Words from 2009

On the online line, everyone's been sharing their thoughts on the decade passed.

And, well, I found this, something I'd pretty much forgotten about. It was the second thing I ever wrote for the blog, in 2009, (after the initial list of 101 songs) - intended to be 101 random thoughts about myself.

In the end, I never published it, and only got to 62. I think I just found myself getting boring, or perhaps was overtaken by the thought of what the blog would then turn into (the lists of songs on a subject accompanied by poems).

Anyway, here it is. The most striking thing for me, reading it for the first time, or perhaps second time, in 10 years, is how mundane it is. I perhaps thought at the time it would be uncommonly self-revelatory, but, of course, since writing the blog, I've shared most of these thoughts in different form several times over.

I also note that, while I'm mainly very much the same person, there are also some very significant changes in outlook - and situation (which have led to changes in outlook).

Nothing is, I think, painfully embarrassing or utterly shamefully outdated (apart from my devotion to Ryan Giggs). The most gratifying thing is that I knew I was a terrible dancer. I think I had it in my head that at some point I thought I could be a good dancer, and that was a ridiculous thing to have thought, but, no, I always knew I was rubbish.

I'd reword quite a few things, but there we go ...

As I say, it's pretty self-satisfied and banal.

Here's me, 30 and 31, in 2009, trying to say some interesting things about myself

1. If I ever form an indie powerpop band, whose trademarks are handclaps, whistling, ba-ba-bas and stabs of understated brass, it will be called The Turkletons.

2. My recurring dream, cliched enough, is the weeks running up to taking History A-Level, not bothering to attend the class, almost forgetting it existed, thinking I'd eventually find time to revise, thinking there would be no problem, but then growing sense of panic and unease. The dream never reaches the actual day of the exam stage, thank goodness.

3. I once came face to face three times in a month with Michael Atherton, in a pub, in a bookshop and at a ... Michael Atherton booksigning event. I've seen around, served in shops etc a lot of famous people -only pointing Laurence Fishburne to the Theatre Section of Blackwell's on my very first day there compares to the Atherton thrill - this was when he had the effortlessly cool aura of a young Bob Dylan, the steely gaze of mid-period Clint Eastwood, the batting average of a test-playing Graeme Hick, and the back problems of an aged hunchback. Only Ryan Giggs or the Resurrected Christ will top this in celebrity spotting for me.

4..I was watching 'The Sound of Music' recently (always a good way for a 30-year old man to begin a sentence) and it made me feel terribly sad. For me, nostalgia is looking at the past and seeing the billions of possibilities that have died since then - the billion ways lives could have gone but didn't, the fashions and inventions that might have been important that weren't. Some people might think the possibilities increase as the world moves on, but I can only think they decrease every second, till eventually there'll be no possibilities left.

'Sound of Music' has more levels of nostalgia than anything else I can imagine - Christopher Plummer now an old man, playing Tolstoy now in maybe his final role, Julie Andrews who can't sing anymore, the child actors who never became nothing, the actual characters who are all dead, the feeling of nostalgia in the film itself for Austria in the past, the time when musicals weren't naff, the innocence of it all, the time when me and my siblings used to watch it as children without it being a running joke, it's time as a running joke in parlour games ...it was a bit of a mindfuck. I don't get that with 'Mary Poppins'.

5. I'm good at quizzes - I guess that in a team or on my own I've probably won 80-90% of the quizzes I've taken part in. However, I haven't embraced this and pursued it in the way I would have done if i'd shown such aptitude in another field (I haven't taken part in a quiz for about a year). Well, I say that, I was very good at table tennis for a wee while, and then I just stopped playing. But table tennis isn't available to play in almost every pub every week of the year, with pretty good money to be won. At least I don't think it is, if anyone knows of any table tennis pubs, let me know.

6. I'm a bad dancer, real bad. I don't think it was destined to be so - I'm reasonably co-ordinated and fleet-footed, and I'm able to keep rhythm not abysmally. I just never learnt to dance properly, so I'm a bad dancer.

