The down belows are better – thank you to all who left good wishes here and elsewhere – and physically I'm up to normal speed; it's my mood that's been left a little more flat and requiring of "recovery".

This is partly to be expected anyway – I mean, it's December for frog's sake; never the best time to be Fish, with its lack of sunlight, Xmas whacking everybody round the head with a baseball bat, and plethora of "here's why the Noughties were bitchenly amazing already, that is if you don't count the many occasions where people were blown to bits" retrospectives already starting to appear in all media.

One of the main signs that my mood isn't all it should be is that things get stuck in my head. Normally thoughts flow through me like a river, and I can stand by the side and fish the best ones out [provided my tackle's in good form ], but at the minute the usual channels seem to be dammed up. The same water, and the same marine life, is just flowing round and round and round and round…

That's not to say it's always bad stuff that's stuck in there, but most of it is completely and utterly inconsequential.

Example. In the car today I had Iron Maiden's Seventh Son album on, including the nearly-hit single The Evil That Men Do. As was our wont at the time it came out – 88 or 89 – I was singing along to the chorus as "the abdomen of Bob goes on and ooooonnnnn…"

But, try as I might, I have absolutely no idea who the froggin' hell 'Bob' was, if he was of a portly disposition, or who decided to modify the lyrics that way for posterity. And the fact I can't recall this information is bothering me to the point where if I don't remember my brain may well explode with the frustration.

The only other 'Bob' which comes to mind is, similarly, from what now seems like ancient history…

"In fact, you're a girl with as much talent for disguise as a giraffe in dark glasses trying to get into a polar bears-only golf club."

Similarly: the other day my brain became absolutely obsessed with the idea of getting a new kettle. Yes, the old one had become furred-up to the point where it resembled my ex- in the month of the worldwide Veet shortage, but that's no reason to have every other thing on my [mental] shopping list dropping completely out of my head the moment I entered within range of a supermarket.

[Although I'm lucky, I guess, that I'm not the guy with memory/concentration difficulties I used to work with who went through a phase of buying gravy powder on every food shop, just in case he needed any. He ended up with about thirty cans of it in his cupboard before the phenomenon subsided. I've lost touch with him but I guess he's still getting through them.]

So: if any of you find your mails unanswered, your bitchenly amazing blog post / status update uncommented, or your Xmas cards unsent, please don't take it personally.

And if you happen to get a parcel off me, expecting some hot shooz, bonzer music or squid-related silliness, and it disappointingly turns out to be a box of gravy, enjoy.

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Today's Big Question: What [inconsequential, not depressive] things, tasks or memories get stuck in your head? How do you overcome this?

[title from this bitchenly amazing song/band]

Today: yet another in the occasional series of "letters I've composed but am too chicken to actually send".

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Dear Magazine Whose Name Begins With F. And Which Is Sold On The Top Shelf,

Thank you for your email, in which you say that the little piece I wrote for you as a favour to a friend was "fucking amazing" and that you'd welcome any more contributions I had.

Unfortunately, further down this mail you included the phrase "sadly we can't pay", which collectively must be four of the most depressing words in the English language [alongside "after the break, Emmerdale"].

If this was the sort of publication, as well as the sort of contribution, which came with a byline [journalese: big sod-off "THIS BITCHENLY AMAZING ARTICLE WRITTEN BY" box], or if I were wishing to collect published contributions for a resume/CV, I'd probably be happy to bash some more out. Since it isn't, I'm not.

Yours journalistically,

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Dear Poking-Their-Nose-In-Landlords,

Yep, I know, it's come round again: you're going to pop round to ensure that I'm not trashing your treasured property, even though over the past five years I've paid you thousands of pounds for the privilege of staying here and I haven't smeared poo all up the walls¹ yet so why I should start now is anybody's guess.

At least, though, I should say thank you for giving me three weeks' notice, which means I can take my time tidying up and sorting out the place rather than rushing it all over the course of a few days.

And, I guess, looking round, it *does* need doing, so I guess I should welcome being given the motivation for tasks that otherwise far too often go into the "maybe later" box – which I know from 37 years' experience often becomes the "doesn't actually happen" box.

Just keep your nose out of *that* box next to the bed, okay?

Yours rentingly,

1 You get to see some strange sights as a roving social care worker. Maybe I should suggest that the woman who does the inspection have a secondment as one, so that she can see how well my surface-messy-but-at-least-hygienic-and-non-destructive laissez-faire attitude to housework compares.

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Dear Brain,

For smeg's sake: why oh why, of all the plethora of programmes available to you on your multi-channel Freeview-enabled television, have you become enmeshed in medi-soap-drama Holby City?

Rosie Marcel, who plays Jac Taylor.

Yes, I know, they put the signed version of it on at 1am on Sunday night/Monday morning when there's absolutely nothing else on the telly or radio, but you could always read a book or something instead.

