January 3rd - January 9th 2005
Sunday Back (again)
Saturday Free at last
Friday Disinterested
Thursday Sing if yr winning
Wednesday Desperate
Tuesday My ID
Monday Friendly society
Sunday 9th January 2005
Saturday 8th January 2005
I say, Minister, frightfully good news about this new Freedom of Information Act.
A great advance for democracy, I'm sure you'll agree..Did you see the fascinating story about the Home Office cat? And the civil servants' toilet paper?
Friday 7th January 2005
"I am not interested in what goes in and out of the newspapers," Tony Blair told a hastily re-scheduled press conference yesterday.
No points for guessing the he cares even less about blogs - leaving us free to say "Pull the other one, you facile little creep".
Thursday 6th January 2005
Discerning viewer that you are, your decision to tune into Jerry Springer - The Opera on BBC2 this Saturday will not be influenced by the MediawatchUK claim that the show contains 8,000 obscenities, including no less than 3,168 instances of the word 'fuck'. (See what I did there? We'll do anything for publicity at Blogadoon.)
Be aware, though, that The Telegraph, inveterate defender of artistic freedom, has taken the trouble to make its own count - and come up 7,549 short; Stewart Lee, one of the creators of the show, suggests Mediawatch may have multiplied the naughty words by the number of people singing in the chorus...
Wednesday 5th January 2005
Sex and the City meets Twin Peaks? A terminal threat to suburban morality? Or a damp flannel of over-hyped fluff?
A mainstream show, trading on sex and violence, but without an ounce of nudity or edginess.
Says who? Says the director.
Tuesday 4th January 2005
Monday 3rd January 2005
The landscape that is friendship rolls ever outwards as the years accrue.
The foreground is filled with Friendships-in-Progress, delicate hothouse blooms that demand a high degree of maintenance if you want them to survive.
Behind them, hardier and somewhat less demanding, grow your Good Friends, well bedded-in by now yet still susceptible to the winds of change. And not yet entirely beyond criticism.
Far off, the horizon is bounded by the blue remembered hills of Lost Acquaintance: the people who moved to another city, found religion or simply fell off the map: you love them but you never see them. Indeed, you hardly ever think of them.
Over the horizon, out of sight if not always out of mind, are the Friendships that Went Wrong: those who turned out to be not what you thought at all, ex-lovers, terminal drunks, closet kleptomaniacs. There be monsters.
The middle distance, the ground you've already covered, familiar almost to the point of tedium, yet still capable of providing the occasional surprise, is occupied by Old Friends: the people you grew up with, shared a life with, now travelling on parallel tracks.
These are the people you see once a year or less - at weddings or, in time, at funerals. You know their foibles, tastes and annoying little habits almost as well as you know your own.
You approach each meeting with a degree of caution, hoping for good news, fearful of hearing bad. You tell each other how well you look and tick off all the usual boxes ('You're still seeing..?' You're still working at..?'); you express ritual surprise at sharing the same city yet never getting together. If the conversation lasts long enough, or gets drunk enough, you eventually work your way round to comparing symptoms of decreptitude.
And you always walk away, or I do, mildly relieved to be unshackled from the way you were, yet strangely comforted to discover that beneath the raging turmoil you perceive as the you-in-progress, despite the fact that you never wake up feeling like the person you were yesterday, some people still seem to know, and like, you.
I spent my New Year with fifteen people, most of whom I've known for over 25 years: my Oldest Friends. We covertly eyed each up for signs of incipient decay, we exchanged gifts of varying pertinence and expense, we ate extremely well and we got very drunk indeed.
I enjoyed myself.
......previous week