7. People say that the main regret in life is often hiding your light under a bushel, not sharing with other people, not bein emotionally open, not saying what you mean. But my main regrets, the evenings I look back on with most shame and queasiness, are when I was too open, too indiscreet, generous with my praise and saying what I mean. When I left my job in a bookshop, I told my excellent boss, who always moaned cheerfully about his position in life and the the fact he hadn't achieved more, that if I was where he was in 10 years time, i'd be happy and proud of myself. And I meant it. Icky. And after his superb first album, I saw Badly Drawn Boy live, happened to meet him, and told him he was an inspiration. It still makes me cringe just to type it. I don't know if the situation would be the same if his subsequent albums hadn't been ever more confused and anodyne. But you get the point. We keep it in for a reason.

8. As I grew up, there was no sense in which the aim of eating wasn't to eat as much as possible. Any ideas of food groups, diets, even the idea of being full, passed me be. At 19, my friend and I saw a '2 for the price of 1 Pizzas' deal as a chance not to save money but to eat two pizzas each. We ate two pizzas, went to watch 'Titanic' at the cinema - strange strange day. Then at some point soon after that, the aim of eating seemed to become to stop myself eating as much as possible ... 2 pizzas became 1 3/4 pizzas, and the rest is history.

9. My favourite film is 'The Big Lebowski'. Obviously.

10. The overwhelming impression of sport as a man's thing just doesn't make sense to me. As I grew up, I played tennis with my sister, my other sister watched every single game of the 1990 World Cup while taking her A-levels, my mum took me to Ealing Cricket club every Friday evening, watched the games, listened to Test Match Special and could tell me when i came downstairs in the morning that India had England 194 for 6 and that Sivaramakrishnan had just had Gatting LBW.

But now, mostly, women switch off when men start to talk about sport, roll their eyes or shrink as if remembering painful childhood memories of mistreatment and exclusion. It's a shame. And most sport is too heavy on testosterone, I accept - park footballers puffing their chest out, squaring up to each other, sliding in two-footed with bug eyes popping. Whether through affectation or breeding, I always played sport with a bit of camp or jsut plain silliness, whether it was T-rex hands when I got the football, trying to do a David Campese hitchkick in rugby, or moving my imaginary fielders when I bowled in cricket. Some of the great sportsmen have an effeminacy and grace lacking in their more lumpen rivals - Roger Federer, David Gower, Carl Lewis, Colin Montgomerie .... [2019 note: this is perhaps the funniest entry to read back, that I didn't realise that people rolling their eyes at men talking about sport was just when I was talking!)

11. I don't like it when people namedrop. But I namedrop as much as anyone else, looking back and noticing I mentioned Michael Atherton, Badly Drawn Boy and Laurence Fishburne as if they were, like, my mates. I don't know any famous people. Apart from the guy who plays the chocolate bar in the Gary Lineker advert.

12. I've hardly ever basically never taken illegal drugs, which I realise is quite unusual for people my generation. I don't really know why. I've smoked and drunk my fair share. I think it's an aesthetic thing.

13. I haven't looked after too many beings, not having had kids, younger siblings, having looked after an elderly relative and not being entrusted with my nephews/nieces alone. When I almost became a teacher, the idea of being in loco parentis to 30 disparate/damaged 9 year-olds certainly freaked me out.

I remember being about 12 when my dog was old and dying and she looked like she might not last the night and I sat with her all night reading her 'Oliver Twist' and touching her nose because I'd been told that if a dog had a dry nose it was bad news. Her nose was dry, she shook and moaned, and I kept on reading most of the book (I don't recall if i got to Bill Sikes' death, that might have freaked her out). In the morning, her nose had a bit of moisture to it and she went on for another year or so after that. I possibly thought that dogs, like humans, are more likely to fight for life if they know that there's someone who really wants them to. But, perhaps I've listened to a few too many of JD's 'Scrubs'-closing monologues.