I know you have a patchy record with this kind of thing – Prisoner [CBH] may not count because you watched it for wobbly-wall reasons rather than to follow the drama, but your teenage flirtations with EastEnders, Neighbours and Home And Away do count against you – and we all know what an addictive personality you are: watching Holby may not be quite as self-destructive as drinking a half-bottle of vodka every day, but the psychological processes aren't that different.

[Although, to be fair, unlike vodka Holby has never made me throw up, sing badly, or write mawkish teenage emo poetry of a sort that makes me cringe whenever I re-read it².

...yet.]

Yours nurse-the-screens!-ingly,

2 I keep it in a folder somewhere because although it makes me cringe and want to chop it into tiny little pieces and feed it to a badger, it also reminds me that although occasionally I still get low and feel like the world is on top of me, it is never as bad as it used to be.

Dear Denizens Of [unnamed social networking/blog site];

You know what? If you post, say, forty updates a day, none of which have any relevance whatsoever, and people who have you on their friends list have to scroll through all of them to get to other people's entries, it's more than likely that they'll remove you from said list.

Yours faithfully,

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FaceBarse, for once, has the right idea: you can "hide" some people without actually de-friending them, or you can hide the updates from various applications [no, I don't want to be your pal on Vampire Fashion Wars 2000, and I don't care you just scored 250 points for sucking all the blood out of a Gucci badger].

The next stage is an interface where, using simple programming language [hey, I grew up on 1980s Spectrum BASIC], one could exclude various topics based on a simple language search; this would have been useful a couple of weeks ago….

10 IF update$ = "omigod MJ!!!1!!!"
THEN GOSUB temphide

…of course, one wishes one could extend this filter to the whole of the Interwebz;

10 IF comment$ = "All taxes are theft"
OR comment$ = "The BBC is full of Marxist
sympathizers"
OR comment$ = "Independent schools allow
a choice in education and social mobility
for the underprivileged"
THEN utterfail=1:
comment$ = FN ["A nice picture of some
meerkats instead"]

…the trouble is, on some sites it'd be so full of meerkats you'd think it'd've been an invasion…

[source. sorry, I just liked this image because it reminded me of a certain person who's often pictured with a flower in her hair...]

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Talking of the BBC and of letters: no response yet to the mail I sent on Sunday complaining that they were sucking up to the Nazi dwarf [though I didn't exactly put it in those words].

Nor has their been any feedback to the mail I sent regarding this 'news' story, in which I suggested that the untalented person therein wouldn't know what "different" means if it crawled up his arse and died, and that he should go back to hospital radio where whence he came. [Preferably in a hospital on, say, St Helena. However much the wirebirds will hate it. I'm all for conservation, but some sacrifices just have to be made.]

Perhaps the lack of feedback is because I put "pissoffunfunnymoyles@yahoo.com" as my email address.

Apologies if that is your actual address…

Lying gits.

When something says "ceilidh", which is, y'know, a Gaelic word, it kind of gives the impression to foolish consumers of Saturday evening social entertainment that it's going to have something to do with Irish music, or at least Scottish.

No such luck: the dancing on offer was generic rustic/country/barn dancing, about as Irish as Boutros-Boutros Ghali.

[not Irish, yesterday.]

That's not to say I had a bad evening – in fact it was a very good one, with Paula, her friends C, N & T, and respective kids.

[although I did find out that my phone camera is a bit crap in the dark]

I took part in two "turns", trying to follow the caller's instructions which veered on the completely abstruse in a way which suggested that the bloke's day job was writing computer manuals, and found that my rhythms, poise and general dancing demeanour has hardly changed in the past twenty years.

Yes, the grumpy semi-gothic teenager still in me disapproved of all this cavorting, and was much more happy sitting at the side chatting to everyone, but I'm glad that I managed to suppress that side of me enough that I gave it a small go at least.

I doubt though that this will mean I'll be taking up flamenco or salsa classes….

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And onto today, where I'm about to laze out at my folks' watching the motor racing. It's great to fall asleep to, but this is what counts as a "social occasion" between me and my Dad.

An unexpected twist to this week's race, though, comes from Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone's recent opinion that Adolf Hitler was "an efficient administrator" who "got things done". I wonder if he'll be at today's event, which is coming to us live from Germany?

It's not only a massively froggin' stupid thing to say, it's also – like the quip about Mussolini and trains – not even true. The thing Hitler wanted to do above all else was establish a thousand-year Reich and the invincibility of the master race. What actually happened was the division of Germany for half a century, after the "efficient administrator" shot himself in the head. That's really "getting things done", isn't it?

Stupidities aside, the thing I'll be watching out for is whether the BBC, who are showing the race, will bring up any of this in their coverage. As the rights holders for Formula 1, which they have to buy off a certain Mr. Ecclestone, they may be stuck between their journalistic integrity and their practical regard for not risking having their wires cut halfway through the race if they don't kowtow to him.

