Shortly after I woke up this morning, my cold and my hangover started competing for control of my body.

I had an unexpectedly boozy night with a friend last night and despite waking up feeling surprisingly perky, it wasn't long before I was starting to feel pretty damn rough.

This is a phenomenon I've experienced on several occasions before, which for want of a better name, I've decided to call the hangover honeymoon.

I'm sure there's a perfectly good biological reason for it — perhaps while you're asleep there are certain natural chemicals floating around the body that temporarily mitigate the inevitable post-excess pains upon waking — but the hangover honeymoon is the blissful first few minutes spent basking in the false dawn of a symptom free morning.

Of course the double whammy of disappointment is that as soon as the unpleasantness starts to kick in, you suddenly recognise the hangover honeymoon for what it is and feel stupid for ever thinking that you'd magically escape the repercussions of an overactive drinking arm.

In such situations I feel the symptoms need to be fought on two separate fronts and I recommend one sachet of rehydration salts mixed with one sachet of Lemsip Max in a mug of hot water, followed twenty minutes later with lots of stodgy comfort food, preferably featuring egg and baked beans.

As a self-confessed Apple obsessive — I currently have five iPods (of various generations), three Macs and an Apple TV — it became a point of pride that I did not own an iPhone. It was proof, if proof were needed, that despite an unhealthy attraction to all things Apple, I could still exercise free will, that I was not a complete slave to the techno-lust inspired by the sleek lines of the latest lifestyle offering from Steve Jobs et al.

Of course, this was only partly true. One of the reasons that I had not switched to an iPhone even a year after its launch in the UK was a reticence to switch from Orange to O2, thus terminating a relationship I'd had for over ten years.

But recently, when Orange decided that me slipping out of an 18-month contract and thus free to court other networks was the ideal time to start screwing me (when you'd think it would be the exactly the time they'd want to start being really nice to me), it was just enough to tip the balance and make me decide to give into iPhone longing and give O2 a shot at my custom.

Although the queue in the O2 shop was quite long and not doing down very quickly, when I did finally get served I experienced that rare and fragile thing — decent customer service in a UK retail environment.

The sales assistant recognised me from when I popped in briefly a few days before and made a point of saying so. He was helpful, knowledgeable, polite and even good-humoured throughout the entire transaction, and when everything was done he wished me a good weekend in a way that made me think he actually meant it. I genuinely don't care whether or not he actually did mean it, but I felt like he did.

It's almost worth signing up for a second iPhone just for the customer service.

When I got the thing home it took me a good five or ten minutes to work out how to put the SIM card into it. There were no instructions mentioning SIM card insertion in the box. But digging around in the packaging I found a curious little metal "sardine key" and a simple line drawing showing it being inserted into the top edge of the iPhone. No words. Just a simple one frame drawing.

And when you do what the drawing tells you to do with the shiny little key, a secret drawing slides out, and that's where you put the SIM. Now maybe the guy in the shop should have told me how to put the SIM in, but I'm glad he didn't.

Others might have found this infuriating, but for me this little bit of non-verbal puzzle-solving added to the whole experience. The package designers had provided me with the minimum sufficient instructions to get the job done and I just had to trust that they knew what they were doing.

Because they're basically saying, if you can't work out how to get the SIM card in, I'm sorry, but we don't want you to have an iPhone. You'll be dragging the standard down.

And I'm all for a bit of elitism now and again.

There's a bit in the back of Private Eye, amongst the classifieds, called Eye Need, which basically seems to be a place where people with (quite possibly genuine) sob stories post their bank account details in the hope that altruistic readers will transfer some money with no questions asked.

It's been going for years and there are rarely any other contact details in the adverts to allow you to follow up and find out more about the person in need and their particular situation — just a sort code and account number.

Can these ads truly work? It all seems a bit naive and optimistic to me.

Now one view is that people wouldn't place these ads if they didn't work. Even the smallest ad costs around thirty quid, so you've got to believe you're going to make least that much for it to be worthwhile.

On the other hand, maybe each ad only appears once. Perhaps people see that other people are doing it, think it must be worth a punt, then get no response and never do it again. I'm not a regular enough reader of Private Eye to know if any of the same ads crop up again and again.

But if they do work, who are these people that donate to these (possibly) worthy but largely anonymous individual causes?

And more importantly, where can I get their telephone numbers?

This morning I had a surveyor round to the flat to assess whether any of the cracks that have appeared in my walls since The Baron started building his subterranean empire are indicative of more serious structural problems.

The lads who've moved in downstairs were kind enough to lend me a set of keys so we went and had a look down there too and something that the surveyor pointed out that I'd never noticed on previous visits to the basement (probably because I was too busy trying to complain about something to The Baron) was just how high the ceilings were.

If you've ever gone house hunting you'll have walked into a room at some point and thought to yourself “Ooh. Nice high ceilings.”. Well, that room isn't usually below ground.

Which makes me quite genuinely think that during the construction someone took their eye off the ball and just forgot to tell The Baron's ragtag band of illegal labourers to stop digging.

The good news is that the surveyor doesn't think there's anything major to worry about and although there's been a little bit of movement which has caused the cracks, there shouldn't be any more movement ever because the property now has the deepest foundations in the whole road.

There is something slightly masochistic about paying someone to come round and basically slag stuff off, but I quickly got into the swing of it. Although his remit was purely structural, I found myself wanting to ask if he liked what I'd done with the kitchen, or what he thought of the pictures hanging in the living room.

The spare bedroom still had the halogen lights and green screen from the filming I was doing earlier in the week and I rather suspect that the surveyor thought he'd wandered onto the set of some kind of virtual porn film.

I know a pool cleaner or a plumber are more conventional professions, but there might be some mileage in surveyor-themed erotica...

Home and Lonely IV: The Crack Inspector

Artificially busty blonde in cropped T-shirt and tiny shorts waits awkwardly in her kitchen. There is a knock at the back door.

She opens it to reveal a muscular young man wearing glasses and carrying a tape measure and notepad.

“Hello?”
“Hello. I'm the surveyor you called earlier on.”

“Oh. Thank goodness you're here.”
“I understand that you've got a crack you want me to look at.”

“That's right, yes. Come in. I didn't expect someone so fit.”
“Thank you. I do a lot of surveying. Can you show me the crack?”

“Yes, here it is. My boyfriend says it's too big. What do you think?”
“No, I think it's just the right size. But if you're worried I could fill it for you?”