14. I'm pretty certain I think I'm a lot funnier than other people do, but sometimes I'm not too sure, because a lot of people are so polite and laugh just when your body language indicates they ought to.

15.I was in Chicago for 10 days the month before Obama's victory, and though it's easy to say it, it was a city full of joy and hope. You couldn't move for shops selling and people wearing funny Obama t-shirts and there was hardly a single apologetic McCain/Palin one. I watched a lot of CNN, which is pretty stunning, and Fox News, which is pretty extraordinary, and despite it's best efforts, you knew there was nothing it could do to stop what was coming.

Then again, I've just seen a poll which said that Chicago is the 3rd most miserable city in America. So maybe it's that I was on holiday, and the sun was shining, and I'd just done a marathon so was stuffing my face with long-forgotten glea every second of every day.

16. My name's David not Dave. That's just what my name is. It doesn't really matter, but it's felt important a few times.

17. You should wiggle your toes on flights. Getting a DVT is quite painful, can be very dangerous - a shocking number of people die from it if it goes to the lungs or brain - and, most pressingly, is treated like an utter shambles in this country (not just personal view, I've read up on this stuff). The frustration and irritation will blow your mind. And if you do get one, whatever you do, don't be stupid enough to get a second one. Durrr ....

18. I'm Left. Just Left in every way. To my bones, to my brain, unavoidably, unchangeably, left of the field, left of the hand, left of the wing, left of the behind. The only thing is i'm actually right-footed (or was last time I played football, when my right foot was briefly, rudely disconnected from the rest of the leg), I just always got put, and put myself, on the left side. I wonder if this is analogous to my secret, sordid conservative streak which is always there but which I try to suppress.

19. There's a section in 'Cena Trimalchionis' from the 'Satyricon' of Petronius, where the grotesque central character, Trimalchio, highlights his crass imbecility by discussing and planning his own funeral in advance, even to the extent of shedding a melodramatic tear as he imagines people's grief at his passing.

It's rather tremendous.

I've no interest in what happens after I die ... except I would be quite glad if I could be indulged to the extent that Nick Drake's 'From the Morning' was played.

20. I still watch 'Home and Away'. That's just wrong and weird.

21. They talk about Plastic Paddys - the Mcs and O's from Boston to Sydney to Ealing who wear their Irish and their Celtic roots proudly and sup their Guinness despite the fact they've never been within 500 miles of Dun Laoghaire - and it's an easily mockable breed, to be sure, but as one myself, might i offer a few words in mitigation.

Yes, i'm not Irish, I'm from London, but Irishness is a true and real part of me. If, as a child, I was stigmatised for my Irish name and my Irish face, and with children's fairly thin grasp of politics and history, asked if I was in the IRA and called potato-boy (these things did happen, I'm not just embroidering) it would be odd of me not to feel that was not just how i felt but how i was perceived. Also, I'm a mathematical boy, and I worked out with my father being 1 whole part Irish and my mother .5 English/ .5 Scottish, that that made me .5 Irish and you round up not down , so I had to be Irish.

For the last 200 years, Ireland has been emigrated from more than pretty much any country, i guess. There are people with irish heritage everywhere you look, and any of us who look into the reasons for this diaspora in even a cursory manner discover that Irishness is a complicated, big thing, particular in relation to England and how England has treated it, and that it has more to it than usual issues of nationality. Well, that's what I think anyway -I'm not Irish, but I'm not particularly not Irish either.

22. To a lot of people, songs are the soundtrack to their lives, but that's not really how it is for me. If it was, it would be "Oh yes, this reminds me of the time I was sitting in my room, writing questions, watching sport. Great days" for one and "Oh, this one, this was all about sitting in my room, writing questions, watching sport. Brings a tear to my eye". Songs have had to be about a bit more than the "pop" phenomenon of moment-capturing to me, I've had to feel I could appreciate them on their own terms, independent of what they might mean to me.

