Smoke lingers 'round your fingers

My shoes are really filthy tonight. I've been walking around london.

First off, what did I eat today in London?



I started off with these. Officially, I ate them in Cambridge, so perhaps they don't count.

Then I went to New World. I had...



and

prawn dumplings and barbeque pork and chinese broccoli and those long thick prawn noodles. Glutinous maximus. Sky High my G.I.

After this I hung around here for a while salivating...



I felt a bit intimidated by this place though, and by the time I'd worked up enough courage to storm in and demand patisserie and coffee there was a queue a mile long, so instead i went here...



and had mocha and chocolate cheesecake.

By now I was on a binge and ended up at posh McDonalds...



and purchased a crayfish and rocket sandwich, a packet of crisps and a bottle of water. I got halfway through the sandwich and decided it was horrid so I walked up to a vagrant looking man who was shivering with a KFC cup in his hand. I offered him my food but he told me that he was on medication and couldn't eat food so could I give him some money instead. I couldn't even give my food away.

Finally, I had one final binge here before I caught the train home...



where I had the works - 3 pieces of chicken, 2 hot wings, chicken dipper and a bottle of water. I topped it all off with a

.

I love my eating disorder.

I think it was the horrific realisation that London offered nothing better in terms of clothes shopping than Cambridge that set me off. Also, there wasn't a single t-shirt for sale - OH MY GOD. I am listening to radio 6 and it is playing Mudhoney. I've not listened to this for a while. You Got It. Keep It Out Of My Face. I can play this on a guitar. How great. No, it's finished now and it wasn't very good. Great intro though. That, and this sabbath on the radio now, or this sabbath rip off leads me into one about Nathan Barley's in their ironic heavy metal t-shirts.



There are so many of these genetically modified mullet heads around. It is truly abhorrent. Every clothes shop had at least 2 of them, and I saw a pub full of them, wearing their heavy metal t-shirts. My hatred nearly spilled over when I saw this boy with a blonde mohican and disco shoes on. Oh dear goodness gracious.

There wasn't a single t-shirt for sale that was less than £25. For a fucking t-shirt. What a disgusting rip. I ended up in GAP. We've got a Gap here. At GAP I saw bo' selecta. Give a shit. More excited to see the woman who played the horrible, horrible pregnant woman in the office xmas special. I actually stalked her for a little bit, wanting to go and tell her how brilliant she was, but bottled it of course.

I got v. depressed but luckily met up with fenella (still can't make it change colour fenella) and had lots of fun going into digital camera shops and suggesting again and again that we could come to some sort of cheap arrangement for a digital camera. I winked and nodded and whistled a lot, but it didn't work in any case. Fenella nearly brought the ipod shuffle and then bottled it halfway through the queue in the apple store. I am pleased about this because the shuffle looks shit.



I could hear a voice on the tube home saying over and over again how much he hated fucking england and fucking poverty and this fucking place fucking fucking fuck. I was reasonably intimidated by him. He also kept saying that everyone in the country is sad, that it is a sad dead country. I found it even more worrying when I looked up to see he was holding a baseball bat.



On the escalator into Kings Cross there was an appalling woman standing facing back at me shouting at her friend. She looked very straight and not very handsome, but she was whining in her loudest voice about her lover, who had "disgusting, unacceptable ginger facial hair." I thought she was really offensive and looked at her in a funny way.



Fenella and I also met a very sweet student in John Lewis. He is studying design and wants to start a revolution. He believes we all consume too much and should try to exist on less, that we all want to go faster and have more when we don't really need it. We had a nice chat with him, gave him our blog addresses and encouraged him to use a blog to start his revolution. Then we went off and felt a little sad as we searched for a replacement ipods and digital cameras. Hi Student.



What a lovely day. Wrote in my new diary on the train journey home about a horrible child with adhd who kept shouting "It's making me weary," and kicking seats until I got up to move to a new carriage. As I got up to move, everyone looked at me as if I was the one who'd been shouting for the last 20 minutes, but I figure I get enough of this shit at school.




Got home to find Polly has a furious cold and Mick has a little less cold. Had a long night thinking about my life in general and decided that my running has to be pruned back rather dramatically, as it's stupid to have a family and a job, but to be obsessed by running huge distances to the point where I can't relax until I've run.



Once I have run, I can't be any sort of partner as I have to sit on the sofa covered in ice. Right now I need to be the Daddy, not the elite, so elitism will have to go on the back burner for a while. Hopefully though this will be a positive step, as I'll be well energetic and my right knee will stop crunching and the ligament behind my left knee will stop aching and my right foot will stop hurting and I won't be stressed all the time about having to do 10 miles. There seems to be little point in being totally healthy if it means my emotional life is fucked and my relationships are fucked. Might as well be fat again. This last sentence sounds as if I am going to go and get fat again. I'm not, I'm just making a promise to myself not to run longer than 45 minutes until Mick can say "Daddy".

O.K. now some free good stuff.

This week I haven't got any new music, or listened to much. I have listened to a bit of internet radio and have got two links here that are worth following:



Since Nathan Barley started, I have become a big fan of Julian Barratt. I have a minor obsession about him since Jon insists that we used to be best mates with him when we were at college. When I say best mates, I mean that Jon reckons he used to come and see the pollfish, our band, all the time and that he really loved us. Translated into realish, this means that Julian Barratt probably came to see us once. Anyway, Jon went to the real university as opposed to my patronising teacher training college, and perhaps he did have some sort of relationship with Julian. I certainly had never heard of him until he started appearing on the telly in an advert for a vodka jelly kind of alcopop drink. Then I became very jealous of him. How come someone who wasn't funny in an advert was now a famous comedian and Jon and I were drones? Surely this was a massive injustice and a sad indictment of the unjust times we are now living in. I have inadvertantly followed this man's career, as he seems to be bouncing about everywhere, landing, finally a part in Nathan Barley. Not just any part, the big part. GOD DAMN. How dare this once audience member of mine be mates with Chris Morris? So unfair did I find this chain of events that I missed episode 1 of Nathan Barley and was gleeful to see the bad reviews of it. This has all changed, of course, and I watch it now and admire and respect Julian Barratt. I have also checked out the mighty boosh in which he is particularly funny as a pathetic man. Both he and Noel Fielding are funny. It pisses all over little shitain. Listen to it. (and Fenella, I am particularly proud of that link.)

Also, I listened to knowing me knowing you twice this week.

There was also a good interview with Woody Allen on thursday's front row.

These links will die after the shows are next broadcast, so get 'em while they're hot.

Today I go to Ely to see Elly. Polly says I'm not to lie in bed blogging while the midwife is here, so I'm going to clear up the bedroom for our visitor. She's just coming to tell us what to do about sick Mick.