“I suppose it's better to be safe than sorry”
“Okay. Can you hold my these while I get my tools out?”

etc. etc.

For the last couple of days I've been suffering from the slightly sniffly, coughy cold that seems to be going around at the moment — manwritesblog flu, if you like.

And when people have asked me, in passing or by way of polite conversation, how I am, I've mentioned my cold and then for some reason felt it necessary to point out that I actually haven't been ill for ages and will probably kick this particular infection into touch very quickly.

And I've realised that have a strong (and as far as I can tell, irrational) belief that I am unusually resistant to infection. That my immune system is a high flyer in comparison to its disease-fighting peer group.

It is true that I only get ill once or possibly twice a year — certainly much more frequently than Bruce Willis in Unbreakable — but I can't believe that's particularly unusual and so I'm baffled as to where this viral vanity, this bacterial braggadocio, comes from.

I somehow picture my immune system (whatever that looks like — it's more than just white blood cells, right?) taunting the germs in other peoples' sneezes with chants of “Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough!”, or strutting round my body with some kind of bovver boy “What are you looking at?” attitude.

Other people harbour secret beliefs that they are unusually good at kissing, or finding things, or burping, or recognising songs, or holding their breath. Speaking personally, in addition to my unusual immuno-abundance, here are some other random, unfounded beliefs I appear to hold about myself:

• Although I'm not tremendously good at names, I'm excellent at remembering faces, i.e. I will know if I've seen you before and will eventually work out where
• I'm unusually good at spotting people who look like a cross between two famous people, e.g. “Look at him, he looks like the bastard love child of Matt Damon and Kelsey Grammer”
• Given pretty much any set of ingredients I can cook a passable meal
• Although I am rubbish at navigating and reading maps, I my raw sense of direction is very good — drop me in the middle of a forest and I'd find the best route out
• I can look at someone and within a split second tell you whether they are a fundamentally decent person or not

But none of these skills is a comfort while my immune system has been laid low by some everyday virus. But hang on, maybe it was some super-bug, that would have completely incapacitated, or even killed, a lesser individual, but is manifesting itself in me as a common cold.

That's it. It's the only plausible explanation.

I'm starting to feel better already.

I just watched 24: Redemption. It apparently bridges the gap between Season 6 and Season 7 (yet to be shown). Now I've only seen seasons 1 to 4 but I didn't seem to be missing any vital information needed to understand this latest installment.

Jack still talks in a hoarse whisper all the time for no particular reason. He still seems to operate a shoot-on-sight policy for anyone who looks even slightly like they might be trouble later in the episode.

In this one-off TV movie we find Jack keeping a low profile in a children's school in the (presumably) fictional African country of Sengala. He's just about to move on to pastures new when it all kicks off — local militia recruiting boy soldiers for a bloody coup — and Jack has to intervene.

Robert Carlyle plays the guy who runs the school but for some reason he's doing an Irish accent. I can understand British actors having to do an American accent in an American production, but if he's just a random English-speaking Johnny European, why not make him Scottish?

Anyway, despite lots of gunplay it's actually all rather pedestrian stuff, created I think to keep the public's appetite at least partially whetted for the arrival of Season 7, which was delayed by the writer's strike.

And as it all wraps up on screen it occurs to me that Jack Bauer has been reduced to a kind of Littlest Hobo but with the addition of deadly force, wandering from town to town cleaning up other people's messes as he goes, but reluctant to stay in one place for too long.

So here's my suggestion for a theme for the next season of 24 to be sung to the tune of the Littlest Hobo:

The Littlest Hobauer

There's a voice, that keeps on calling me
Serve your country, whatever the cost might be

Every stop I make, I find a new deadly situation
You've no idea, how far I'm willing to go, to acquire your cooperation

Maybe tomorrow, the world won't need Jack Bauer
Until tomorrow, there'll be a cliffhanger every hour

(repeats)

Other people seem to be much better than me at getting good deals on things like mobile phone plans by playing hardball with the customer service people. I generally don't like to threaten to leave in fear that my bluff will be called and then I'll have to change provider just to save face, even though all I really wanted was slightly better value for money.

On a number of occasions I've had gentle, slightly wimpy conversations along the lines of “I'm not saying I'm going to go elsewhere, but I have been with you for over ten years, and a lot of my friends seem to pay much less for their phones, and so maybe, in recognition of my loyalty, you could see your way clear to knocking a bit off my bill. Please?”

But that approach never seems to work and I'm always left feeling somewhat emasculated. On the odd occasion that I have had some success it was because I happened to get moody enough with the "customer services representative" that they uttered the magic phrase: “I'll just put you through to someone in the retentions team”.

That's when you know you're getting somewhere.

But even then it takes me about five minutes of backstory and preamble before I can stoke up enough internal anger and frustration to get through that particular door. There must be some optimal phrase to get straight through to the people who can actually make some decisions.

“Thank you for calling Orange Customer Service. You're speaking to Angela. How can I...”

“Shut up and listen carefully, Angela. You've got exactly ten seconds to put me through to the retentions team before I cancel my contract and cite you personally as the reason for leaving Orange. Eight seconds...”

I've been an Orange customer for perhaps 12 years and the basic service has always been very good. I think I've paid over the odds at times, but take some responsibility for not being willing to have a big fight over the telephone with a stranger every 12 months to get a better deal.

However, I'm now on the verge of properly leaving because two months ago I dropped out of contract without noticing it and since then have been paying full rate for every single text I've sent so my bills have over doubled. No-one from Orange thought I might be interested in learning that my 500 free texts a month would be changing to fuck all free texts a month.

I phoned them up, had a proper complain, and they've agreed to waive some of the charges on the condition that I renew my contract for another 18 months and sign up for one of their animal tariffs.

Now these tariffs (Canary, Dolphin, Racoon and Panther) might look cute on a poster but they are inherently ridiculous:

“In terms of texting do you see yourself as more of a racoon or a dolphin?”

I'm sorry, what?

“And evening calls to landlines? Are you more of a canary or a panther?”

Excuse me Orange marketing team, are you actually asking me, in the imaginary world where an apparently arbitrary selection of land, water and air-based animals not only could use mobile phones, but actually did so on a regular basis, in that peculiar and frightening world, are you really asking me which of those animals would my own mobile phone usage most resemble? Are you actually asking me that?

You are? Right. Well, I've had a think about it and I've come to the conclusion that I text like a penguin, make calls like a sea cucumber and my data usage is akin to a ring-tailed lemur. Do you have a plan that covers those off? Well, do you?

