in the background. And his report began with something like, "As you can see, the stations are even busier than usual, with people in the background hurrying to get home before the strike starts in a couple of hours time...".

Now, possibly I'm overreacting a little here, but this is plainly NONSENSE. It's half past six in the centre of London and people are hurrying to get home because of a tube strike? NO. They're clearly hurrying home because it's HALF PAST SIX and because they WANT TO GO HOME. Trust me. I was there yesterday and I was certainly hurrying, because it was HALF PAST SIX and nobody wants to be in the centre of London at half past six. They don't mind being there earlier for work, or later for all the fun and excitment and everything else that the city offers, but none of this occurs at HALF PAST SIX. That's why people entering tube stations are in a rush, not because of some strike which isn't going to happen for another COUPLE of HOURS. I mean, what do you think, that people don't have watches, or something?

And anyway, how the hell would you know, idiot local news reporter? What are you usually doing at this time? Are you lounging around your office, watching your crappy programme and admiring yourself in a narcissistic manner? Or are you out on the streets doing IMPORTANT RESEARCH instead of making IDIOTIC AND CLEARLY UNTRUE GENERALISATIONS? It wasn't even as though there were hordes of people besieging the station in the background, just a steady stream of people, like there is EVERY NIGHT, even at half past six, because people often work to this sort of time because they're HARDWORKING AND CONSCIENTIOUS, unlike you who are LAZY AND DIMWITTED, so that proves that you were talking UTTER BILGE. So there.

I must admit, I'm not sure if there are many things that you can use tin foil for. You can wrap things in it for cooking - mainly in roasting and baking, I think, but then I'm not actually an expert. Mostly, though, it seems to be used in the wrapping of food - little snacky things for parties and picnics or, if you work in the centre of London and don't fancy paying half your salary over to the proprietors of the sandwich shops, wrapping lunches in. That's all I use it for, anyway.

The manufacturers of tin foil are astonishingly helpful, as, towards the end of the roll, they give you a handy little message, marked out in the foil so that everyone can see it. "THIS ROLL IS NEARLY FINISHED", it says, with "Remember to add foil to your shopping list" picked out underneath in slightly smaller letters. Nobody else does this. How difficult would it be for, say, toothpaste manufacturers, who've proven themselves capable of adding stripes to the mixture, to put a cheery little message in with the last few squirts from the tube, reminding you to make sure you buy more toothpaste, as a failure to brush will leave your teeth smelly and decaying and nobody will want to snog you? But they don't. Because they hate you. Unlike the tin foil manufacturers, who are lovely.

I got to read the cheery "buy more tin foil" message myself only a few days ago, and it temporarily brought joy to my heart. And then I became slightly annoyed, as I had only been shopping a few hours earlier, and would now have to haul myself down to Tesco at some point in the week. After a hard days work. On a nice sunny evening. That time has come; I ran out of foil last night, and now, despite having many delicious sandwich fillings, and bread-related products a-plenty to put them in, the most unlikely yet vital ingredient is missing.

The problem is that it's horrible and sticky and I feel tired and I really, really can't be bothered to go down there. Also, I'm not sure that being the man who spends his evening going down to Tesco to buy tin foil is going to do much for the dashing man-about-town image I'm attempting to cultivate, although now I think it through properly, being the one who writes about going/not going to Tesco to buy tin foil probably isn't an awful lot better. Gah. Didn't think that one through, really...

I can never work out if the murkiness of the water in my bath is caused by me not taking enough baths, and thus having lots of dirt about my person that just isn't picked up in the shower, or if it's caused by me not cleaning my bath out enough.

Actually, I should bath more often. It's a really good chance to listen to these albums that I keep buying and never get around to properly listening to. Plus I'd smell less, which can only be a boon.

Who likes short shorts? We like short shorts! Except when they're being worn by exceptionally ugly people in supermarkets on Sunday morning. In this instance, short shorts are by and large a bad thing.

Yes, alright, so I brought the page back because I realised that mediocre observational comedy mixed with abuse was the way to fame, money and groupies. I'm so feeble.

