2003-03-06 - 2:58 p.m.

A long weekend in Barcelona came at just the right time, though it did prompt certain worrying realisations, namely that: Barca, as none of the kids are calling it = cheap, sunny, and laid back, whereas London = killing yourself to be able to afford to live in an overpriced shithole of a capital. I know that going on holiday somewhere is different from trying to grind out a meagre living for seven years with no discrernable marketable skills (I hereby coin the social substrata of the nodimasks) but it was just great to be able to wander out to a bar serving beer so cheap that you barely need paper money at 11.30pm after a long leisurely dinner of tapas and more of the aforementioned beer (I hereby coin the acronym besocheyobanepamo�er, not quite as catchy as nodimask�) In London, if you haven�t polished off your fish, chips and mushy peas by the time the six o�clock news comes on, you may as well abandon going out for the night, unless you�re a big fan of necking warm lager like someone�s putting a knife to your windpipe, and in some parts of Soho that doesn�t even need any great leap of imagination.

I�m OK here really, just need to get away more regularly.

New house and the people therein are getting like a, er, house on fire, which could take an ironically literal turn if our landlady doesn�t install those smoke alarms soon. Me and Unhappyboy.

are sharing a broadband connection and as soon as we, by which I mean he, works out what�s wrong with my new soundcard and cd writer, I�ll be multimedia�d up the wazoo. UHB has been a complete star, as there are as yet undiscovered amoeba-like plankton squirming in the deepest swampy pools of the Amazon that are more techno-savvy than me, as well you all know.

I also apologise for the incredibly appalling excuses for entries that have been oozing out like regurgitated vegetable matter into this outlet for the last month or so. Normal service (ie. quite appalling entries oozing out) should hopefully now have been resumed.

Many thanks for all the excellent suggestions for my �male viewpoint� schmagazine piece. I put forward some ideas, so let see what happens. I may rely on you for anecdotal padding, since I don�t actually intend to put whopping amounts of effort into this.

Also, I was thinking of putting together a zine of my travel writing, some of which hasn�t been published anywhere, including here � kind of the weird outtakes that never really fitted anywhere � but have never really thought about how you might go about designing and producing such a thing for, er, not much cash, so any pointers would get virtual, and possibly even actual, wet kisses. My working title is: �Nowhere, fast.� It�s not going to in any way informative, though I will be drunk for most of the chapters.