The Game of Players

To hell with expensive sequencers...I must learn an instrument. I need a musical outlet that does not involve the tiresome glare of the computer monitor; Sherlock Holmes had his violin, Nero had his fiddle, Jonathan King had his singers...which is why he’s now in prison.

And so the question remains. Which musical instrument shall I learn to play?

Guitar: This is unlikely. I cannot afford this and I haven’t got nearly enough delusions; in 2005, a guitarist is legally bound to spunk fifty pounds at Toni & Guy every fortnight to look like a member of the Strokes...only you, of course, are completely different... Your band has a manifesto, going it alone to smash the state with a brand new take on music...spiky, angular garage rock. Because nobody else is doing that at the moment.

You have one of two attitudes...you are here to save rock and roll, or here to destroy it. Both methods involve playing spiky, angular garage rock. Incidentally, it is worth remembering that you are not the first person ever to have bought a Stooges CD.

Anyway, I am not sure how well I could get on with a guitar. If someone at an otherwise convivial gathering suddenly brings out a guitar, I will happily garrotte them with a spare string. And Wonderwall? Cack wall, more like.

Drums: I’m not nearly sweaty enough for this.

Keyboard: The keyboard is a strange presence in the average guitar band, always tucked away to the side of the stage with bad promises of tinny Bossa Nova rhythms. Think John Shuttleworth and tremble.

Many bands merely shoehorn in a keyboard to satisfy the clingy little brother of the drummer. This spotty herbert has never played an instrument and only got in because he held onto the singer’s leg with both arms screaming “oh, pur-lease let me be in your band!”. There is no material need for the instrument in this case. And the resulting keyboard part amounts to the occasional electronic choir that plays whenever the singer is flailing about and emoting that his latest shag marathon is more transcendent than Romeo and Juliet. The part consists of a lengthy note every eight bars and ends up so far down in the mix it can only be heard by putting an ear to a glass on the speakers.

However, if a band requires a lot of keyboard -- and we’re talking parts so twiddly even Dr T would struggle -- then the band normally also requires furry animals skating around a lunar landscape on stage, and album covers that depict a bunch of unicorns leaping over Peter Gabriel in a tutu. These people can be safely dismissed as rubbish.

The middle ground, then, is the hallowed turf. But even this is problematic because the keyboard is not a good look. Even when the part is an immeasurable contribution to some haunting piano-led ballad, you are still limited to standing there awkwardly, unable to express emotion beyond pushing down the keys, like,really hard, screwing up your eyes with your head pointing to the heavens and thus giving the crowd an intimate view of your sweaty Adam’s Apple. This move does not reek of romance and looks to the crowd like you’ve just realised you forgot to get your tax return in on time.

Ah, but what of the piano player? Sad little men who have been playing smoky clubs for so long that their handshake leaves a gloopy residue of tar on your fingers? Or fat, tantrum-prone bald men whose dress sense has long since shrivelled like a salted snail? Hmm...but at least if you buy a grand piano it comes with a free dolly bird in a red dress who will lie languidly all over it and sing like she’s popped a tub of testosterone pills. Please note...she is out of your league and she IS wearing underwear.

Singing: Good lord. There is no chance in hell I would do this. If I was forced in front of the microphone, even Mark E Smith would call my performance surly and uncommunicative. Bollocks to singing. Think Jeremy Hardy on I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue...or William Shatner duetting with Lee Marvin whilst being kicked in the teeth.

Bass: Bass players are seven foot tall and spend their days plucking at strings the size of baby’s arms. The instrument does not seem to be a very satisfying prospect on its own, and I doubt I would have much fun composing on the thing.

But a killer bass line is a thing of beauty and a joy forever, and in a band your guitar is bigger and weightier than the cocky lead guitarist’s. This is worth remembering when the inevitable band “dynamics” begin to take shape and you keep getting the heavy lifting jobs. However, you will soon become unhappy with the direction of the band, generally because those ten minute bass solos are beginning to feature less and less frequently. You will leave and set up a new band where you will of course be the star, only for nobody to join unless they can play guitar, relegating you to bass and starting the whole cycle over again.

So on reflection, perhaps not.

