"One of the most glorious messes in the world is the mess created in the living room on Christmas day. Don't clean it up too quickly."

Wow. A semester gone and not a single blog. I am ashamed of myself.

Nevertheless, let us put these transgressions behind us and start as we mean to go on; optimistically, light-heartedly and with a slight note of cynicism to garnish. And what better topic upon which to muse than the current festivities?

For yes ladies and gentlemen, it is Christmas time again! A time to spend far too much money, eat far too much food and pass far too much time in front of the TV watching films you've seen many a Christmas before. By that tone you might be expecting this to become an anti-Christmas rant; riling against the capitalist over-indulgence or the false best wishes you write into the card of the aunt you're hoping will die and leave you anything but her similarly ancient and unpleasant cat. And yes, of course there are plenty of things that aren't great about Christmas. But in fact I have to say that I love the festive season: it's a time that takes me back to my childhood when a mountain of presents would appear beneath a glittering tree and Dad would fall asleep in the middle of unwrapping them after the traditional turkey dinner. Sure it's not perfect, but it's as close as we'll get in a world populated by flawed creatures like homo sapiens, and that's not bad at all.

One thing I can't stand, however, is wrapping presents. Lord how I hate it. Nothing in the world makes me as angry as wrapping presents manages to. I don't mind buying them, in fact I take great pleasure in doing so; finding that witty present that both entertains and shows you care, or at least attempting to do so (novelty socks don't always impress). I don't mind receiving them either, although I've never been amazing at surprises: I used to ask my parents what I would I would be getting year on year; that way I could pretend to like them even if I didn't and wouldn't be caught off guard. But wrapping them infuriates me like nothing on earth. I can never seem to get the right amount of paper, the right kind of fold and end up with a shape that in no way resembles anything like a gift worth unwrapping. I end up in a mess of ribbon, glossy paper and sticky tape rocking back and forth in a corner and hurling abuse at a pair of woolen gloves.

What's possibly more aggravating is the way that women seem to have an innate instinct for present wrapping. Either they're taught from a young age the correct way in which to hold down a flap whilst preparing the ideal length of sticky tape with their toes, or somehow this ability has transcended the generations via the genetic make-up that separates male from female. My mother can wrap anything from a shapeless jumper to an oval box (whose idea was it to put gifts in oval boxes?!) and it comes out looking as if Santa himself had prepared it. My girlfriend will wander in to my room (now liberally adorned with lengths of selotape that give it the appearance of a human spider web), shake her head despairingly and produce in under thirty seconds a gift so perfect she's even trained a robin to sit atop the item and whistle 'Good King Wenceslas' at passers by.

Yet another example of the ways in which women far surpass the bumbling incapabilities of men.

"Get that Friday feeling."

Today is a momentous day. This blog is in fact is a momentous blog. This is officially the 10th blog I have written. Perhaps i should open a bottle of champagne, or at the very least a new bottle of shampoo. So what shall we be exploring in today's momentous blog? The topic itself should be a reflection of how important today's blog is, the epitome of my writing career, the pinnacle of my blogging ability.

Which is why I have chosen to write about the humble Crunchie.

I used to dislike Crunchies. Yes I was a heathen, without taste or style, unlikely to progress past the lower echelons of Tesco's employment programmes despite years of hardcore sugar stacking. But I simply didn't like them. And then something changed, a miracle, whereby what had once been odious to me and had remained unwrapped in a Cadbury's Christmas selection box for months on end until an overwhelming desire for sugar would force me to unwrap it, ram it down my throat unchewed and instantly regret it became something of an addiction. Now the very smell of a Crunchie is enough to melt my insides and send me dizzily into a state of ecstasy, let alone the taste of its delicious, cinder toffee centre. God, I'm getting tingly just talking about it. Is it right to feel this passionately about a confectionary item?

Where am I going with this? I'm not sure but we'll get there, don't worry.

What interests me about this change, besides opening up a new possibility when stood in a newsagents agonising on how best to further expand my waistline, is the fact that it proves something that I never believed when I was younger; that you can grow to like something. I had always thought that this was a clever ploy used by adults to coerce you into eating something that was in fact inedible, but slowly and regrettably I am coming to realise that what they said was entirely true. I remember my first sips of beer, pretending I loved it and could drink a whole pint whilst in fact thinking that someone had just poured the contents of their blocked drain into a glass and served it to my unsuspecting father. Indeed, I remember asking what whiskey was like and thinking someone wanted to kill me when my dad gave me a sip, cursing as the burning liquid scorched it's way down to my stop like some kind of aqueous dragon. Both of these things I now thoroughly enjoy, alongside many other delicacies I would never have delighted in a few years ago, and the fact is that on this occasion as on many my parents were completely and utterly correct; your tastes can change with age.