I hope the former wins out [and I'll be sending a complaint if they don't mention it]. I've always supported and applauded the BBC – nowhere near a perfect organization, but in a lot of ways the least worst – and I expect higher standards of them than I would if the race was being shown on, say, ITV. Take the risk, Beeb: ask him live on air what he really thinks about German history.

If the race then has to be replaced by two hours of light music, it'll be worth it.

Yay Day: I've spent today at Colchester Zoo, with Paula and her son. At four years old, he's just the right age for starting to stare with wonder at animals [even if he kept getting distracted and occasionally being more interested in sticks or hand-washing facilities].

Subjects discussed included trolls, Dada, Net meetings, "performance" and how to hit your bogies [the last was the kid's contribution].

Blurry out-of-focus why-is-that-gazelle-four-miles-away photos will probably appear on FaceArse later, if I don't fall asleep before I upload them.

It wasn't too crowded [unlike last time I went, when I was stupid/disorganized enough to take B. and crew on the Sunday of a holiday weekend] but was very hot. You'll find that all the animals pictured will be asleep under trees. Not even shouting at them that Ann Widdecombe was about to enter the cage and that it'd be a good opportunity to commence feeding time seemed to rouse them.

And I seem to have scarred the kid for life [or at least condemned him to social pariah status next year when he starts school] by teaching him the ancient Basil Brush catchphrase "Dirty Gertie from Number Thirty".

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Meh Day: Luckily, being out all day means I've missed the news output of television, radio and Interwebz. Including all the "OMG!!!" FaceArse updates, Twitters, etc.What? There's a whale in the Thames called John Peel already? Was it driving a Mercedes in Paris?

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Nae Day: A phone call at 10:30 from director J…., telling me the disappointing news that Henry Vee will be held over until 2010, citing pressure of time [five weeks between now and curtain up]; though another phone call from friend and fellow thespian M… later blamed the postponement on [districtcouncil]'s mess-up in double-booking the ruined castle that was to serve as our theatre.

Whichever, this of course means that the denizens of Suffolk [and further abroad] will miss the opportunity to see me in kilt and full Scots dress, reciting unintelligible semi-medieval prose in a bad Hamish and Dougal voice.

I [and the kilt] am, however, still available for weddings, funerals and Bar Mitzvahs…

[yes, this appears to be real.]

Back on nights after a week off, so my circadian rhythms are all over the place.

I was sitting in the cafe just now, having finished the paper and waiting for the second cup of coffee to hit my neurons, and grabbed a bit of paper to do a "to-do" list.

I reached for something to lean on to scribble out my daily tasks, and found I was holding a copy of "Spirit And Destiny" magazine.

The promise of an article on "foot reading" caught my eye, so I took a look inside. The article itself was the usual bollocks that you get in any horoscope, incorporating their usual style of generalisms which just about anybody could identify with if they were of a mind to [eg "bunions mean you're sometimes too generous"].

[The thought did cross my mind that "foot reader" would be an excellent career path: you get to fondle people's feet, spout a little bollocks du jour at them, then take a large chunk of their cash¹.]

Flicking through the rest of the magazine, though, what I noticed was how much it felt like the pr0n "jazzmags" of my teenage days. Half the pages were advertisements for premium-rate numbers, much like the sexline ads; only instead of a picture of a female model faking a pout of orgasm, there was a picture of a semi-moody male model with a "spiritual beard", and instead of the caption "SHARON wants you to listen whilst she takes it three ways from a Crosby Stills and Nash tribute band", it'd be "STEPHEN knows your secrets and can tell you what lies in your romantic future".²

Further evidence of the similarity between the two publishing genres was provided by the article "Cosmic Order Your Ideal Man".

"Cosmic ordering", the idea that if you wish hard enough for something the universe will somehow magically make it happen, is a favourite of Noel Edmonds on Deal or No Deal, in a sad attempt to make that show somehow more interesting than just "fifteen random people open a box". It can be handily refuted thus: I've spent five years wishing Noel Edmonds would get the frog off my telly, but the tosspot's still sodding there.

..

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Now, all of the above doesn't mean I disrespect real mysticism, any more than Big Jugs Monthly means I disrespect sex; nor do I think either of the genres should be suppressed, just detached from ostensibly more serious publications and put on a separate shelf.

Because for those of us who read, say, The Observer, and identify with its proud over-200-year tradition of serious liberal politics and rationalism, their introduction several years ago of a horoscopes page was as shocking and disappointing as if they'd decided to have a "Page 3" girl with their tits out every Sunday.

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Do you still buy magazines, or has the Web meant that you don't want or need to any more?

Which would you accept a free subscription to, and which do you hold in such contempt that you wouldn't wipe your bum on it?

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shoenotes:
* Blog title from this.
1 Arabian proverb: If Allah sends you a fool, take his money.
2 Which may or may not be a Crosby Stills and Nash tribute band, depending on your personal preferences.