It's a bit of both of course, capable of being both ephemeral and lasting, art form and entertainment, background and focus, more so than any other artform, I think. That's why Pop Music is the best thing ever.

23. I hate skinny jeans. I wear flairs, but it's hard to find good flairs.

24. The main thing that drives me is trying to avoid embarrassment. Embarrassment is an ever-present menace for me. I can stand up in front of 200 people with a microphone and deliver a silly quiz, but if I half catch someone's eye on the tube, the blood rushes to my head, and feel a bit stupefied. It's a physical thing - a physical thing I hate. I'm not particularly embarrassed by actual things, I slightly disassociate it from insecurity and neurosis, which in some ways I'm quite free from, it's embarrassment at the thought of embarrassment, at the physical blushing, it's self-creating and self-perpetuating. It's not really manageable, but I try not to look at people or talk to people too much if I can help it, and I've realised if I make a twat of myself in my own controlled way that can keep it at bay.

25. I'm quite sympathetic to caught drug cheats in Athletics. When I say sympathetic, I think they should be banned from the sport for 5 years, so that they definitely miss at least one Olympics, but a) you can be sure that they are one among many and that they saw themselves as trying to get an even break rather than gain an advantage, and b) people cheat, to greater or lesser extents, in every sport. Footballers cheat in tiny ways every game, asking for throw-ins which they know isn't there, tugging their opponent's shirt at a corner, cricketers suck sweets to shine the ball, try to move their leg out of line if they're struck in front. These are tiny, acceptable bits of cheating, they won't stigmatise yr career if you get caught. In athletics, there is only one way to cheat, you can't jump the gun, scupper your rivals. There is only one way to gain an unfair advantage (or, like I said, get on a level playing field), and that is to do something which will destroy your life and career if caught. It must be a big call to start. (Also I have particular sympathy for current pariah Dwain Chambers. It is his honesty, ironically, after the event that has cost him. If he's just pretended he never did it, and not admitted how long he's been cheating, he wouldn't have had to pay back all his victory earnings for years and years, and he wouldn't have to be constantly fighting for a livelihood which is being denied to him with unique vehemence to those amongst the returning drugcheat fraternity)

26. I love music festivals. All those bands, so cheap, lots of nice people, rivers of mud. Hooray, they're the best.

27. Pomposity seems to be the main sin of our age. You can get away with being mean, selfish, unreliable, flaky, rude, it's all part of individuality and character. But if you're seen as at all pompous or self-righteous, people want to knock you down. I really like self-righteous people.

28. I think with cigarettes, it's mainly the iconography that keeps sucking me back in. They can ban advertising, put all those horrible pictures on the packets, raise the prices, but they haven't yet scrubbed the cigarettes out of the mouths of James Dean and Paul Newman and pretty much every character in every film between 1950 and 1980, and every time I see them, I feel something inside me asking why aren't I doing that, that's what the cool people do. Whenever I envision myself saying something funny, I've always got a cigarette in my hand. It's so annoying, they're so rank. Still, one week and counting, just got to avoid watching 'Mean Streets'.

29. I don't think I've ever been persuaded to buy one single thing ever by a TV advert, I really don't. I don't even consider that they're trying to sell me anything. They should reintroduce cigarette advertising on TV, I could quit for well and good then.

30. The world was silent while we died - a line from a book about the West standing by while slaughter and disaster occur in African countries. And it's true but how much can we feel culpable for our sins of omission? How much can we possibly know? I'm going to tritely scale it down. We don't even know what's going on in our friends' heads and if we did, we wouldn't know what to do about it. People always hope people are watching them, picking things up, ready to intervene at just the right time when salvation is needed. But it just doesn't happen like that. People just don't notice when the most important awful things are going on in their own backyards.

