It has, it is true, been some time since I wrote a post, but it's been Christmas and that so I'm sure my non-existent readership will forgive me. Good Christmas, NER? (as I have decided to affectionally call you.) Happy New Year? Good, very glad to hear it.

Well, let me tell you about my Christmas in tedious detail. The highlight was surely the presentation of a shiny new Playstation 2 from Santa. And not one of those crappy old ones, oh no, but one of the new tiny silver ones. Having become a single man recently, it's apparently now a legal requirement that I own one, so quite a stroke of luck that Father Christmas got his act together before I had those goddamn Feds knocking my door down and, er, telling me to spread 'em or whatever.

The lowlight was probably opening the box of said shiny new Playstation 2 and discovering to my horror that a vital lead was missing and I was thus unable to do a damn thing with it, other than crouch over it protectively, my bitter tears staining its beautiful, shimmering surface like acid rain on a rose petal.

Naturally the day after Boxing Day I was down the Sony shop (Wakefield branch), armed with righteous indignation and an imaginary son whose Christmas had been ruined (ruined!) by their incompetence and lax attitude. The snorting imbecile behind the counter informed me that it wasn't their fault - the equipment was packaged by Sony and sent to them. He gave me the missing lead. I tried to get free stuff off him. He refused. I ranted on a bit about my poor little lad and his current near-comatose state due to crushing disappointment. He still wouldn't give me a free memory stick. I asked to speak to the manager. He'd popped out (even though I'd spoken to him on the phone ten minutes earlier). I asked for the contact details of their head office. They don't have one - they're all independent resellers. Bollocks. I asked for the phone number of Sony. He gave me it. I issued him with a withering stare and stormed out of the shop.

If only there was anyone reading, I could start a smear campaign against the Wakefield Sony shop and then they'd be sorry. They'd be begging me to have a free memory stick if only I'd stop besmirching their reputation and driving their customers away in droves. Ah well. At least, at the end of the day, I've got a Playstation 2. Plenty of people don't even have that basic requirement, so I suppose I should count myself lucky.

Other than that, then, the festive season was pretty much the standard merry-go-round of heavy drinking, wearisome family occasions and Jenga. All good fun, for the most part.

Want to hear what I did for New Year's Eve? I bet you do. Oh yes. I know your sort. I bet you'd bloody love to.

Hung. Over. Can't. Blog. Today. Merry... zzzzzzzz

Two posts in one day? Is this allowed in Blogland? Well I'll tell you what - I should know. I have, over the preceding few hours, become quite expert in the foibles of bloggers and their blogs. I have trawled the blogscape exhaustively, ducking into nooks and crannies, peering into disused corners, squinting underneath rocks, scrabbling through darkened underground gullies in search of reclusive bloggers. (Enough of the metaphor - you get the picture, I've read a lot of blogs.)

And I've come to the conclusion, after much analysis and statistical trend-plotting, that the average, and therefore standard, template for a blog post runs, if you'll forgive me a pastiche, something like this:

i have bought shoes today yippe! they are blue jeff dont like them but me happy!! jeff say his are better but pfffff what do i care loser! i go walking buy ipod technology cool... they are best download KT Tunstall and listen all... day.... off to petra crazy girl tonight to do a party wont take ipod LOL probably lose it nightmare...

Now then, I don't want to come across all superior and snob-like, but what the hell are these people going on about? It is too much to ask for punctutation? Does that make me sound like the most fuddy-duddy 'isn't it about time you were getting home, Grandad' bore you ever heard? I expect it does. But really. It's a sad day for the English language.

There are exceptions, naturally. I've managed to find a couple. Check out here and here to see how it should be done. Oh, and obviously everything you've read so far.

Crikey, that was a bit serious. I really should go and lie down. I'll be back to my cheery, whimsical self in the morn.

Until then...

Gah - Monday morning. I hate Monday mornings. They are, as Garfield himself might wittily have put it, really shit. Then again, I only have today and tomorrow, and then I'm off for Christmas, so in a sense it's actually Thursday morning, which isn't half as bad.

You know that thing where, five minutes after you've left the house, you suddenly get the horrible suspicion that you've left the iron on or something, and then you um and ah for a bit and finally go back, only to find invariably that you haven't left it on at all? Well this morning I did go back to check the iron, and it turned out I had left it on. Which just goes to show what an original and cliche-free life I lead. That said, on Saturday I did get a shopping trolley with a wonky wheel, so obviously there's still a bit of work to do.

So what about the snooker, eh? Poor old wrinkly Steve Davis denied his fairytale ending by some 18-year-old Chinese whippersnapper. To see his ashen face crease with disappointment as, one after the other, his balls rattled in the pocket - well, it almost broke my heart. I was, quite literally, on the edge of my seat. Still, I would have had a lot more sympathy for Davis if he hadn't played like an absolute spaz for the whole match. That blue to right middle? Even I could have potted that, Davis. You should be bloody well ashamed of yourself.