This goes for many other things as well. Go back two or three years ago and I was a committed communist (insofar as you can be committed at the age of sixteen). I riled against a capitalist system I had very little understanding of and believed I lived under a corrupt political system that I could barely comprehend and wasn't even old enough to vote for. A lot of these beliefs I still hold today and would argue passionately in favour of an improved welfare system and more democratic style of government and election. But I know see that, despite the beauty of a egalitarian utopia, one cannot escape the fact that that is indeed what it is; an unachievable dream, a flawed goal, an enigmatic ideal. Call me cynical but, whilst mankind continues to be flawed and imperfect (which is a polite way of saying "we're all buggering it up"), the creation of a perfect world is impossible; the best we can hope for is to aim high and expect to achieve a little less. This is so hugely contradictory to my old beliefs that you would be forgiven for thinking they were two different people, but they were both me; just at different stages in my continual development as a human.

And so I guess in a roundabout way this blog serves as a contrast to my last; looking forwards as opposed to behind. If I have changed so much up until this point, how much more can I expect to change? Will I discover that certain things are fundamental to my being, or is my character to be eternally shaped, moulded and manipulated as I continue on the path of life? This sounds deep, and possibly like the words of some ancient philosophy professor who, after years explaining Descartes and Socrates, has given up and now lives with his cat, a bottle of rum and a collection of amusingly shaped vegetables. But I find the prospect both interesting and exciting; I like to think that age will add to as opposed to erode what constitutes my being and that, with a little humility, life will only become richer and more beautifully mysterious. As much as life is scary, every so often its promise gives you a thrill that's as addictive as a drug, and the only way to approach it is to embrace it and be prepared to leave behind the things that are slowing you down.

Even so, I won't be trading my Gameboy for a golf club too soon.

"The four stages of man are infancy, childhood, adolescence and obsolescence..."

Adult life is a scary thing. I've been an adult for around a year and a quarter now and I couldn't be more terrified if I were shipped out to fight in Iraq with nothing but a toothpick and a copy of 'The Express' (I guess that's not far off the modern British army's armaments). Life as an adult is confusing, fraught with worries and stress and centered largely around whether or not you have enough money to buy this Wispa or whether you should save it for an extra five minutes worth of electricity. Call me melodramatic and pretentious, but in my own small way I've been confronted with the real world and I have to tell you it scares the shit out of me. I don't like it. I have a house that I have to pay for and look after, I have a future that has to be worked towards beyond whether or not I get more than eight out of ten in my French vocabulary tests and I've come face to face with the realities of modern life. Upon visiting Barcelona recently I was propositioned by a prostitute and offered drugs within five minutes of stepping outside the safety of my youth hostel. Had I been ten years younger I would have been unlikely to have been offered so much as a lolly and a toy dinosaur, if I had been allowed out beyond seven 'o' clock at all.

And that's why the topic of my blog today is childhood. I'm sure I'm not the only one who, confronted with the way the world can be, retreats into a corner with a teddy, sucks his thumb and reminisces on what it was like to be a few years younger and without a care in the world beyond when the next Pokemon game comes out and whether my Mum will buy it for my birthday. Perhaps I am. But I like to think we're all a bit nostalgic for that lost innocence, and just for a few short paragraphs I'm going to revel in it rather than feel ashamed. Who knows, I might even make a car out of Lego or a fort out of cardboard boxes in the process.

Being really little must be ace. You can't be that conscious of it when you've got one hand in a plant pot and the other picking sweetcorn out of your nose, but it must be an epic time of life. I wish I could learn to walk again. There's something in the self-confident yet almost entirely uncoordinated walk of a small child that boasts of having conquered the greatest hurdle of them all and remained unscathed beyond the odd bump to the face as you trip over a discarded Mr Potato head. It's somewhat similar to the strut of a successful businessman actually, and when you think about it the comparison isn't too big a leap of the imagination; both use speech that no one understands but themselves and throw a tantrum when, whether because of a caring mother or government restrictions, they're not allowed to take a risk that's beyond their capabilities.