Twiddly Knob Guy: With sub-genres blossoming all over the place, there is frequently room, even in a guitar band, for a speccy kook to stand in front of a bank of equipment and twiddle things to little obvious effect. This guy never breaks a sweat and is the only member who is not pretending to dress for a gig with such little thought.

If he attempts to dance or engage with the audience, you may falsely believe there is a gas leak in the room. In fact, the sound you hear is merely the sound of hundreds of people simultaneously sucking in air through their teeth.

Myself, I do not wear glasses nor need to. But I can believe I can learn to twiddle knobs... I’d start turning them clockwise, and perhaps with a little practice and intensive training I would learn anticlockwise too.

And if I get jealous of the singer strutting about the stage, stripped to the waist and dripping sweat into the open-mouths of a bunch of screaming female fans, I could always turn his mike down, yank a compressor unit from the rack and bring it down on the scumbag’s head. Hah!

Conclusion: I’m a bad man.

Once More On the Game

What? Are we in Belle du Jour territory here? Well, of course not, we’re simply labouring under the yoke of a lame pun today, and not a poorly received cash-in book in sight.

So, I tried to create a card game yesterday and failed miserably. My aim was to put together something that involved the concept of rule changes...that a player had the chance of changing the rules as they played but without giving them too much power to overwhelm the game. There are reams of stuff about this on the Internet and I dipped into it a year or two ago with fascination; but for the most part the games described reeked of academia...or were played more as entertainment for an audience. I wanted something that could be played by a handful of players that involved skill...

The initial ruleset was to be simple – I was basing the game loosely on Whist – and the players could build on this ruleset as they went along, hopefully creating strange loopholes and groundwork for future cunning. But the damn thing proved impossible. Too many inherent contradictions. And whenever I added a rule to prevent a stupid situation from coming up, another problem popped up at the other end. I gave up and began to consider why some games work and others do not.

For a game to be great it must allow for the greatest possible variation from the simplest possible ruleset. This allows a player to grasp the rules immediately, whilst allowing the development of strategies and, crucially, the ability to become skilful in the game over time. This idea of skill should allow original thought and not simply rely on the need to memorise.

On the latter point it could be raised that the greatest exponents of a given game have become so close to the strategy and rules of a game that they know how to react to any given offence; in a way, for them the whole game exists within the realms of the memory. But what the hell, eh? We’re talking about having fun here. Let’s boil this thing down to one of the simplest rulesets we know...Noughts and crosses. This is a game for children and can never be played by the average adult because we have learnt every possible defence to any given offence by the time we reach double figures. Unless one’s pencil and paper skills are particularly blunted, every game will end in a stalemate, negating the whole point of the process. So the ruleset is simple...and the variation is limited.

The limits placed on strategic thought in a game are of great interest if we wish to analyse the game. Whereas the game of noughts and crosses is inherently limited and is therefore little more than a childish distraction, the game of scissors, paper, stone is far more interesting. Again, the ruleset is simple, but the variation here is surprisingly large. Bullshit, right? It certainly seems that way on first sight.

Ah, but consider how the game is played out of the realms of mere gameplay. The limits around this game are not focused on the physical number of rules or moves...in fact, the large expanse surrounding the game is the result of the game’s inherent psychological aspects. Psychology is one of the broadest churches in the religion of skilfulness. In successive games of PSS, the player builds a history with his opponent of game results which affect the outcome of future games based on how a player thinks...bluffs, second guessing and basic personality all play a part, along with the more obvious aspect of luck. Even one off games will be coloured by each player’s analysis of the other person’s most likely move, with personality analysis filling in for game experience.

Despite sounding like the waffle of a post-match interview with a pretentious manager, it can be said that football and chess are alike in the above respect. Both rulesets are lean and easily grasped, but the variation is vast, unless you happen to be playing a team recently purchased by a poisonous billionaire...but that’s not for now. However, both games still contain rules that slip under the barrier of simplicity. The offside rule is a curiosity because it is a technical rule that acts as a piece of chipboard nailed up to hide the perceived problem of attackers hanging around the goal line, rather than what feels like a fundamental and immediately obvious foundation to the game. In chess, a couple of oddities exist that, whilst all part and parcel of the game, still stand out as being not so fundamental. Castling and en passant pawn capture both fall into this category. Even the simplest rulesets need the occasional protection from exploitation.