Anyway, this could be the final straw that leads me to walk away from Orange after a long, faithful relationship, straight into the arms of an iPhone with O2.

Okay, the boxer dog is now safely back with his owner. I've (we've) finished all 13 episodes of the first season of The Wire and I'm eager for more, though I can't speak for the dog. I may have to watch Season 5 of 24 first as a palate cleanser.

The dog forcibly pushed me out of bed this morning at exactly 8am (not sure if he has a very refined body clock or can actually read clocks...) by putting his back against mine and then pushing hard with his legs. It was actually snowing outside when I looked out of the window. Not a good day to be a dog owner, temporary or otherwise.

I took him out on a small patch of grass near my flat to 'do his business' (dog walker's parlance) where I met a retired woman walking her grandson's American Pit Bull, which I thought she said was called “Maretta”.

“Maretta?” I repeated, thinking this was a rather Mediterranean-sounding name for a pit bull. “No,” she said. “Beretta. It's a gun I think.”

At this point my mind became focussed on handing my canine ward back in one piece later in the day and although I couldn't quite remember if it was American Pit Bulls, or their illegal crosses with other breeds, that were the stuff of infant mauling tabloid headlines, but one potential killing machine named after an actual killing machine seemed like a bad omen so I made a polite but quick exit.

Back at the flat something happened that really shouldn't happen to a man until he's at least sixty — I “had a fall”. I was getting into a hot bath, slipped, and then fell headfirst into the water. The dog heard the noise and dashed in, half-excited, half-confused, and decided that the appropriate response to my floundering was to start licking my bare arse, which was hanging over the edge of the bath as I struggled to right myself.

I know it's not the dog's fault. He was just confused and it was my own stupid fault for falling in the bath, but it feels like a line has been crossed. It's going to be difficult to go back to the way we were.

I can at least console myself with the knowledge that a few weeks ago he went to the vets to have the snip, and were that not the case, my violation might have been all the more severe.

I'm looking after a friend's boxer dog for the weekend and since I'm not 100% confident that I can leave him alone in the flat for any length of time, it's basically me and him and The Wire for the next 48 hours, with occasional breaks for walks and meals.

He's a very good-natured dog but he's feeling a bit sorry for himself because he's got a sore foot and stitches on his chest from a minor operation he had on Wednesday. So I'm trying to follow the instructions left by his owner to the letter to make sure he's as happy and comfortable as possible.

This includes letting him sleep in, or at least on, my bed, which is what he's used to at home. I grew up with dogs (I mean my family had dogs, I wasn't raised by dogs) and they were never allowed upstairs, let alone on the bed, so this canine co-habitation all seems a little bit Californian to me.

Anyway, he wasn't too bad a sleeping partner last night but he does like to spoon, and I get hot easily, so I woke up a couple of times in the night to find that I'd been squeezed out of the side of the duvet, like the last Polo in the packet.

We'd gone to bed about 1am, after finishing the first couple of DVDs from The Wire box set, and he woke me up about 7.30am, all excited like a kid on Christmas morning. We had a bit of a chat and he agreed to a 20-minute snooze and then I took him out on Wandsworth Common for his walk.

Back the the flat for breakfast then more of The Wire.

I've come to The Wire pretty late in the game, slightly daunted by its reputation as the must-see series of the last few years. I'm about halfway through the first season and so far it's quite slow-burn but I'm sure I'll be addicted by the end of the box set.

My canine friend does not seem particularly impressed — he's slept through most of it so far. Perhaps he's finding the Baltimore accents a little impenetrable.

After my rather functional visit to the gym yesterday (“Come for a dump, stay for a workout”) I got back to the flat expecting to have to spend the next hour or so standing under the leaking waste pipe in a T-shirt and shorts trying to effect a boy scout repair, but in fact got back to find that it had been fixed. My repeated calls to The Baron's various numbers had, against all the odds, done the trick.

A very pleasant surprise for me, but perhaps a bit of an anticlimax as far as the blog is concerned. A Carry On-style scene which ended with me getting a face-full of sewage would probably have been more interesting from a reader's perspective.

However, the whole affair did remind me that last time there was a problem with this pipe, there was an incident which never made it onto this blog, but probably deserved to.

This was back in July, around the time of The Airline Seats and the Juicer, and the same pipe had become dislodged of its own accord (rather than because someone had chucked a big lump of wood at it). Large quantities of water were gushing out into the lightwell and down a small grate designed for much more modest quantities of liquid.

I'd noticed this during the day, but The Baron had been poking around downstairs and had assured me that he was in the process of getting it fixed so I just let him get on with. I worked from home all day but at around 8pm I decided to squeeze in a quick session at the gym. When I left the pipe was still leaking and there was no sign of The Baron but to be honest I wasn't really in the mood for chasing him so I just tried to forget about it.

When I returned a little after 9pm there was a fire engine outside the house. Two firemen were standing outside the front door, which was at that moment being opened from the inside by a third, revealing a fourth coming down the stairs inside my flat.

It turns out that someone had phoned 999 to report a leak (a slight over-reaction I would argue) and the fire brigade had broken into the house via the empty basement and then broken out into the hallway and then back into my flat in their search for the source of all the water.

The firemen were actually pretty good about it all, and The Baron arrived on the scene surprisingly quickly, with promises that it would all be fixed first thing the next day. It turned out he'd recently had some kind of waste pump fitted and this was clearly pumping way more water than necessary out into the main waste pipe.

Anyway, it was only after the firemen had left that I realised the one who'd broken into my flat must have gone into my spare bedroom, where I still had a video camera on a fully extended tripod pointing down at a hand-trimmed toilet seat resting on my B&Q Workmate-alike workbench, which I'd used to take this photo.

On discovering this rather peculiar setup, it would not have been completely unreasonable for this unsuspecting fireman to have assumed that he'd stumbled across the secret set of an amateur scat film. He might have further speculated what such a film might be called — for instance, Potty Training II: Totty on the Potty — but then again, that might just be an excuse for me to think up silly film names.

So continuing an occasional theme of ultra-specific and thus almost certainly useless advice, next time you've set up a video camera to take a photo of toilet seat balanced on a workbench, make sure you dismantle it before the fire brigade break into your house.

Until now, there has been no mention of The Baron during Blovember, but let's face it, it was only a matter of time.