Anyway, having stayed up late to watch a snooker legend be utterly and irretrievably humiliated, I managed to catch the last hour or so of Channel 4's 100 Greatest Christmas Moments. I only meant to watch it for ten minutes or so - but you know how horribly addictive these programmes are. 'I'll just see what the next one is, then I'm off to bed. Oh, Slade, that's rubbish. Maybe the next one will be good. Ah, Blackadder, that is good. Maybe there'll be more comedy. I'll just wait..."

And before you know it Jimmy Carr is bidding you a good night. Really, if they want to make people pay attention to politics or the state of the world, all news programmes should be packaged in this format. You just literally cannot look away:

C-list celeb talking head: Hey, everybody remembers Brown talking about maintaining macroeconomic stability.

Man in T-shirt: You ask anybody, and they will say 'Hey, yeah! I remember that.'

Slightly ugly comedy writer: It's one of those things where you just think - that could NOT have been said by anybody but Brown.

Editor of Nuts: It was genius. Sheer genius.

Not-very-funny woman: It was - really - and I don't think there's single person who wouldn't agree with this - one of the all time classic Budget statements.

Etc. etc. etc. But will they listen to me? Of course not.

Well anyway, I don't want to give the impression that I just watched telly all weekend. I went to the pub and that, but it was all very generic, so I shan't bore you with the details. And now I must be off and do some of that terrible work stuff.

I may return later. I may not. Watch this space.

Well, really.

I've never felt so violated in all my life. Really.

Picture the scene: Half past seven pee em in the City, and I wearily wend my way through the suits and the shouting towards the bus stop. Against all the odds a number 47 makes an appearance almost immediately (unheard of), and I leap aboard, make for the top deck and settle myself down for twenty minutes of peace and a game of Bantumi on the circa-1980s phone my company generously bestowed upon me.

Naturally, I hadn't bargained for the shrieking harridan behind me. Oddly enough I had failed to notice her when I sat down, but as soon as the bus sets off she launches into a hideous monologue, directed at some no-doubt similarly monstrous banshee on the other end of the phone line. The upshot of the conversation seems to be that she isn't getting enough of 'it', she needs loads of 'it', her boyfriend isn't very good at 'it', she is planning to get a (volume of voice decreases by point 1 of a decibel) vibrator (voice goes back to very loud) because she needs 'it' all the time. All quite disturbing, naturally. But that's not the worst of it.

The worst of it is that, during this revolting speech, she actually - I'm not kidding here - starts stroking my right shoulder. Seriously. At first I hope that she's just nudging me accidentally, but no. Her vile fingers are actually reaching through the gap in the back of the seat and, quite deliberately, moving back and forth on my shoulder. I won't lie - I am terrified at this point. I shift forward a little in my seat, just in case she doesn't realise what she's doing. The stroking continues. It's awful. I daren't turn round. The nails-down-a-blackboard monologue continues. She gets really frustrated if she doesn't get 'it' all the time, she really loves 'it', she'd do 'it' all day long if she could. Stroke stroke stroke. I feel like I'm actually about to have a stroke. I strain my eyes to the left, trying to catch her reflection in the window, but she's just in the wrong place. I'm thinking of getting off the bus here and now. I can't take this any longer...

And then, just like that, the conversation finishes, and the finger withdraws. I'm left, unbothered, unharrassed, and strangely rejected. I get off the bus a couple of stops later, glancing up at my tormentor as I turn to go down the stairs. She's not that bad, actually. The sad irony is, I probably would've.

Apart from that, nothing else interesting has happened. But it's the weekend any minute now, a night out on the lash beckons, and come Monday, I'll have stories galore with which to bombard you.

Bye then.

Three posts in a row - I'm going great guns here. Just shows what a soul-sapping dead-end job can do for you.

Anyway, I have been worrying all day about what to write for today's entry. Nothing one might call even remotely noteworthy has happened so far, and at the turn of every corner, at the opening of every door, I have hoped beyond hope to encounter some incident, or accident, or paranormal phenomenon. Alas, my hopes have been in vain. Unless, in the next ten seconds or so, something truly astonishing happens...

Give it time...

Nope. Nothing truly astonishing happened. A man did walk past the office, but he was unremarkable in almost every way possible. Remarkable, you might say, in his unremarkableness, but no, I can't get away with that, really, can I?

So last night: well, cleaned the flat. Watched University Challenge. Got, in fact, several questions right, including the following:

How many astronomical units is Pluto from the Sun?
How many astronomical units does Voyager travel in a year?

It was the astronomical units round. I got them both right. Even I, hampered by modesty, must admit that's pretty goddamn impressive. The answers, if you're interested, are 40 and 3. And they dared to give me an E in Physics A-Level. Ha - if only they could see me now.

