As usual, there have been no blog updates for quite a considerable amount of time. This time my excuse is that I've just moved house, and currently have no internet access... what with not having a phoneline yet and all.

I don't know why I always apologise in my blog when I've not written anything for ages... I'm sure no-one except me is really that bothered by my absence. Maybe I am actually apologising to myself? Apologising for being more laid back than is healthy (I nearly negated to type the word "back" in that... excuse me while I wander off into a mental fantasy in which I am overly sexed...

...

...

... and I'm back)

Anyway, it's been a busy few weeks. Quite stressful.

There have even been elections! I had to vote at my old address, and my local polling station was truly "special". I got the joy of causing quite a stir, merely by showing my face, before I'd put any marks on my paper.

"But *gasp* we have no ramp!"

This, of course, neccessitated every member of polling station staff to drop what they were doing to come outside and squint at me for a moment.

What I loved the most was the ironically designed polling station. Fucking huge step at the door with no ramp (the building in it's normal guise is a fucking nursery... small children's legs aren't long enough to easily negotiate that step. What the hell?)... but once inside they had not one, but two lowered polling booths. And just to prove that they weren't installed to cater for the non-disabled person at the lower end of the height spectrum and to really drive home that irony, they'd stuck the international symbol for "cripple" above them.

Like they were suddenly expecting a mass influx of wheelchair users to levitate over that step?

The other major event that seems to have the nation up in arms at the moment is football.

Can I just say for the record:

I fucking hate football.

There. I feel better already.

I don't really understand the point. I've never really been into spectating sports. I used to be a swimmer, and that I enjoyed. I'll probably watch the Paralympic swimming coverage in the summer to see how people I used to know are getting on, but I don't really forsee myself watching any other sports on TV at all... ever.

Actually, I can kind of understand the point of watching women's football. Less to do with the fact of appreciating "the beautiful game", and more about appreciating fit, tomboyish women running round in shorts. Though, this is a hypothesis as I've never actually been to see a women's football match. But I'm sure I'd derive some level of enjoyment from it.

Actually... that makes a lot of things make sense to me... football fandom is something typically associated with heterosexual men. Often thought of as being homophobic too... but yet they derive pleasure from watching a bunch of pretty boys kicking a ball around a field. Huh. Can we say "repressed"???

On Sunday night a friend and I went out for dinner in my new local area (West Hampstead incase anyone cares to come and stalk me). There was the need to assess every restaurant along the main road before selecting one... just to find somewhere that wasn't showing that bloody football match. Eventually the restaurant we selected did have a portable TV inside, so we sat at one of the tables outside where we couldn't see it, and seemed to be in the company of similar football anti-fans.

It was a very nice restaurant with spectacular toilet graffitti. In addition to the usual "CJD ♥ STD" the toilet had clearly been visited by the Egon Ronay of graffitti artists and inscribed in the door were comments along the lines of "The best pizza and pasta in London" and "I shall definitely come back with my mates!" (I'm assuming the author didn't just mean to the toilet with a packet of condoms).

Whilst sitting outside the restaurant, we had the joy of seeing every car go past sporting an England flag from the aerial (tell me, does this improve reception? I now live next to a train line so I'm considering hanging one off the digital radio on my desk if it's a successful tactic). I'm not particularly patriotic, and feel no pride or joy about England or their football team.

What I do love about all these cars with England flags hanging off them are the cars that are owned by someone so doubly patriotic that they need to have a flagpole erected out of each side of the roof of their car. Why do I love this as a sight? Because it makes the car look so cute and girly, like it's wearing bunches or even better - deeleyboppers. I somehow suspect that this is not the image that football wankers were going for, but it does make me smile.

I have no idea when my next update will be... if anyone cares muchly about my blog, they can start a campaign of begging to Telewest to hurry and come round and install me a phoneline!