Three days, nothing to blog. I'm watching Tipping the Velvet as I type today, and I think I've finally grown out of my childish habit of watching saucy television for titillation purposes. Which is for the best, as our heroine's mockney accent is about guaranteed to give me the floppies.

Five days, nothing to blog. Except, perhaps, for a documentary about herring spunk. It's true! All around the Alaskan coast, every year, countless billions of herring head into the shallows to spawn, secreting millions of gallons of creamy white sperm into the pools and eddies of the shoreline.

Six days, nothing to blog. AFC Wimbledon won 4-0 today, the best result out of all the matches I've seen live. We're turning into a bit of a side! Admittedly, Cobham weren't up to much, and never really threatened. Being bang in the middle of the hardcore fans was good too, as we got to hear old favourites...

Show me the way to Plough Lane,
I'm tired and I want to go home,
I had a Football Ground ten years ago,
And I want one of my own...

We drink champagne, we snort cocaine,
We've got ladies, over here,
You've got shit jobs, you shag your dogs,
and your wife is on the game!

Seven days, nothing to blog. That's cos I'm on my way to Americky! See you next Monday :)

I have a complete works of Shakespeare in my room - it's one of those old, razor-thin paged volumes with tiny type, and it makes actually reading the content even scarier than usual. It also plays a small but significant part in my feeling of intellectual panic - i.e. panic that I'm not the intellectual I, like Adrian Mole, convinced myself I was destined to be. Instead, it reminds me that I shy away from anything approaching deep thinking, satisfying myself with the smug and possibly wrong conceit that because I can think more eruditely than the majority, that's good enough.

So what can I do about it. I have no idea - I have no desire to further my education, and talking to genuinely bright people scares me - I can only do it for tiny bursts, or even worse, I reduce the level of discussion to soundbites and unjustifiable opinion, and then run away.

Perhaps this is where Shakespeare comes in. I know I *am* bright, I'm just frightened of failing to prove it. Getting stuck into Hamlet (who am I kidding - A Summer Night's Dream would be better to kick off with) and actually enjoying it - I don't even particularly have to *understand* it - might prove to me that there is indeed more to me than the occasional filthy innuendo and solipsistic meandering.

Followers of the surprisingly popular "Stevie's shelf" blog entry will be delighted to know that our hero has now added some nourishment to his almost-empty larder:

Next week: Stevie buys some glace cherries and some Triple Sec.

To your right, you will see a recent picture of Gary Neville of Manchester United and England in uncharacteristically jolly mood. I was hoping to blog this with a humourous aside of some kind, but my sense of hilarity has, for once, deserted me.

So. A prize of as-yet-undetermined type for the best caption. Get to it!

Now that winter has officially set in (my dad's had his birthday - the 12th - and I can't ever remember there being anything remotely summery after that), and the rains have come, I can settle into my cosy house and get well and truly autumnal. The central heating has been set on its slightly faulty timer (as we're going to discover should Stevie or I have to get up at different times of the morning in the months to come), and I'm even contemplating putting the double glazing panes back on the sitting room windows. The problem with this is that it involves cleaning them as well, and can I be arsed?

However, this year's been a bit unusual so far. Usually, as September draws to a close I start experiencing an intangible yet powerful sense of change. It's very closely linked with the feeling I get when nostalgia is around me, so I think it's something to do with my childhood, and autumn representing the time I was most aware of my life and surroundings. Or something, it sounds poncey I know, but it's a profound sensation for me, and its positive vibe (man) is one of the few plus things about the year's descent to a cold, wet miserable end. And this year it hasn't really happened.

On the other side of the coin, suddenly everything seems Christmassy! I've already decided that it's my job to motivate my family this December into actually doing things around the festive period. Largely due to frail, ill old people, the last few Christmases have been sombre, underwhelming affairs, and as neither I nor my brother have children yet, it's going to be a while before the glow of toddler-influenced joy makes a yuletide visit to Southfields.

So, I need hints as to what I can try and organise for friends and family over the coming couple of months. Lots of festive cheer and the like. I like Christmas. It's for life, you know.

Occasionally, you notice something that puts elements of your life into perspective, and today, I was struck by the symbolic significance of my kitchen cupboard. Not a locale noted for its meaningful depths, you'd think. However, when a New Flatmate arrives, it shakes things up in ways you wouldn't imagine. Scary ways....

Below is a picture, entirely genuine and unposed, that I took 10 minutes ago of the glass-fronted cabinet that faces you as you enter my kitchen:

You may note a certain disparity between the shelves. Let's take a closer look: top shelf, hmm - tinned oily fish, noodles (soft and hard), pesto reserves, lentils, muesli and 7 (seven!) kinds of rice. Bottom shelf - three martini glasses.

One of these shelves belongs to me. The other belongs to famed flaneur, bon viveur and poseur Stevie T. Can you guess which is which? Sigh.

(p.s. the unattractive stain on Stevie's shelf isn't even his fault. It's the remnants of a liquefied potato from times past)

I know the boy's'll be gutted, but thanks to Liz, I now can prove that:

NB do you like my duvet material? I'm very proud of it. Habitat, you know.

Further to the discovery of the "whey laser" (patent pending, but I'm hoping it'll make me rich), I was gobsmacked to discover that whey has taken on a whole new commercial face since Little Miss Muffet did a Gary Lineker on its public profile.