Although things have moved on a little since my last post on the subject, there are still a number of minor but annoying items that he has left unfinished, the most pressing being that at the front of the flat, there is a large lightwell for the new basement which should have a safety grille over the top.

He's been telling me for months (since the start of the year in fact) that the grille is on order and that the company making it are just taking their sweet time. I've suspected that this was just another lie, and in fact recently confirmed this to be the case — nothing has been ordered at all.

Without a grille, there's basically an open, 15-foot drop into the concrete lightwell, with very little to prevent someone toppling in. Putting the welfare of said anonymous, future possible toppler to one side for the moment, if someone did fall in, I'd be jointly liable.

So I decided to try and block this hole up today and bought a couple of big bits of plywood to rest between the front of the house and the low front wall to create some kind of obstacle to prevent any would-be toppler falling too far.

But in the process, one of these big bits of wood toppled into the hole, breaking, or at least dislodging, the flimsy plastic waste pipe on the way down. I can't get down to reconnect it — even if I had the skills (and possibly parts) that task requires — because the hole is too deep to climb into.

I've left numerous messages with The Baron, but obviously I've heard nothing back. Two of the four (yes, four) numbers I have for him no longer work, one goes straight to answerphone, and the other is answered by a woman I presume is his wife but who refuses to identify herself although promises she will pass on a message.

While the pipe is broken, anything flushed down the toilet will just end up at the bottom of the lightwell, immediately outside the bedroom of one of the poor lads who's been unfortunate enough to rent the basement flat.

It's doubly annoying because is it kind of my fault for dropping the wood down there in the first place, but of course I wouldn't have been monkeying around with bits of wood and big holes if The Baron had finished the job properly, or at least had arranged a decent temporary barrier himself.

It's been three and a half hours since I could safely use the toilet, and so now I'm off to the gym to make use of their facilities, hoping that The Baron gets in contact before the boys downstairs get home from work.

I just hope none of them had a big lunch...

I learn today that Woolworths has become the biggest victim of the credit crunch as it was revealed that bosses are in discussion with a potential buyer. And the mooted purchase price — the princely sum of £1.

I now feel a little guilty for my attack on Woolies' institutionalised retail apathy, if only because perhaps the writing was already on the wall by the time I wrote the post. Perhaps I was kicking it when it was already down.

So I'm sorry Woolies, it was intended to be the difficult truth as delivered by an old friend that holds you to a higher standard than you hold yourself, but now it seems it was all too little, too late.

My main worry is that Wool and Worth, the Woolies mascots, will now be out on the street. They are likely to be the first victims of any buy-out, and find themselves out of work in the period leading up to Christmas, a time when historically they've been at their most busy.

I'm sure Worth will find a good home, but I do worry about Wool. Because while a dog certainly isn't just for Christmas, a sheep might well be, making one last Yuletide appearance, on the dinner table, as a tasty alternative to turkey...

I've spent most of today editing together a short video trailer for a project that I won't mention specifically on this blog, because for various reasons it makes sense to keep the two things separate, but many of you will know what I'm talking about.

The video was filmed in a makeshift green screen (or chroma key) studio I've recently constructed in my spare bedroom, using a combination of proper kit (e.g. a large piece of specially-dyed material to use as the backdrop) and cheap, make-do substitutes (e.g. the halogen light from B&Q I mentioned in the last post).

Final Cut Pro has a bunch of tools you can use to remove all the green from your footage so that the background you really want behind your image shows through.

Now this is all well and good in principle, except that I'm colourblind, and green is one of my problem colours. Don't get me wrong, when I look at this 12' x 10' green screen, I do see a big expanse of a colour I understand to be green, but I imagine it just doesn't look as fundamentally, undeniably green as it would to you.

It's obviously difficult for me to describe exactly how what I see differs from what someone with perfect colour vision sees. It's a bit like asking someone with no sense of smell exactly what it is they can't smell, but I'm not particularly aware of having a diminished colour spectrum. I look around and the world looks like a fairly colourful place, but I guess there are certain colours that look similar to me, that probably wouldn't look similar to you.

Of course, there must be colours that look very similar to you too, it's just that in your case it's because they are similar. For me it might be blue and purple, or green and brown. In my primary school drawings my skies were often purple and my trees had brown leaves and green trunks.

So there is some irony to be found in me sitting in front of a computer trying to adjust an image based on the inclusion or exclusion of subtle shades of green. I think I can see well enough to do a reasonable job, but then it could be a complete mess and I would never know until I showed it to someone else.

But there is a precendent in my family for this sort of thing. My grandfather, from whom I believe I inherited my underperforming rods and cones, seems to have gone out of his way to seek out jobs for which you would have thought colourblindness would have been a major impediment.

During World War II he was a paratrooper. Now maybe they were less fussy back then, or weren't even really aware of the concept of colourblindness, but these days that would rule you right out, because you might not be able to tell the difference between the green (“jump!”) and red (“don't jump yet”) signal lights.

(This is a reasonable concern because from personal experience I know that red and green traffic lights aren't as startlingly different to me as I hope they are to most people, but I get along just fine by knowing that the one at the top means slow down and the one at the bottom means keep going).

And for several years while I was growing up, my grandfather worked for a large newspaper printers, and was in charge of checking the colour balance of the very first Sunday supplements as they rolled off the press. And as far as I know he wasn't fired.

But this whole thing has got me thinking — I wonder if I can get a guide dog for being colourblind? I've heard it said that dogs are colourblind themselves, so maybe that's a non-starter, but the idea of having a dog in the passenger seat barking once for a red light, twice for amber, and three times for green does have a certain comic appeal.

I made a commitment to write something on this blog every day in November. Some of you may have noticed that I have, on occasion, already relaxed this to mean that I will write something for every day in November, i.e. occasionally allowing myself a day to catch up on the previous day.

It's already late, but I'm reluctant to go to bed without adding something to the blog, because I suspect I'll be playing catch up for the rest of the month if I let things slide until tomorrow.

So, in the absence of a specific idea to explore, I thought I might just tell you some of the things that are on my mind right now. I don't think any of them will be particularly funny, but they will at least be true.