Complicated rulesets, though, will frequently elevate the papering over of cracks to an art form. Rules can begin to contradict and counteract one another, creating loopholes and potential exploitation. With the worst examples of exploitation, a player may become ‘invincible’, defined here as a strategy that cannot be countered as it is set up and eventually executed. However, many games allow the state of invincibility provided each player has a fair chance of preventing the strategy from moving from the stage of setting up to the execution. An imperfect example of this would be the star player on the football pitch shooting on goal...the defence must prevent the situation from occurring in the first place, but if they fail in preventing the set-up, thus allowing the execution of the shot and possible goal. The execution may be unstoppable, but this is the fault of the defence, not the ruleset. However, if there was a rule allowing the kick-off to begin on the penalty spot with the star-player ready to go...the other team would be right to collectively growl like Marge Simpson on a bad day.

Another example of exploitation is quite the reverse; the game that can too easily be stalemated by a player. In chess, a stalemate is difficult to achieve when the player skill levels are mismatched...but when they are evenly matched, stalemate is more frequent, which seems logical. Some people dislike the ability for a game to end in a draw, but in context of a series of games, they make more sense. I would elaborate, but this damn thing is never going to finish if I did.

The point here is that the rules of a ruleset must be clearly thought out, logical and disallow unfair situations, whilst offering the chance to create unpredictable strategies. A player must lose because either luck or skill (or indeed both) is against them, not the game itself. A game lives or dies on whether it is perceived as fair.

You can apply these concepts to computer games, although this is too broad an area to be worth analysing in one small paragraph. In brief, computer games that have impenetrable rules and only have one or two winning strategies that can be repeated over and over to win will be found out and thrown in the river with a safe tied to their feet. We must be grateful that computer games began on primitive technologies that forced simple rulesets...those early designers had to squeeze the most fun and variation from a handful of 2-D asteroids, otherwise another game would be along in a minute to take the children’s 10 pence pieces for themselves. This means that the lessons from these early days could percolate down the years as technology became stupidly complicated. Despite this, bad games with silly rulesets come out all the time...provided a celebrity is involved somehow, the public will swoon and hand over their thirty quid.

Ah, another tangent to resist. Which is as good a place to finish as any.

So we appear to be one conclusion short of an argument today. This subject is massive and I can see many places in which I could have taken the lines of thought and ran for miles. Many people already have, and if I had Internet access as I write this I would chuck in a couple of links. Ah, well. If you give a damn about any of this, chuck some words into Google, although don’t be surprised when inputting the title of this post doesn’t return the results you expect.

Cold Days of Fumbling Incompetence

Mother of shitty death! What the hell is wrong with me? I am tumbling through canyons of ineptitude like a suicidal Wile E. Coyote, unable to function without bodging the job in hand. Give me a pair of Acme Jet-Powdered boots and I’ll launch into the air and explode like a firework... give me an elastic band and I’ll catapult myself into the nearest cactus.

Yes, this morning has been a doozy. On the way to work, I left the train a station early while changing lines on the Underground. The second I realised this, I turned round to discover every centimetre on the entire train had just been filled. Faces were in armpits. Children were drowning in the thighs of fat old women. And at least fifteen people were now unwittingly pregnant. Hell, you couldn’t have hammered a nail into that vile scrum. I looked around and tried to look noble in defeat, only to burst out laughing after hearing Peter Jones telling a joke on Just a Minute in my earphones. Beaten, I hid behind the chocolate machine and plotted against mankind.

Okay. It’s little things like that, and they are adding up by the minute. I am presently assembling a report, and in my newfound spirit of uselessness I have been telephoning the wrong people for information, whom I have attempted to ring back once I realised the error only to reach quite another set of wrong people who had no idea what I was banging on about.

The weekend was no better. An unwanted but essential trip to Ikea on the Friday evening ended with us missing the last direct train by an hour and a half. That is breathtakingly poor. We had to go on a bizarre and circuitous route that ended up with us tumbling into the tube station and practically having to lasso the last train of the day as it left the station. Whilst my flatmate decided to risk one last tube change, I took my chances on the buses. Almost inevitably, five minutes before I got to the stop an accident blocked the traffic for half an hour, meaning no buses could get through. Miserable and cold, I arrived home at 2.00am, forty five minutes after my flatmate.

