I had my hair cut at the weekend. This would usually be unworthy of comment - I have my hair cut on a fairly regular basis, more often than I used to as the wisps of grey that are beginning to form around my temples look more prominent and straggly the longer my hair gets. Not that I have a problem with the advent of the grey hairs - if there must be some sort of change to my less-than-lovely hair, greyness would certainly be preferable to male pattern baldness, as at least this way I don't have to find ways to keep my head warm in winter. And I might even look quite distinguished, as long I managed to repel the temptation set before me by the Just For Men adverts.

No, it wasn't the fact that the closely cropped bits around my ears look greyer than ever that disturbed me. The things that disturbed me were the barber diverting away from the top of my head to thin out my eyebrows, and then running his little clipper device thing (technical term) over the outside of each ear and having a bit of a rummage inside the ear as well. And I don't want to have to have the barber removing hair from my ears. Not that I want to be one of those old men with tufts of hair sprouting from every facial orifice - the very thought of it makes me shudder - but I don't feel old enough to have hair growing in my ears. It's all rather upsetting.

I do feel as though someone ought to have warned me in advance of this business of unsightly hair appearing in unwanted places, particularly with it coming just at the point that I was finally beginning to feel comfortable in my own skin. They tell you enough about where you're going to get hair during the teenage years, but nobody explains that you get to 30 and just when you're thinking that, actually, this isn't so bad after all, you find yourself with nasty tufts in unfortunate areas. Or maybe they did; maybe I was off school that day, and so everyone else except me knows how to deal with nasal hair. It certainly explains binge drinking, teenage pregnancies, etc; get it done now while you're young and hairless, for tomorrow we... er, might have unsightly nasal hair.

Fred Wedlock

It's an unfortunate fact of life that as you grow older you always lose your friends. Well, it's an unfortunate fact of life if you're socially useless and find that you can't cope with slightly changing circumstances anyway, which is where I come in.

Take, for example, my two closest friends from the ages of about 14 to 18. One we lost contact with in the early university years, when he became so melancholic and apparently unable to move on that he became unbearable to be around (particularly as part of this melancholy would invariably result in him getting off with whichever girl I'd been eyeing up and desperately hoping to find the nerve to talk to across the floor of the indie disco before wailing about some girl that had chucked him two years previously). The other I fell out spectacularly with a few years later, for reasons too dull to go into here, although rest assured that this didn't involve him getting off with anyone I'd eyed up as he was as hopeless at these things as I. (It was he that taught me that you should never pretend that you have a girlfriend when you don't, as he was far cleverer than I and he couldn't do it convincingly, so what chance did I have?)

I'd only seen this second former friend a couple of times since our falling-out, the last when he'd passed through the ticket barrier next to mine at Liverpool Street a few years ago. And it was at Liverpool Street where we encountered each other today. I was stood waiting for my train to pull out, pondering the fact that I'd just spotted a policeman who was disturbingly young-looking and was hoping that this was down to him being freakishly baby-faced and not because I really am getting that old. As such, it took a moment for me to recognise that the figure that had bounded into the carriage just as the doors closed and was now stood directly in front of me was oddly familiar.

There then followed a brief moment of panic; what if he says something? Do I act aloof, or should I be all reconciliatory, what with being an adult and everything? If he says nothing should I acknowledge him, or pretend that I haven't noticed? But this was a momentary concern, for it was apparent that my former chum had taken matters into his own hands by standing with his back to me. For a brief moment I felt slightly affronted, and then I decided that this was a completely ridiculous situation and began to enjoy it.

By adopting this me-shunning stance, my former compadre had put himself into a rather awkward position; whereas I was stood leaning against the glass panel that separates the door area from the seating, he was stood facing the glass panel on his side and had nothing to lean against. This meant that, to the neutral observer, it looked as if he was trying to read whatever the young lady sat on the other side of the panel was reading over her shoulder (or possibly trying to look down her top). Furthermore, this meant that, as the train rattled towards Stratford, there were a couple of moments where he lost his footing and nearly fell backwards into me, a quite delicious prospect given his inability to as much as look in my direction.

Unfortunately our little tete-a-tete lasted only a few minutes, as I had to get off at the first stop. I was tempted to bid him a cheeky farewell - perhaps point out that we are 30 years old and thus should be capable of polite conversation or at least to glare malevolently at each other without causing some sort of incident, or possibly just to give him a cheeky wave as that was sure to utterly disgust him - but decided better of it.

