Star Blog

Been working my withered old hairy nuts off this week. Actually two weeks. 14 days. Nights. Chewed toenails. Name it. Working also as in family work, metaphorical work, sleeping (unable to) work, and so on and so unending forever. Now... almost over. For a couple of days. Coinciding as this does with the weekend, especially nice. Almost as if I planned it. Like I have that much control over anything. Wife, who has seen the best and worst of me this week - again - has taken my usually empty promises of salvation to heart and planned a weekend of child-exciting activities. Tomorrow, a visit to Oxford Castle, then on Sunday, the something or other caves in... High Wycombe? Does that make sense? Somewhere anyway. I mean, I'm there. Too right. Though a little bed time would be good too, if I could actually sleep long enough. Sadly, no longer possible, going on the available evidence of these past couple of years. Still... there is a kite (spelling? the bird anyway...) that is flying in circles above our house that has been flying and singing his song every morning this week. I know because wife, wise in the way of the country, has pointed it out. And of course, now I've noticed, I can't stop noticing. Have also been filling my mind in those in-between moments, early morning, walking the dog over the Whittenham clumps, a vast hill overlooking cottages, lakes, fields, trees, creatures and sheep shit. You climb to the top of the green hill, breath out, look around and hold the sunlight off with your hand. And keep walking in a staggered circle till you come back to where you started, then turn round and go back again. Whole thing takes maybe 45 minutes. Feels like years compressed into minutes, which of course is exactly what it is. I used to do this a lot when I first moved here from London 14 years ago, my poor squeezed-dry brain gulping in the green and the light and the long-distance views like a dying man in the desert plunged at last into an oasis. Not that it made me suddenly any happier then, not enough anyway, it just helped cleanse something in me... eventually. Enough anyway not to need it as much as I did then, but to need it still now in a different way. Needy still not not as much. Progress, to my mind, of a rich enough kind. Meanwhile, I'm sitting here starving, ready for scoff and a bit of love if there's any being heated up. First though, I need to phone a friend...

Another long day following another too short night. At least I feel like I am starting to get back on top of things though, workwise at least. Still too much to do, including transcribing a phone interview which is one of my least favourite things to do being as it is about the most tedious part of being a so-called music journalist, but as the actress said to the bishop as they stood behind the curtains holding glands together: at least I'm getting paid for it.

Enough. I am going out now. To buy a coffee. Then to pootle around Wallingford, pointing my unshaven chin at the sky and spilling cappucino down my lapels. There is nothing I particularly want or need to buy there - though there is a very expensive secondhand bookstore there with a most disgareeable old bugger in it that I like to ghost around in sometimes, me ignoring him ignoring me - I just fancy a pootle. And some fresh air. The last time I saw proper smell-that daylight was Saturday morning when the dog took me for a walk around Wittingham clumps, staggering like a vampire in the sharp sunlight.

Which reminds me... I spoke to Ross yesterday. First time in ages. He was in his usual high form, telling me all sorts of things he shouldn't which made me laugh out loud, and some things which didn't. People often mistake him for being a nutter - the piercing eyes, the knack of saying the unsayable, the sheer over-exhuberance of the man - yet it is so often the nutters that surround him that are the real problem. Unless you have been there stood next to him as the next moron from outer space from some band comes tottering through the door whining about their day, life, everything, it is hard to understand just why he has grown the hard-as-baked-shit outer shell he has. He is what he is because it has been the only way to survive and get the sodding job done and done well, too, more times than not. This doesn't always make him right, of course. Who, after all, is that? It does make him the most misudnerstood beast in the jungle since Sid the Serpent though. (I imagine him reading this pulling one of his faces. I imagine his detractors doing the same, only worse.)

Meanwhile, back at the farm, I really am going now. There is still two hours of daylight left and the air felt good wafting between my ears when I accidentally fell over the dog and into the garden just now. Ah, the intoxicating thought of Wallingford at twilight. If there is anyone out there reading this thinking of joining me perhaps... please don't.