The furniture was delivered on the Saturday and I went straight to B&Q and bought a hammer. Once home again I was drunk with power. The entire flat became perforated with nails leaving the front room looking like an S&M dungeon. So I hung up all the pictures, calendars and clocks I had been hoarding, and stepped back to admire my work.

Every single thing was in the wrong place. In my euphoric moments of hammering I had set back the cause of DIY by four hundred years; the clock was too high, the picture hooks were crooked, the calendar was fatally lopsided... And as I cursed myself for this attack of overconfidence, the picture over the fireplace fell off the wall. My flatmate came home and offered his fair and balanced opinion; the bile that splattered across the walls was an inch thick.

On the back of this badness, I turned my attention to the furniture and somehow managed to assemble the simpler items without incident. Well, I was more than happy. My toolbox had finally come good... but the next day these smug reflections were dashed. I decided to build the wardrobe on Sunday evening despite my tired hands and heart. With my head again filling up with stumbling insanity, I failed to notice there were two sets of instructions...one for assembly by one person, one for assembly by two people. Naturally, I followed the two person instructions and almost destroyed the damn thing for want of an assistant. Once I had put the walls up, I spent about fifteen minutes locked in a silent-movie comedy, madly dashing around the damn thing trying to stop it bursting open like the cabinet at the end of the magic trick in which the pretty woman reappears in a puff of smoke.

The wardrobe, which was twice the size I had imagined, was eventually complete, and to hell with the wonky doors and handles that wouldn’t screw in all the way. I spent half an hour shoving it across the room into the corner only to find the space was too small by a sizeable margin. So now this birch monolith was wedged in a corner with no obvious way of dragging it out again.

It’s still there. Occasionally at my desk here at work I fancy I can hear the doors flapping in the breeze, tapping out my name in Morse Code along with the promise of bodily harm. But in a confrontation, I feel confident...I have a hammer and this is Ikea furniture we’re talking about. Hell, strike that... that bastard would collapse if I coughed at the wrong moment.

Hmm. Ikea...Ikea...funny kind of word, really. The more you say it, the less sense it makes. Rather like the store’s floor plan, in fact. Ah, but this is a dull branch line of familiar abuse...enough people have thrown rocks at Ikea and I would refer you to them for a full criticism.

The question I now have to answer is simple: what the hell is going on in my head? Over the last few days there have been countless other tiny moments that have bathed me in the stark light of cack-handedness. This is not my normal state. I cannot chalk it up to stress since my job is not inclined that way. I have settled into the flat nicely and feel fairly good about it (except for that electrical hum that turned out to be a poorly functioning fridge in the flat upstairs...hopefully this should be sorted soon), so that cannot be the reason either. Hmm...I don’t know. Astrologers would put it down to some planetary movement but I know better. Hell, a dead dung beetle knows better. Perhaps I have become complacent now that I am settled here, and have begun to lose concentration in matters to which I am still fairly new. Like the learner driver who thinks he knows it all until the lollipop lady lies sprawling on the bonnet, I must be wary of such thoughts. Vigilance must be my watchword.

Jesus, now I can feel my hands shaking; I am now so useless that I even fear for this very text, and it is all I can do to stop my hands moving of their own volition towards the delete key, to accidentally destroy something I have been writing for the last hour. So I must press save, save, before it is too late... There, done.

But it’s not over yet. Doubtless I’ll hurl the floppy out of the window on the journey home, briefly and fatally having mistaken it for a disk full of images of Tessa Jowell in her underwear, or something. On this form, I wouldn’t be at all surprised.

Echoes Down the Canyon

The public are restless today. And who can blame them? News that the good ship Aurora sailed no further than the Isle of Wight, thus ruining hundreds of luxury cruises, must be weighing heavily on their minds. The cruise has now been abandoned. I cried for hours over that one.