• I was very pleased to learn from BBC News that Barack Obama's emails are "generally crisp, properly spelled and free of symbols or emoticons".
• I'm annoyed at B&Q for managing to persuade me that a halogen light I bought this morning should be sold to me "as new" and at full price despite obviously being re-boxed and messily Sellotaped shut. When I got it home, I took no joy in the knowledge that my scepticism had been well-founded and indeed parts were missing.
• I'm hoping that the fact I've had noodles from the local takeaway for dinner two evenings running is a statistical anomaly rather than an unhealthy new trend.
• And I'm wondering how I'm going to get all of the gorilla fur out of my carpet. And no, I'm not going to explain that any further...

Do Polar Bears Get Lonely? is this year's popular science title from the New Scientist, following in the footsteps of Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze? and Does Anything Eat Wasps? and is clearly targeting the presumably lucrative Christmas stocking filler market.

I think the title is at least as important as the underlying science, and so I've come up with a few suggestions for next year's offering:

• Why Do Bats Knees Bend Both Ways?
• Do Kangaroos Like Quiche?
• Why Do Fish Think Backwards?
• How Come Pigs Are So Sarcastic?
• Why Do Dogs Like Sticks But They Don't Like Stones?
• Can Squirrels Really See Smells?

Just in case one of these titles appears on the shelves next year, remember where you saw them first.

I got a letter today from American Express inviting me to apply for a British Airways-branded credit card:

Apply now for the British Airways American Express Credit Card and collect 3,000 BA miles instead of the usual 1,000

Congratulations. Based on your exceptional record of financial responsibility, you have also been selected for a limited offer that you could grant you 3,000 BA miles to start you off on your journey...

Now the first thing to note is that the offer of 3,000 BA miles in the first paragraph, seems to be the same offer of 3,000 BA miles in the title, so I'm not quite sure what the word ‘also’ is doing in there.

“Not only could you collect 3,000 BA miles, you could also win the same 3,000 BA miles again. Are you persuaded yet? Okay, you could also win 3,000 BA miles*.

(*these are the same 3,000 BA miles we mentioned earlier)”

The other thing that caught my eye was the phrase “exceptional record of financial responsibility”. Not just a good record, or an impressive record, but an exceptional record. In the world of financial records, mine, and perhaps just a handful of others, stand out as being truly exceptional.

Funny, because I haven't had a job paying anything close to liveable money for over a year, which leads me to believe they might just be saying that to flatter me. Which, by implication, means they think I'm the sort of person who is flattered when other people tell me they think I'm financially responsible.

If American Express wanted to chat me up on a night out, it would probably say something like:

“Hi. I don't normally do this sort of thing, but I saw you at the bar, and I couldn't help thinking — I bet he regularly puts some money aside for a rainy day. If you don't mind me saying, you look very fit, you know, financially. Do you work out, you know, how much you should put aside for a pension? I thought so.”

Well, I'm not flattered, American Express. So you can take your card, and your misplaced fiscal come-ons and sod off.

And you can also sod off.

I've finally solved the mystery of why, no matter how many times I update the programme on my digibox to record Family Guy, I always end up getting half episodes (in fact usually the second half of one episode followed by the first half of another).

The reason for this is that the broadcast time for Family Guy on BBC3 is determined by a complex, non-recurring numerical sequence which ensures that not only is it on at different times on consecutive days of the week, but it's also on at different times on the same day of the week one week later.

Here's the Family Guy double-bill schedule for the next eight days:

• Today: 10:50pm and 11:10pm
• Tomorrow: 10:55pm and 11:20pm
• Sunday: 10:00pm and 10:20pm
• Monday: 11:30pm and 23:55
• Tuesday: 11:00pm and 11:25pm
• Wednesday: 10:45pm and 11:10pm
• Thursday: 11:00pm and 11:25pm
• Friday: 10:30pm and 10:55pm

I used to be good at those “what's the next number in this sequence” IQ-type puzzles but this one has got me completely stumped.

If anyone manages to crack the code, please let me know, because I'm getting a bit tired of watching Family Guy half an episode at a time, and usually in the wrong order.

There is a church at the end of my road displaying a poster for The Alpha Course, with its invitation to “explore the meaning of life”

Now I'm no friend of organised religion, and was as pleased as anyone by the recent runaway success of the Atheist Bus Campaign (original target £5,500 — current total very nearly £120,000), but obviously I also stand firmly by the principle that people should be free to invite other people to explore pretty much any subject they want, with the possible exception of the best ways to blow a third group of people up.

Now I'll admit upfront that I haven't done The Alpha Course, but the poster has always troubled me a bit, and I think it's the suggestion that what is on offer here is a free and unhindered debate on the big questions relating to the human condition. Despite this implication, I would bet good money that the metaphysical enquiry The Alpha Course is inviting us to undertake isn't quite as open-ended as its pithy tagline would have you believe.

I would go further and say that The Alpha Course is probably about as agenda-free as an insurance salesman asking you to “explore the meaning of peace of mind”, Gary Glitter urging young people to “explore the meaning of fun for all ages”, or Colonel Sanders inviting a chicken to “explore the meaning of a crispy coating”.

And in fact the course content backs this up, with the first of the ten sessions being titled “Who Is Jesus?”, the answer to which question I'm pretty sure will not turn out to be "the central figure in just one of many alternative, unprovable theories about the purpose, if indeed there is a purpose, of human existence”.

So, I think the posters should instead read:

“The Alpha Course — explore the meaning of life, but only within certain parameters, and based on the fundamental assumption that there exists a single, all-powerful Deity consistent with the principles of a Christian faith”.

I admit, it's a little wordy, but it does avoid the risk of a misunderstanding.

But hang on, perhaps it's the word “explore” which is problematic, suggesting as it does the opportunity to roam into new and unfamiliar territory without a pre-determined destination. It's more like a guided tour than an exploration. That's it — cracked it:

“The Alpha Course — tour our meaning of life”

Okay, I'm happy with that. It's the same number of words as before, just more accurate.

P.S. I notice that The Alpha Course has launched its own poster campaign. It doesn't seem to be enjoying quite the same success as the other one...

There is a young woman who obviously works in one of the offices at the end of my road who can be seen several times a day standing outside and smoking. Now the problem is that this young woman is, by my rough assessment, about seven months pregnant.

At the end of the day, I suppose it's her personal choice, and she certainly wouldn't be the first parent or parent-to-be to make an unwise choice on behalf of their child. But it is a surprisingly shocking site and does beg the question what is the appropriate response?

What are the rules on telling a stranger you think their actions are unacceptable even if it's a) none of your business, and b) not really affecting you?

It's very unclear what I should do. And confronting a lone woman in the final stages of pregnancy is not exactly have-a-go hero territory either.

