2004-07-23 - 3:44 p.m.

This week has gone by scarily fast. Actually, scary is perhaps the wrong word � it hasn�t actually been frightening, at least not in the way that, say, D@vid H@sselhoff reinventing himself as a rapper called H@ssel the H0ff is frightening. But my last week of being 31 has raced past. Next week I�ll only be a year behind Jesus. It would be nice to be older than Jesus. I figure, beat the physical incarnation of the son of the living god in the life expectancy stakes, and you can�t complain all that much.

The ageing process won�t be passing without its trophies, mind. In coincidental and completely mental (nice rhyme, cheers) news, I�ve been nominated for a journalism prize, which feels very grown up, or at least it would do if it hadn�t been marked by going out and drinking too much at lunchtime.

It�s the first time I�ve nominated for anything since I was about 11. At that age, and try and reign in the gasping vacuum of your collective disbelief here, I was slightly above average intelligence, and as we moved up to secondary school, I was made Class Representative. I was quite pleased about this, until I realised that it essentially comprised of being forced to inform on your classmates all the time to the teacher like an oily little squit, and rightly being threatened with all kind of physical discourtesy by the people that you�d fingered (please, no smutty comments). I hope if by some miracle I win this, it won�t involve quite so much in the way of grassing up your peers, and hiding behind the bike sheds every break time.