And then being, say, 10 must be really cool as well. My little sister's 11 now and has just started secondary school (I feel old just thinking about it; I remember when she used to run around the house wearing no more than a hair bobble and shrieking like Amy Winehouse after a particularly heavy night) but back when she was 10 she was the queen of her world and loved every minute of it. You're old enough that you're at the top of your school, you're a politician of the playground and lord of the lunch queue and yet have the prospect of secondary school, with the promise of Bunsen burners and cutting up a sheep's eye, looming ahead of you full of excitement and anticipation. And on top of that you can still watch Spongebob, find it funny and no one thinks you're emotionally immature. Brilliant.

Even being 13 or 14 is pretty cool. Girls are now no longer diseased and are actually starting to get attractive (before you reach for the phone to call social services I speak from the perspective of a 14 year old here). You can now go out with them and, joy of joys, you might even snog one on the back of a bus! You're old enough to pick on someone smaller than you at school, but not quite big enough to have spare any kind of thought for things that matter. Jesus, when I was that age we had SATs to worry about; kids don't even have those these days the lucky gits!

You have to question at what point did life switch on. When did that innocence disappear, where the only money you had to worry about was your £1.50 worth of lunch money and things such as sex, drugs and alcohol were things you only heard about when they were in a song or when some lads at the back of the class would shout them out to annoy the teacher and snigger? When did the world start to take on darker shades? When did you stop having to ignore them and start having to care about them? As I have said more than once in these blogs I don't intend to come up with answers, and it's a damn good thing, because on this occasion I haven't the foggiest what the truth is. All I know is that I still have my gameboy and I'm going to play on it.

I will, however, shut the door when I do it.

"I know a mother-in-law who sleeps with her glasses on, the better to see her son-in-law suffer in her dreams."

I had a dream recently in which I woke up to a giant tortoise outside the window. On further inspection I discovered that it was accompanied by a killer whale and they were lounging around in a pond in my girlfriend's back garden that doesn't exist in reality . Not long afterwards they were joined by a whole host of creatures ranging from grizzly bears to meerkats. One has to question what I had been eating/drinking/snorting just before bed to have had such a bizarre night's entertainment.

Dreams are very odd things. Despite the fact that we all have them psychologists still have no idea why. I used to think that it was your brain replaying and sorting out all the stuff that had happened in a day, but such a concept is highly disturbing when you think I once had a dream about marrying my guinea pig in Hawaii. Some people think they are the expression of suppressed desires and thoughts, our subconscious if you will, but again either I've got a bizarre fetish for South American rodents or Snowy was just particularly appealing when I fed her that morning. The truth is we really have no idea why we dream, but at the same time we wouldn't be able to function without them. They're a bit like the appendix of the mind: no-one knows why they're there but they must have or have had a function once upon a time.

And it's possibly the mysteriousness of dreams that make them so fascinating. Whole books are written on interpreting them, inevitably leading to the conclusion that you fancy one of your parents and want the other dead regardless of whether you dream about Hamlet or of the donkeys at Skegness. Films such as the recent 'Inception' explore the idea of the dreamworld and what could happen if we were able to manipulate them for our own devices. Superstitions have surrounded them since time began (apparently dreaming about ham means you will lose something dear to you). The very fabric of dreams is intriguing, and our experience of them can shape our day. Dreams can be so realistic that we wake up in floods of tears or with the urgent need to contact Winston Churchill, and yet at the same time can be so bizarre that we recount them at every dinner party thinking they're witty anecdotes when in actual fact the guests listening want to have you hung, drawn and quartered. They can take place in a familiar setting and with familiar people, yet still have odd twists such as axes over your grandmother's mantle piece or a lack of gravity. All in all dreams are weird. What a pathetic conclusion.

If only we could record them, like we used to record 'Antiques Roadshow' for Nanna on VHS because she couldn't work out how the "television box" worked. On waking they so often slip from our grasp and this is massively infuriating. There have been occasions where, on describing the least amusing of two dreams, I've forgotten the far more hilarious one and can only remember that it involved the Statue of Liberty and a packet of ginger nuts. This obviously leads to much embarrassment and seems such a shame, particularly when you have really enjoyed a dream. I've had adventures I would consider worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster, or at least £200 from 'You've been framed'. And perhaps if we could record and replay what goes on in our heads when our bodies have shut down we would have a greater understanding of why we dream and maybe even comprehend better the human mind.