I suppose that this was a regrettable incident, that two grown men can't get over something that happened years ago when we were young and stupid and instead resort to acting in such a childish manner. But, truth be told, the only regret I had came when The Pipettes cropped up on my iPod shortly after I'd changed trains and it occurred to me that I really should have found some music I know that he'd have absolutely hated during our short encounter, and played it at such a volume that he would have been able to hear it and become annoyed by it. Clearly, I have an awful lot of growing up to do.

Since the advent of the piece of crap free newspapers polluting the London transport network of an evening, the London Evening Standard has subtitled itself as 'London's Quality Paper'. This evening the advertising boards for the Evening Standard read: "STUDENT MASSACRE VICTIMS: PICTURES".

I've been trying to check in my handy dictionary to see if there's a definition of the word 'quality' to encompass these two facts, but unfortunately every time I try to look it up I find myself hurling the dictionary across the room in despair. Which is useful for purposes of exercise, but not particularly useful for reference purposes. I suppose I could try to look it up on the internet, but then I might feel the need to hurl my computer across the room and that probably wouldn't be wise.

Or maybe I'm being too cynical. Or not cynical enough, I'm not sure. Maybe there are people who were thinking "well, I didn't think that people being apparently randomly murdered was a bad thing, but now I've seen some pictures of people whose existence I was completely oblivious of I suddenly feel that this was possibly a bad thing to have happened", and it's only because I'm a bad person that I assume that most people's reaction would be to think to themselves "Would, wouldn'tve, would, would, wouldn't've, wou... well, maybe not if she begged, would".

Flawless victory

I made a midweek post-work trip to a supermarket (not the one that readers of this blog might have been expecting me to visit) as when I'd done my shopping trip there a few days earlier I'd noticed that they had boxes of six bottles of Lucozade on a buy-two-get-the-second-one-cheaper deal but didn't have the necessary number of arms to carry twelve bottles of Lucozade arranged in a handy two-lots-of-six-per-box as well as my weekly shopping (estimate: four arms required).

However, because I was a little late leaving the office and as such didn't get to the supermarket until quite late, I arrived in time to encounter the bloke whose job it is to mark down stock which needs to be sold quickly. (He probably has other duties as well - I may have written extensively on the subject of what happens in supermarkets, but I don't know exactly what a supermarket worker might do during the day.) In fact, I arrived as he was marking down boxes of doughnuts. Five doughnuts per box. 15 pence per box. Expiry date of the next day.

I made a calculation. Eat a doughnut or two today = fine. Eat a doughnut or two tomorrow = also fine. Eat a doughnut or two the day after = probably fine. Likelihood of doughnuts being left after that = small. So I bought a box. I went for the custard ones rather than the jam ones.

After adding the doughnuts to my basket, I made my way around to the Lucozade. I'd intended to buy one box of lemon, as this is my preferred flavour and the one I would choose if I was buying one box, and one box of orange, as that's what I would buy if I was buying a single bottle and they didn't have lemon, as is invariably the case. However, for some reason I picked up a box of normal Lucozade rather than the orange - it may have been due to dizziness from the coup with the doughnuts, although I could blame the box being mostly red and colourblindness causing me to get it confused with the predominately orange packaging of the orange flavour. Moreover, because I trying to work out whether the girl on the checkout fancied me or not (I decided not, on all balance of probabilities) I didn't notice my mistake when I paid for my goods, and didn't notice until I arrived home and put a couple of bottles in the fridge.

I tried some of the proper Lucozade this morning. I'd been dreading it slightly, as I thought that horrible memories of childhood illnesses would come rushing back, but it wasn't too bad. The problem is that, given that there are several bottles of the delightfully tasty and refreshing lemon flavour in the fridge as well, I can't imagine a circumstance under which I might choose to drink it. I suppose I could wait until I've finished off all of the lemon, but I suspect that my will is not strong enough for me to not go and buy some more lemon flavour once my stock is exhausted.

As such, I've decided to try drinking the Lucozade-flavour Lucozade in the mornings before I leave for work, on the grounds that it may help me feel more energetic and not as horribly lethargic as I've been of late. The flavour issue won't be nearly as important as the mouthwash I swill around tends to destroy any taste sensations I may have, and at least it'll save me buying any cartons of fruit juice for a bit.

