Pretty much all of my male friends of my age like real ale and good wine. Pretty much all of them started out as indiscrimate pissheads. The switch from one to the other has two main steps in it, I think:

1. Having responsibilities – chiefly, having to be awake, sober and somewhere other than bed at nine in the morning.
2. Having more money – so beer with a premium of 30% or more (off the top of my head) doesn’t seem so unreasonable.

What I want to know is, in the absence of those two drivers, how many indiscriminate pissheads would become connoiseurs of wine and ale? Have we convinced ourselves that we like them because we know we can’t get slaughtered every night?

A counterexample would be a British male who had the opportunity to get plastered regularly on cheap booze, but who passed it up for restraint and more expensive drinks. I can think of no-one who falls into this category.

Pope a Catholic. Bears defecate in woodlands. People think wine is higher quality when it is simply more expensive.

I’m fairly ignorant when it comes to wine, which is not to say I don’t enjoy it. I’ve known for a while that I’m not really capable of telling good wine from average, although I’d like to think I could spot the bad. I think that I prefer red to white, like Shiraz and dislike Chardonnay, but I also think I’m probably just trying to fool myself.

I’ve a good mind to buy half a dozen bottles and try a double-blind test. Anyone fancy some experimentation, strictly in the name of science?

Do we store excess fat around our waists first because it doesn’t upset our movement and balance as much as storing it elsewhere would? Someone else suggested that it was for insulation and physical protection of the internal organs below the rib cage. I buy the first, but not the second. Any ideas?

A few days ago I did the maths, and saw that there were no instant-access savings accounts that would pay me more after tax than my student loan cost. Today I picked up the phone to the Student Loans Company, and paid off the last £1,200 of my debt.

That’s the last of the debt I accumulated over seven years, from 1995 to 2002. Much of the money went on two degrees, and some of it went on living expenses. For two of those seven years I was working in London, seriously underpaid, for Sweet & Maxwell, and the amount I owed rose slightly over that period. When I finally left university for a second time, I owed about £21,000 in total, to two banks, the Student Loan Company, two credit card issuers, an MCR and my parents.

So that’s £90 a month more I’ll have to do with as I please. Of course, all I do these days is obsess over when I should buy a house and get into much, much more debt.

I went to see The Nutcracker at the ROH this evening. I had the last seat available, closest to the stage in the righthand slips. This is above the level of the curtain, which although raised still obscures about half the stage.

Missing much of the dancing could be annoying, but then I realised that hearing a famous orchestra play a two-hour long favourite was worth the £5 admission by itself.

Or, to paraphrase Frank Sinatra, “How did all these people get in my gym?”

I’ve been going to the gym three or four times a week for the last six months or so. I expected that January would be bad, and so it is. At peak times there’s no room on the mat, no spaces on the cardio machines, and the free weights area is crowded. During the week I’m trying to go before noon or after two thirty, or after seven thirty in the evening. I’m off to the gym as soon as I’ve finished this post, since I figure the resolutioners won’t be out at the weekend.

I expect it will be back to normal in a month or less. I’ve never seen any figures – and I imagine that the people who have them don’t want to publish them – but I reckon that a lot of gyms make a killing from signing people up in January who stop coming after a few weeks. I don’t know what the marginal cost is to the gym of a single visit (although at my gym guest passes are a ridiculous £15) but I bet they’d have problems if all of their members started using the services they’d paid for.

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Joss Whedon's long awaited UK based Buffy spin-off,
Ripper, starring Anthony Head, starts filming next
summer for BBC.
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If it’s in Popbitch, it must be true.

A dancing robot, that picks out rhythm by itself. Link from Boing Boing.

Yes, I changed the title of the blog. I don’t live anywhere near Ealing anymore: I’ve crossed London (the best city in the world), and now I live in Surrey Quays. This area used to be known as Surrey Docks, hence the new title. I reckon I’ll get bored with it fairly quickly, plus the Blackadder reference makes it sound a bit gay…

The amount of local knowledge needed to live a relatively pain-free existence is substantial.

I know nothing about Surrey Quays, and unlike Ealing, it doesn’t have an obvious main drag on which everything can be found.

I found a dry cleaner, but what I can’t find is someone who will cut my hair. Now, I don’t mind if it’s called a barber or a hairdresser or a unisex salon. I just want it to employ someone competent with scissors and razors. They should also be open when I arrive. I haven’t yet found this combination, and it’s a pain.

On the other hand, I have found a couple of pubs and a dry cleaner. The supermarket eight minutes away is open 24 hours a day, Sundays excepted. Usable buses are relatively frequent, except for the night buses, which are only twice an hour from Trafalgar Square. I just need to find a newsagent and a hairdresser, and I’ll be sorted.