29th January:

Apologies, gentle reader, for the irregular frequency of dispatches from the front line, but the general list of priorities at the moment reads as follows:

1. Work without falling asleep
2. Attend to baby when not at work
2. Sleep when not at work or attending to baby
3. Eat when possible

Published literature suggests that this phase lasts approximately 6 weeks, if you haven't thrown yourself out of a window before then. 3 weeks and counting, then....

In other news, a headline on the BBC news web site today reads "Muted Response to Shetty in India". Proof yet again, as if it were really needed, that the rest of the world views Big Brother as an irrelevant load of old cock.

Makes you proud to be British, innit?

23rd January:

Happy Birthday Titi.

It's the sleep deprivation that is the worst thing. It's like running through treacle.

Wearing clown shoes.

And a diver's helmet.

You get the idea.

20th January:

As someone vaguely famous once said, "that's the trouble with history...it's just one bloody thing after another."

18th January:

There are certain absolute and irresistible facts about life when a newborn baby comes into your home.

Amongst these is the fact that your hands will continually smell of Milton steralising fluid. There is nothing you can do about this. Fortunately you will also be able to detect that wonderful creamy-buttery-baby-head smell wherever you go in the house. This is nature's recompense for the Milton fluid.

Additionally, you will notice that even the simplest of routine and mundane tasks will start to require Herculean levels of concentration and effort. This is sleep-deprivation. Allied to this will be a sudden loss of ability to spell or write a coherent sentence and a constant nagging feeling that you've forgotten to do something important. Nature's recompense for this is the look on your baby's face when she relieves herself immediately after being fed. Absolutely priceless.

This list of useless facts is likely to grow over the coming weeks in direct proportion to your congenial host's experience of parenthood....

In other news, people on reality television shows are apparently a bit thick and racist.

No punchline required.

13th January:

You have to feel sorry for front-line staff working in the NHS. Every time the NHS appears in the news it seems to be because of some crisis, cock-up or strike/wages/management related calamity. As well as being pretty demoralising for staff, the way the NHS is talked about in the media must also surely give the public an impression that the service is, generally speaking, a bit shoddy. And that is being polite.

However, anyone holding this impression tends to throw it right out the window as soon as they actually come into contact with the pointy-end of our National Health Service during a time of accident, illness or trauma. Only then do we really see first-hand that the service is staffed by extremely caring, hard-working and dedicated people. Yes, they may work in far-from-perfect conditions and yes, they may be a bit of a political football, but your congenial host has this week experienced the kindness and compassion of doctors, nurses and widwives, and is extremely grateful to these people, many of whom went far beyond the call of duty in looking after the two most important women in his world.

I am humbled by their efforts and salute them for the wonderful work they do every day.

9th January:

The old adage runs thus - "those who can't do, teach". A little unfair probably, but it is true to say that for every creative vocation in life there also exists a plethora of critics, reviewers and commentators just waiting to pontificate over the merits of the end product. If those who can't do, teach, then those who can't do or teach presumably review.

Take Gordon Ramsay's latest restaurant in New York. Regardless of what you think of Mr. Ramsay himself, some of the reviews of his latest venture would have you reaching for the rolling pin and taking the 'journalists' in question out the back door for a quiet word. Not that he needs our help, i'm sure. Gael Green of New York magazine wrote "...we are shocked by a leathery lobster ravioli and an unseemly marriage of langoustine tails and maple-infused chicken (not to mention the bill)". So she's clearly not up her own arse at all then.

Perhaps it is human nature or just indicative of a certain collective insecurity that we keep people like Ms. Green in a job. We like having people tell us what is in and what is out, what is good and what is bad. Which is all bollocks, really, when you think about it. I'm even less sure what qualifications one needs to possess in order to apply for the role of 'food critic'. Are you fat, pretentious and a crushing bore? Congratulations, the job is yours! Wasn't Michael Winner a restaurant critic once? Hmmm.....

Maybe I do critics everywhere a disservice but it does seem so much easier in life to pick out the faults when examining the result of someone else's hard graft rather than doing it better yourself. It's an oft-held sneaky suspicion that in behind every snipey comment in a review is a thinly-disguised pang of jealousy because the reviewer never quite made it as a chef/painter/musician/author themself.

Ramsay comes, of course, with a reasonably big reputation and New York critics have secretly been looking forward to pouring cold water on his old-Europe sensibilities, apparently believing that chefs should crawl over broken glass whilst gushing humbly about the privilege of serving food to the Manhattan glitterati rather then telling them to fuck off and get over themselves.

Your congenial host refers to it as the Galloway effect: you might not like Gorgeous George, you might even find him to be a supercilious and rather odious toad of a man, but there was something terrifically satisfying about seeing him appear before that Congress hearing and give them a good old fashioned bollocking.

Wouldn't it be lovely if Gordon did the same?

8th January:

For some reason, the people of Britain expect their politicians to be model citizens. Granted, some of our elected representatives are sufficiently wooden to fit the bill superbly well, but perhaps we should be a little more tolerant of those who are not?

Today we learn that ex-Education Secretary Ruth Kelly took the decision to send one of her children to a fee-paying private school. This seems to have upset a few people. The same people, presumably, who feel that our politicians should be clean living bastions of morality who have long, happy and monogamous marriages, take their summer holidays in Dorset, use their local NHS hospital when they are ill and send their kids to the local comprehensive school. Whereas in reality the average MP's salary puts them in an income bracket where they can afford to have affairs with secretaries, holiday in Tuscany, get that exotic rash treated through BUPA and send little Ollie and Emma to a mid-ranking public school where they will have a miserable time fagging for future captains of industry and knights of the realm.

Professional politicians may have images and reputations to feed but they are also, lest we forget, human beings. Apart from Prescott. They drink, they smoke, they join ultra-conservative religious cults and they want the best for their kids. And who can blame them?