If I intervene, let's face it, it's unlikely to go well. I'll make a polite, reasonable case for her to stop smoking until she's had the baby, she'll tell me to fuck off, and from then on I'll feel anxious every time I leave the house in case I have to walk past her puffing away like the Marlboro Man.

She must know it's not a good idea to be smoking. Other people must have said something to her. She must know that the world of opinion is not going to be supportive of her actions. But she does it anyway, so some random stranger coming up to her and pointing out the obvious isn't really going to make her or my world a better place.

Even if I did decide to say something, knowing my luck it would turn not to be a cigarette at all, but some new way of taking B12 supplements, or part of a course of GP-sanctioned marijuana to help treat her chronic M.E. And the shock of my sudden, verbal assault would cause her to go into premature labour and suddenly I'd be the bad guy.

So I've decided the best thing to do is just walk on by without judgement, and put something on this blog, so that at least you all know that I think it's wrong, but without me actually risking a difficult social encounter which could potentially backfire and make my life a bit awkward for a while.

So if I'm with a friend next time I see the woman who's smoking for two and they say: “Shouldn't we say something?”, I'll be able to reply “Don't worry, I've already made my opinion abundantly clear.”

And when that young woman comes across this blog — and it's only a matter of time — I think she's going to feel very sheepish indeed.

Man Writes Blog is taking a respectful break, but please do your best to observe the traditional two-minute silence at 11am today.

Just to update you after yesterday's post, this was what I came up with for the auction-related gags written late last night to order for my friends currently playing auctioneers in L.A.:

“And the next lot is:

• ... a personalised Hollywood “Walk Of Fame” star, perfect for...

  ...anyone who thinks they can cement a brass star into a public footpath in the middle of the night without getting caught.

• ... a court artist's sketch of Michael Jackson during his 2005 trial, perfect for...

  ...stimulating conversation at your next cheese and Jesus juice party.

• ... a private tour of a maximum security prison, perfect for...

  ... anyone who's ever wondered what it's like on Death Row, but not enough to take a life.”

Strangely the one which apparently went down the best was this:

• “...a pristine condition Fender Stratocaster guitar, perfect for...

  ... anyone who's always wanted to play the guitar, but has an irrational fear of music shops.”

It's the right side of midnight and I've just got back from North London after watching an comedy show performed by a bunch of people who study with the same improvised theatre company as me. And very good it was too.

I was just starting to think about going to bed when my mobile phone rang. A very good friend is currently out in L.A. and has somehow managed to get himself and another friend roped into hosting a charity auction attended by the great and good. Aaron Sorkin (Mr West Wing) was supposed to be there, but apparently pulled out at the last minute.

In previous years I'm told this event has been a little dry and so my friends have either been volunteered, or have volunteered themselves, to bring a little levity to proceedings.

And in this game of Who Wants To Be An Auctioneer?, I've been chosen as the phone a friend. I've got about an hour to come up with a bunch of gags that can be used when introducing the various items on offer, including:

• a flight in a de Havilland Chipmunk vintage airplane
• a personalised Hollywood "Walk Of Fame" Star (just the star though, not a place on the Boulevard)
• a court artist's sketch of Michael Jackson during the 2005 trial
• a private tour of a maximum security prison with lunch cooked by one of the inmates

In addition, they've decided that all of the material has to follow a certain pattern — “...and the next lot is (insert item here), perfect for (insert gag here)”.

All I've got so far is:

“...and the next lot is a flight in a de Havilland Chipmunk vintage airplane, perfect for anyone who's never been inside a chipmunk, or at least wouldn't own up to it in public...”

Hopefully further inspiration will strike before I get too sleepy. They're on in two hours...

After yesterday's post I've been thinking some more about the new non-emergency telephone number introduced by the Met Police.

I'm a bit worried that if I do witness an incident that may or may not be an emergency, I won't be certain whether it is indeed a real emergency, and even if I decide that it isn't, I'm concerned I won't remember the new number.

So I've been wracking my brains all morning and I think I've come up with a solution. It's a three-tier emergency classification system, with easy-to-remember telephone numbers.

The first type of emergency is called a premergency. A premergency is when you notice something that looks a bit dodgy — no crime has actually been committed yet, but it looks like it might quite soon. So for example, a couple of shifty-looking blokes hanging around outside an empty house, an argument that looks like it might turn into a fight, or a person driving dangerously — these are all premergencies.

The second type of emergency is the realmergency. This is equivalent to a proper emergency under the old system. A house is being burgled, a car stolen or a nasty fight in progress. These are easy to spot.

The third type of emergency is an unmergency. These are situations where some kind of crime or accident has occurred but it's all under control, or certainly unlikely to get any worse. These are the types of situations for which the Met Police wants us to use their new number.

I've even done a bit of basic design work for a poster to publicise the new system. I was thinking that we could trial it in London, then roll it out across the whole country if it's a success...

As you may be aware, the Metropolitan Police has recently launched a new contact number for non-emergency scenarios, to try to reduce the number of unnecessary calls to 999.

There are a number of posters around town which are aiming to help us determine whether or not a particular situation qualifies as a genuine emergency.

If you live or work in London, you may for instance have seen this one.

The new number looks as though it should be quite memorable, but actually it's not at all. I challenge you to remember it confidently in an hour's time.

Reading between the lines, what the Metropolitan Police appears to be saying with this campaign is:

“Look, if something dangerous and exciting is happening right now, by all means, give us a call, otherwise, to be honest, we're not all that interested. Sorry, that's just the way it is. If you really think we should know about it (and we probably don't), maybe drop us an email in a couple of days time, or better still, just mention it next time you see us...”

I've been keeping my eye out for other posters in the same series and came across this one in Waterloo Station:

This one was on a hoarding at the top end of Tottenham Court Road:

And I saw this one outside a police station near Victoria:

Do let me know if you see any that I might have missed...

When I woke up this morning I had a sudden, strange paranoid fantasy that when I switched the radio on, the lead news story would be that John McCain had won the US election with a convincing majority.

I've avoided the listening to the radio or reading a newspaper all day, just in case it's true, but it did give me an idea for a film, a sort of a cross between Groundhog Day and Conspiracy Theory in which a man wakes up the day after a major election to find that the previous day never happened and the wrong man (or woman) is heading for the White House.

Yes, it's unashamedly American, but the last time I looked the UK Film Council weren't handing out seven-figure cheques for hastily conceived, high-concept film ideas.