When I first started buying videos of The Simpsons, you got the feeling that the people involved in marketing the things actually knew what they were doing. Take, for example, whoever wrote the little blurbs on each epsode for the back covers: whoever did it actually understood what they were watching, and so picked out good bits of the episodes without ruining the jokes, and got the essence of the plot across without spoiling anything.

"SEE the Lagoon of Immortality! HEAR Lisa as the Voice Of Reason! TASTE Secret Hobo Spices!"

So today I bought the Season 2 DVD special box set thing, and instead of pithy little descriptions of each episode in the little booklet that accompanies it, they just outline the plot of each episode. They don't even do it in a vague way either. Every little plot twist is outlined with all the subtlety of a a really bad analogy alluding to the subtlety of something.

"They finally agree to tie, and Flanders offers to forget the bet, but Homer insists that they each mow the lawn in a dress - which Flanders enhoys, to Homer's fury."

I mean, what is the point? I may as well have handed over my thirty quid to someone to come round and tell me what happens to each episode instead of this nonsense. No, it doesn't matter that I've seen the episode six times and only watched it the other week, it's the principle of it. It's lazy and stupid and bad and wrong and whoever is responsible needs a good kicking. Yes.

Of course, if they hadn't included this information, and left me entertained rather than slightly miffed and depressed, it's extremely unlikely that I would have fallen asleep while watching Treehouse of Horror earlier this evening and so I would now either be somewhere dark in North London or on a train on the way home somewhere. But I did, and so I'm here.

Girls, eh?

Why relaxing the cannabis law is bad and stupid and wrong: a concise guide

Number of fascinating conversations conducted with people under the influence of said substance: 0

Number of dull conversations conducted with people under the influence of said substance, number of dull anecdotes related by people who were "completely stoned, y'know", number of dull Internet messageboard postings with people telling you that they were "completely stoned, y'know" and number of crap comedy routines featuring mirth-free jokes about people who are "so stoned they did something or other and it was mad!": countless, x4.

Number of times I've been on the point of getting off with an impossibly attractive girl (well, maybe not impossibly attractive, but still very cute indeed and hugely unlikely to be interested given that, at that time, I was even uglier and more awkward than I am now, which is saying something) but have been deprived of the opportunity because a "friend" had made himself sick on account of smoking something that was deceptively strong and then drinking several cans of lager on top of it, and having to haul him home instead: 1.

There's an episode of The Flintstones that we used to have on video (my parents still have it; my niece watched it fairly recently, apparently) in which Fred and Barney meet up with an old chum of Fred's, a fellow called Hot Lips Hannigan. Hot Lips, you suspect from his outfit, is supposed to be some sort of jazz performer, and is playing in Bedrock. (He plays some sort of wind instrument - possibly it's supposed to be a clarinet, but it isn't exactly a well-animated series and so it's rather difficult to tell - but I think you're supposed to get the impression that the name comes from him being a hit with the ladies as much as his musical blowing activities.) Hot Lips invites Fred to sing with him, and Fred asks if Barney can join in on drums. They then launch into Oh When The Saints Go Marching In. The crowd of The Kids are initially sceptical, but Fred's voice and Barney's drumming soon wins them over. During the course of the song, Wilma and Betty, in disguise for plot-related reasons I cannot currently recall, recognise Fred's voice as they walk past, and enter the venue, incredulous at the excited reaction Fred and Barney are getting from the crowd.

No, stay with it, this is going somewhere.

At the end of the song, a rapturous crowd of screaming girls rush the stage, causing Fred and Barney to race off in a panic. Eventually they are beckoned through a doorway and rush in gratefully, only to find themselves trapped with two women (Wilma and Betty in disguise, natch) who start coming on to them. Fred and Barney manage to get away, and then run into Hot Lips, who they ask to delay the persuing Wilma and Betty. As they approach him, Hot Lips makes some curious jazz-type noise, and then says "Contact?" Wilma thumps him over the head, commenting "there's some contact for you, you old goatface", and they run off.

Hot Lips, with glasses askew, hat at an angle, birds-a-tweeting around his head, his swinging image utterly ruined by a rampaging wife, says, to nobody in particular:

"Once in a while, a moment of truth".

And, you know, that's precisely how I feel at the moment.