A large proportion of today has been spent organising the plans for New Year. One has to organise these things, you see, otherwise one ends up wandering around with no clear direction, and ends up having a rubbish evening, culminating in a riotous, joyous celebration in which you are the only one spitting bile and hatred into the throng. Nobody wants that. So I'm going to York. As usual. I highly recommend it, actually, having been a stalwart New Yearer in that vicinity for many years. Busy, but not London-busy. Parochial, but not Littlehampton-parochial. And at about quarter to midnight, it's a beautiful sight to see the revellers emerge from the pubs, only a minority doused in their own vomit, and head towards the glittering lights of the Minster where, at the stroke of twelve the plangent chords of Auld Lang Syne fill the chilly air, the exhilirating pops and fizzes of Champagne corks spike the darkness, and drunken louts such as myself run around trying to kiss as many girls as possible, safe in the knowledge that, hey, it's New Years Eve, and there's not a damn thing they can do about it.

Sounds like fun, eh? Anybody want to come along, let me know.

Well, I think I'm out. Twenty minutes till home time, and the welcoming environs of Surrey Quays await me. I will endeavour to make sure that something exciting happens on the way home. Watch this space...

Well the weekend is over, and the crushing routine of the work-a-day week is upon us once more. But what a weekend it's been folks! It's at times like this when my sorry tales of omelette-related disasters seem woefully inadequate, almost prosaic in their mundanity. Highlights of the previous twenty-four hours include:

• Attending a black-tie Christmas party in 5-star paragon of luxury, the Landmark Hotel

• Failing spectacularly to get off with a girl at aforementioned black-tie Christmas party, despite such shrewd initiatives as:

1. Carrying her down the street when she was ‘tired’.
2. Looking at her face during conversation, rather than her cavernous, barely-restrained cleavage.
3. Plying her with as much white wine as I could get my hands on.
4. Going in for the kill a mere thirty seconds after she mentioned that she had a boyfriend.
5. Damn it.

• Attending a no-tie, unChristmas get-together in the no-star paragon of working-class vitriol and intolerance, the Surrey Quays Wetherspoon’s.

• Failing spectacularly to get off with a girl at aforementioned no-tie unChristmas get-together, largely due to the fact that I daren’t strike up a converstion with anybody there.

• Eating Wensleydale cheese off dry Jacob’s Cream Crackers because there wasn’t anything else in the house apart from a month-old cucumber.

You must admit, the unrelenting Bacchanalia is almost mythical in its scope and spectacle. And now here I am, sat in an empty office, with only the mournful sigh of the air-conditioning to keep me company. It's the kind of dramatic juxtaposition of which Spielberg himself might have conceived.

But never mind. Home time in two and a half hours. And if I remember correctly, there's still a little corner of that cheese left in the fridge. Fasten your seatbelts folks - we're back in action.

Until the next time...

How long?

You know, when I first began this blog, I had such high hopes for it. It was to be a noble record of a life, Pepysian in its scope and intricacy, Nabokovian in its flair and linguistic elan. In years to come it would be feted throughout academia as an insightful work of, dare I say it, genius.

In the event, inevitably, I really couldn't be arsed.

But, aha!, all that has now changed. I find myself in the employ of a company who don't require me to do terribly much, and the empty, empty hours must be filled somehow. So we are back on track. Let the stultifying mundanity commence...

Last night (or thereabouts) I attempted to make an omelette. Not that I've never made an omelette before, but it's been a while. One's omeletteering skills, as I'm sure you know, become rusty so quickly if one doesn't keep one's hand in. I, sadly, had let my ovular techniques slip into redundancy. It was like my first time all over again (and hey, we all remember that first time, right? The bashful handling of the eggs, the shy uncertainty over which gas-mark to use, the over-enthusiastic seasoning...) But I was not to be deterred. I'd done it before, and assumed that it would be very much like riding a bike.

As it turns out, it wasn't anything like riding a bike. What idiot came up with that? I know how to ride a bike, and would venture that the Venn diagrams of bike-riding and omelette-making intersect at no point whatsoever. What use is the ability to execute a 360 degree bunny-hop when you have a sizzling, blackened, scab-like crust of eggs rapidly welding itself to the pan? No use at all. (I tried executing a 360 degree bunny-hop - I was desperate. If anything, it only made matters worse.)

So: in a flash of brilliance (something to which I am especially prone) I decided not to make an omelette after all. Omelette? Ha! They are SO not cool any more. Scrambled eggs are where it's at. Scrambled eggs are so much more edgy, more real than the dowdy old omelette. Luckily, my abortive omelette resembled scrambled eggs to such a degree that it practically was scrambled eggs already. I imagine the inventor of scrambled eggs (whoever he may be) found himself in much the same situation. "Damn it, this omelette's gone badly wrong. But I've no other food in the house, so I'll have to eat it. Ho hum. Munch munch. Hey! This is not bad!"

Scrambled eggs it was then. Pretty nice they were too, although you don't get much for three eggs. Oh, and I grated some cheese on top too. Cheddar cheese.

I'm going to end now on an entirely unrelated but impassioned plea to anyone who happens to chance upon my ramblings. Here it is:

PLEASE stop saying 'myself' when you mean 'me'. It's so WRONG. It's not 'You need to speak to myself'. It's not 'That'll be myself.' It's not 'Myself and my colleague'. It's me. Me me me me.

That'll be all for now.