On second thoughts that's maybe not a good idea. The implications for Snowy could be dire.

"You're not drunk until you have to hold onto the floor to keep from falling off."

It was in a small side-room of a Lincoln coffee-shop, surrounded by enough books, cushions and curtains to make the driest librarian aroused and ready for an evening of erotic reading and light petting, that I first realised the ludicrousness (a truly lovely word that should be used more often) of drunkenness (another delightful word). This revelation was triggered by the many tales of a friend's antics at university, where nights in airing cupboards, punching wardens and spattering friends with projectile vomit seem an almost weekly occurrence. This is not only typical, but almost expected of the average student (who also eats pizza as an attempt to fulfill all their nutritional requirements in one go and does less work than the average estate agent) and, although I am no fan of averages, I have to admit that I think everyone I know there has at least one similar story and some far worse.

And this is a slightly worrying trend I feel. I speak not as some government official or octogenarian with little notion of the real world and problems with their bowels but as someone who enjoys the odd drink or two (or twelve...) and who has the odd story of his own; Kentucky fried chicken plastered up the back of a toilet is not one of my proudest memories. The fact that we measure the quality of a night not on, say, how brilliant the music was or the quality of the cocktails, but instead on how little we remember and how many minutes were spent on the floor, in tears or snogging a toilet is almost perverse. We frown upon self-harm and slit wrists but wear scars and bruises obtained on nights out like the war wounds of a viking war lord. Romance can take weeks, even months or years, to achieve in a sober state and still be frowned upon for being rushed but inebriation can form relationships that last a lifetime and spark peals of laughter reminiscent of a hyena choir when it is retold at family parties and prison cells.

Now I'm not saying we shouldn't drink, nor am I saying we should never get so drunk that our own belly button keeps us in stitches for hours; this would be a depressing, bleak and teal-coloured future. Because on reflection, it is the very danger, unpredictability and lack of control that accompanies drunkenness that makes it so exciting. Why do base jumpers hurl themselves of buildings with nothing but a square of fabric and a sherbet lemon to save them? Risk. Why do race drivers zoom round a track in what is effectively a tin can powered by a rocket? Risk. So why do students drink until they know they won't remember their actions the following morning when they wake up in a shopping trolley in a suburb of Wakefield? I don't think I have to say it again.

And so I'd like to make a toast to the ludicrousness of drunkenness. In a few hours I shan't be able to stand.

"Home, sweet home..."

Well ladies and gentlemen, I have neglected my duties towards you as the female cuckoo neglects her young; foisting her eggs upon an unsuspecting meadow pippet as opposed to nurturing them with love, care and the odd note of motherly disapproval. I am ashamed to have done such a thing, but once again the lack of internet connection has prevented me from supporting you as I should. I shall try to father you better henceforth with regular support payments and trips to watch football. That aside it's good to be back and I write to you from the comfort of a sofa at home with my family. My girlfriend is sat on one side reading and my brother on the other playing some dinosaur game on his iPod touch. I have just spent the morning blackberrying and am now writing for you with a cup of tea at my side and a rather irritating thorn in my right leg. Bliss.

Being at home is a truly odd thing. You go from being an adult (well, nearly an adult) to being bizarrely transported back in time to when you were in your late teens, desperate to leave home yet still unsure of how to use a washing machine and even what it's meant to be washing (is it plates or pants in this one?). It's strange and a tad unnerving that your parents still believe they have the same degree of control over your life as when you left, that you find yourself acting in a childish way (I decided to dance like a crab to the tune of 'Under the Sea'yesterday, and then offered to perform it to a friend when she visits tomorrow) and that, oddest of all, you don't seem to notice all that much, or even necessarily to mind when you do.

I used to think this was a case of parents not wanting to relinquish the control over us, wishing still to treat us like the toddlers we once were by wiping our noses, blending our food up and sending us to work 18 hours at the local sawmill, but more recently I've started to wonder whether this is in fact because we don't want to let go of our childhoods. This isn't something confined to the parental home, this is an attitude that pervades adult life. I'm a student and spend a significant proportion of my life drinking to regain the mentality and a style of walking of the average three-year old; there are whole club nights devoted to dressing up as school-children, even if the skirts are much shorter than teachers would allow and the average student didn't liberally spatter his uniform with vodka and coke; and you can walk into many a girl's room to find more teddies than floor space (normally when she's there as well, unless you have an unhealthy interest in cuddly toys and eyeliner pencils). But even real adults with jobs, homes and several divorces attempt to return nostalgically to their youth. I saw a 45-year old man on a train playing a racing game on his phone the other day like someone 30 years younger than himself. Heck, even having children is a way of reliving one's childhood; parents seem to spend more time playing with the toys and talking in the baby voice (incidentally, when did you ever hear a baby say "goo" or "ga"?) than the children themselves, who seem bored and in need of a coffee and copy of the Sunday Times.

