I’m in a pie ‘n’ mash shop somewhere on the Essex coast. I’ve ordered two pies and two mash, because it’s been a long time since I had pie ‘n’ mash and it felt like what I was supposed to do; the girl who served me queried this - “it’s four scoops of mash” - but I’d just been for a long walk up the coast and then back into a strong wind, and was confident that I would manage it. She was completely correct, of course, and after one pie and half the mash I was beginning to struggle, but as she’d sat down at the table opposite me to eat her lunch I couldn’t betray any signs of weakness and so munched on. The pies were nice, but I was a bit uncertain about the liquor.

A bloke sat down at the table behind me. No sooner had he started eating than his phone went. Unfortunately he was either talking to someone hard of hearing or felt that he needed to broadcast his conversation to everyone in the near vicinity; I suspect it might have been the former, as he had to say nearly everything twice. Or possibly the person he was speaking to was particularly hard of thinking, which, given that she was in some sort of relationship with him (he appeared to be in town to get a tattoo done to show his affection for her) could well have been the case. I tried valiantly to concentrate on an article about Bubble Bobble, but bits of his conversation still seeped into my consciousness.

One thing he said struck me as particularly odd. Mentioning that he was beside the sea to his beloved, he claimed “it’s fuckin’ gorgeous here”. Asked by clarify this by the deaf bint, he repeated “it’s fuckin’ gorgeous here”. And while it was undeniably a delightful day - the heavy showers that were forecast had stayed away, and apart from briefly clouding over when I’d been making my way back down the beach the sun had beamed down - it still seemed an odd description. The first “fuckin’ gorgeous” I could understand, as this is Essex, where “fuck” is used as a punctuation point in the way you or I might say “er” or “um” or pause briefly while choosing the appropriate word for the circumstances, but the second seemed totally unnecessary. It’s not that it wasn’t a nice day, but surely for something to be “fuckin’ gorgeous” it needs to be really exceptionally nice to the point of leaving the speaker unable to quite take it all in, which isn’t really something that’s ever going to occur on the Essex seaside.

I finished my meal and contemplated finding a quiet corner for a Spurlock-post-Supersize-meal heave, but in the end decided that sitting on a bench overlooking the seafront for half an hour might do the trick instead. It did.

Well, the catch to open the lid is a bit sticky, but apart from that the Gamecube seems to be ok. Phew.

Anyway. I spent much of the day looking at university websites. University websites are, by and large, astonishingly badly designed and make it hugely difficult to find any information that you might be looking for; I was after details of courses and what you might learn about on them, which you’d think would be the sort of thing that they’d be quite keen to tell you about, and yet virtually all of them made finding the information a trial, and at worst I couldn’t find it at all. As I growled in frustration at yet another page utterly failing to tell me what I needed to know, I came up with three possible reasons as to why this curious situation might be:

1. Universities are keen to tax the research skills of prospective students, and so hide the information away so that only the most worthy will find it.
2. Universities are keen to dissuade potential students from their courses on multimedia, visual design and all that sort of thing and on to worthier subjects which may lead to them doing something of use in their lives, and so they deliberately make their websites awful to persuade them that this really isn’t the place to learn about such things.
3. University staff are so busy writing complaining letters about each other to the Times Higher Educational Supplement that they haven’t noticed that their websites are crap.

I promise to never attempt a joke about the Times Higher Educational Supplement ever again.

Although my interest in the Universities was a professional one, there were a few courses that took my eye and made me wonder whether maybe education could be the way to stimulate my ponderous brain. It’d have to proper education, mind - my evenings are too occupied with football and looking at pictures of women on the internet to fit it in with normal life.

And there is something about the life of a mature student that appeals. I like the idea of being considered ‘mature’ for a start. Plus, as I recall, the mature students on my course were always particularly good chums with the girls, perhaps because they were comfortably more interesting and capable of holding down a conversation with a woman than, say, I would have been. It’s an idea with absolutely no flaws whatsoever apart from the crippling cost of it all and the total absence of a worthwhile reason for doing it, when you think about it.

Nine (or: A cheap cheer from the Peanut Gallery)

The new supermarket I’ve been using for my shopping was not designed with the pedestrian in mind. There is a road leading to it, but the pavement only runs halfway down the road; at some point over the last few weeks a sign advising a much less direct walking route that involves various backstreets and inclines has appeared (or maybe it was always there and I didn’t notice). You have to take your chances walking across the car park to get to the supermarket as well, and all told the message you get from your shopping experience is that they think that non-car owners are all worthless scum who deserve to die (an idea that I believe is known as “Clarkson’s Theorem”).

On the plus side, the shop assistants are, by and large, far cuter than the ones in the supermarket that I used to go. And that counts for a lot early on a Saturday morning.

This morning, I found myself in the bakery section buying some loose rolls, and being perturbed at how inordinately expensive they were. Ten pence, I’ll grant you, isn’t really that much money in our modern world of today, but in the context of one roll being ten pence more than in the supermarket that you used to shop at it seems somewhat extortionate. Granted, the rolls are bigger, but then I was perfectly content with the size of the rolls at the other shop. Nonetheless, I’d decided to buy some for my lunch anyway. Some tongs were provided for the purpose of removing the rolls from the baskets. I’ve never had any problems with the tongs when selecting rolls before. I managed to get the first roll into the plastic bag provided without difficulty.

