Ah bolo, my oldest friend. Welcome back and shake my shame faced head as I regret the stories over the last year that I meant to write down. Lost to time. Who knows? Somewhere in there might have been the spark or nugget of wisdom to turn this whole sorry train around.

But hey, enough of regrets. 2010 beckons loudly and even though I keep writing 2009, it’s here to stay. Quick made aspirations to go to bed earlier are already out of the window. This week an experiment in sleep deprivation sees me wild eyed and crazy, hunkered down in the bunker like a wounded animal brandishing a blazing twig.

Is that possible? Who knows? Seems like these days the natural order is reversed. Salmon swim downstream while gurning fools download iphone apps to help them walk down the icy road. Cameron’s mob sweep the free press, telling me Lord Goldsmith is an affluent visionary rather than a scrot featured tax dodger. Cameron tells me marriage is good, worthy of a given tax break. Boris waves a stick at the emerging London overground. Bankers leave the country like rats off a sinking stomach, dodging 50% tax rates and the PR bonus hating culture of those that need to deflect attention from their duck houses, ceremonial moats and hotel rented porn action.

Expenses are a thing of the past. The free ride is over for MPs and web designers alike. But hey, we rode the good train for a while. All we needed was a receipt and a ready smile. We could buy our goods from John Lewis and that alone for most was privilege enough.

Jesus, I have so much to say, but I’ve just drifted off for ten minutes listening to Mystro, head nodding, hood up and listless. Better wrap this up, but at least this is a start. A poke in the ribs for myself when I wake up confused and with a dry throat and pounding head wondering why my laptop’s still on and I’m lying on the floor.

Anyway, the other day, I was on the motorway, overtaking a lorry at the national speed limit of 130kmh. I’m about half way past the big diesel chugging, Paella slurping, shit-stained y-front-toting, crumpled porn mag grasping driver when I notice the prince of all cunt cars zooming up behind me - an Audi TT. If you’ve ever driven here you may notice a mildly irritating habit the people have of leaving their indicators on “left” when overtaking, even if they are in the fast lane and there is no “left” other than the barrier. This guy was doing this, thus letting me know that he intended basically to overtake everything in his path, and that i should hurry up and get the fuck out of his way. Not content with the indicator alone, he also decided to start flashing his headlights and gesticulating wildly with his hands in a wannabe proper mediterranean diego fashion. The thing is, as a new driver I’m only supposed to do 110kmh, which is not realistic, but it’s not worth the risk going over 130 as I would be on shit street proper if I got flashed. So I maintained my speed. In fact I may even have slowed down a bit, as the rage and indignation leapt through my synapses. Another example of mindless aggression from the security of an expensively engineered locked steel box.

For some reason, when I do get past the lorry, the guy insists on pulling up alongside me and waving his hands at me wildly. I’m sure there was actually spit hitting the inside of his passenger side window. Now, I’m normally a fairly careful driver, preferring to keep both hands on the wheel at all times, but I broke a rule and gave this guy a nice frank middle finger and blew him a kiss. Not sure what inspired the kiss, but it really seemed to enrage him. The nutter overtook me, then stayed at my speed, pointing at the next “aire de répos”, which was just 500m away, and implying that we should meet there to discuss our differences.

I really do not go in for this sort of thing, I mean you never know who is in the car do you? But on this occasion the rage caused by him cutting me up as he overtook carried enough momentum to guide my car onto the slip road and into the small car park where I pulled up along side him and got out of the car. I was surprised when he didn’t do the same.

After a time, a custom built sliding door began to open slowly on the Audi, to the background of quiet siren and a flashing light. As the interior of the car was revealed, a wheelchair bound figure came into view. In time a ramp slid out and a smiling head and torso in a wheelchair rolled down on to the tarmac. The motorised chair moved to face me almost silently and its owner made a classic “what are you gonna do” shrug with his two good arms outstretched, ripe to embrace the prize of my impotent outrage. I jabbed him once hard in the face and drove off wondering whether I had done the right thing or not. Probably.

Having relatively recently acquired both car and license, I have been driving to work lately in an effort to fully get to grips with the machine. Needless to say, 1st year insurance premiums are high for a reason and I have made a few cock-ups in my fledgling driving days. Nothing serious as yet (touch wood, swear at the moon, lick the back of a toad, spit milkshake on a tramp). This morning on my way in I mistakenly positioned myself to overtake a bus which was stopped at its stop, but had to abandon the effort as there were cars coming the other way, so i was up against the side of the bus. A stupid mistake, but given that there was a vacant bus lane on the other side of the road, there was no danger and the cars could move over safely.

Embarrassed, and realising I had made a pretty stupid mistake, I put my hand up by way of an apology to the approaching cars. The passengers in car 1 were revelling at my mistake, clapping, laughing and pointing. Nice. Car 2 was a police car, so I did not look to see what kind of finger waving antics the fat croissant munching twunts were pulling in there. A bit of ridicule, a stupid mistake, a lesson learned, fair enough. There was no excuse for the agressive sarcastic gesticulating of the woman in the car to my right though, as she had seen that I was embarrassed, that I had apologised and that I generally knew I had fucked up before she proceeded with her little show, another brave display from within the safe confines of a locked steel box. She just wanted to get her self-righteous little say in. And for that, I hope she comes a karmic croper. Nothing serious, not like a full on anal prolapse or anything, perhaps she’ll believe she’s wiped properly but in fact miss an obvious clag on, adhering to her undoubtedly hairy and horrificly unsightly crack, before being squished into her pants and ensuring that she is known for the rest of the day as “that bird who has probably shit herself”. Or perhaps she’ll be talking one of her colleagues down and she’ll start choking on a banana, relying on the person she’s slagging off to come and save her, knowing that she is totally powerless for those few seconds. Or maybe she’ll scrape her car against a wall trying to overtake a bus. Who knows?