Once again I'm not here to give answers or well-wrapped up conclusions, only to offer thoughts and observations, but maybe it isn't such a bad thing to return to our childhood. The world is a big, terrifying and unpredictable place, and sometimes it must be nice to escape into the mind of a child where the most horrifying prospect is not going to the corner shop on the way home or having less carrots than his younger sister.

“When angry, count to four. When very angry, swear.”

I hate technology. I think this is an emotion shared by many people who wish that the slashing of wires had a similar effect on computers as the slashing of a throat has on humans- a painful, messy and somewhat satisfying death. But right now I think I hate technology more than ever; the only reason I am using a computer right now as opposed to battering it with a wooden spoon is so that I can vent my fury over the interweb. The wooden spoon is waiting however, and I doubt the laptop will survive the experience.

What has brought about this hatred you ask? Simply the fact that so many things have gone wrong with it in recent history. Sky have refused to connect our phone line and set up our broadband without first making us wait a month, forcing us to spend many hours on the phone to their staff (perhaps there are issues of lonliness and self-worth in their personnel department?) and sending us so many letters I fear for the rain forests of the world. Yorkshire water managed to completely rearrange the numbers of my girlfriend's bank account with a creativity that rivals that of Dan Brown in the Da Vinci Code. And I am currently sat next to my friend whose laptop is refusing to connect to their wireless network whilst mine is working perfectly, almost taunting his frustration as he battles with system diagnostics and control panels.

This is the second blog in a row to have discussed questions of technology and you would be forgiven for assuming that this has become something of a theme. My last blog, just in case you haven't read it (and if you haven't you should; it's a riveting read), was all about our lack of internet and the revelations to have come out of this sorry state of affairs. My writing about it again only goes to further prove how important technology is to our lives, but I don't intend to repeat myself. Instead, I thought I'd look at the different ways in which we respond to frustrations; it's highly entertaining.

After much analysis (I thought about it just now whilst making a glass of squash) I think there are three different ways in which we respond to irritations. The first kind of people are those who simply aren't bothered by them. These people are about as rare as an immaculate conception (and are similarly questionable) but one example is my friend Luke who never seems to get angry at anything. It's almost frustrating; you could kill his mother, sleep with his girlfriend and use his balls to make a somewhat unpleasant soup and he wouldn't do more than shrug his shoulders and ask if you enjoyed it. It's tempting to see how far you could push it some times, but he's too lovable for that .

The second kind are those who become despondent in the face of problems. These people tend to wither like a daffodil in the desert any time they are confronted with frustrations, becoming as depressive and lifeless as Anne Robinson's face. They retire to their rooms, spend many hours playing runescape or something similarly mindless and eat anything vaguely edible (including socks which can be made palatable with a light layer of toothpaste) washed down with rainwater collected in a shoe. They only exit their lair when coaxed out with promises of cake and assurances of the death of the 'Go Compare' man. Again these individuals are uncommon, less so admittedly than those non-responders, but you're unlikely to meet them, which is a shame in my opinion; enough of them might gaurantee the demise of that operatic bastard.

The final category, and by far the most prevalent, are those who, like me, get angry. Very angry. Sometimes so angry that the nearest object, whether that be a remote control, a half-chopped onion or an unsuspecting hamster, can find itself flying through the air at high velocity wondering how it suddenly discovered the ability to travel in such a manner and why oh why it was chosen for such an undertaking. They often express their anger in colourful language that would make even the foul-mouthed Ricky Gervais blush and at a similar volume to that of a howler gibbon in a contest of 'Bogies'. This can be a truly terrifying experience for nearby individuals, who are warned to wear protection of any form to avoid shrapnel as said object explodes against a wall.

I don't intend to form a conclusion for you ladies and gentlemen. I'm not going to argue that we should all be more like type 1 person, or that not responding passionately suggests a lack of interest and imagination. I wouldn't want to insult your intelligence, and besides, my aim was neverto lecture but to entertain. If you laughed at any point then my mission is complete and I can return to the mothership.