I dropped the second roll on the floor.

Now, I was fairly certain that nobody saw me drop the roll. But, being a decent sort of fellow, I decided that there was no way that I could simply put it back. I didn’t particularly fancy finding a shop assistant (cute or otherwise) to explain my predicament to, so I simply put the roll in another bag with the notion of paying for it and then disposing of it later, perhaps by giving it to some ducks or something. I then took another roll from the basket using my fingers and put it in the bag with the first, unblemished roll.

However, as I continued about the supermarket, I began to feel more indignation at the terrible cost of rolls. So much so that, by the time I’d completed my shopping, I’d decided that I jolly well wasn’t going to stand for it. I found a quiet aisle and discarded the tainted roll next to some apple and blackcurrant squash, where it was unlikely to be picked up by anyone wanting bread-based products, and, as nonchalantly as possible in the circumstances, made my way to the checkout.

I do, in hindsight, feel rather bad about all of this, and hope that the roll didn’t make it into anybody’s lunch, but in the circumstances I do feel as though I was forced into it. I suppose this is exactly how most crime is committed. “Well, all right, so I’ve dismembered and eaten 143 people, but I had to do it, honestly.” This is the start of a slippery slope, and when I’m on the news being led away with a blanket on my head and being pelted with stones by a jeering crowd, you’ll be able to shake your heads sadly and note that it all started here.

Still haven’t tried the Gamecube.

I managed to pour milk into the Gamecube this morning.

Obviously I didn’t intend to pour milk into the Gamecube; it was an unfortunate accident caused by my being confident that I could turn the television on without putting my breakfast down first. Quite why I decided this I don’t know. I haven’t recently acquired new powers that render me markedly less clumsy than I’ve been for the previous 30 years. But I did, and the inevitable result was spillage. I don’t think much leaked into the Cube itself, and I did get in quickly to mop it up, so hopefully it won’t be fatal.

I was alerted to a free gig by a cricket commentary, so I deviated from my usual route home to head for Pimlico on the basis that the worst that could happen was that I’d arrive too late and not be able to get in. The queue was huge, and here we can see the difference between me of the past and the new, less good model. Once I would have stayed in the queue, taken my chances, stood around for maybe 45 minutes on the offchance that I might get in and, hey, if not maybe I’d meet some exciting new people, perhaps decide to take in the galleries instead, and generally have a culturally enriching experience rather than simply going home and eating some frozen pizza. These days I know that these things never happen; I assessed the queue, decided that 45 minutes standing around to not get in was a waste of time that could be better spent trying to find that Ultrasound CD, and headed for home.

I quickly ascertained that I’d made the correct decision; the queue was even longer than it had looked from the back, and walking past the area that the gig was to be held in I could see that there was no way I’d have got in. Feeling pleased with myself, I decided to walk along the river to Westminster. As I strolled by the river, trying to avoid getting in the way of tourists taking photographs of each other and muttering “you’re going to be stood there all night love” at a woman who seemed to be struggling with the principles of the pelican crossing and wondering why I’d added the last word and if I was suddenly turning into my dad, I felt oddly melancholic again. Maybe it was at missing the gig, maybe it was at my cynicism, or maybe it was because I was convinced that I’d broken the Gamecube. Who can say?

On the train home I noted a sign urging me to “Please keep your music down”. This would be all well and good if it was accompanied by similar signs telling people “Stop fucking shouting at people when you’re only sat a few feet apart”; until it is, I’m going to have to keep my music turned up because otherwise I’m not going to be able to hear it. I’d like to keep my music down, really I would. I like to be considerate to others. But I suspect that years of abusing them at gigs means that my ears are going to stop working properly sooner or later, and so if you, bloke with a conk the like of which I haven’t seen since General Blight, insist at hollering at your mate across the way, I’m going to turn the volume up and sod the consequences, and it doesn’t matter if it irritates people because they’re going to already be irritated enough by you and your mouth.

I still haven’t dared try the Gamecube yet.

It’s interesting to see how the commuters of London react to the first day of proper summer (ie dull, drizzling, not actually cold but with a distinct chill to the wind). Some choose to carry on dressing the same way they did when it was stupidly hot; some adopt sturdy plastic macs; I saw one woman who was wearing a scarf, which quite frankly is taking the piss. There may have been a distinct chill when the wind blew, but that’s taking things too far. And who keeps a scarf handy during the summer, anyway? I can tell you where my scarf is, because I only moved house a few weeks ago and therefore can tell you where practically everything is (the current exception being my copy of Everything Picture by Ultrasound, but never mind). Most normal people would have surely shoved the scarf to the back of the cupboard, before spending part of November searching for it, buying a new one, and then finding the old one two days later. When autumn comes around and she has to find something else to be exasperated by for a couple of hours, she’ll be sorry.

It’s days like this that make me feel ever so slightly wistful. This, to me, is summer; whenever I recall holidays and days out and such and such, very few of them were ever conducted in glorious sunshine and definitely not in stupid-o-degree heat as per the last few weeks. My memories of London Zoo almost all revolve around peering into cages trying to spot anything that might not be sheltering from the passing showers. All told, taking a stroll around the park at lunchtime, looking warily at the thick grey clouds overhead, I felt more content that I’d done in some time.

This, naturally, means that something appallingly bad is going to happen tomorrow.