Long, long, loooooooooooong day sitting here fidgeting trying to write, ignoring the urge to say fuck it and go a-rambling outside somewhere anywhere but here. That said, all worth it in a all-work-and-no-play-might-make-Mick-a-dull-mother-but-at-least-it-pays-some-sodding-bills-of-which-there-are-way-too-many-cheers sort of way.

Between groans, have found time to squeeze a few extras in. Like being told by Metallica's PR that, no, they won't have any tickets for me to see the band play live later this month. But then who am I, just some bloke who put them on the cover of Kerrang magazine severaql times back in the days when it was make or break for them, then later again on Classic Rock several times when it was make or break for us. The fact that I have also recently included them in a cover story for The Times T2 arts section and, upcoming, a cover story for Metal Hammer obviously means nothing either, you fools. Not that I'm bitter. Obviously. I just thought it might be nice to see them, like you know what I'm trying hard not to say, like, dude?

Meanwhile, in the background of my office, the new Pete 'Blood Everywhere' Doherty album Grace/Wasteland has been tinkling away (it's mainly acoustic) like muddy rain water down a drain. I'm reviewing it and I have to say it all sounds rather good. Quite unexpectedly so, too, considering he is even closer to the not so metaphorical grave than I. But, yeah, tis good awright. What next, a hit? No, not that kind, I mean an actual song in an actual chart for an actual five minutes or so? Maybe...

And then there is Paul Rodgers. Who I was supposed to be doing a (brief) phone interview with last Friday evening but has now, mysteriously, taken off on holiday, according to his in-no-way-making-it-up-as-he-goes-along PR. What do I care when I can just email him the questions anyway, asks PR? Well, right then, I will. But then that's me all over. Easy going. Like my arse after an Indian the night before. Or possibly... not.

Was supposed to be finishing off the 'ideas document' for my new TV producer friends today but oh christ I just could not get with it. That is, I got so far before the regular interruptions from my well-meaning wife and children and even the dopy dog finally put paid to any train of thought I may have almost had going. They don't mean to drive me crazy sometimes, they just... do. But then it is a Sunday and I believe there is a universal law that allows husbands and fathers to be driven round the twist and back from members of their nearest and dearest should they find themselves in the unforgivable positon of having to work on a Sunday when really they should be taking the family out and treating them to the kind of fun you see on the Brady bunch.

So... I gave up in the end and offered to take the tribe out somewhere, anywhere, just name it. But by then it was nearly 4pm and they didn't want to know anymore. Nice. So... I went back into my office and ploughed into some CD reviews for Classic Rock instead. If I couldn't be liked I could at least try and earn some dough, right? I should co-co...

Once upon a time - and for a very long time - much as I enjoyed doing them, I simply was no good whatsoever at writing reviews. I just didn't have the required restraint or flair as a writer to say what needed to be said in such a short space. Now, as I sit here one foot already wrapped tight in the shroud, I suddenly, miraculously, have discovered how to do it. Three hours later I had polished off four of the buggers. Enough, in fact, to encourage wife in the notion that we deserve a nice take-away from the Chinese tonight. We're supposed to be cutting down on such frivolities because of all this stuff about the credit crunch but you know how it is. And anyway, I need to get back in her good books. She has been pestering me about buying a kitten she'd found on a free ads page on the internet (I joke not) but the problem was suddenly solved when she refreshed the page and discovered the cat had already been sold. (Thank you Jesus, praise be to you Lord...) Now she's walking around with that serene yet ultimately put-upon face of a sodding nun and I'm praying the old Chicken Fried Rice plus sweet loving combo might help me out. Again...

Went to bed at seven last night and slept right through to about 6.30 this morning. Got up feeling better than I have in ages. Wife also helped by sleeping with the boy in his room. Maybe that's the secret then - bed at seven every night, and sleeping alone. Sounds good, doesn't it? Ah, the joys of decrepitude.