I was going to write something about the curiousness of seeing bands play in shops, but I've received a note from the people who supply my gas informing me that I owe them £153.39, despite having previously given no indication that I owe them anything at all, and as such I am near incandescently angry and unable to concentrate on anything other than what precisely I'm going to say when I call their helpline tomorrow morning.

What I did on my holidays - Part 2

One of the highlights of our holidays in Hemsby used to be the day trip into Great Yarmouth. We'd take the bus there, passing through the clearly inferior holiday resorts of Newport, Scratby (great name for a place, that - not exactly the most promising name for a exciting holiday resort, but fantastically evocative of something) and Caister (with its huge water tower, visible for miles around) and on to Yarmouth, past the bus garage with the distinctive blue Yarmouth buses and then to the town centre, where we'd disembark, visit the bank (where phone calls would have to be made to the home branch to make sure there were enough funds for my dad to take enough money out to last us the rest of the hols - I feel I should point out that this was in the late 80s, possibly even later, before anyone makes any comments) and begin the walk down Regent Road, with its shops telling useless tat that you'd never contemplate buying anywhere other than while on holiday, and down towards Britannia Pier (Warning: link leads to site playing cheery seaside music at you). It's impossible to convey how exciting the sight of Britannia Pier coming steadily closer was. These days, of course, everyone's been to Disneyland and there are theme parks offering death-defying rides opening on every corner, but back then the prospect of visiting Joyland, the little mini funfair thing adjacent to the pier, was enough to get us hugely excited, even if it was only a prelude to the slow walk down the front to the Pleasure Beach, with its impossible Rollercoaster, Water Chute and Bumper Car excitement.

We parked near the Pleasure Beach, in a near-deserted car park. (The buses, which always used to be busy even this early in the holiday season, are now single-decker and empty, while the lovely shiny blue Yarmouth buses, which used to be everywhere you looked, are now a mucky beige colour and fade into the background, assuming they're there at all. I know I shouldn't get nostalgic about the colour of buses, but I really did miss them.) Sister had been talking about the model village, which we'd visited once many years ago but which we'd usually scampered past in our eagerness to get to the fair, and so we went in. It seemed an awful lot smaller than it used to, and looked in need of a lick of paint, and maybe I'm feeling a bit generous out of nostalgia, but it was still seemed hugely impressive that anybody in their right mind would take on such an project in the first place. Actually, it would be hugely impressive even if somebody hadn't been in their right mind, which, looking at the tiny bits of furniture in the window of the model furniture shop, you'd have to conclude was quite likely.

And so we went the wrong way down the front, past the Wellington Pier (always the least interesting of the two piers - the only point of interest was the little ride featuring a train of dogs on a track, and it seems as if Jim Davidson has removed them, the bastard) (NOTE TO NORTH AMERICANS AND OTHER FOREIGNERS: Jim Davidson is a television comedian, once out of favour as his humour tended towards crude racial stereotypes and other such unpleasantness, now rehabilitated as a host of gameshows for all the family. In the early 80s he appeared in a sitcom titled Up The Elephant and Round The Castle, humourously named after the area of London known as Elephant and Castle. The closing titles featured Davidson sitting on a statue of an elephant, flashing his cheeky-chappie grin. I liked the programme a lot when I was 7 or so, and happily nobody has decided that it is worthy of repeat as surely the self-loathing that would follow would be too much for me to live with. He now owns the Wellington Pier in Great Yarmouth, and has arranged a summer season featuring himself, Max Bygraves and The Grumbleweeds, all of which is worthy of a further note that I can't bothered to contemplate at this point), stopping to look around the Amazonian Forest which used to be the Butterfly House, past the Sea Life Centre, stopping to let niece have her pony ride, and gradually on towards Britannia Pier, where a summer season featuring Joe Pasquale, Duncan Norvelle, Bucks Fizz and The Chuckle Brothers has been arranged. (NOTE TO EVERYBODY: I would comment on this, but this paragraph is far too long already.)

Niece liked Joyland a lot. Which was highly reassuring.