I haven't quite decided whether it should be played as a broad, knock-about comedy (with Jim Carrey) or a more edgy, paranoid thriller (with Will Smith or possibly Shia LaBeouf^*) so I thought I should work up both ideas...

The Do Over (2009)

Dave Putz (Jim Carrey) is the host of a cult cable television show called "Ain't That Nuts!?", which presents wild and wacky stories from across the world. Despite his energetic, crazy persona, Dave hates his job and harbours ambitions of being a serious newscaster.

When he wakes up one morning to find that everyone except him seems to have lost a day and that the result of the previous day's election has somehow been reversed, he realises that this is his opportunity to become a real journalist.

He breaks the story on his cable show, but no-one takes it seriously. However, Dave won't let it go and his growing obsession and rapidly falling audience figures cause him to get fired. Then his girlfriend dumps him and one by one his friends disown him.

He tries to find someone to corroborate his story but everyone thinks he's mad, until he gets a call from a young woman who saw his show and has exactly the same recollection of events as he does. Trouble is, she has a history of mental illness and no-one believes her either.

The Do Over is a comedy about being the only sane person in crazy world and teaches us that sometimes, to get want you want, you have to go a little mad.

273/238 (2009)

David Putzler is a solitary, level-headed insurance claims investigator who wakes up one day to find that a narrow Democratic victory in the previous day's general election has been mysteriously replaced in the public's minds by a Republican landslide.

He becomes convinced that a sinister group within the existing administration has managed to pull off an audacious experiment in mass brainwashing and he sets out to prove it, using all his skills as a claims investigator.

But the problem is, that if such a conspiracy has occurred, the tracks have been covered very thoroughly: online news stories have been doctored and newspapers from the previous day all seem to have been mysteriously pulped &mdash even the recording of the election coverage on his TiVo has been wiped.

Finding no evidence to support his theory, he starts to doubt his own sanity until he makes contact with a small group of people in an internet chat room, calling themselves Thesis 273/238 (referring to the original split of Electoral College votes), whose memories, like his, have remained intact.

David gains the trust of this diverse set of paranoid characters and realises that what they all have in common is protection from electromagnetic radiation — one member is an eccentric survivalist who lives in a lead-lined nuclear bunker, another is a homeless woman who sleeps under an electricity pylon, and David himself has a metal plate in his head from a childhood accident.

Working together over the internet they discover a loose end from the almost perfect cover-up, the one piece of incontrovertible evidence that will prove their version of events, and are on the verge of going public.

But suddenly members of Thesis 273/238 starts turning up dead and they soon realise that one of their number is actually a government agent. But who is it, and can David get the evidence to the one person in the government he can trust before he ends up dead too?

273/238 is a high-tech, paranoid thriller which asks the question: if you can't trust the truth, what can you trust?

Time to make a nice cup of tea, sit back, and wait for the phone to ring...

*Am I the only person who thinks Shia LaBoeuf sounds like a dish off a menu in a posh 1970s restaurant? — “Yes, we are ready to order. I'll have the duck a l'orange and my wife will have the shia la boeuf.”

I stayed up last night to watch the final hours of the US election unfold, courtesy of David Dimbleby and the rest of the BBC election team. I went to bed just before 3am, shortly after they'd called Ohio for Obama, the point at which little short of the second coming of Christ could save John McCain.

I'd hoped to have a little bit of a lie-in this morning, but obviously I was woken around half past seven by Dave the Husky. It's not clear whether he's an Obama or a McCain supporter, but he must surely be pleased to learn that one of Obama's very first appointments will be a new puppy to the White House.

Commentators far more knowledgeable and insightful than me will be discussing the repercussions of this monumental turn of events for months and years to come. I will say only that I am very, very pleased.

Eight years of Dubya may now be conveniently post-justified as a necessary evil to prepare the ground for what has just happened. Perhaps Bush's presidency was the terrible fire that extinguished the even more terrible plague of blinkered, superstitious, hateful, greedy, short-termist American Conservatism. Or something like that.

There are many challenges that will face the new president when he comes into office, and these are well-documented, but perhaps the biggest opportunity now open to Barack Obama in the very first days of his presidency is to execute the hardest-won and most audacious sight gag in the history of the Western world.

On Tuesday, 20 January, 2009, I will be hoping beyond hope that his first action after becoming sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, will be to head to the front lawn of the White House, unroll a prayer mate, face towards Mecca and thank Allah, in Arabic, for making him the leader of the free world.

Insha'Allah.

In the North London community centre where my Monday night improvisation workshops are held, there is a poster on the wall (of a room usually used for a childrens' playgroup) that is what Larry David would call "a big bowl of wrong".

For several weeks I've been meaning to take a picture of it before someone else spots what I've spotted and destroys it in the name of all things decent and wholesome; last night was the final session of the term so I made a point of capturing it on my mobile phone.

(NOTE: As an exercise for the reader, write a list of separate ways in which this poster is just plain wrong. If you don't get at least seven, then you're really not trying...)

Here it is in its full glory:

Now here's the thing. Somebody had to put those kids in that position and think it was okay take a photo. I don't know whose idea it was to have one kid standing immediately behind the other whilst grimacing and holding his ears, but if that person is an adult they should be in prison.

Now I appreciate that we can't lay the blame entirely at the photographer's feet. Anyone can have a temporary lapse of judgement.

But someone at the marketing agency had to approve the photo, presumably by selecting it from a number of different photos taken during the same session. Someone had to look at that photo and think to themselves: "Yep, that's the one".

More worryingly, if this photo was the best and most suitable of those on offer, then I'm afraid to imagine what the kids were doing in the other shots.

One boy having a playful "tinkle" in the other's mouth, perhaps? Or one boy crawling around on all fours in a gimp costume while the other boy rode around on his back wearing a cowboy hat and smoking a cigar?

And once someone had, hard though it is to believe, selected this image from its photographic peers, then they or someone else in the same department decided that the best copy to accompany the photo was "Maximum Fun, Maximum Protection".

Without the Nivea brand in the frame, this would look to all the world like a shockingly ill-conceived attempt by Durex to break into the pre-teen market.

To continue: someone senior at Nivea then presumably had to sign off a paper proof of the poster and then someone else at the printers had to agree (albeit implicitly) that the best thing to do with this image of sexually ambiguous, prepubescent roughhousing was to produce several thousand hard copies for wide distribution amongst the nation's schools and playgroups.