Today then should have been a vastly productive one. And it has been in many ways, except not quite productive enough, and now we have friends coming round in a minute expecting dinner and drinks and conviviality except I'm still here at the laptop wondering where the hours have gone, trying to review albums for Classic Rock, talk to a radio producer about a show idea, finish a detailed treatment for a TV production that may or may not happen one day, and be nice to people that randomly email and phone, of which there have been an unnatural amount today, inclduign the weird bloke who had the audacity just now to knock on my window and ask my if I want a window cleaner. "No, thank you, old chap," I'm sure I smiled cheerfuly. "Not today, thank you." I think that's what I said anyway, you'd never believe it from the bloke's face after I'd finished though. Anyway, all good stuff, when you are on top of it. I, however, am most definitely not on top of anything at the moment except my own aging arse.

Another weekend looming then where I sit staring at my fingers pretending to know what they're doing on the laptop while wife tries to find new ways of keeping the kids out of my hair. If I had any hair...

Oh lord, I know you are punishing me for my sins but if you could ask the giant two-headed demon in hobnail boots to stop stomping around in my head for just two minutes I would be very, very grateful. Yes, I did allow Robert to drag me to Groucho's last night, where we propped up the bar necking vodka martinis. Yes, I did then allow myself to be taxied to the Orion author's party at the Victoria & Albert Museum, where some evil-minded waiters and up-to-no-good waitresses absolutely insisted on filling my champagne glass every time I took the merest sip. And no, I hadn't had anything to eat all day since the greasy bacon and mushroom sandwich I had sacrificed the temple of my body to at lunchtime. But, hey, I'm only a man. And a very old, four-eyed and fat one at that. What did you expect? Denial? Abstinence? At this late and getting later by the second stage of the let's face it completely crooked game? No, you did not. Or you would not be God. For you knew what would happen. So why didn't you just let me fall under a bus on my way there, before all that happened? Because you are a cruel, heartless omnipotent being who frankly enjoys seeing the likes of me suffer more than I ever should. You are, in short, taking the piss. Which is sooo unfair as this is plainly all your fault and nothing - repeat nothing - whatsoever to do with me. You bastard...

A very subdued household today. Our friends Becky and Mike came over for dinner (and drinks) last night and we are still paying for it. Strangely, wife who doesn't drink at all, is the one really suffering. Headache, back pain, exhaustion... you'd think she'd played a blinder on the red last night. No, straight Ribena. It must have been all the excitement. Meanwhile, I feel all right - tired but otherwise fine, despite the medicinal measures of wine and (possibly) port I very reluctantly allowed myself to enjoy a couple of very small snifters of. Good seeing B and M though. Full of sage advice about the rearing of small lunatics, and many other ways along the road we are following them down.

Meanwhile, back to work today. For a while anyway. Been writing like a madmen, trying to get stuff done so I can hop a train to London where my book publishers are holding their annual author party this evening. Robert my agent is threatening to take me to his club "for drinks" beforehand - always a good sign and the main reason I am not driving in tonight.

An eventful day yesterday on many levels. First and foremost it was my youngest daughter's sixth birthday. I know because she came into the bedroom to remind me of this fact at about 6.30a.m., telling me all about it while whispering loudly in my half-dead ear. This is the girl that was born in my story Forty & Fat. Just like my boy, she was a Saturday night/Sunday morning baby, born to rock, destined to roll, only to sleep while the rest of us lie wide-awake trying to recover. And as loveable as only baby-love can be. As a treat, mummy took her and the other squids out for a walk over the local woodland clumps with the dog, something they never get to do with her usually as they are at school - it's half-term this week - and we don't try at weekends because the place is too full of other nutters and their kids (and dogs). After that, they all went out for lunch with Nanna and Granddad, to a place Granddad has been trying to get us all to go for months but which for similar reasons to walking the dog we have so far never been able to do. One of those lost and lovely country pubs you get out here where they mainly serve food - all day and night - and children and dogs are welcome honoured guests.

