Slept for England last night. I hardly slept at all on Monday night, because of the afternoon powernaps I think. I nearly died from lack of beer on Monday night as well. Yesterday afternoon I detoured past the alco-mart to ambush the beer shelves. 6 weans of Becks, 2 of the biggest bottles of Hoegarten money can buy, and a large bottle of La Chouffe for the serious. I proceeded to lighten the burden of human existence by sucking down one after the other. Priceless.

Phil came home with ingredients for a green curry with fish. It was fanastically good, the exact level of heat one would want from a green curry. One of his journo buddies, who writes for The Independent was round for a visit. The politician arrived, as usual, a couple of hours late. I avoided first name basis as there was Saeed and Shahid. Phil said something to the effect of 'If I can get Zahid round as well we can have phonetic nomenclature nightmare soirée...'

Shahid the politician gets Phil to publish his own brand of spin. Shahid is promoting himself inside the party to gain some kind of status, probably that of an MP. It is such a strange game to play, politics. From time to time though, Shahid will need to design and print some new self propaganda. This is usually done in the small hours, Shahid's underground propaganda sweatshop in Maida Vale, industriously planning new layouts for his pamphlets. Shahid bought a printer which takes up half of Phil's room. It's so big, you'd want to chain it down. It looks dangerous, like heavy machinery, you could probably feed it things, other than expensive paper. So the political party rolls into town. I don't think Shahid ever sleeps. The Maida Vale sweatshop is one of his locations, 'Hot Offices' - an HQ of sorts, yes, his printing house. Everyone in the house turns into a supporter/employee when the carnival comes to town. He had bought a new suit, Hugo Boss, very nice. We got a showing of the suit, twirls and all. He also had his new laptop with him, a Dell, 17" laptop with walnut dash style case. Very business-like, very nice, i'd love one of those... for the processing power of course, fuck the walnut dash.

His PA or adviser, lifestyle guru, groupie, style-council or whatever she is is quite interesting, because I'm not sure which of the afore mentioned she is. It's like they're on the campaign trail, our caravan just another place to work, anybody present is by default part of the brigade, we all share the same interest. She offered great advice on a shirt for the new suit, 'floral Paul Smith styles' is what my good ear picked out. My beer induced haze and the debate on BBC 2 with Jeremy Paxman caused me to be more selective than usual. Sometimes I expect a monkey on a monocycle clanging cymbals to come whizzing through - I wouldn't even bat an eyelid, even if it greeted me.

It's all great fun anyhow. Someone like Shahid is a great resource for possible characters - in fact many of Phil's mates are, far from boring.

Dollar has expressed a dislike for Edinburgh. She wants to come down and spend her evenings with me and the telly. That is fine by me, she just can't stay there. She is going to ask Aunt Ruby if she can use their flat in Warwick Avenue, which I think is a great idea. Having Dollar around is like having Dr Seuss, the cat in the hat about. Nutty, slightly demented entertainment from someone, who really is one of those people who think differently. Here is a picture.



Just got back in from lunch. Today was Irish day in the canteen, naturally we can attribute that to St Patrick. Black pudding with apple and cabbage, colcannon, stew and a brothy sausage number adorned the hotlights. Once again, I was to be served by someone who didn't speak or understand a fucking word of English, 'English I say, as spoken in England, where you now find yourself standing - you u-n-d-e-r-s-t-a-n-d?' His charades was not up to European standards either. I mean how the fuck does one act out 'colcannon', 'mash with cabbage'? So I did his job for him, I served myself while he watched. How can they employ people in the service industry who don't speak the language? Why does the English world feel obliged to absorb inconsistency and exception to the norm, and then expect us to adapt? Would the French employ me in a corporate canteen with the extent of my french? Je ne peux pas ne sais pas!

A new kind of blurb has appeared on the internet. Interactive ads that appear on a layer over what you are viewing. They are not picked up as popups and they are all over the place. The most irritating of its kind, our world is saturated by spam, a constant flotsam and jetsam of foamy garbage has permeated our lives. All we have been reduced to as humans is to absorb advertising. I feel sick and depressed about it, we are, or are becoming absolutely useless. Are we as humans making ourselves redundant, and in our strife for convenience working our way out of the job of being human beings? Phil sent me a rant to the editor of The Guardian newspaper, because of similar popup ads on their site...

Have you tried reading any of your content with the ad for the Money
Unlimited whirring cogs ad-animation in full swing? Migrainous isn't it? I
clicked on the offending ad to leave a message for the company concerned to
give them a piece of my mind only to discover it was an 'in-house'
production - pointless. You might regard the fact that I felt compelled to
do this as a shining example of 'traffic' that your ads can generate, but I
simply view it as a stinking turd deposited atop an article by Noam Chomsky
that, as a result, I can't be bothered to finish.

Please stop it.

A few weeks ago I sent a parcel for Dave back to South Africa with Gail. I should never have disclosed the contents of the box. It looks like he might be getting them tomorrow, despite my attempts to get a courier to pick them up and take them away. Simply put, I love my family, it's just that the majority of them have been seriously inflicted with unreliability, I'm sure though, that tey have the best intentions. They have been removed from the box (that must have something to do with the fact that are rediculously expensive) and are now on their way to some reception in a building in Pretoria. 'Oh, look', said someone 'A very nice pair of sunglasses'. Apparently they were removed from the box in order to make space, for a box 10cm X 5cm, I'm not sure there's room for a box that size. My personal theory is that they had probably been removed from the box weeks ago (by my ostrich-like sisters, who would ambush anything expensive, shiny or just not theirs and claim it), spent the last 3 weeks on Alice's head, the box got binned, and now that they have been exposed to the world, they might as well stay that way. It's like looking after someones house, and rearranging the furniture. Simple rules apply, if it's not destined for you, then leave it alone. Simple, you'd think wouldn't you. No Xan, not in this world.

I finally decided to put a picture of my family up. This is them enjoying a day out on their bicycles.