The waxworks on the corner of Regent Road has now turned into some sort of snack bar-cum-restaurant, although presumably only recently because the signs for the waxworks were still there, even if the big cut-out heads of Charlie Chaplin and Marilyn Monroe that used to advertise it have gone. This is a bit of a shame, although inevitable as there is another waxworks just down the road, and I'm not sure even the most bustling seaside resort needs more than one waxworks let alone two in the same street, as surely demand to see dummies of celebrities is quite limited at the best of times. This said, presumably both waxworks had stayed in business for some time, so maybe I'm missing something important - the effect of the fresh air, maybe, or some side effect of the rubbish dumped into the sea, that leaves people with an insatiable desire to see such things. The other waxworks is still in place - with the same models of Laurel and Hardy in white overalls outside as an irresistible lure - and advertises among its attractions the inevitable Beckhams but also, on the recent arrivals list, Mr Blobby and, on its list of classic historical figures you'll be unable to resist, Gorden Kaye off of 'Allo 'Allo. (NOTE TO FOREIGNERS: Look, maybe you could look all this up on Google or something. "'Allo 'Allo, inexplicable success of", perhaps, or "Duncan Norvelle, rubbishness of". Although I'll hear nothing bad said about The Chuckle Brothers.)

The shops that sell tat still sell tat. This is highly reassuring, although that the primary purveyor of tat - the only place I've ever seen all of those joke shop novelties that The Bash Street Kids and the like always seemed to have access to - also sells sodding great swords and other weaponry. Apparently they always did and I was just too busy amusing myself looking at the plastic dog turds to notice. Hey ho.

After lunch at the same restaurant we always used to visit and another stop at Joyland (we'd agreed to skip the Pleasure Beach, although as it would have been closed by the time we got there it didn't really make much difference) it was on to the intriguing looking Adventure Golf course. It maybe wasn't as intriguing as the name Adventure Golf would suggest - just putting golf balls around some winding holes, and sometimes into holes that lead to other bits of the hole, that sort of thing - but was still tremendous fun, even if we maybe didn't quite follow official Miniature Golf Association rules. (We did get given scorecards by the chap giving us our clubs, but we accepted them in a fairly apologetic way.) About halfway round the course, it began to rain. With a few holes to go, it became torrential. At this point my patented "hit the ball and then run after it and hit it again as soon as it starts going off-course" tactic became all too common. As we scurried away from the course, the rain began to ease. Typical.

And so, a few arcades and a cafe later, it was back to the car park, and then back to our little chalet in Hemsby, where I would walk off in annoyance at the appearance on the television of Britain's Number 1 cheating scrawny tennis hero and head off down the road for a few games of Pac-Land.

What I did on my holidays - Part 1

I liked Border Cafe. The thing is, the reason most twentysomething-type drama series leave me cold is that they always feature horribly unsympathetic characters who live in too-big flats having lots of exciting sex with people they shouldn't and taking copious amounts of drugs, and it seemed to me that the only possible reason people could enjoy these programmes was some sort of wish-fulfillment thing - "look at me! My life is just like that of this implausible character in this implausible series who has lots of interesting sex and takes lots of drugs, despite the fact that I live in Purley and have a steady girl/boyfriend and that nobody likely to want to have exciting sex would touch me with a bargepole and I haven't taken anything more potent than oddly coloured alcopops in my entire life!", that sort of business. But Border Cafe wasn't really like that - more My So-Called Life than This Life - which is probably why hardly anybody watched it. Bah.

This is why the idea for a comedy series I was coming up with when we stopped at a Little Chef on the way up the A12, featuring the harassed but charming waitress who does all the work, the callow youth who secretly worships her and cleans tables, the cynical manager who orders them around without doing much other than collect the tips, and perhaps a chef character who does unpredictable things with the meals of particularly annoying customers, and a running joke about how people who work in service stations get to work, was completely flawed. It's been done, and nobody liked it. Maybe if I'd worked on it for more than about two minutes I may have come up with something more convincing. But it seems unlikely.