Where was I during all this? Well, here working, of course. We hadn't necessarily planned it that way but as I spent so much of last week away from my desk - hence, partly, the lack of blog these past few days - that I really did need to catch up on stuff. Anyway, we'd devoted Sunday to birthday stuff too, including a massive clothes and shoes bill (even at six, you wouldn't want to go shopping with a woman, especiailly one who knows exactly what she needs, or god help us also brings her sister and mother with her, ooh, that'll do nicely, thanks). Bizarrely, I ended up a few hours later in the same pub the family had had lunch in, talking turkey and eating tuna pannini with two TV producers who are plotting to rule the rock world and who have decided to enlist me to help them, poor deluded fools.

The other reason yesterday was a big un, for me anyway, was that I - ta ra! - did my first ever bit of downloading. Yes, I actually found the courage (and computer) to go foraging for something I quite fancied (the Fleet Foxes album) from Amazon, clicked a couple of buttons, one of which rather fearfully to install some, er, software that would make things, blimey, easier. And lo, it came to pass, that for half the price of sending off for a CD (sooo last week!) I had the bloody album sitting somewhere on my new laptop. What's more., wife then came in and showed me how to - technical term doubtless not new to anyone but me and all the other over 50s out there - burn said music onto a blank CD, which is now playing gently in the background as I sit here slackjawed and drooling writing this.

The future, eh? We're already living in it. We only have to worry about the past now...

Spent most of last week either in London or stuck in a basement, or both in fact. The best combo of which found me having lunch - twice - at Toppos in Soho, the basement Italian dive that looks and feels like it was lifted and flown direct from New York sometime in the Godfather-imitating mid-70s. Or always used to anyway. They have undergone a refurbishment in recent times which I'm not entirely sure about yet but at least I can now read the menu, which used to read - and weigh, it had so many pages - like something Plato put together in the original Latin, but is now four pages max, all in Anglotelli. Been going there for 25 years so the waiters - none of whom have succombed to any sort of refurbishment whatsoever in that time - all know me, which is always a plus, as I'm much better behaved now and so forgiven everything. Almost.

My first visit there last week was to entertain Bob the rock'n'roll bank manager. Now this might seem like an odd thing to do in this new age of being encouraged to shoot on sight any stray members of the breed brazen enough to actually venture out in public. But Bob is old school, has helped me out on more than one bad-crazy occasion, and also happens to be someone you would actually want to have a long lingering lunch with. Stories, Bob's got 'em. Trust me, no-one does sex and drugs and rock'n'roll like the big-money boys. He should do his own book, in fact. Maybe when he retires in a few years time we can hook up. Call it Daddy Was A Bank Jobber.

My other even more pleasant lunch at Topos last week was with Maureen Rice, and not just because Maureen is such a meeja supastar these days her soothingly elephantine expense account allows her to splash out on the likes of me, but because, again, Maureen has so many stories - some sad, all true - just sitting there listening to them is better than reading a book. In fact, she's someone I've been trying to coax into doing a book for years but so far she's not having it. Shame. Cos knowing her it would be a blockbuster, probably a film eventually too starring Anne Hathaway.

As for what else I was up too these past few days of no-blog, actually, I can't remember. Something about writing, something about paying bills, something about something about something I actually don't care about but one of those somethings that just has to be done sometimes, and then forgotten about. Certainly not committed to short-term memory in a blog or similar. Not while I'm still around anyway.

Right, gotta go, today is my youngest daughter's sixth birthday and because I'm having to make up for lost time we have to make the most of it while we can. Always.

Bored, was sitting there tonight watching Piers Morgan doing his ITV show on Hollywood. Remembering I used to spend a lot of time there myself, wife asked me if I would still want to live there. I couldn't answer. It's been such a long time, and judging from the TV tonight, it still looks exactly the same. English footballers busking it as bit-part actors, bit-part actors making do as interior designers, pop stars way past their sell-by date designing jewellery and developing film projects, yeah right. Then my old friend Sharon Osbourne came on, looking more like Joan Rivers than ever, and I thought: yeah, I'd still like to go there and sit by the pool with Sharon laughing at her stories. But bring my kids up there? Naw. Not while they're still little anyway...