If you are dissatisfied by this however, perhaps you could use this as some sort of quiz, like those ones you get in girly magazines to discover what your skin tone is or which of the twilight characters is most likely to marry you in the unlikely event of your meeting them and of their finding you in anyway remotely attractive. Work out which type of person you are. And if you're still dissatisfied, I offer a five year warranty, just make sure you've kept the receipt.

Now the laptop. Where's that spoon...

"For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three..."

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, it has certainly been a while! You'd be mistaken for imagining I had been on an expensive two-week holiday to Argentina, or had been detained for the theft of a £1.99 pencil sharpener from Smiths, or dare I say it that, as the second coming, I had died and come back to life with the express purpose of saving mankind from their sins, only had decided to extend the duration from three days to three weeks in order to achieve a higher 'wow' factor and a place in the Guinness Book of Records. I'm afraid to reveal, however, that all of these are far from the truth. The simple fact of the matter is that I have not had the internet for some time.

Such a revelation will undoubtedly be horrifying to some of you whose existence depends upon this link to the outside world. The fact that I am still alive, breathing and able to maintain a game of chess for over three quarters of an hour will seem a miracle, unbelievable and possibly even induce you to swoon into the arms of a wealthy potential lover named Lord Brandenburg. How does his heart still beat when he hasn't been able to announce his eating a banana on Facebook? How can he still function when he hasn't heard the latest gossip about Jordan's waxwork face (there's always 'Heat' magazine)? Well the fact is, friends, that it hasn't been as much of an ordeal as you might imagine. It did however reveal some somewhat interesting observations that I should like to share with you.

Did I miss the internet? Certainly. Did I miss it terribly? Not really. I missed it as a puppy might temporarily miss his absent master, but not as an erotomaniac might miss his nonreciprocating lover after he has murdered her with a bread stick and small pair of tweezers. It was certainly discomfiting not being able to keep up with the latest events in my friends' lives, and inconvenient to not be able to look up how many of Great Britain's monarchs were women and whether their respective reigns had more benefits for the nation than those of their male counterparts. But this was no major grievance; I simply found other things to do.

What was more surprising was that my world continued to revolve around my laptop despite its lack of connectivity. I would, for example, spend hours shooting people on games regardless of the fact that these people were bots as opposed to the extensions of other human beings. I would watch films as opposed to reading books, since an analysis of the two activities highlighted the former option's advantage of reduced physical exertion (none of that page-turning business). I would even do something as boring as defrag my hard drive just to occupy myself.

I'm hooked, almost wired up, to my laptop, of which the internet is but a useful and sometimes amusing tool. Taking away my computer would have been like removing one of my limbs; debilitating, painful and somewhat bloody. but the lack of internet was simply like breaking a wrist; a pain in the arse but workable. Is this the condition of all human beings now and not just myself? I think so. We rely so much on technology that to take it away from us would be horrific. My girlfriend's mother has a cooker with a touchscreen interface that can keep an individual entertained for hours with the short series of chromatically ascending beeps that accompany it's being turned on. Ludicrous and somewhat pathetic, but unfortunately and despicably true.

And now I shall read a book. Unplug for a little while and let my battery run down. Who knows, it might do me some good.

"Home is where the heart is."

I have a house. How exciting is that?!

It has walls, ceilings, windows and all sorts of other things that come together to make what we call "a house". It even has an outside toilet. Not that I shall be using it, but the fact that it does is somewhat exciting; I could answer the call of nature in the fresh air if I wanted. Although I probably would close the door, just for appearances sake. It has to be said that I have not moved in yet; I have yet to install my saucepans in the kitchen cupboards, to align my pencils on the desk and to christen the toilet. I haven't had time to book an appointment with the vicar yet, let alone take it to the local St Thomas'. But soon I will be eating in a new kitchen, sleeping in a new bed and stumbling up new stairs after a few too many at the Grindstone not 50 yards from my front door (the proximity of the pub is a feature that I particularly relish) and I have to say I have mixed feelings on the matter.

Houses are funny things aren't they? An old house can contain hundreds of years worth of memories, thousands of lives, millions of memories and countless spiders and bluebottles. You never know what could have happened in your house before you got there. Go back in time and there might have been a young family, struggling to make ends meet without their bankers' bonuses ("Theobald might have to give up the polo classes!"); an old lady whose husband still hasn't come back from the chip shop after nine years; maybe even someone who would rather not be remembered. In a friend's house we found strange red spatter marks at about head height in the shower. Freaky.

