29th February:

A happy leap year to one and all.

On the same subject, happiness is being able to enjoy all of the influence without having to take any of the responsibility.

18th February:

Regular readers of this increasingly irregular blog will know that your congenial host has a relationship with his country of birth that can only be described as "uncomfortable". In a nutshell, I go through phases of missing it terribly and then disliking it intensely.

A flying visit North at the end of last week did little to tip the scales convincingly in either direction. However, it did yield one illuminating comedy moment: I was walking from the local train station to my parent's house and, as I passed one particularly well manicured lawn, I noticed an empty bottle of Buckfast that had been tossed on to the grass. Except that someone had ripped the label off the bottle. So drinking wine from the bottle in public during the day as you walk down the road is perfectly acceptable. But imagine the shame if anyone sees what brand you bought. Priceless.

Poverty and education are still massive social issues. Anyone landing in Sauchiehall Street (Glasgow) from Mars would assume that the Scottish national sport consists of throwing chips at pigeons. And I have a problem with that. Just as much as I have a problem with those kids who called me a "poofy bastard" when I was 9 years old just because I was capable of stringing an articulate sentence together using words of more than 2 syllables without breathing heavily through my mouth.

Scotland may have admirable aspirations to be a dynamic and entrepreneurial small nation within Europe, but it won't come close until it tackles the ignorance, intolerance, bigotry and poverty that lie far too close to the surface of daily life in the central belt of the country.

My country gave me many good things - a dry sense of humour, an ability to see through even the thickest bullshit, a healthy hatred of wind and rain at the same time and a curious fondness for caramel wafers. And I took these things with me when I moved on. Which is what people inevitably tend to do when they've tasted other parts of the world.

It's good to remember your roots but sometimes it's even better to be a stranger in a strange land.

13th February:

According to a recent report, the critical period in any relationship comes 2 years after getting together – this is the point after which sexual attraction fades and has to be replaced by something else in order for the coupling to survive. Which will come to a shock to many people who thought the critical period was actually at 9am the next morning when they had sobered up and looked over at whomever was occupying the other side of the bed.

In love, as in many other things, it is easy to allow yourself to get into a routine and get complaisant. You don't set out for this to happen, it just kind of sneaks up on you somewhere along the road - a kind of dreadful familiarity and predictability that stalks your every moment together. Until one morning you wake up and realise that convenience is the only thing holding you together. I say this from personal experience with previous partners and by drawing from the experiences of those around me. One of my dearest friends noted that after only 6 months together he and his girlfriend had settled into such a routine of domestic drudgery that she literally became something he inserted himself into 3 times a week when she wasn't cooking and doing his ironing. Which can't be a good thing for either party.

The secret to a long and happy life together? Well, it's an old cliché but having your own separate interests is probably a good thing, and spending time apart should be seen as healthy rather than as a threat. The rest is more than likely down to diet, exercise, having a sense of humour and realising that nobody else could ever really understand you like she does.

4th February:

Despite my dislike of spam (the emails rather than the tinned food substitute), one does have to marvel at the number of metaphors and euphemisms that these people come up with for the male member. Just when you think you'll seen them all, another one pops into your inbox and leaves you scratching your head in grudging admiration.

I'm not sure if anyone has ever taken the time to collect all of these terms together to create a compendium of cock, but there must surely be a market for this kind of thing.

After all, someone has already taken the time to find 99 different words for breasts.