Tuesday

There's a lot to do today and I'm so tired at work that I'm practically nodding off. Staying up until 2.30am reading about a young man's suicide is not, as it happens, the key to a good night's sleep. I have to get up and wander around the office to try and force some alertness into me - but little works.

After work Jess and I head into town as there are two quite significant book launches to attend, and we plan to make flying visits to each depending on the free booze/food situation. The weather is horrible and we arrive at the first gallery - a large, private photography gallery on Cork Street - soaking wet and hungry. The book being launched is a collection of photographs of a man suffering from Alzheimer's disease as taken by his wife. They're nicely done and are sad things to behold but the mood is a little dour and the crowd does little for me. This is until Jess and I each have a glass of champagne on the go and the girl starts coming round with the canapes.

The nibbles are excellent, including one rather amazing thing that seemed to be a cone of hard parmesan cheese stuffed with porcini mushrooms. There are also quail's eggs and some meat on a stick (which probably has a much poncier name than that). As usual at these events I feel conspicuously underdressed, given my refusal in these situations to bow to convention and put a shirt or some smart shoes on. I did do up the top button of the thick grey shirt I had on, however - I'm sure this distracted from the torn jeans and crumbling white trainers. Hmm.

After around four or five glasses of champagne and more quail's eggs than I've ever had in one sitting we make a move just as the boring speeches are starting. The weather has improved and we dodge puddles up to Soho to the Arts Theatre Club where a book celebrating a noted early-20th-century prankster is being launched. The club is underground and has a nice, old feel about it - but, alas, the bar is not free. Never mind: we grab a couple of beers and head over to meet some other folks from work including the MD and the publisher of the book. We sit and chat happily about the book and work coming up, then later I am, oddly, alone with the MD and our sales manager discussing the relative merits of various eras of music. After a couple more beers they suggest going for something to eat. I fear the night getting messy if I stay out much longer and am very aware that a jacket potato will be waiting for me at home with K.

I make my excuses and get on the tube just before ten, listening to the Collings and Herrin podcast on my iPhone and tipsily chuckling to myself on the Victoria Line. I get home and devour said jacket potato in front of yet another excellent episode of Mad Men.

Monday

Today I finally get round to finishing last week's Who Are Ya?! blog post and I'm actually rather proud of it. It's one of the first one I've completed over a few days and not just off the top of my head in one hour and, understandably, I think it benefits from the extra few days' consideration. I think I am lucky in that I'm able to write to a good standard very quickly and without much agonising over how best to phrase my thoughts - I can more or less type as fast as I can think - but I need to work on my ability to self-edit. This is less important in a blog post than if I were submitting something to be published, I know, but when you've written something you like it is very easy to be precious about it and wrongly see every word you have written as being essential.

Either way, I think I said what I wanted to say about the narrative and the drama of football - or the Beautiful Car Crash as I seem to have put on the Who Are Ya?! Twitter feed.

I post the entry online just as K arrives home and read sections of it out to her to check how the rhythm sounds. She seems pleased that I am happy but essentially disinterested in what I am writing about - let's hope The Publisher doesn't share this attitude three weeks today! We eat a strange Chicken Tikka Kiev each for dinner which is perfectly tasty but...strange.

My payday Blu-rays arrived today in the form of Toy Story 1 & 2 so we stick the latter on after dinner. It's probably the Pixar film I've seen least recently so remembered quite little of what was going to happen. What I had forgotten - partly because I remember the relatively flat textures of Toy Story and have been spoilt by the more recent Pixar films on Blu-ray - was just how beautiful everything looks in TS2. Every surface looks and moves exactly how it should whether it be wood, fabric, leather, plastic, metal, glass and it is clear that the filmmakers were keen to show off just how far they had come since the first film. As I always say about these films, if only all filmmakers put in just half of the effort and attention to detail that Pixar did, we'd have some truly spectacular films to watch.

Later we crack on with Mad Men and watch two very good episodes as bits of Don Draper's past seem to be coming back to haunt him. Even later I stay up far too late to finish Touching From A Distance - which I'm glad I finished but has made me feel little other than quietly sad. Suicide is never cool, but Ian Curtis thought it was and that is his real tragedy. He's just lucky he had people like Tony Wilson around to build the rock star myth for him after he'd gone.