31. I fully appreciate I'm one of the most fortunate 1% of people who've ever lived, in terms of the opportunities afforded, the stability of upbringing, excellence of friends and family, things that have been seen and done in this age, but I can't help feeling the last few months have given me a little bit of a rough trot. I think I've managed to find it all pretty funny, but I suspect if one more person fucks me about and I'm in the wrong mood, my veneer of equanimity may come crashing down.

32. The death of Paul Newman was particularly significant, I think. He was the last of a kind in a number of ways, and had a pretty extraordinary life in every way. Made me feel sad, anyway. I couldn't eat one egg, let alone fifty. What a badass.

33. When I was about 19, it suddenly struck me that I might not have laughed for about two years. For the next few years I found myself laughing like a hyena, like a girl, all the time. Then I stopped doing that at a certain point and now have a normal laugh. Sounds quite phoney and affected now I think about it ...

34. You do gradually mature into certain tastes, don't you, whether it's coffee or olives or real ale. Up until a couple of years ago I just could not look at a painting with any clue, I had no idea how to look at anything and know if I liked it or didn't. I just had no frame of reference. I still have basically no idea, but at least can now look at things and be struck, or not, by them and so if I go on holiday I go to galleries and enjoy them rather than be dragged along unwillingly. I can see myself listening to more classical music at some point perhaps - opera will remain a load of silly ballbag, though.

35. I really hate false compliments and automatic words of affirmation. If I say "i've put on a bit of weight in the last couple of months" or "I'm not very good at swimming" I'm not saying it because I want someone to say "O no you're not" I'm saying it because it's a statement of fact. It's not a plea for approval.

It's like, if someone cooks dinner for people, and the first thing that comes out is a bowl of plain rice, and everyone coos and says "Ooh, the rice looks/smells amazing" what value will it be when during the meal the actually impressive dish which they've spent hours slaving over is greeted with the same "Ooh, this is amazing". The right noises are the wrong noises.

36. I think all things that appear to be magic will be able to be explained one day, and I don't think of "genius" as far as music is concerned, just excellence, brilliance, individuality, whatever, but of all the people in music where you go "How did he do that? What is that? That's a whole different world to anything I can understand" I'd go for Nick Drake. It's so simple, but it's so eery and prescient. There's an extended article on him called "Heaven is a Wild Flower" which sees Drake as a kind of seer, with a complicated and unique musical and lyrical vocabulary which dealt with and dwelt in a "heaven" removed from the pressures of the modern world. I've explained it poorly - it's pretty interesting and poignant both in terms of Drake's only death but that the journalist himself committed suicide.

37. When I went up to the top of the Empire State Building, it gave me a childlike excitement which carried me forward for a good couple of weeks.

38. I don't miss trains and I'm never late unless something utterly uncontrollable happens, and even then it's very rare. This is self-righteousness. People don't have good excuses to be late. I read an interview with Paul Newman where he gave Robert Redford a birthday present once inscribed with "Punctuality is the Courtesy of Kings" cos Redford, for all his charm and good deeds, is notoriously flaky and wilful. That's how fucking cool Paul Newman was.

39. My first awareness of chronology was the summer of 1984 - I knew it was 1984 and I knew that next came 1985. I knew this because it was the year West Indies toured England and won the test series 5-0. Their fans going crazy at the Oval, bearing banners with 'BLACKWASH', the maroon helmets, Malcolm Marshall batting with one hand. The team - Haynes, Greenidge, Gomes, Richards, Lloyd, Dujon, Harper, Baptiste, Marshall, Holding, Garner. Inerradicable to me. I met Desmond Haynes once ... I'll get to that. But all the images from that summer are still in my head. I'm still fascinated by West Indies cricket and how these small islands ruled the world in that sport for 15 years.