No ordinary milk by-product, Designer Whey "has undergone more than $2.77 million dollars worth of clinical testing", and "slash[es] body fat an average of 3.7 lbs". How about that?

My prediction - whey is the food supplement AND nursery rhyme staple of the 21st century. We can hope.

So tonight I did something I never thought I'd do (outside marrying into rich farming stock, which is an oxymoron these days anyway). I went to a cow auction in aid of toothy witch Esther Rantzen's favourite charity, Childline.

In case anyone was wondering, our cow of choice was this one. Yours for only £6,000! The other two we liked went for over 10 grand each. Sigh. However, we did discover that the auction is NOT OVER! They're selling off another 50 odd cows online over the next 4 weeks.

Anyway, the auction itself was a real laugh. And whatever they say, it feels WICKED to stick an orange paddle in the air and have a camp, ruddy-faced man in a bowtie says "£3,500 with the gentleman in black". I was so grown up! Unfortunately, our upper limit was so low that he soon realised we weren't the most serious (-ly wealthy) bidders, despite my extremely professional (I thought) shake of the head when he looked back at me to see if we would go higher.

So, hopefully, I'll bloggin' once again when my ma manages to get her hands on a cow of her very own. Probably with photos too. In the meantime, here's a story of how I bid over £2k for a macrame tortoise... (cont. p.94)

Hey kids! Have you seen Amazon's new thang that tells you how much you can sell the stuff you bought on Amazon for? And has anyone actually tried it out?

The best thing is that I now know that my second hand copy of My Life at the Movies by Tompaulin is worth over £33. Who'd have thought? ;)

It's all that Will Young's fault (I daren't accuse Gareth, in case a certain G starts bombarding me with hatemail). Why do the young of today need to search out the classics of yesteryear when their scrubbed pop conveyor belts will bring them a sanitised version at a finger-click?

The other night at Tigermilking, the lovely Ian played one of the most movingly beautiful songs I've ever heard. Coincidentally enough, I had downloaded it the previous day, but hadn't yet listened to it. That song was I Will Always Love You by Dolly Parton, and if a more beautiful song has ever been performed, I don't want to hear about it. Not now, anyway. *sniffle*

Anyone fancy coming with me to see AFC Wimbledon vs Cobham on Saturday 26th October? I'm throwing a posse together.

In other news, Mariah Carey is the highest-selling female singer of all time. Shame on you all! Yes, you! I don't care if it was for your grandmothers. For shame!

This is all Llew's fault. However, I quite like what it says about me :)

How indie are you?

You're pretty knowledgeable about music in general. You like indie music, sure, but that's only part of it. You'll listen to any old shit as long as it sounds good to you. You're not snobby about music at all, you just like what you like. How boring. Curiously, this makes you popular with the opposite sex.

Ree's latest post got me thinking about a fairly depressing facet of my life. I have quite a lot of bad dreams, and it seemed to me that there was a correlation between happiness (a good thing) and nightmares (not, obviously). I could never put my finger on it, but it seemed to be, by and large, true.

However, recently, I've been a bit happier, yet I have had very few bad dreams! What's that all about? Then, earlier today, I came to a possible conclusion. I have bad dreams when I go to sleep sober.

It's a scary thought. It's not that I've been bingeing each night, but my social life has led to a number of brewskis in recent weeks. It even seems that drunkenness makes my dreams better. Last night, the only thing I remember dreaming about was someone who, in real life, is thoroughly obnoxious and possibly insane. In my dream they were quiet, sensible and pleasant. So you don't have to be awak for booze to help you find people more appealing, then...

So what should I do about it? Well, as a control experiment I could try a week's abstinence to see if it makes any difference. Will I do it? Will I fuck...

HOW COME NO-ONE EVER TOLD ME ABOUT THIS?!?!

Google FITE!

(Some pertinent examples - now try your own...)

Shall I watch an erotic thriller on channel 5? Shall I? And if I do, will it be that fake-looking woman with the cheekbones and the breasts so round that they must obey an entirely different law of physics?

No. It looks vaselined (I mean the lens, you smutty buggers), and a woman has just held a letter to her chest and sighed deeply. Ick!

But now there's nipple play and snogging! No wonder sex gets people confused! Did Mary Whitehouse die for this???

I was right about the bosoms though.

Moving onto other things... my "job" (it gets quote marks because the pay is really too pitiful to use the term convincingly) is, actually, great fun! I'm moderatin' an interactive TV chatroom where kids txt msg in, and yours truly decides whether they're suitable or not, and prevents nastiness of any kind getting to the screen.

Anyway, today I made what may well be the grave mistake of telling the kids (between 16 and 22) that I was a boy. So the next two hours were spent with me vainly trying to get them to talk about things other than "r u well fine? i bet ur well sexy". And - I shit you not - I had to break up a fight between two of the girls over who was allowed to chat me up! I should just tell them one or two choice hints about my physical appearance and they'd find their teenage libidos stopped in their tracks...

So that's what I'm doing with myself. Exciting or wot?

p.s. have I bigged up Laura Llew lately? No? Smacked wrist!

I earned money today, for the first time in longer than I care to remember.