By the way, I once sued Piers Morgan, when he worked on The Sun, for stealing my interview with Axl Rose and running it as a Sun World Exclusive. This was in 1990, the famous interview that Axl then claimed I'd made up, which I had obviously (yawn...). I don't remember Piers being in the room when we did it, though. Anyway, I sued him and The Sun, it took two years, cost a fortune, was nothing but a huge pain in the arse, and when, at the end of it, they agreed to settle out of court and make me a lump sum payment, I still felt no better. In fact, I felt worse. So bad in fact I swore I would never sue anyone ever again. Ever.

You live and learn the hard way. I do anyway. Which for no good reason makes me think of something else. My wife has started her own blog on her Facebook page. This is weird, for me anyway. I have never been to her Facebook page and don't intend to start now but she keeps reading me bits of her new blog it out, or laughing out loud as she writes it. It's not bad actually, if you want to hear about what a tosser I am sometimes. But I thought you got enough of that here. Oh...

Dog woke me at six this morning. Not to be let out. To be let onto the bed. I left her to it, along with wife and boy, and went downstairs to make tea and toast and stare at the telly. 6.00a.m. is starting to seem like a lay-in to me. By 7.30 I was actually at work in my office, putting up with Johnny Walker on Radio 2 deputising for The Great Wogan, and doing it in his usual cringeingly useless way. I like Johnny, was sorry to see him lose his ace afternoon slot on Radio 2 to Chris Evans, who is a great DJ but whom I find unlistenable for periods longer than a few minutes, and who plays music so 80s-oriented I can't stand it. But first thing in the morning, when you really need an expert, Johnny tries too hard, laughs at his own rubbish jokes too much, and is a v.poor sub for the greatest breakfast DJ of them all, no argument allowed.

Anyways... it's nearly 12 hours later and I'm still sitting here, apparently working. Of course, I have been out of the office occasionally, to eat, piss, talk to the dog, stare out the kitchen window, harrass my wife and children and all that other great stuff writers do when they're not tippy-tapping away like the lunatics they are at the keyboard, but it's still nearly 12 hours later and even I have now had enough.

What's the deal with Twitter, by the way? I've been told to give it a go so have but... remind me: what's the point? Hi, right now I'm having a shit... Now I'm wiping my arse... Now I'm walking back to my desk... Now I'm taking out my gun...

What I really need to do is update this website. Trouble is, as I have no clue how to do it myself I have to ask Julie to do it. Trouble there is Julie is v.busy these days becoming one of Britain's top young artists and it's not easy prising her away from her latest canvas. Good luck to her, I say. Maybe she could do one of me, staring at this screen, wondering how to make a very old website new again at the same time as scratching my arse, twittering to no-one in particular about Wogan and Walker and what in god's name happened somewhere down the road that I now get up at six o'bloody clock in the bastard morning? The Moaner Loser...

I was rolling down the road, out of work, no luck with women, sleeping on floors and the corners of other people's beds, but feeling all right now, you know? Each day was a search for the easy way ahead, a drink, a smoke, a box of take-away pork and chicken with rice from the Chinky down the road, 90p, cheaper than giving a fuck. Johnny Gilani had given me his old semi-acoustic and I had learned a half-dozen chords. I was 25, too late to learn anything new, it was generally agreed, but no harm in strumming. Anyway, I'd had it with rock writing, that was for sure, free at last then to concentrate on music. The place I mainly shacked-up was a third-floor shithole in Acton, wanker kids doing glue on the stairway, but nice, in a Nelson Algren sort of way, fire-escapes, old wooden doors shove 'em open with just a sneeze, 11 or 12 of us squeezed into four bedrooms, a kitchen and bathroom-toilet, unbearably hot in summer, deathly cold every other time, see your own breath hovering over the pillow. There was a cat we called Crowley. A big tabby fucker who lived up to his name, claw and bite you just for looking at him funny. Worse than any dog, he would lie in ambush, wrap himself round your ankles, score the flesh till the blood seeped into your odd socks, leave his fleas to bite you.