And as important as what's been before is the mark you put on the house yourself. Perhaps that's why leaving is so hard; I don't want my presence in this room to be entirely forgotten. I'm toying with the idea of boobytripping the bedside table with a boxing glove on a spring, or maybe a gun that produces a flag saying bang (assuming, of course, Acne didn't go out of business along with Loony Toons). It's somewhat strange and a tad discomforting to think that soon the Eiffel Tower on the back of my door could be replaced with Robert Pattinson posing as an undead romantic; the Golden Gate Bridge with a chart of drinking games; or 'Your First Spanish Words' with Cheryl Cole in nothing but a bed sheet. Actually, perhaps that's a change that should be implemented sooner...

So as exciting as it is to be moving somewhere new, I can't help feeling slightly daunted by the change. Living with my three best friends is possibly the most exciting prospect since Elizabeth asked Philip if he'd like to bring his mistress to bed tonight, but I'll be sad to leave behind my beloved room; even if the curtains don't close properly and I live opposite a Brummy who still thinks he's in the sixties and has a worrying obsession with Monty Python. More than anything it's scary to think I'll be a proper adult; I don't think I should be entrusted with the responsibility. I still struggle to clean my teeth without making my gums bleed, how am I meant to pay bills and remember to put the alarm on when I leave the house?

Dammit, that reminds me. Oh bugger, I'd better pop back...

"And there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth..."

Friends, I must enter the confessional booth of the interweb and confess a sin so heinous it would knock out a nun at twenty paces. I am a plagiarist. There, I have said it. Forgive me father. I'll do 20 Hail Margarets, count some rosemary or something along those lines.

But it's true; anything witty I have to say has most likely come from somewhere else. The very name of this blog, for instance, is a reference to Black Adder the Third; a word invented by Edmund to confuse the famous Dr Johnson. It means something along the lines of "trouble" or "bother" but more than anything it is a beautifully amusing word. Try saying it aloud. It makes me chuckle every time.

Then take the titles of these first two blogs. The first is a quotation from Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' that seemed somewhat appropriate for a first post (if a tad pretentious, but when you know this shit you've got to show it off). The second is a reference either to Rowan Atkinson's stand-up or the Holy Bible. Which one I leave you to decide, I still haven't worked out which is the best for moral guidance, but it paints a rather terrifying portrait of my fate as a despicable plagiarist.

We were warned of the dangers of such a wanton practice on our arrival at Univeristy. Like a vicar from the pulpit, the head of Spanish preached fire, brimstone and a severe telling off for those who transcended the laws of plagiarism. "Woe to those who use wikipedia, for their sources will be questionable and their essays apalling!" (You'll find it in Leviticus somewhere, I think, near the rules on intercourse with animals.)

Truly terrifying stuff, but it made me think: what is so bad about plagiarism? Forgive my heathen ways (Don't worry priest, I'll kiss a saint's kneecap or something...) but it's an interesting thought. Stealing someone else's work is definitely wrong, I'm not disputing that, but where do we draw the line on what is plagiarism and what is influnce? Where do we mark the boundaries between downright theft and unoriginality?

Because when you think about it, very little these days is truly original. When a magazine applauds an album as "an original sound for Summer 2010" what they really mean is "we haven't heard something this wierd since the sixites". A novel, praised as "a truly original and creative work of fiction", was written by someone with a favourite author themselves (we only hope for the love of all things sacred that it's not Jeffrey Archer). Even to claim something as original is an unoriginal claim, because someone (a cynical, lonely man from Newark I expect) once decided that things should have originality. Spooky.

Take this all one step further and we realise that the very fabric of our existence is unoriginal. Our personalities are a result of our relationships over time (which would explain why so many people are as mad as a duck that can't swim); the way we dress is dependent on what there is to buy and whether Gok Wan has deemed it the latest thing. The very words that we speak were taken from somewhere (unless of course you're into gibberish); be it a book, a parent or the only child in school that knew the meaning of the 'F-word', the fact that we string these components in a new order doesn't change the fact that we've taken them from somewhere. This is all hypothetical, farfetched and possibly ridiculous but the point stands.