For my part, I am going to go back to being as cautious as possible without driving like I’m 110 and try and not be so judgemental when people screw up on the road. Maybe they are not doing it to specifically persecute me afterall……

Anyway, for the most part have been managing to keep a lid on the hours spent on the new toy, but it creeps in every now and again, seeing a five hour, coffee fueled solitary journey into exploring the ravaged world of Fallout 3, shooting my fellow man in Call of Duty and tripping it out lean up style in some Japanese kid’s Little Big Planet level of joy.

The new generation of consoles are insidious in that they literally do everything so well. You want to immerse yourself in an epic Hollywood budget interactive film? No worries. You want to play games with people all over the world. Couple of clicks and one username and account and you’re up and running. Watch a blue ray? No probs as long as you’ve got the requisite giant HD screen (which I don’t yet incidentally). Stream videos, tunes and images from any other computer on your wireless network? Couple of clicks and you’re there. Send abusive message to your friend due to zombie killing antics? Inadvertently make a 10 year old cry due to expertise at shooting nazis? Yes it’s all possible. Hmm the relapse to total geek fueled second adolescence, including accompanied self loathing and bad skin is near enough inevitable.

I had many drunken epiphanies and I made scant mental notes for a series of projects to launch in the new year. Who knows whether they will happen, but they sounded good to my internal ears as they were enunciated through smoke filled kitchens, leaning out the window and spending a little time away from the computer and with family and wiggly. Many ideas for things I want to write down and some I fear that must be written unless I lose them to the mists of time, or worse, they rancour in my brain. Flotsam to expunge don’t you know.

Oh well, tonight is no time for big thoughts. Arctic winds howl round the flat and the combi boiler struggles to raise the temperature enough for me to remove my scarf, put my hood down and make a sandwich. Ice under foot and the chance of slipping over precarious as I stumble up and down the stairs, laden with the last boxes of stuff from Prubast.

Its so cold, cold enough to ice your giblets my friends. Lets draw the curtains on this one. I feel a zoot beckoning and the chance of another epiphany. Arms aloft to lightning filled skies like an idiot savant searching for fractal meaning in the sight of an old man riding his bike by at 1:30 in the morning. Why would an old man be out on his bike at that time in the freezing cold? Dark things may be afoot in Ealing and there is much to consider for the Groovernort.

Now, four or five weeks gone, I am back faced with the predicament again. Old father time has scooped up the period of sensible planning, strategic action and careful selection and stuffed it in his mouth and now I am doomed to fight my way round the West End like a confused water rat, well out of my pond and shaking my fists at the rotarians.

Still, I have been remiss in getting it out of there and as luck or lack of luck would have it, my room for laziness has run out. Prubast’s mum is applying the pressure for him to move his stuff out of her house and into his, one of his cupboards has gone damp and moldy and these two twin pressures mean that as of last night I was round there stuffing ancient handkerchiefs, flat caps and assorted debris into black sacks.

Half of these 6 black sacks now sit in my new bedroom (the other half are still in the car). I’ve yet to bring myself to root through them and yet I must. At the moment, the room is so full of boxes, bags and potential trip death hazards that I am navigating it by taking a series of short strategic hops - hop to window to close blinds, hop to bed to pass out, stub toe on cupboard, curse, fall back and nearly smash through 19″ old style CRT monitor, but bounce off onto antique battery operated pinball machine. Going through those sacks frightens me. I know that amidst the tat (the majority of the content) unstirred memories from a turbulent time lie. What’s that peaking out of that corner. Ah of course a Commodore 64. What’s that bit of paper? A long lost set of lyrics to a half finished tune. What’s that bright green shell suit top. That’s the thing I wore to the early 90s party. What’s that watch with no battery? Oh, Ninglate got that for me for my 21st.

Strange days, strange fears and no doubt above all far too much hoarding. Yes, it must be faced, mostly got rid of and the best pieces boxed up and sealed for all eternity in the attic archive. Either that or wake up suffocating under a collapsed sack of minidiscs, N64 games and lever arch files. I may have to catalogue the collection for a future post, then burn it in the garden as some kind of cathartic, heathen antic. Most of it certainly can’t be kept.. well apart from the box of lego, the set of Micro Machines, the Keep Harrow Tidy tshirt, the Oasis at knebworth programme, the poems Coybag wrote in GCSE German, the recording of the White Line, the ever growing sneaker library, my Grandad’s boots, the books, DVDs, CDs, rubber ducks, russian dolls, postcards of dinosaurs, the kinder egg toys, the stickers from Stussy, the Yamaha keyboard manual, that painting of sheep I did when I was lean, the beer towel from the Isle of Arran, the collection of hats, amusing bags, monkey related characters, chinese calligraphy set, tennis racket, skittles set, backgammon and travel car games. All these things are essential and I’m starting to think I might be in big trouble….

Its apprehensive and occasionally proud father, I attempted to save it, clearing out the worst of the filth and keeping an eye on the bandwidth, watching for spikes of viewing caused by security breaches, but they came too thick and fast. Too many weasels in this world these days and not enough time outside of the credit crunch design company late night, rinseout hours to put pen to paper, to tap fingers on keys.

So it went, but now its back. Shielded by the finest in plumbait protection, anti-perspirant of the spam jacker variety and a shot of methedrine in the praxial nerve. Temporarily without design template, but exact and still resounding in words, ideas and thoughtless Saturday night rib breakings. Cast up, hear ye me hearteys as Captain Haddock no doubt never said, rolling up your sleeves for a brand new month, the end of an insipient year and the last shadows of twenties zeitgeist with better trainers, but far too few remaining brain cells.