I think I may, for the first time in my life, write a letter to the Daily Mail...

On the street behind mine there is a house where there lives a large husky dog that howls loudly from about 7.30am every morning. I know it's a husky because I can see him (or her) pacing up and down in the paved rear garden of the house from my bedroom window.

On a couple of occasions, having gone to bed and forgotten to set an alarm, I've thought to myself: “Not a problem — the husky will wake me up”. It hasn't backfired yet, but I am looking forward to the day that I have an important appointment first thing, and have to give the excuse: “Sorry I'm late, my husky didn't go off for some reason“.

I have often wondered why the dog makes so much noise at more or less the same time every morning, but come to the conclusion that it's probably just what huskies do. I imagine that huskies are fairly social animals — you never see them arguing when they're pulling a sled together &mdash and so I imagine this particular husky is just putting a “shout out” to other huskies in the area. A one-dog version of the SETI project if you like.

This theory satisfied me for a while, and at least reassured me that the husky wasn't being maltreated in any way, until it occurred to me that I never heard a response to the dog's mournful cries. How lonely it must be, I thought to myself, living in a world where it is convinced that it is the last husky alive.

This morning I had the idea that if I recorded the sound of the husky howling, and played the recording back in response, then my canine friend might be happy to learn that he (I've decided it's a he) is not alone in the world.

This seemed to be to be a great plan and a way to start the week with a selfless gesture of kindness, until I realised that simple human arrogance had caused me to forget the importance matter of content...

How that husky conversation might have gone

— “Hello! I'm a husky. Any other huskies out there?”
— “Hello! I'm a husky. Any other huskies out there?”

— “Oh my God! Yes, I'm a husky. I'm Dave the Husky. Who are you?”
— “Hello! I'm a husky. Any other huskies out there?”

— “Yes, yes! Over here. I'm a husky. I can hear you. Can you hear me?”
— “Hello! I'm a husky. Any other huskies out there?”

— “What about now? Can you hear me now? I'm barking as loud as I can!”
— “Hello! I'm a husky. Any other huskies out there?”

— “What are you, deaf or something? I'm over here, you dick.”
— “Hello! I'm a husky. Any other huskies out there?”

— “Maybe if you did a bit less barking and a bit more listening...”
— “Hello! I'm a husky. Any other huskies out there?”

— “Oh, I get it. You're mocking me. Well, you know what, fuck you!”
— “Hello! I'm a husky. Any other huskies out there?”

— “That is so puerile. What are you, a puppy? Grow up for fuck's sake!
— “Hello! I'm a husky. Any other huskies out there?”

— “You're such an arsehole. I'm going back in my kennel.
— “Hello! I'm a husky. Any other huskies out there?”

Today I've been immersed in writing some copy for the launch of a new comedy project which I'm sure I will mention on this blog at some point. I can get a little bit OCD when it comes to copywriting, tweaking sentences until they are just right and spending far too long with increasingly diminishing returns (which is why the more rough and ready style demanded by my self-imposed Blovember is going to take a little getting used to). Unless you're a poet or a novelist there really is no point spending a whole day writing something it will take people a couple of minutes to read.

Anyway, I've been a bit of a recluse, leaving the house only once, to buy a packet of Maltesers from the local shop.

There are three guys who work in the shop where I buy my chocolate. One is big and quite jolly, one is skinny and a bit cool, and the other is short and a bit shy. The big, jolly one and the skinny, cool one have both worked there for several years. The short, shy one is a bit newer.

When the short, shy one first appeared on the scene there was a day when the big, jolly one was there at the same time, showing him the ropes. When I walked in, he said: “Ah, this man likes a Twirl, but we haven't got any here, so let me show you where we keep them in the back.” That was the day I made the following mental note: When the guy who runs the local sweet shop remembers your ‘usual’, it's time to cut back on the chocolate, or at least spread your business around a bit.

It's the jolly one who seems to be on duty during the day and over the last two or three years I must have bought something from him (usually a Twirl) on somewhere between fifty and a hundred different occasions. And each time I yearn to be able to muster more than the very basic level of conversation required to complete my chocolatey transaction.

But given the long history of almost identical exchanges, it now seems very artificial to suddenly try to up the conversational ante. However, I have experimented, sometimes unintentionally, with slight variations to the routine...

Fairly recently, for reasons that now escape me, I started calling the big, jolly man “boss” in an embryonic attempt at friendly banter. I should point out that the big, jolly man and I are not the same colour, and after my new monicker was twice greeted with a lukewarm reception it did occur to me that it might come across as some kind of ironic racism.

This was confirmed when I saw someone else, in another shop, using exactly the same term to address the guy behind the till and it was immediately clear that the whole thing had cotton plantation written all over it. You obviously have to factor in intent and context, but even taking that into account, I quickly stopped referring to my daytime Twirl-dealer as “boss”.

The other time that I deviated from my normal routine, was when I went in late one evening to buy a bottle of wine from the skinny, cool guy, and accidentally said “Night night” instead of “Good night” on the way out.

The clocks have gone back, the long winter nights are closing in, and inspired by another worthy cause that has adopted November as a month for consistent action in the name of positive change, I have decided to launch Blovember — a month of solid blogging.

This will mean a temporary shift of pace and style with longer, with more considered posts making way for shorter, spur-of-the-moment musings. It's all a bit of an experiment and I can't guarantee it will be entirely successful, but I'll commit to writing something every day during November, and we'll see what happens.

I do also feel that I need to gain some sort of “closure” on October, a month during which this blog experienced what I'm going to call a flurry of inactivity. It's not that it was a particularly quiet month for me — there was actually quite a lot of stuff going on — it's just that none of it made it into the blog.

So, in addition to doing my level best to update the blog every day during November, I will also undertake to fill in the gaps in October. This may mean that 'new' entries start to mysteriously appear in the past. Please don't be concerned. It's just like when Skynet sent that Terminator back to the past to change the future that was actually the present. It's better if you don't think about it too much.

So that's my Blovember manifesto. I hope the change of style isn't too disorientating. At the end of the month we'll all sit down and have a review meeting to discuss how it went. You may well find that you prefer a little something to read every day than a big dollop of words every week or two (or three). On the other hand, you may decide that if I haven't got anything good to say, I shouldn't say anything at all. We'll just have to see.

Anyway, that's it for my first Blovember entry. I'll sign off now because it's getting late and I've still got a couple more messages to leave on Andrew Sachs' answering machine.