40. When I do karaoke with my chums and, say, friends of friends, in a karaoke booth (here i feel no embarrassment) I'm trying desperately hard not be overbearing, not to hog the mic, to pay attention and enjoy other people's favourites, but gradually I realise, inexorably I end up feeling like I'm doing that. Then again, you just can't please everybody. It's like when I run a quiz for, say a church or synagogue, and there are a fair few old people there, the main thought in my head is making it palatable for them, so I almost entirely dispense with the usual volume of music, jokes, references to TV/Film and generally the stuff that makes our quizzes fun for most people. Then, in the 'Culture Round', I might play one clip by Buddy Holly and you can guarantee one or two of them will scrunch up their face and complain to me after that "there was too much of that awful pop music". Buddy Holly died 50 years ago.

41. For a number of years, since about 2001, I've harboured a desire to write a book about Ryan Giggs -not a straight biography, more an argument, a thesis. I tried a few times, had chapter ideas set out, bit in the end realised it was better to let the dust settle on his career before laying it all out. As it happens, it looks like the book won't be necessary - people have begun to realise, to some extent, what i always/felt knew about Ryan Giggs.

42. My brother is good at art, five years older than me, and had his paintings up all over my school when I went there. After a couple of weeks, the teacher (who sneezed like the Latin word for alas - eheu! eheu!) said to me "I don't believe you're actually James' brother". Mean, really mean.

43.Since I was 17, I've written, or started to write, 2571 poems. I number them and have them in 35 notebooks. I don't find it embarrassing, it's just not something which has any relevance to any interaction I have with anyone really and it would alter the way i did it if I thought about responses, so I keep it to myself. They vary between bad and really bad, but I feel it's a good thing to have done, it keeps me in touch with my brain and occasionally keeps me in touch with my senses when they're a bit deadened. I try to keep it simple and mathematical. I've never got the hang of it at all, I think it's one of those things some people just don't get the hang of, like cricket, but, like I say, I'm happy enough to have done it.

44. I've really not got nor have ever had any proper ambition. I kind of wasn't sure I'd ever get a job and imagined when I was 20 I might be a bum by the time I was 25. Even now, I can't really look forward to anything I particularly want out of life. Having said that, i certainly don't live in the moment, i just kind of live week to week, constantly playing over the past, recent and distant, and the near future.

45. When I'm alone, I often wish I'd done more and think of all the time I've wasted doing nothing. Then, when I'm chatting to someone and I've had a drink, I miraculously start to believe that I've lived the most fascinating, globetrotting, crazy life and that all my stories will bring the house down. I guess that's kind of indicative of this blog.

46. People who are anti-boxing say that in no other sport is the very point to knock your opponent unconscious. But that's not "the point", the point is to win the fight. That's the point. They pretty much never knock either unconscious, most fights go the distance, since the horrible night in 1995 when Nigel Benn fought Gerald McClennan, I've never seen a boxer remotely seriously hurt. The doctors are right there to look at every cut, the referee steps in as soon as someone's head snaps back pretty much. People pick up so much worse injuries in other sports. I probably watch too much boxing, but I find it mesmeric. And, believe me, I really do not like to see people get hurt.

47. I like my job. It suits me and I'm very lucky to have got it.

48. I always thought Alex James was the biggest chancer in the world, a limited talent who contributed all but nothing to a great band and thought because he hung out with interesting people that made him something himself. I've read his book now and though I haven't necessarily changed my mind, it's a brilliant book - pretty much the best of its type I've read.

49. I thought Ealing was the centre of the world for a long time, then I thought it was Hyde Park, then I thought it was Delphi, for a while I thought it was Edinburgh, then it was Soho, then it was New York. Now I think it might be Ealing again.

50. Monty Panesar doesn't know the LBW law - he just doesn't know it. If it was me, Monty, in your place, I would at least know the LBW law, and I would also have a nifty arm ball in my armoury.

51. I don't watch cartoons or chidren's films or read children's books, whether we're talking Harry Potter or Wall-E, or whatever we're told is "not just for kids, but actually really clever". This is somewhat due to a lack of imagination on my part, but mainly because I'm an adult, and I liked kids' stuff when I was a kid.

