Beard

When my beard is at a certain length - ie longer than stubble but not yet at Rabbi - it has a really interesting consistency . . . sort of like wire wool, with clots in.

I love it.

Insomnia

I'm just not sleeping . . . exhausted at work and then unable to sleep till 3, 3.30, 4, 4.30, whenever. It's not good.

I'm having, even by my standards, a crap time at the moment. Just when I thought I'd done them all I've been finding new ways to be blown off. And not in a good way.

Grrrrr.

In fact every thing's pretty shit right now . . . what can you do?

And my colleagues can spend hours and hours talking about their cats. It's driving me stark staring insane. Dear God people, GET A LIFE.

Cansei De Ser Sexy "Music Is My Hot, Hot Sex"

This is just the *best* song. Terrible video though - looks like it was done as a school project. For the under 10s

Well I was wrong

... I was!

so far

A new low

I'm now being rejected by people I haven't even been out with yet. What next - total strangers are going to start ringing me up to tell me they don't want to meet me, not ever, no way, not no how.

Not in a million years. Not in a million, million years.

I guess it's all my own fault for assuming that just because people pluck your phone from your hands and put their number into it for you they may actually be considering that dinner offer.

Well that taught me didn't it?

Cigs

Now been 5 days. I'd slay Harry Potter with a dirty hacksaw for a wheeze on a gasper.

Potter, and his little friends too.

Lift Rage

My lift phobia is starting to reach our of control proportions. I work on the fourth floor and have now taken to walking up and down the stairs all the time. All well and good - won't do me any harm I know. The problem is that I'm not doing it because I want more exercise (merely a handy by product) but because I can't get into the lifts.

This isn't because I'm afraid of lifts. I am unconcerned that they may plummet to the ground. Being trapped in them fills me with no dread. Agrophobia - nahh.

But I seem to be developing lift rage. Whenever someone else gets in with me I resent them immediately, and the various things that they then do can only make their position worse. Pressing any floor in between where I want to go and the current one is bad. Traveling one or two floors only: very bad. Traveling one floor downwards: apoplexy. Inserting your hand in between closing lit doors to make them reopen so you can sneak in will earn you a violent and protected beating followed by being locked in a coffin full of broken glass, set on fire and thrown down a lift shaft.

It's really much less aggravation to just take the stairs.

Smoking Ban

I haven't had a drink or a cigarette since Saturday, and I feel . . . awful.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not gasping for a fag, I'm not pining for a cheering pint of cockney fizzy keg. I'm just fucking bored. I mean under normal service I'd spend 2-4 evenings a week either down the pub or recovering from same. It sounds awful, but it's not. It's just the way of many 'traditional' Britons. So now you can't smoke in the boozer anymore, what the fuck are we supposed to do with ourselves? I don't even want to go to the pub anymore - a non smoking pub isn't really any sort of a pub at all, it's merely a designated alcohol consumption centre. And who likes the sound of that? Not I.

Maybe I should just give up imagining I'm allowed to do anything resembling what I actually want and sign up for a load of accountancy night courses, or become a prison visitor or counsel disadvantaged yoofs or whatever it is the New Labour Experiment is so clearly expecting us to start doing. Alternatively I might just start hanging out in the park with Ve Kids and the Deros and some cans. At least you can have a fucking fag there. So far.