The doughnuts were good though. Although after the first day they did begin to taste a bit cardboardy. Maybe that's what the expiry date is for.

The tent's gone.

Well, actually, I had a look earlier and I think that the tent is still there, but there's no blue/red light emanating from it, so it may as well not be there. It's like the first time I looked up into the sky as I wandered back from the indie disco in, hey, 1997 and realised that Hale-Bopp wasn't there any more. Except that that lasted for ages and this has only been there for six days.

There was going to be a really feeble parody of Life On Mars but set in 1997 and called Icky Poo Air-Raid at this point, but I've suddenly lost the will.

Waiver, waver

Easter has been all arse backwards this year. Good Friday was all wrong for starters; I missed out on seeing the people marching through the streets of Goodmayes carrying the cross to commemorate the time that Jesus marched through the streets of Goodmayes carrying the cross, as I went to see my parents for the day and so had no need of the usual trip to Tesco for supplies. Whereas on Easter Sunday, when I would usually go to see my parents, I stayed at home as my mum was off seeing the stars of Dancing On Ice. (Doing ice skating, obviously; it would be a bit pointless going to see the stars of Dancing On Ice doing the jobs that originally brought them to minor fame, as it wouldn't make for a very coherent show.) Apparently the show featured some sort of voting element in the style of the TV equivalent, which seems a mite risky given one thing and another, and a mite unfair what with people having already paid their money to see the show, but that's our modern corporate world of today I suppose.

While I'd been at my parents' on Friday my aunt had mentioned something about a motorbike rally taking place in Southend today; as such, as I made my way back from the supermarket I was less surprised than I might have been to see around 50-60 motorbikes waiting at the traffic lights. As I walked down the road I could see (or, perhaps more precisely given the hedge obstructing my view, hear) a steady stream of bikes following them. This was still going on by the time I reached the crossing point, from where I had a much better view; there seemed to be all sorts of bikes and bikers involved, from scary looking old blokes with big grey beards on brutal-looking machines who could probably hear Born To Be Wild playing on a continual loop in their head, to couples in matching leathers (the woman, inevitably, being the one riding pillion, if the amount of hair streaming from underneath the passengers' helmets was anything to go by), to a guy with L plates on a fairly weedy looking bike who, come to think of it, may have been out for a training ride and unexpectedly found himself caught up in the excitement of it all.

My curiosity extended to looking up the event, which is pleasingly named Southend Shakedown, probably the best name for a charity event I've ever come across. And it actually looked like tremendous fun; I've never had any desire to own a motorbike, in much the same way that I've never had any desire to own a car, but for a few moment I found myself considering the possibility; then I remembered my innate clumsiness, which would probably see me severely injured within about a quarter of an hour of sitting on the bike in the first place.

Perhaps the oddest feature of the weekend has been the addition of something that appears to be some sort of tent to the ravishing view of the Essex countryside from my back window. In the day it appears to be white, and by night it glows with blue and red light. I did wonder if it might be a circus or something of a similar ilk, as the open fields that I can see in the distance would seem like quite a good place to set up such a thing, although I suppose it could be The Klaxons paying homage to the heady days of the Old Rave scene by putting on shows in the middle of nowhere and playing their hit tunes, "The One That's Quite Good" and "The One That Sounds A Bit Like Hard-Fi" to a delirious bank holiday crowd.

We're so young we're so dumb and our time's been and gone

In a way I suppose it was just as well that the events of the afternoon had left me both tired and emotionally spent, otherwise I may have been far more apprehensive about seeing Bis again than I eventually was.

Y'see, I hadn't planned to go and see the Bis 10th anniversary tour thing. I first read about it at the end of last year and couldn't raise any enthusiasm for it at all; I'd been the the Last Ever Bis London Show Ever which had neatly concluded everything and, well, there was always the possibility that it might be crap and I'd find myself wondering if this really should have been the band my (very) late teens and early 20s were spent on. And then Gillen and Simon both linked to a piece about it that made me waver, which had turned into full on dithering during the last week, and which finally led to succumbing and buying a ticket on Friday morning.

