Why I'll Never Be A Music Journalist

Me: Who's the "big" rapper that's dead? Is it Biggie Smalls?

Sidekick: Nah. S'the Notorious B.I.G you're thinking of.

Me: (musing) Right. Right.....

Sidekick: There are other dead rappers, though. They all released songs about it - like O.D.B..

Me: What - Old Dead Biggie?

Sidekick: Er, no. Old Dirty Bastard.

Me: Right. Got it. Thanks.

40 or Bust

30 rushed up and grabbed Sidekick like a mugger, leaving no marks apart from an increasing level of general grumpiness. Now he's coasting towards 31 with nary a peep of complaint.

I can remember a time when 30 seemed like a distant country with no airport. Now I've been living there for a couple of months, having been forced kicking and screaming onto a direct non-stop flight. Only a few years ago, I was a called a lady for the first time - by a mother, instructing her tiny daughter to get out of my way. I wanted to pick the kid up and explain that I am a girl, dag nammit. A girl! No lady! Now that I am 30 I have to concede the point. I have officially passed the gateway.

However, I refuse to accept the encroaching decrepitude. Where will it stop? I have a vision of myself , wrinkled like a piece of perished rubber, wearing the same clothes I do now, but with the added support of a cast iron wonderbra, causing equal amounts of barely concealed horror and mirth as people see me hobble by.

My job forces allows me to regularly converse with people who are 17, 18 or 19. I sometimes feel like they have been brought up on another world and have travelled back to planet Earth to perform experiments of a social nature on me. This is, I reassure myself, perfectly normal paranoia. Isn't it?

One of them politely asked me the other day if I was going out at the weekend. He then stalled and looked slightly embarrassed, before saying, with a throwaway sort of gesture, "Of course not, you're too old to be going to pubs." I would like to state for the record that this is untrue, despite the perfectly acceptable argument that I cannot remember the last time I was in a pub. My memory, it goes without saying, is as good as it ever was (i.e. less use than a chocolate teaspoon).

All future birthdays are now cancelled. I will henceforth only be celebrating lustrums 'cos they happen less damn often.

Years are just numbers , right? Right? Good.

The Pwoer of Loev

"Do You have enough pwoer to provide your patrner high

quality SE-X on St. Valentine day?

Get a MON-STER pwoer, nothing can bring your ererction down!

Show your partner the PWOER of your LOEV and she will always remember You.

Loev will ALWAYS be associated with YOU!

Your order will be PRIVATE, nobody will know what You use.

Follow the link and get SSPECIAL DISSCOOUNT for that period."

Reading this email left me with several questions:

1. How did they know I was concerned about my ererction?

2. What's a DISSCOOUNT? SSPECIAL or otherwise?

3. Should I trust this complete stranger with my body?

The answers are:

1. The internuck knows all and sees all.

2. A small type of duck known for it's ability to fly remarkable distances.

3. Of course! I'd be a fool not to, considering the special duck and all.

If you'll excuse me, my order has just arrived from Gunter Schlong Enterprises.com. I'm just off to show Sidekick the PWOER of my LOEV, so that loev is ALWAYS associated with me.

Gormless-ness Insurance

Next week I will be making an utter Fochaber of myself by pretending that I have bottomless reserves of cool and can snowboard exactly like someone who does not have my unique "gifts" in the realm of physical prowess.

Every year I imagine myself, poised at the top of the slope, ready to glide down as if born to ride, maybe carving a few turns deep enough to lazily allow my hand to drift over the surface of the powder. Steep patch? No problem! I can turn the board as if it is on rails. The sky is an unlikely shade of blue, the mountains are like swarovski crystal and I glide along with mindblowing skill. In my mind.

Reality is more like this: Warmly bundled, my be-bootened form is as graceful as a rollerskating polar bear. (This year's boots more streamlined look are an improvement on last year's, which made me look like 2005's elephantiasis sufferer of the year.) This level of padding is enough to impede my balance, never mind my non-existent boarding ability. I've seen horrifying videos: my vast arse pushed out behind me like an airbag, knees bent, face as per Donald Sutherland pointing out the non pod-person in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" virtually catatonic with fear, hands flailing like Tyrannasaurus Rex reaching for a bowl of mashed potatoes.

Why do I insist on putting myself through it? Petrushka* only knows, maybe it has something to do with the rush of pure joy and ecstasy caused by reaching the bottom without breaking any bones, gashing flesh open with my own board, or cracking my skull open on a passing skier**. Any accusations that the happiness I feel is caused by imbibing luscious quantities of Vin Chaud (or "hotbooze") will be ridiculed while I knock back another shot and start snorting/giggling helplessly into it.

In any case I am taking no chances. I have doubled up on the holiday insurance.

*She's as likely to know as anyone else.
**If anyone can do it I can.

Updating Your Ass

'Cos it's just so yesterday.

I know it, I am lazy. I spent my two week Christmas break lolling about the house, increasing my waist size by consuming fat-based food and listlessly spending money that I do not yet have, on things that I don't need.

Gob Less Visa.

I could try to turn inactivity into some sort of art-form, but that would be too much like work.

Frankly, little has changed since last I wrote, dear diary, besides the following:

• I invented a miniature jet propulsion suit for dogs which has really taken off in Japan.
• I took up air hockey professionally.
• I now know exactly what hedgehogs having sex sound like*.
  

One of the above may be true. Or not. I have also taken up being non committal about most things. That's all folks, nothing to see here. Move along, move along.

*Grunt, grunt grunt. Groo! Grunt grunt. Seeing as how as you asked.