So I’m rather pleased to now be relaxing on my Christmas holiday at Jess’s mum’s house, where she’s scheduled to cook a big Christmas dinner for the whole extended family in her gas oven. So there was some concern when the local gas substation blew up on Monday. Plan Bs were hastily contrived, but then last night the gas came back on, with the gas board advising people (apparently - they never advised us) not to use it until they’ve been round and checked it won’t make your house do the same thing as the substation. I don’t suppose anyone paid any attention, but most of the buildings in the street still seem to be standing, so I think they got away with it.

Meanwhile, I purchased an alcohol-based item in Morrisons - it’s a Christmas present, so I’ll remain vague about its precise nature because you never know who’s reading. When I went to check out, the woman at the till asked me if I was 25. It told her I was, and she was satisfied.

As I understand it, the rule is that if I look under 25 she has to ask for ID to make sure I’m over 18. Whether I actually am 25 is neither here nor there, and she didn’t ask for any ID so I could have been lying anyway. I think she must have been off sick the day they did that bit on her training course.

Still, it’s nice to know I look like I might be under 25. A week from now my girlfriend won’t even be a teenager, so as you can imagine I’m feeling very old.

And the other day I saw David Attenborough on the telly - well actually he was just a voiceover, I saw some kind of monkey, but I heard David Attenborough - positing that it may be impossible to think without language. This is one of those stupid, ridiculous ideas that you’d think no one with half a brain would give serious consideration to for more than a thirty-seventh of a second, and yet every now and again otherwise intelligent people give the impression that they actually believe it, like religion, or thinking Little Britain qualifies as comedy. Possibly Sir Attenborough has never had a thought that he struggled to put into words, or pictured something in his mind, or performed mental feats at higher speed than the English language would allow. Well, I’d like to see him play Whack-a-Mole without executing a single motor function that he didn’t first specify out loud, like programming a turtle on the BBC Micro. He’d do rubbish.

Actually I’d just like to see him play Whack-a-Mole.

And that’s all I’ve got to say for now. Happy Christmas!

So much has happened. Jess has got a part time job at a care home, which seems to mainly involve larking about at bowling alleys and concerts*. Apparently last night they went to a concert performed by people with learning difficulties, which I’m sure was excellent, but it just makes me think of Ralph Wiggum with a flute up his nose.

* There may also be an element of giving people baths and getting covered in spit.

I’m addicted to Christopher Brookmyre. I read one of his books years ago, when I found it in a geocache, and though I thought it was jolly good I unaccountably failed to follow it up with furious Amazon shopping for the rest of the canon. Then last year I spotted a few of his works in Waterstones and have since read the lot, and now that I’ve run out I’ve started again from the beginning. I’m hoping they’ll keep me going until A Snowball in Hell comes out in paperback.

Yes, I’m addicted, but I still wait for the paperback. It’s a matter of principle. Though what the principle is I have no idea.

We did some more muralling - Transformers this time - but you’ll have to wait until we’ve finished before I show you pictures, and I doubt we’ll fit any more in now before Christmas. Oh, did I mention it’s nearly Christmas? I’m all excited! I’ve been surprisingly efficient this year and done nearly all my shopping already, which seemed like a good idea at the time, but now I’ve somehow got to resist giving people their presents for nearly three whole weeks. That may not happen.

Anyone want a present?

I like roast chestnuts. And there are few things more satisfying than eating food that you not only prepared yourself, but which passed through no other hands between yours and Mother Nature’s, so a few weeks ago I came up with a plan to collect some chestnuts from beneath the nearest chestnut tree, roast them over an open fire - or possibly in the oven - and eat. What I didn’t know is that eating-chestnuts are one thing, and conker-chestnuts quite another, and whereas the first are healthful, tasty and entirely non-toxic, the latter ought to have a skull and crossbones stamped on them and wouldn’t be much worse for you if they’d been injected with arsenic.

Fortunately I didn’t get round to doing it for a few weeks due to laziness, and then I happened to off-handedly mention the plan to my mum, who quite possibly saved my life by informing me of the above. And before anyone jumps to conclusions, Jess doesn’t like chestnuts, so this wasn’t another attempt to do her in.

My chestnuts will be ready soon. I got them from Tesco.

The reason it reminds me of my former life is that I used to work with a chap called Ian Cockerill who looked exactly like a potato. I presume that’s where they got him from.

I hope he never googles for his own name.

Then a couple of months ago, a great big cockerel turned up. No one knew where it had come from - my neighbour discovered it one night hiding under a car, and attempts to coax it out were unsuccessful, but come the morning it hadn’t been eaten by a fox so he adopted it.

It never really fitted in with the rest of the chickens. It’s about twice the size of them, for a start - it looks like something out of George’s Marvellous Medicine. But that didn’t stop the others expressing their displeasure by pecking at it, which possibly isn’t the most effective form of protest but pretty much your only option when you’re a chicken. Anyway, they learnt to tolerate it eventually, and it soon asserted its position at the top of the pecking order. It now struts about like it owns the place, but I don’t think it does, or I’ve been making my rent cheques out to the wrong person.

That person, incidentally, is our eighty year old landlady, who I was told the other day has broken her hip and will be in hospital in Kuwait until after Christmas. Why an eighty year old lady suddenly decided to go to Kuwait and break her hip I don’t know, but it’s very inconsiderate of her. We want new carpets.

Oh, and the cockerel’s a zombie*.

*It isn’t really, but I thought I should weave a Hallowe’en theme in somehow.

But Omally has persuaded me to do a special Hallowe’en dressing up game, so be in the chatroom at 8 if you feel inclined to participate, or just if you want to watch those of us that do making fools of ourselves.

You know how Hallowe’en is also known as All Hallows Eve? Well that must make November 1st All Hallows Day, right? So what are we supposed to do on that? Is it something good? Have I been missing out on cake?

While I was here I was going to take the opportunity to do a proper blog, but I’ve got to go and get ready to take Jess out now, so that will have to wait. I’ll try to do one later. I might tell you about our neighbour’s enormous cock.

The trouble, of course, is that I don’t blog much these days, so a serialized novel would rather eclipse my other ramblings, though I suppose there are ways around that. The other problem is that my plot’s rather brilliant and I fully expect publishers to be throwing themselves at my feet, and I have no idea whether their enthusiasm would be dulled by its previous publication on the internet, though I suspect the feedback I’d get from the comments would be useful enough to outweigh that concern. So it really comes down to whether my public would react with a rousing “Hurrah! A fantastic tale of murder, tramps and astrolabes for me to read while I’m supposed to be working!” or a less enthusiastic “Oh god, here he goes again with the stupid stories". In any case, I want to get a decent head start in case I get lazy later on, and I’ve only written four scenes so far, so it’s going to be a month or two before I’ll have to make up my mind.

Actually, while I was looking for that link up there ^ just now I found myself reading through a fair amount of my blog from that period, and couldn’t help noticing that a) my life really was fairly depressing then; and b) my blog was actually jolly good. Nowadays I get round to it so infrequently that I tend to stick to diaryesque updates, which is stupid, because let’s face it, who cares what’s happening to me? It was much better when I just talked rubbish. I might try to start doing that again. I don’t think I’d find it difficult.

It still won’t be any more frequent, of course. I’ve got a novel to write.

Right now I don’t have much else to say, but we’re at Jess’s mum’s house and I forgot to bring either the book I’m reading or the one I’m writing, and Jess is messing about on Facebook, so I might as well keep rambling. There was something else I’ve been meaning to bring up, if only I can remember what it was. Hang on, I’ll have a think.

Nope, it’s gone. I’ll go and read some more of 2005 instead.

Goodnight!