Apart from their constituents, of course.

5th January:

Happy Birthday, Dad.

There is no greater adventure in life than parenthood, apparently. If you live in the world of glossy magazines and shiny car adverts. For those of us in Normaltown, however, the prospect of imminently sharing your life with a smaller, more belligerent version of yourself who thinks that vomit is a decorative option can be utterly terrifying.

Of course, crumbs of comfort litter the ground. Mankind has been doing this sort of thing for millions of years, we are told. It’s really not that big a deal. Yes, you will be tired and yes you will discover that every item of clothing you possess has suddenly acquired little milky burp stains, but the joys of parenthood will far outweigh any such minor inconveniences. There, feeling reassured?

The latest statistics relating to divorce and separation beg to differ. Apparently, 1 marriage in 3 comes to an end (presumably a sticky one) during the first 12 months of a new baby entering the household. Sobering stuff. Maybe it’s the fatigue, maybe it’s the difficulties inherent in juggling career and childcare, maybe it’s just the feeling that life has suddenly become overwhelmingly complex where once there was freedom and simplicity. Any way you care to dissect it, 1 couple in 3 don’t make it through those first 12 months as a family.

Your congenial host is not an affluent person, but an au pair is suddenly starting to look like a thoroughly worthwhile investment.

4th January:

The Great God of Capitalism has a strange sense of humour sometimes.

Crap chain of motorway service station cafes goes into administration - good
British manufacturer of rather lairy sports cars goes into administration - bad

Natural selection or random circumstance? Who can say...

In other news, the media are collectively telling us all that breeding and keeping big dogs with large teeth is bad. As is letting them near small children. Yeah, thanks for that.

3rd January:

Some things in life are just wrong. Like eating something whilst sitting on the toilet. Or getting drunk and telling your father-in-law that you may have married the wrong sister. Or enjoying any film starring Adam Sandler.

Not that your congenial host has ever done any of these things, you understand.

On the reverse side of the coin, some things in life are very right indeed. Finding 5 Pounds in the back pocket of your jeans, birds singing in the trees, sunshine streaming in through the window as you sit down to fresh coffee and hot, buttery brown toast. That kind of thing.

The majority of things in life have a peculiar capacity to be both right and wrong. Like love. Love, according to the popular ditty, is a many splendoured thing. Love lifts us up where we belong. All you need is love. Love is also apparently blind. Or, more likely, deaf, dumb and teetering along a fine line between sanity and barking, dribbling madness. We all love and lose at some time or another. And then we come back for more. Our capacity for it is boundless, which is fortunate given that we don't always bestow it on people who are deserving nor share it for the right reasons. We commonly confuse it with sex, which leads to all manner of unfortunate situations, and we assume that it will live forever, when this is clearly rarely the case.

When love is wrong, it can make you feel like a hollow and empty shell. When it is right, however, you can revel in the rare and all too fleeting experience of feeling like a complete human being.

2nd January:

Politicians are not generally known for their sense of humour, and British Deputy-Prime Minister John Prescott does not break that mould. He was interviewed this morning on the Radio 4 'Today' programme and managed the considerable feat of being surly, contrite, belligerent, capricious and curmudgeonly all in the space of one 5 minute interview. Prescott sounded like a bear who had been woken from hibernation 3 months early and was determined to take it out on anyone within earshot.

Prescott is an odd breed of politician - the grumpy old Uncle of the party who will more than likely turn up late, have a few too many drinks, say something racist and then try and cop a feel of your new girlfriend's breasts. As opposed to your girlfriend's new breasts. That's next Christmas. And yet he is often credited by political commentators as being the one man who really enabled the New Labour project to succeed because his 'Old-Labour' background gave him credibility with the party's elder statesmen and allowed him to manage their influence. If Blair was the young man with the rictus grin and the perma-tan charm, Prescott was the back-room fixer, brokering deals between old and new and keeping the Unions quiet. No small feat, you might imagine. And yet he still manages to come across as being a rather unsophisticated operator - less intelligent than he probably actually is. Perhaps it was the astonishing affair with his secretary in 2006 (astonishing in the sense that any woman would want to get nekkie with him and examine his portfolio. Whoops, no, I forgot - he had that removed) or the fact that he all-to-readily chinned a member of the public who threw an egg at him (before eating the egg ) at a party meeting, Prescott does seem to be a man we can all rely on to put his foot squarely in it at precisely the wrong time. Which, in these spin-doctored times, is maybe something we should all be thankful for.

And have you seen his wife? Either that is Ian McKellen in drag or the embalmers got her in 1962 and nobody has noticed.

1st January 2007:

Happy New Year.

May the new year bring you everything you've ever dreamed of. However unlikely that may be. Because I hear the European Union no longer has an 'everything you've ever dreamed of' surplus mountain. Shame, really. We'll blame the Romanians.

The local children started setting off fireworks last night around 10pm. Before moving on to what sounded like mortars and light artillery. Mind you, having seen what some of them have done to their Citroen Saxos, I should perhaps not be surprised. Visions of a drive-by chavving. I thought those exhausts looked suspiciously large...

Prepare yourselves collectively for a day full of furniture, kitchen and bathroom adverts on the telly. 'Tis the season to buy sofas, fa la la la la, tee tum tum tum. One of the large sofa retailers (hint: DFS) had an advert running yesterday, seemingly every 10 minutes, to remind us all that their sale is now on and their stores ARE open on New Year's Day. Can you imagine that scenario?: "Well, the telly's crap and we've finished off the last of the cooking sherry and aftershave, so there's nothing left but a trip to DFS just to round off the perfect New Year's Day". How sad would you need to be to even contemplate it, never mind actually reach for the car keys? Do me a favour....