I actually rather enjoyed the trip up the A12, which is odd because I'm not really a one for cars. (I can't drive and, as the only real use I would have for a car would be to get my shopping home from Tesco and learning to drive, passing a test and then purchasing a car to save my hands from getting a bit sore once a week seems a bit extravagant, I've no real desire to learn.) It's not even as if it's a particularly scenic route - quite interesting around Lowestoft, at a pinch, and the bridge over the River Orwell is quite impressive, but otherwise there's nothing jaw-droppingly attractive there. I suspect I may have simply been enjoying the notion of travelling a distance without being wedged on a stinky rush-hour train, or enjoying the anticipation of not having to wedge myself onto a stinky rush-hour train for a week. I'd never realised that the actual idea of going away for a bit was enough to made you feel better. Which all goes to show something, but who knows what it could be?

Actually it probably goes to show that I should get away more, I would expect. That's torn it.

It is, of course, entirely appropriate that the return of the page-o-thing should be delayed because of "server maintenance". It's all rather pleasing, really.

So I had a lovely near-week off, marred only by a few crappy insignificant things (none of which had much effect on me anyway - I don't mind it raining, really. If it had been stupidly hot and I'd been unable to walk down the street without breaking into a horrible sweat I would have enjoyed it far less than in the wind, rain and unseasonably cool temperatures that we got a fair amount of the time) and the major stupid thing of me deciding to leave early for a number of reasons, all of which remain stupid.

Firstly, just after I'd agreed to go with them "for a few days" (I'd actually wanted to go for a few days, just to see what Hemsby was like these days, except that before I had the chance to ask if I could go up for a few days I got asked along anyway) I had overheard my mum telling my sister that now I'd agreed to go with them, I'd probably stay for the whole week, and this annoyed me slightly because I felt I was being taken for granted, and I hate that. Ever since I'd maintained that I'd probably choose to leave on Thursday, and after not mentioning it much over the week (because I didn't really want to go) I mentioned it on Wednesday night.

This is a crap reason to do anything.

Nothing much was planned for Thursday and Friday. Sitting on the beach and packing stuff up. But then, I could have gone for a bracing walk or something instead. So this was a crap reason to go home.

There were some vague notions of something to do with a girl, which I'd thought rather too much about on Wednesday afternoon for some reason, but that was all absolutely ridiculous. I really should have learnt about this sort of thing by now.

There were some other reasons, but I can barely raise myself to consider them at this point. The point is, instead of walking down past noisy arcades and stalls selling various types of delicious food to visit a nice beach and look out to the rolling seas, today I walked past DIY superstores and a branch of McDonalds to visit a supermarket and look at cucumbers.

So. All in all it was stupid and rash and I was behaving like an idiot. Very little ever changes in my world.

* * *

So I adandoned the page-o-thing. There were a number of reasons for this.

I got a couple of nasty abusive e-mails, which I thought were spectacularly unfair given the insignificant nature of the page-o-thing, but which I should have just dismissed in the same way I ignore, say, horribly abusive postings on message boards and such and such. But, because of how I was feeling at the time, I couldn't let them go.

I'd gotten a few mails about postings I'd made that people had misinterpreted, or that I hadn't been awfully clear on, and I felt terrible about this because they'd thought I'd been making barbed comments about them when I'd just been being grammatically clumsy or not actually considering them because I didn't think about them like that, and I allowed this to get to me as well.

I'd been fed up with the Internet as well. It seemed full of an increasingly large and unending pool of idiots whose idea of a worthwile discussion was to dismiss your argument without offering any actual reason why you might be incorrect other than you being a fucking cunt, so there. Of course, they're all still out there, but then I haven't been exposed to them for a week, and I've had my faith in people slightly restored since then.

Plus I had problems of my own, which you really don't want to know about. Not that I've solved any of these, of course, but they seem much less significant all of a sudden. That week away did wonders for my head, apart from my nose, which inexplicably got sunburnt on a rainy day in Yarmouth.

So. Here we are again. Of course, by Monday evening I may have changed my mind utterly, but Monday seems a long way away at the moment. I've no idea how long it will last, and I'm still not convinced that most of the page isn't a bit rubbish (and I'm sure that this entry is of no interest to anyone at all, but I need to get things straight in my own head before we get down to the pointless whimsy) but just at the moment I'm in the mood for another crack at it. Join me. Or not.