52. The number of people who say Nelson Mandela is their hero ... I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but come on! The 20th Century was very much the era of black heroes, civil rights and post-imperialism being the grandest stories. A lot of people will say Muhammad Ali as well, without knowing the first thing about him beyond the very basics. There are some equally strong stories which have passed to the periphery of history, and there's a lot to be said for tracing the history of 20th century Black America through the Heavyweight Champions - Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, Floyd Patterson, Sonny Liston, Ali (and the way he treated Frazier), Foreman, then Mike Tyson and the mess that followed.

Sonny Liston's is the saddest story of all, tho Paul Robeson, a trailbrazer and polymath who America threw in the dustbin, runs it close.

53. I'm against British Private Education, just because it's unfair. 7% of the population getting an immediate, straightforward advantage in life - if it was 50/50 and there was an actual choice for most people I might feel differently.

Easy for me to say having had those advantages myself, of course. I'll further push my luck by saying that one of the effects of private education is the stigma for those that would have been through it - at the back of your mind, you know that people resent you, that they doubt your intellect is your own, they think you've never really had to work for anything, and you kind of feel those things about yourself.

54. Christian Bale was just so good in 'Empire of the Sun' - i went to see it in the cinema all those years ago and even at 8 I could tell he was brilliant - no surprise he became such a superb actor. Him and me are done professionally, though. Fuckin' ass!

55.I think of my heart being full of mercury, my head full of snakes.

56. When I get migraines, or shocking hangovers, my head fills with repeated phrases I can't stop hearing, or more commonly, mathematical puzzles I can't, nor will ever be able to, work out, lines which will never meet, journeys which can never finish.

57. People are wrong almost all the time. We've all been utterly wrong about the way the world is throughout history, political theorists and economic forecasters sell books and make lots of money getting the future totally wrong. If someone is speaking to you, whoever they are, about whatever, you can almost guarantee they'll be wrong. I used to be wrong a lot, but now I'm right nearly all of the time. We call it McGaughey's Sporting Predictions. You can count on me.

58. I was a terrible teacher, just terrible. That was my last attempt to do good in the world by doing something I wasn't naturally good at. I came face to face with the limits of good intentions one hot summer in the worst class in the worst primary school in Peckham. Not waving, but drowning. The funny thing is was that the most praised part of my teaching was my use of technology, the thing I'd gone into it with the most fear of. Hmm ... teaching/learning. So glad I'm not doing that.

59. I loved 'The OC'. It was the opposite of what it appeared to be and what I expected. I thought it had the funniest, most sympathetic central characters of any American TV show I've seen. Apart from Mischa Barton's character.

60. The British Sports are light years ahead of the American Sports, in my opinion, Cricket vs Baseball, Football Vs Basketball etc - everything about the way we do them is truer, deeper, more dramatic. Conversely, American Music is likewise light years ahead of British Music.

61 ... is my favourite number. Perhaps because of Highway 61 Revisited originally but it took on a life of its own. In Kenya, my frend and I called our hillside hut (bigger than a hut, actually, but I'm trying to romanticize the image) ' Number 61 Momentarily Hard Chemka' (chemka the ki-swahili word for boiled) to the thorough bemusement of the local chidren.

Then it was the Number of my Football Shirt in the team we started in St Andrews, and wouldn't you know it, it's the number of my current address.

Also, I love Number 11, the number of my current Football Shirt, the number of the Giggs, the classic left-winger's number.

Both pretty powerful prime numbers too.

Perhaps, I should have named this blog 11 Songs or 61 Songs, to spare myself and you all the bollocks that will follow.

62. Here are some lines which often I can't get out of my head

Country's got soul and city's got sickness

Poignancy's my enemy

I chronicle my hours and I can tell you I'm not in love with anything now

Train or Milky Bar? You decide