There would come a time when I had to run away again, after Alison had gone fully mad, not even bother to hide that she had been stealing from you, look at you like the early death you saw overtaking her mind, or that time you came home and Little John was face-down on the kitchen floor, the works still hanging from his side. But there would be some fun before that and for a long time it was my favourite bolthole, the place I went to when I couldn't stand to be left behind anywhere else. Something about it that almost insisted you be yourself, however bad that looked in the mirror in the morning, the self you knew others better off than you somehow managed to overcome, to hide and do away with almost but not quite most of the time. It didn't feel right or make you proud, but it did allow you to flop down on the bed and light a match in the middle of the afternoon, to pull the curtains closed on a sunny day and be outraged that Saturday nights were so shit or that pubs ever had to close, that put you in touch with every late-night garage window within the vicinity. And it was the last time I was real for about 20 years, which comes as a shock to think about now but would not have surprised me at all to realise then, obviously.

Odd end to the week. Blacked out in bed about midnight on Wednesday night, woke up about two hours later, completely unable to get back to sleep. Nothing particularly playing on my mind, as far as I could tell, no more ghosts than usual anyway, just wide awake for some reason. Struggled with it till about 4.00a.m. then gave up and went downstairs and made tea and toast - then noticed it snowing again. Really snowing, I mean. The full Bing Crosby. Stood at the back door as the dog frollicked in the garden, up to her armpits in the white stuff, the night sky not black but dark orange, the whole garden alive with eerie snowlight. Still couldn't sleep though so lay on the couch watching Barefoot In The Park, the only half-decent movie on, that I could bear watching anyway, while the dog licked my toes.

Finally felt my eyelids drooping again at about 7.00a.m. - just in time for the alarm clock to go off. Crawled back into bed just as wife was straining to get out of it. She needn't have bothered. The kids' school decided to close for the day. Not that I got any sleep. With wife and kids up there was no way daddy was going to get any peace. So...

Last night, I was worried it might be the same thing. Shattered but not sleepy, I climbed into the sack at about 10.30pm. No chance, I thought. But the previous 48 hours had taken their toll and I nodded out, falling headlong into the abyss almost immediately. Was still fighting the darkness when the alarm went off again. Staggered to the loo and gazed at the orange-pink sky through the window. Well, well. More snow. And more and more. Another day then of no school for the kids and not enough work done by me. Another day of wondering where it all goes and trying not to let it sink in too deep just how quickly. Another day then. With snow.

Not quite a day off today but very close to one. That is, no pressing stories to write, though a gathering pile of letters, bills and whatnot in a bottom drawer of my desk, all in various states of urgent disgrace. Adam the IT guru came round at lunchtime to finish up and by god if he didn't work yet more miracles. The whole house is now teched-up to its creaking, wallpaper-peeling eyeballs. Wife even has her own Facebook page now! Both girls are also doing stuff online. I'm half expecting the boy to come skateboarding through the door any minute with an iPod strapped to his back. It's all rather good, in an about-time-we-caught-up-with-the-rest-of-you sort of way. Even I am feeling bold enough on my new computer to have a crack at downloading iTunes. Well, maybe later. Do they do any good classical and folk, jazz and blues? (I'm not bothered about the rock stuff, I've got all I need of that, cheers.)

Did actually manage to creep off for an hour by myself this afternoon, just as it was getting dark. Had to pick up some stuff for the pharmacy, then found myself strolling through the mini-mall, going into the Games shop to try and find some stuff for PC for the girls. Came out with Fashion Show for the eldest and Me And My Pony for the youngest. The two girls serving in the shop didn't look much older then my own but they knew everything you needed to know about this stuff and were very helpful. I think they felt sorry for me actually, echoes of their own aging fathers perhaps, or that of their best friends'. (Best friends' fathers are always best, aren't they?) From there it was into Holland & Barrett for some fish oil EPA for the old ticker, then across the street to the new store that just opened which sells totally necessary gear like place-mats for the dining table. I know, I know, zimmer frame city. But, hey, I've had to wait a long time to get to this place. I'm just glad I lived long enough to see it. And hope I can hang on for a few more years of wandering around slow, sucking up the vibe, coughing it out again, seeing my reflection in younger shoppers' eyes and wondering.