Whatever the cause, there are some strange outbursts of choral bellowing this morning in the railway station at which I work. And this is not an isolated incident. Last week a choir was singing its heart out to the accompaniment of a dozen Tsunami charity buckets. In such circumstances the station comes across as a living breathing entity, the blood running through its veins unpredictable and sometimes poisonous. Today the weird disturbances do not seem unfriendly. What the hell? With such a mass of people, you have an audience or a mob at a moment’s notice. Which can prove tricky – Terry Pratchett, I believe, once pointed out that the intelligence of a mob is the average intelligence of all those assembled divided by four. Which makes sense – a mob cannot form out of disparate wisdom...rather, they follow the principle of monkey see, monkey do. Monkey applaud the rubbish street artist. Monkey punch a member of staff because his train was late. Monkey disperse like the fucking clappers.

Those people outside with their cryptic roars, to extend the body metaphor, are a plate of food swallowed by the station and is now passing through its belly, perchance to cause indigestion or perhaps not...but within the hour the legs will part and they will be shat out into the sewer -- the Underground -- to float swiftly away to distant shores. Students of this kind of thing may wish to shoehorn in a joke about coming out the Arsenal, but such filth will not find a home here.

Oh, alright. Cockfosters. There, I said it.

A general hubbub, though, can be soothing. Some noises will always keep you awake, whereas some do the opposite, often in defiance of logic. Even traffic noise through the bedroom window can be acceptable, provided it is fast flowing and not prone to cars at traffic lights playing the well-known driving CD “Loud Shit for People Who Think the Chicks Really Dig a Pair of Cheap Blue Lights on the Bonnet of a Nova”.

After moving to my new flat in the south east of London, I have found the area wonderfully quiet, despite a situation for the first week where I couldn’t sleep because of the noise...made by the Landlord. Whoops! (To his eternal credit he sorted it out the second I brought the subject.) However, the quieter the sonic landscape externally, the more you notice the little things. Such as the electrical hum that comes through the walls and bounces around the bedroom like a beam of bad energy in a box of mirrors, making it impossible to track down the source. This is not a Soothing Noise, in the same way that distant music is always intrusive. I would rather have the aircraft passing overhead than this slight humming. Hmm...I suspect this is a problem with no solution and within a few weeks I will have grown used to it. Well, I bloody well hope so...you will know if I do not if I post a message consisting entirely of letters pressed by the average headbutt. Something like:

Jhnmuyt.

Hey, what do you know? An African village. And that particular experiment was brought to you by the good people at Everyone Else is in a Meeting Ltd.

I am still unable to make successful use of my time in the office when the work is slack. Here, my mornings are busy with a major deadline daily at 11am, after which the rope is not so taut and I can relax somewhat. But I want to make use of the gaps I always seem to fritter away...and bear in mind that my previous job was so uninvolved you could drive a herd of hippos through the spaces between work. I should be used to it. Once I had spent the first few weeks writing a series of scripts for a work in progress sitcom, I hit the doldrums and did more window gazing than anything else. (Right up to the point I began writing these things...) Sure, there were a few little games. Flicking paperclips into a cup was one.

What? Ye gods, what a nadir. This is what I am talking about. I need some kind of inspiration, and a blank screen is not a source of such a thing. All I need is something to focus on and I can finally...no, that’s it. I’m out of inspiration. Besides, my stomach is growling and my eyes are growing weary. So now I save this mess to floppy disk ready to post it from home tomorrow. The wonders of the information age, eh?

A Man's Life in the Honours System

Knighthoods and the honours system in general are surreal and strange things that we only tolerate because the system has been there forever, and because there are greater things to march against than the allocation of puffed-up trinkets.

But there are many weird aspects of the system that can still raise the odd frown. Step forward, Mark Thatcher...preferably colliding painfully with some prison bars in the process.

Thatcher is a man who worked his arse off to become a Sir – through the act of being born – and could now lose his title if MPs have their way. Labour MP Neil Gerrard is sponsoring a motion to carve the metaphorical flesh from the very body of this self-satisfied criminal...and of course this is a good thing. But it is sullied by the question of title inheritance. How the hell can such bottom-feeding scum can be awarded his Sir-dom simply by wriggling through the vagina of some wicked she-beast? In England we are slowly shrugging off this national malaise that, through its inaction, is complicit in allowing the notion of automatic privilege, unearned and unbalanced, to continue passing its way down through each rotten generation of power-crazed, self-regarding idiots. But only slowly. The fuss when the House of Lords – however castrated those robed whores may be these days – was seen fighting tooth and nail with the government over fox-hunting is a case in point.