So where has this rambling, bizarre and somewhat pear-shaped train of though led us to? Cheltenham, no; but a conclusion, I think likely. Perhaps what I am trying to say is that plagiarism as an understanding of influence is a good thing (forgive me Father...). All of life should be a distillation of the many things that impact, change and enrich our lives, where we take the best bits and weave them into something new. My writing will contain references to 'A bit of Fry and Laurie', echo the styles of Rowan Atkinson (long may his manner be eccentric and wierd) and most certainly borrow from the wisdom of other such famous men and women (excepting of course Bruce Forsyth and Rolf Harris, both of whom should have been retired and lovingly put down many years ago). Let us leave behind this obsession with originality that must drive so many creative people to the brink of a breakdown and instead applaud the ways in which we can regenerate what has been before. Maybe, just maybe, not being entirely original isn't such a mortal sin after all.

Even so, I think I'll keep praying. Just in case.

"To dive into the fire"

So. We commence. How exciting.

I'll be honest with you ladies and gentlemen. I haven't the faintest clue what I'm doing, where I'm going, why I'm going there and whether there will be ice cream when I arrive. I desperately hope there will be, but nothing is certain. All that is certain right now is that I am as confused and slightly nervous as I suspect you are.

Perhaps a short exploration of what a 'blog' is would make things clearer for myself and, if you've maintained interest for this long, for you as well. Having given it much thought (two minutes and thirty-eight seconds to be precise) I believe a 'blog' to be the modern update of the much loved and loathed diary. A simple conclusion perhaps, but then a long-winded one would have been dull and too taxing for my brain, which as we speak is still recovering from the near fatal experience of "waking up".

Diaries for centuries have carried in their well-used pages the private thoughts and feelings that we thought we could not express to anyone in the world but a humble page. They are treated as human beings and are sometimes given names such as Kitty, Deborah, Johann, Keith and, more commonly, Diary. They have suffered the whining teenage angst that, of course, no-one understands (especially those adults who have already been through this period of love, hatred and strange bodily growth). They have been the companion of revolutionary politicians not quite sure if the world is ready for them yet; of writers who need to be doing something vaguely literary to persuade their wives to leave them alone a little longer and stop pestering them for children and the like; they have even carried the confused, terrifying yet surprisingly eloquent and poetic ramblings of the odd mass murderer. In short, the diary has been for time immemorial the vessel of thoughts and feelings on everything from the mundane to the truly sensational. All the 'blog' has done is take the privacy out of this process and turned these thoughts into something of a spectacle.

Given this conclusion I can say with absolute surety that I do not want to write a 'blog'. I have never liked diaries, particularly those of paranoid teenagers, for they seem only to store up the hatred, anger and fear that should be left in the past. I kept one once for about 3 weeks, poured thoughts and feelings into it and ended up terrified of it and its monstrous potential to swagger smugly from its hiding place and shame me to the rest of the world. I eventually summoned up the courage to burn it when no-one was around. Ludicrous, I know, but I was 14 and one is allowed to be ludicrous at that age. I even believed in communism back then... Mad.

Perhaps the 'blog' has made this even more of a shameful process. Before the teenager would write in a diary that came with a convenient lock. Why these locks were always so easy to pick is anyone's guess. Perhaps the genius who invented them also found it amusing to peruse other people's diaries. But the point was the illusion of privacy, the feeling that no-one would read it, and on this point I suppose the diary was a commendable friend; lightening one's emotional burden and guarding secrets from the world where our best friend Jenny might spread them around the form room of a Tuesday morning. But the 'blog', the hateful spawn of the diary, has mutated into a form of showmanship. Thoughts we would never have told anyone are now online for the world to see and admire. Of course, no-one will understand them, but someone might fawn over us, pity us and possibly even tell us what an amazing person we are as a result. Such attention seeking is criminal. I am convinced that it is in part responsible for the rise in teen pregnancy, I just haven't worked out why yet.

Instead I wish to write this 'blog', not solely for myself, but for those who might find it interesting, whimsical and possibly even chuckle-under-your-breath-whilst-drinking-tea-worthy (a man can dream). Yes, it will convey thoughts and feelings; yes, it will contain angst and frustration; but I hope to put these across in an amusing and entertaining way and on topics far more interesting and relevant than the latest girl who doesn't love me back. As someone who loves to write but lacks the impetus, I hope this will give me a chance to hone my skills, expand my horizons and possibly even keep something up for once. Bear with me; I may at some point say something funny.

So, welcome to the 'blog' that isn't a 'blog'.

And at some point I will drop the inverted commas.