Woke up in my boy's bed again this morning. He has developed the habit of coming into our room in the dead of night and getting into the bed on his mum's side. By the time we know he's there he's already snuggled up in the middle with his legs on my back and his head on wife's pillow. We used to get up and take him back to his own bed but he would just get up and do it again when we were asleep. Slowly but surely we gave up trying. Or rather, one of us will finally give up and take ourselves to his bed.

It was the dog that woke me. She's better than an alarm clock, and there's no turning her off. Even if you could our youngest girl would always be there to administer the fatal final blow. Thus, I have become a person that gets up extremely early every morning, something I never was for the first 40 years of my life, and certainly never intended to be, which just shows you what I know. It also means that as it is 11.36pm as I write this I have to stop now because it's already past my bedtime. I'm not even half-joking. Which is truly strange as again this would never have been the case for the first 40 years of my life. Indeed, one of the reasons I lived so dissolutely for most of that time, I believe now, was because I simply could not sleep or even try and go to bed early. Too much piss and vinegar. Too much shit and sugar cane. Too much too much...

Check out Kate Rusby's The Miner's Dream Of Home, if you can, by the way. It will touch your heart, if you still have one.

A beautiful day if you happen to be indoors gazing out the window at the snow, listening to some soft classical piano tinkling quietly from the radio (composer unknown). No red wine today, just apple juice (cold). It's just a moment, of course, a snowflake, gone the minute you hold it in your hot hands. But still good for however long or short it lasts. While it lasts.

The last time we had snow like this where I live was in the winter of 95-96. It was my first Xmas here in the countryside and I assumed every winter must be like that, my old red Fiat buried up to its roof, my head submerged too, just an old orange carrot for a nose to help me breath, someone else's discarded hat at a jaunty angle on my unmelting head.

That was a long time ago. So long it doesn't feel like here (there?) anymore. But then, I was outdoors in it all the time back then. The snow always looks better from inside.

Sitting here sipping a glass of good red wine, the snow falling in a blizzard outside my office window, fretting because I'm so far behind with a story I'm doing for Metal Hammer, hoping Alex the editor will be able to give me one more last - honest - day to finally nail it, while running to the stove every now and then stirring the bolognese sauce I decided I had to make tonight, wife and kids hurrying to finish their baths so they can run downstairs and watch Dancing On Ice on TV while they eat their dinner, feeling absolutely knackered and stressed and unduly itchy, and I'm wondering, quietly to myself, like, whether this constitutes ultimate happiness? I mean, I'd rather be sat in a chair before the fire, no kids to pollute the air with noise, reading the Sunday Times Culture section, all my work done days ago like it was supposed to be, wriggling my toes and sipping newly-ground coffee bought from some Fair Trade Pharoah from the covered market in Oxford, wondering why the rest of the world couldn't be as cool or why anyone ever voted Tory. But I did all that in the twenties and did it make me happy? Based on all the available evidence, I'd have to say no. Not even a fuck-bit. So I tried it this way instead. Wife, kids, house, mortgage, the full catastrophe as Zorba the Greek put it. Of course, Zorba didn't also have two cars, half a dozen computers in various states of health and a website that hadn't been updated in three years, so he had no pressure at all, as far as I'm concerned. A bottle of Retsina and a sheep thrown on the fire and he was done for the night. Anyway, to get back to the point, it occured to me somewhere round about the third or fourth sip of red that this state of affairs I find myself in, 50 going on 60, the finish post just a furlong or two away, that crapped out as I am, this is probably as good as it gets for the likes of me. That I actually like the stress, thrive on the day being pulled from under me like an old rug with sick on it (which reminds me), that I wouldn't swap this for anymore days lying by the pool of the Sunset Marquis in LA no matter how many interviews with the stars were on offer, on ice or otherwise. Of course, I might feel different by the time I get up to pour myself a second glass on doctor's orders, but the thought still counts as much as any the other ones that come in the dead of night, doesn't it?