None of this criticism is new. And perhaps unnecessary...if you look deep into the eyes of the system you see something that says it knows how ridiculous it looks, but it would never admit it. Maybe it will burn itself out eventually without water from our meagre buckets. Interestingly, many people who sound off about the class system are doing so entirely from an “in theory” point of view in which the anti-establishment viewpoint is expected and unquestioned. Their genuine, unspoken view is one of indifference, and indeed even have a sneaking affection for it all, having found themselves satisfied with their own lot in life and therefore able to wallow in nostalgia for the English way. A kind of Gallic shrug mixed with an American cry of “What-ever.”.

Besides, unless you are part of the establishment in the first place, why would you be yearning for such a reward? Becoming a Sir results in little else but responsibility. Once you receive your knighthood it is a legal obligation to turn up at a bar of your choice once a week and demand a triple brandy before accusing the poor of being wilfully stupid, grabbing the nearest woman’s breasts and then falling off your stool mumbling about national service and gin. Also your moustache must bristle indignantly and your top hat shoot off into the air with a penny whistle sound effect when you hear somebody mock the honours system...especially if you spent your youth peddling your soul as some kind of class rebel. Finally you must be free to play your bad music at any given party thrown by the Queen. And if she gets pissed and requests Smack My Bitch Up to the tune of Greensleeves, your full compliance is expected. The penalty for failing to discharge any of these responsibilities will result in a Beefeater kicking you in the balls. It’s a man’s life in the honours system.

Of course, many knighthoods are simply rewards and hush-money for massaging the rotten flesh on the government’s grotesque hunched back. The new issue of Private Eye demonstrates a perfect example; Mark Allen, M16 director in charge of operations in Iraq until recently, arose as Sir Mark Allen in the new year honours despite being responsible for the “appalling intelligence failures over Iraq”. So next time you fuck up in your job...well, let’s say that you are an air traffic controller who hears the Voice of God in your head and in a crazed stupor decides to circle all airborn craft around in a bizarre spirograph resulting in multiple collisions and hundreds of fatalities. Then, whatever you do, don’t forget to take a few pills and fill in the blue form entitled “Gizza Gong”, available at post offices nationwide.

But what of those who refuse honours? And more importantly, would you accept if one was offered? I have spoken to many people who say that they would refuse, but the situation is an artifical one that bears no genuine philosophy. Everybody who says that they would turn a gong down would never do anything to earn one, myself included...and no, there are no titles for being Bestest Mate in the Whole World, nor will anyone be up in front of the Queen in recognition of their ability to fart in time to Who Let the Dogs Out? To be in the position to be given an honour would be one in which the mindset of the recipient would automatically be different to the one that proudly speaks of refusal. If you were enough of a shit to claw your way to the top of a proud British arms company, say, and have finally hung up your holsters, why would you come across all high-minded when the old boys network comes good with the goodies?

Perhaps what we need are a bunch of new titles...that is, Bad Honours. For those who offend. So when Mark Thatcher is stripped of his Sir, perhaps he should be forced to precede his name with Smug instead. As in Smug Mark Thatcher, or Mark Thatcher, Smug of the Realm. Or best of all, Prisoner #456434 (Wormwood Smugs).

Ah, but why beat on a deeply average man who got lucky? There’ll be enough people doing that when the cell door closes on him. As I said at the start of this thing, there are more important things to march against.

A Head Above the Parapet

Okay, this is all happening in a blizzard of activity two hundred miles away from where I left you...now the wires are twisted into place and a new connection made with the exchange...full service to resume shortly and once I have finally bought some furniture for this new place... That is all.

Carry On Drinking

Ah, there we go. Carry On Screaming is blaring out of the television set in the corner of the room, and Jim Dale creeping around the woods is a good distraction from the task in hand...to throw together some kind of summary of the last couple of weeks. I find the idea dispiriting; what is there to say? I am unable to write about the recent devastating tsunami because it would be pointless and vaguely insulting to think I have anything worth saying about something that left the world speechless.

