Day 48: I Discover The Secret Of Rapid Weight Loss

Rick Gallop, Rosemary Conley, Dr Atkins, Montignac: they are all fools. Listen to me, and me alone. There is only one way to lose 10lbs in under 3 seconds. Ready?

1. Eat less.
2. Move around more.
3. Invite someone into your home who weighs themselves on your scales, then comes out of the bathroom saying: "Did you know your scales are broken? They're at least ten pounds over."

Result.

Day 47: I Have A Conversation With My Brother

Me: I've got to go to PC World this weekend.
My brother: Where in the world?
Me: PC World.
My brother: I can't believe you just answered that question.

Day 46: I Am Moved To Tears By A Song, Entirely Against My Will

Women pretending they're musos is as bad as women pretending to like football or cars. I always suspect them of pretending to be interested just to make boys like them more, when in fact most men only like women who listen to Westlife and watch showjumping. I went through a phase of pretending I listened to vinyl but got found out when the Object Of My Affections was lured back to my plush Brixton pied-a-terre and said: "so, where's your turntable?" I said it was at the Cornflake Shop being fixed, when in fact the real answer was: "In the cellar, with my enormous collection of vinyl, which stopped with the 12-inch of 'Blue Monday' and started with 'The Wombles' and 'Dougal and The Blue Cat', with 'For Your Eyes Only' by Sheena Easton and some Lloyd Cole in between". What a twat.

As it happens, I'm not too bad. But only because I really do like it. Music, that is. My parents have good taste, if you discount Yes and Genesis (my father's Dark Years), and my brother is QUITE the hep-cat. Granted, I'm a complete knob in some respects; I've got an iPod and even make playlists (see what I mean?), but generally it's not too embarrassing.

The problem is when songs you don't really like GET to you. I've got a friend who cries if you even mention "Don't Give Up" by Gabriel 'n' Bush. I made her cry in a meeting once by just telling everyone about her problem. Brilliant.

Anyway, there I was driving down Tooting High Street from Wimbledon today, having completed an unmentionable cosmetic medical procedure that was surprisingly painless and in some ways quite amusing (two nurses poking a blindfolded me, going "cor look at THAT, it's BRILLIANT, we WISH you could see them just VAPOURISING"), and 'Chasing Cars' by Snow Patrol came on. They're alright, Snow Patrol, but I'm not that bothered. But every time I hear a tiny bit of one lyric (something like 'these three words'), I well up.

It is quite extraordinary. I've been testing myself. I made myself listen to it twice at home without crying (successful), and then made myself listen to it on the Stansted Express on Sunday night (not successful: tears just outside Harlow Town). I had to turn the telly over when the ad for their album came on (not successful: all they had to say was "current hit single 'Chasing Cars'", and I was sobbing), and I welled up when I read about it being the soundtrack to some film whose name I can't remember.

I don't know what to do. Wouldn't be as embarrassing if it was something good, like James Blunt.

Day 45: I Never Said I Was Original

I used to think I should be extraordinary and remarkable in some way. Then I grew up and realised I'm like everyone else and want the things most people want. Enough money not to worry, friends I like and a nice place to live; perhaps, one day when I am very old and smelling of wee, a relationship with a pleasant gentleman who will ignore the smell and love me for my mind. I think working is a bit last year, and in that I may differ from many people, but generally I'm astonishingly pedestrian.

Of course, life would be considerably enhanced if my belly were not a separate entity made of melted Play-Doh attached to my body by Magical Methods (in fact, I have decided that the day I can bend over without it making itself apparent is the day I can start sniffing around after gentlemen callers), and it would be good if someone gave me a million quid or fell in love with my splendid mind and well-formed eyebrows, but these things are mere pipe dreams, and must, for the moment, be put aside. (Apart from Play-Doh belly, which is subject to 6 visits to the gym every week and calorie consumption entered into spreadsheets.)

Anyway, there is a point to this. I am as interested as the next person in how people find my blog and I look at my Site Meter stats every day. Sometimes I even put on a pair of spectacles and smoke a small pipe when I'm doing it, just to enhance the experience. Many visitors from India in the last few days (hello India), for example. But my favourite is search engine stuff. So I shall now slip in to the worst of Blogging conventions and tell you that someone found this blog today by typing monkey fuck into MSN. But not just any MSN. MSN Arabian Peninsular. I laughed until my nose bled.

Day 45: I Am Sure That I Am Back In London

"How can you be so sure?", I hear you mutter. Well, apart from being in my own home (which is, as far as I know, in London) with my stupid fat cat (who is now an alcoholic), and apart from the fact that there are big red buses and that going up and down the road, I have been given some very strong clues:

1. Anyone crossing a road makes a particular point of avoiding pedestrian crossings. Instead, they choose the busiest part of the street and wander across it as slowly as possible staring at the sky, eating crisps and making mobile telephone calls.

2. Dinner at an OK 'gastropub' (fuck OFF) last night in Vauxhall (for foreign readers: 80% scuzzy, 20% full of people who wished they lived in Notting Hill) consisting of a steak, some green beans, a glass of red wine and an espresso cost £26. You could buy the whole of France for that, let alone a 17-course gourmet extravaganza featuring deep fried foie gras and live snails with hats on doing the can-can. And that's without the tip.

3. The parking restrictions in my road come into effect between 10 and 12 every day. At 10.01, a Lambeth Council Corsa drew up outside my flat and spewed out FOUR parking wardens. This is where my council tax goes. Other things they could perhaps invest my £75 a month include:

- filling the potholes that cause people to fall over and lose their bumpers
- removing the crack dealers from the end of my road
- culling the hoardes of squirrels only now busting some moves in my front garden
- cleaning the streets and that
- stopping the atonal singing Chinese Christians from setting up their Hammond organ outside Brixton tube and filling the air with vile aural pollution
- putting some books in the library
- employing people to answer the phone at Lambeth Council
- putting in some double red lines just before the railway bridge in Brixton so that all traffic jams in Brixton are avoided forever.

4. My gym is half an hour's uphill walk away. But I drive to the gym, and then spend half an hour walking uphill on the treadmill.

5. A bottle of wine costs £300.

6. There are mad people roaming freely in the street. One of the mad people attacked a friend of mine in Great Portland Street last week and smashed her face in. She has just got out of hospital for the second time in as many weeks having had her broken nose re-set.

7. All of my friends are at work, and most of them are not happy about it.

8. There are people EVERYWHERE, and a lot of them look quite cross.

Sigh.