Weekend Video: Alison Moyet - Changeling

So, why didn't the internet tell me that Alison Moyet's got a new album out?

And why didn't the internet tell me that it is excellent?

Thanks for nothing, internet.

The joys of parenting

So, I made this terrible mistake: I accidentally went to Asda in Farnborough at 4 o'clock on a Friday afternoon, where every parent in the district takes tired kids shopping before the weekend rush.

Hell is not the word for it.

Lost among the little cherubs running amok on a sugar rush gleaned from breaking into packaging before reaching the checkout, and mums screaming "COURTNEY! GET ERE YOU LITTLE SHIT!", I hear this charming exchange:

There's a small child seated in a trolley, packets of nutrition-free calories already piled on top of him, engaged in a shouted conversation with his father. Mum tries to flee, but she cannot.

Kid: You're a retard

Dad: No, mummy's a retard

Kid: Daddy's a retard

Dad: NO! Mummy's a retard! AND THAT'S THE LAST WORD

Kid (sotto voce): ...retard...

Poor mummy.

On meerkats. And bottoms. But mostly meerkats

Another of those catalogues you get in magazines, aimed squarely at the granny market and containing whole pages of items solving problems you didn't know existed.

And for £25 of your Earth Pounds comes this charming little statue of three meerkats reading a book, because twenty-five quid is the going rate for anthropomorphasised garden oranaments.

But wait a minute... That little chap at the front doesn't seem to be concentrating on the page. What could it possibly be that has caught his attention?

Is it some sort of meerkat predator, like an eagle or a hyena?

Has that annoying bastard Aleksandr Orlov come over the hill yelling "Simples!" to anybody who still gives a flying one?

Or is it David Bloody Attenborough again with another film crew?

Let's look.

Oh.

A bush that looks like Mario Balotelli

I repeat: A BUSH THAT LOOKS LIKE MARIO BALOTELLI

Or Sloth from The Goonies. Your mileage may vary.

That is all.

A Day Out in Basingstoke

To the Transport Festival in Basingstoke – bustling south-central metropolis that brought the world Liz Hurley, Burberry and ...err.. some other famous stuff in Basingstoke.

We arrived in this little beauty, a supremely rare Austin Seven Speedy. And I can tell you what it's like driving in one of these things on a beautiful sunny morning: Bloody freezing.

However, it wasn't terribly wrong before things took a turn for the weird.

I spy with my little eye something beginning with bollocks.

Then, once the kid's been suffocated, you beat the hell out of it with the cricket bats provided.

And with little else to do, the locals dressed a meerkat up as Lawrence of Arabia, then lynched the bastard.

It's all fun and games until somebody loses an eye.

Then it rained and we went home. What's it like to ride the Speedy in the rain? Wet and bloody freezing.

On Short Term Memory ...Err... Thingy

I've joined the gym.

I've paid out forty of your Earth pounds for the privelege of using torture equipment so that - one day - I won't be a fat bastard.

For those of you with a gym contract, that's forty quid for the year. The. Year.

My gym is the work place gym, and my place of work is excellent.

So, I'm still keen, and only just getting to grips how dull twenty minutes on an exercise bike can be.

However, this is not the point of this post. Oh no, it is about short-term memory loss, for one of my trips to the gym resulted in this: woe.

Twenty minutes on the bike. Half a mile on the rowing machine, some half-hearted posing with the weights and I was done.

Then, showered, dressed, and leave.

I was halfway to the car with my gym kit in my Co-op shopping bag when I got the sneaking feeling that I had forgotten something.

It was only when I  went to put my hand in my pocket for my keys that I realised what it was.

For there was no pocket.

Trousers.

I was in public, in my place of work, sans pantaloons. Shoes, but no trousers.

NO TROUSERS.

Then I didn't wake up and my pillow wasn't gone BECAUSE IT WAS ACTUALLY REAL.

The end.

Weekend Video: Daft Punk - Get Lucky

Holy crap - new album Random Access Memories is out on Monday.

You have my permission to get vaguely excited.

And while I have your vaguely excited attention, you may sometimes find me here writing for the esteemed chaps Socked Journal

On early mornings and having nice legs

BAD JOKE ALERT: The first sign of Madness is Suggs walking up your drive.

This is a lie. I am not mad, and we've got a communal car park.

However, I have to question my own sanity when driving to work for the early-early-early shift. That's the one that means I have to get up at 5am to make the office at 0630. Let me tell you something - you never feel more alive at that time in the morning.

Unfortunately, the early starts are not good for the brain, and you eventually end up having conversations with yourself. It was during one of these in-car exchanges with myself that I caught myself saying the following:

"I've got nice legs."

I don't even know what the context of this outburst was and why I told myself I have nice legs. I caught myself saying -for no reason at all - that I have nice legs.

But it's true. My legs are excellent.

A VICTORY DAY MIRACLE

Who knows where lost things go?

I was heading for a meeting the last Thursday, when something familiar caught my eye on top of the small stationery cupboards at work.

Bang! Only my bicicycle repair kit wrapped in a Soviet hammer and sickle, lost a good five years previously.

It being Victory Day in Russia, a celebration of the defeat of the Nazis in 1945, I can only see this as a sign from Josef Stalin himself.

Or somebody just found a bundle of rags and left it on top of a cupboard.

LONG LIVE JOE STALIN*

*Thank shit you're dead Joe Stalin

You know it's time to change doctor when...

You know it's time to change doctor when...

• You go along to the surgery with a long standing foot injury, and you don't even get your shoe off in the consultation

• When you wait two weeks for an appointment and you're back in reception within two minutes wandering why Dr Spaceman has a revolving door on his consulting room, asking yourself if he even actually listened

But most of all...

• Getting the locum, who asks "Did Dr Spaceman give you the result of your blood test?"

"Yes he did, he gave me the all clear"

She sighs, and points to the rash of bold red text on her computer screen.

"So he didn't tell you that your cholesterol is sky high and you're a borderline diabetic?"

No, he had not.

Goodbye Dr Spaceman, slowly coasting your way to retirement. Hello low fat diet and fitness regime.

And Dr Masood, I think I love you. In a purely professional manner, of course.