Years and years and oodles of time ago, I had just started smoking. I had the decency to wait till after I had left school, unlike a lot of my friends, and waited till I was at college. I did try to keep it a secret from my parents but of course they found out.

A Christmas arrived, as they do with alarming regularity and I asked my parents for an electronic and groovy lighter. By that I do not mean it was actually “grooved” but that at the time, electronic lighters were all the rage.

They said no. In fact my mum said “We ain’t encouraging you to smoke!”

Ho Hum.

A year passes and another Christmas is doing the looming thing. I am actually thinking of giving up the vile habit (as I would do a couple of years later. For ten years! Why did I start again? – long dull story.) and did NOT ask for an electronic flame spitting toy. Oh no.

What did I get for Christmas? Yep. A slim, flash, shiny electronic lighter.

The Christmas after, I seriously considered giving up playing guitar. This would ensure that my parents saved up and got me my first ever Gibson Les Paul right?

Did it work?

Did it bollocks!

Just saw a headline on the side of an Evening Standard van outside:

"Go ahead for £25 congestion charge given"

Fuck me!

I don't drive and never have but even I think thats a bit much. I know it is supposed to keep cars out of the centre of the city and improve the air quality (so then they can stop us smokers from enjoying our vice on the streets grrrr!) but I know some people that have to commute by car. Crowded underground trains are not an option if you have claustrophobia.

But that does not matter, until there are badgers and Roe Deer running free along the streets of the west end the price will just keep going up.

At least the wildlife will attack the bastard cyclists and give us all a laugh.

I get attached to things.

Stupid really. Cheap things, expensive things - in my head they have the same value if they are connected to some memory or person.

For example: In my rucksack I have a pen. A simple fibre tipped pen. But this pen reminds me of a warm summers night in Cyprus, because it was purchased on such a night from the little shop over the road from the Nereus Hotel so I could write the album title on a cd copy of an album that I was going to give to Andreas at the "No Name blues rock bar" after I had finished playing CD's over the bar pa that night. It was purchased during that part of the early evening when the sky is still lit but the sun is down, the heat is starting to go out of the air and the restaurants are just getting ready for the night. In my immediate future was a pint of long island iced tea poured by the woman who looked and sounded disturbingly like Orvil the duck behind the bar in Papa Georges, and after that a fantastic meal in the Princess Georgia with Sarah and Jo, then down to the "No Name" with said girlies for the rest of the evening and a few very "free form" games of pool with the littlest one of the two.

So that pen, that cheap little bit of very replaceable rubbish means something to me. Everytime I use it, I am crossing the road back from the shop, waving to the guy outside "Othellos", clucking (?) at the parrot in the cage outside "Vines" and looking forward.

Another Object of no actual value that I have much affection for and would be very upset to loose is the little foot high cardboard cut out Santa, that has been part of every xmas for as long as I can remember. Every year when he comes out and is stood in the fire place I tell Sarah how old he is, and that he appears in the background of xmas photos of me with my mum and dad taken at home when I was ten, and I can't remember a single festive period without this very cheap once colourful and now a little faded icon featuring in it. If I lost him, I would be very upset.

And lets not forget the cheap plaster black panther that my sister won at a fun fair back in the 70's and gave to me because I took a shine to it. Not full size of course, its only six inches long. It's behind me now, sat ontop of the right speaker of the stereo with a small Johnny Bravo figure standing next to it (Johnny used to stand on my Rack system at gigs via the magic of blue tack)

None of these items is worth a penny. But for some mad reason, they are some of my most prized possesions.

Daft bugger that I am.

(written at 22.53, 11/02/08)

“Nick, you know that new phone of yours”

“Yes”

“When it receives a text message, does it go Beepbeep beepbeep beepbeep like your alarm clock, at all, remotely?”

“Erm, no. It goes bingleybonglybling”

“Right. So why did you, on receiving a text last night just after midnight, reach over and turn your alarm clock off, causing us to be stood here rammed into a tight little tube of people and next to a man who has a jacket on that smell vaguely of fish while having the sharp corner of some womans bag introduced repeatedly to the soft parts of our below the belt area? Hmmmmmmmmmm?”

“Cos I’m stupid?”

“Yes. Yes I think that will be it. It can’t be that you actually wanted to be an hour late could it!”

“no”

“Right!”

But I am buggered if I know how.

The planet in question is "Planet Rock", the digital radio channel playing classic rock music and a smattering of new bands in the classic rock mode.

The thing is the owners of the station have put it up for sale and if they can't get a buyer.....it's hasty bannanas.

I mean Hasta la vista. (I have watched too many bugs bunny cartoons)

Anyway. Even if they get a buyer, the buyer may change the format. Which is a bugger.

So what to do.

Anyone got a spare shed load of money?

I will have to listen to something else when I am blogging then.

ARSE!