So I am stuck with attempting to come up with some of my own recent history. Well...I enjoyed the festive period, but I doubt that it translates well to print. Unless we can finally discover how to spell the sound of a hangover; so far all I can come up with is "urraarrrghhhhiee." Hmm...needs more feeling of having your brain kicked out and less feeling of imminent hurlage. But we are getting bogged down already, so let us attempt to chuck a few memories at the page.

New Year's Eve was, for me, a house party ten minute's walk from home, and this was ideal on an evening where taxis are overpriced and scarce. The party took place for the most part in a basement containing a fully stocked bar and a pool table. Result: unspeakable drunkenness and a white ball flying through in the air every ten minutes like clockwork. As the early hours crawled past somebody produced a game of vodka roulette. And with a Russian girl in attendance the game was not going to produce many winners...

And there he is! Bernard Bresslaw in a suit giving Harold Steptoe the beady eye...but I must remain focused. It is still a good hour away from Kenneth Williams' infamous "frying tonight!" line, and I intend to have a cushion plumped up ready for that moment. In the meantime, let us continue.

Christmas was quiet and sadly I have long since run out of elderly relatives to see. Since I am a believer in traditions - they give a sense of continuity and a way of making a particular event unique and meaningful - I observed a couple of new ones that I began last year. They all start somewhere after all...and before I get carried away with such romantic notions I should point out that all my new traditions revolve around fatty food and alcohol. Exciting new annual traditions are not much good if my arteries and liver are going to explode like a staked vampire before Twelfth Night is done. But what the hell, eh? So it's fried bacon and eggs for Christmas morning, gin and tonics the night before, and plenty of bloody marys all week.

The strange thing about the bloody mary is that the tomato juice is there to take away the taste of the vodka, and the vodka is there to take away the taste of the tomato juice. (This is known as the Red Bull & Mixer Paradox) The key is to add just the right amount of spice...and a week of experimenting this year shows that you need six good drops of Worcestershire sauce, eight drops of Tabasco, the juice of a generous slice of lime and plenty of ice. A stick of celery with the leaves still attached makes the thing look almost drinkable, but will barely affect the taste. It's fucking celery, after all.

And perhaps a new tradition, courtesy of the inestimable Nigel Slater and my own lazy adaptation, should be the superior turkey sandwich for the day after Boxing Day. Lightly toasted white bread, thin slices of turkey breast, a big rasher of bacon, mayonnaise (not butter), thin batons of celery or carrot (for crunch) and a generous shaking of Tabasco. Nyum nyum.

Ah...a commercial break interrupts the film...and I observe more evidence of Channel 4's new branding. Their new pre-show idents last three times longer than previously, resulting in a protracted and embarrassing gap before every programme once the announcer has run out of things to say. How long before they drop them? Will they be ditched as fast as the circles from a few years ago? Far too much is made of these things. Branding is ubiquitous on all channels now, even to the extent that the BBC allocate each channel their own colours. Jesus, where will this all end? At the moment only Channel 5's branding is unobtrusive yet quietly assured...

What? "Quietly assured?" Ye gods, am I buying into this marketing gibberish now? Surely not. I can't watch a commercial channel without muting the adverts now. I refuse to be the hypocrite who happily sits there soaking up the adverts, only to throw rocks at the creators afterwards. I mean...people, you have a choice! If you publicly groan whenever a new reality show is announced and then watch the damn thing and read every word of the tabloid stories about them, why exactly are you complaining? And why hasn't some vengeful god appeared in a puff of smoke at the bottom of your bed and started jumping up and down on your groin and shouting "how's that for reality, you twat?"

No...I am not writing this to give reign to a bunch of lazy, swear-filled rants that even Charlie Brooker would admit were obvious. So what else can I say about the last couple of weeks? Is that really it? Maybe not, but I don't feel the need to dwell on my own protracted crapulence (except, natch, to be able to use the word "crapulence"). Really, it's the future I should be concerned about. I should find out how the new flat is progressing tomorrow, a situation that is becoming more protracted every day. Hopefully I will be able to write something positive about it by the end of the week.

Ah, a cheeky reference to Steptoe And Son on the film...and why not? But never mind that. Bring on Kenneth Williams and his vat of bubbling oil! Frying tonight! (and so on)