On arrival, the first thing that struck me was that there were far more people there than had been at any other Bis gig I'd attended. I'd half expected the usual group of people who always turned out for them and a few curious outside observers and that we'd have to spread out to make ourselves look big, and yet when I arrived (just in time to see the support band chanting what I thought was "B-A-S-F" in some sort of tribute to audio cassettes, but which, now I think about it, was probably B-A-F-F or something) the place already seemed quite full.

The second thing that struck me was how young the crowd were. Not that the crowd weren't always young - I was older than most of the other attendees at these things when I was 22 - but these people were, by and large, really young; at one point we were shoved past by two girls with glitter-encrusted eyelids who couldn't have been older than 6 when the album whose 10th anniversary we were celebrating came out. (Steven, bless him, suggested that the band were older than most of the crowd; someone - no names - told me off when I attempted to reassure him that this wasn't quite the case. I also note that Manda either is or will pass 30 this year, and goodness but she's looking good, which goes to prove something).

And the band were great. Any doubts I may have had began to ease as the band struck poses before launching into Tell It To The Kids, dissipated further by their laughing off a technical fuck-up at the start of Sweet Shop Avengerz, and had gone completely by the end of Fake DIY. The thing that always stuck me about Bis live shows was that they never seemed to be enjoying what they were doing, no matter how much gusto they were bringing to it. And maybe it comes with getting older, getting less self-conscious or self-important or something, but only now do they seem to have fully embraced the joyous silliness of it all. And this is good, because you should enjoy the really quite preposterous sight of a room full of people shouting "Icky poo! Icky poo!" back at you at least as much as those who are doing the shouting. But at the same time there was no horrible archness about it, no sense of "Ha! Weren't we all crap?" guilty pleasures-type nonsense, just shared enthusiasm from the band and the crowd for this bunch of irresistible, ridiculous, fantastic tunes.

So I needn't have worried. Ten years on and I'm still not, as some predicted at the time, even slightly embarrassed about owning The New Transistor Heroes (although I am maybe a little embarrassed about my apparent need to resort to frantic air drumming in lieu of being able to, y'know, dance). Of all the horrible bands I could have picked to fall for in 1996, I couldn't have fallen for a better one

I first went to see Dagenham FC when I was about 6 years old; they were playing Milwall in the FA Cup and my dad, being that way inclined, took me along. I can't remember anything about it at all, other than it being dark and loud. After that we used to go a few times a season, usually when my aunt and uncle were down for the weekend and my uncle could drive us over there; he and my dad would watch the game, while I'd run around on the grass bank behind one of the goals and play with broken Iron Maiden records from the plant behind the stand with my cousin.

I first went to see Redbridge Forest FC play in the last season of their short existence; the second time I went they won 5-0, which is always a good way to make an impression. The grass bank had gone by then, although I think that there may still have been the odd fragment of shattered vinyl behind the stand.

I first went to see Dagenham & Redbridge FC in their first home league game, a 5-1 win over Farnborough Town. And I could give you a relentlessly dull list of various events I've been present at since (enthralling Cup and Trophy runs, winning the Ryman League at Hampton and Richmond Borough with 9 men and a centre half/centre forward in goal; staying to the bitter end of a 9-0 home defeat to Hereford and the redemptive victory over them the following season, the first stirrings of the team that... well, anyway) because all of this stuff is stupidly important to me, but we could be here all day.

And yesterday lunchtime I was prowling around the flat in the manner of an unhappy captive polar bear, eventually leaving at a pointlessly early hour because the nerves had got to me by then. Which was ridiculous, because they needed three points from the last six games, and which makes it probably just as well that they got them in one fell swoop (even though, in the circumstances, they could have lost and it wouldn't have made any difference).

And, while any sort of championship for a team you support is great, this one seems special - manager coming back to his hometown club for One Last Go, team of young players mostly picked up from lower league teams (with obligatory, er, wise old goalkeeper who's been there/seen it/failed to kick the ball straight there), the team gradually developing over time and being allowed to do so no matter how much people carped as they did so, taking on and beating more vaunted and better resourced opposition with no little skill and a relentless determination and spirit. It feels like how the comics told me that football should be like rather than how it actually is. And no matter how things go for Dagenham & Redbridge (or for QPR for that matter) over the next few years, I can't imagine anything football-related that could be as satisfying as what's happened this season.