Sunday

The clocks go forward this morning announcing the beginning of British Summer Time and letting me think I'd slept in until 10am when in fact I hadn't, really. Although I had.

The hens who stayed over spend the morning waking up at various speeds so I head to Tesco to get extra bacon for a round of sandwiches. They're off to a spirit-tasting place in South London for hen-do-part-two at 12pm so we sit for a while in front of my computer watching movie trailers on Front Row which is quite fun and I should do more. When the girls finally bundle out of the door at midday I spend some time faffing around on the computer, trying to get down to starting the book pitch but instead end up heading out to Sainsbury's to do the weekly shop solo. This is good in that with only one person involved the shopping becomes more streamlined and less prone to impulse buys. Also I get to choose all my favourite brands, which is rarely allowed.

I get the bus home at the point when the day is really warming up and feeling very spring-like indeed, so after a late shower I head into Wood Green unusually coatless to have a look for some new trainers, having finally become frustrated with the sheer amount of water my old Stan Smiths are currently letting in at all sides. I don't really manage to find anything that takes my fancy in WG's few shoe shops - I'll probably have a proper look in town next weekend.

Later on I make some chilli and K and I sit down to watch Gran Torino, this week's Lovefilm Blu-ray. An award-winning Clint Eastwood project (written, directed, produced, starring) it tells the story of a bitter, racist, recently-widowed Korean War veteran who has seen his neighbourhood become dominated by Asian immigrants and various ethnic gangs. After saving one of his young neighbours from a violent gang he develops something of a father-son relationship with the boy and teaches him how to "be a man" while standing up for the boy in the face of escalating violence and tension. It's a piece of very economical filmmaking - in that no shot feels surplus to requirements and shows that Eastwood is in fact a very talented director; something I hadn't known before. It's a fairly harrowing film and fills me with the sort of sickness I get when I see people fighting or weaker people being bullied for no reason other than the bored amusement of the aggressor. It's also very good.

Saturday

Today is K's friend's hen do and the group will be assembling at our house before moving on to do some bowling and karaoke in Bloomsbury. Through the haze of a hangover I head to Tesco to source bacon for a frankly essential fry-up and we prepare for the visitors' arrival. By 1pm there are eight women in the house and I feel conspicuously male - especially as I am hiding in the kitchen eating a sandwich and watching Football Focus while they chatter away, doing each others' make-up and performing various other gathered female cliches.

Speaking of the football, however, things go very well indeed. Chelsea beat Aston Villa 7-1 at Stamford Bridge, taking them briefly back to the top of the league and edging a few goals ahead of Man Utd on goal difference. Arsenal also fail to make up ground on the two top teams by drawing away to Birmingham. Next weekend's Man Utd v Chelsea game at Old Trafford is going to be huge in the context of this season's run in. Down in League Two Rochdale beat Grimsby 4-1 and promotion is looking ever more certain. Never thought I'd see the day!

The hen party leaves the house at around 4 and I lazily watch final Score and play a little FIFA. I had planned to do a bit of work on the book pitch but by this point I am three beers gone (having joined in with the general party spirit in the house) and feeling less than sharp.

My general plan is to have a couple of drinks in Crouch End then to head into town to meet Andy and Joe et al in Soho to celebrate Joe's 25th. I wander over to the Harringay Arms feeling thoroughly rough - bloated and disgusting having spent the whole day getting over a hangover by putting away a few cans of Kronenbourg. Yuck. Regardless I sit with a nice big group of nice people and have a few more pints before writing off the central London idea and heading home at around 11pm. Having strung out a fairly heavy drinking session over so many hours leaves me feeling anything but drunk; more weary and full. I get home and watch a little of the interminable Football League show hoping to see the Rochdale highlights but end up falling asleep somewhere in the middle of League One.

The hens return shortly after I go to bed and I barely notice their arrival.

Friday

There's a sense of Things Happening today as I take the plunge and fire off an email to The Publisher to sort out a meeting at London Book Fair to discuss my book idea. Happily he says he'd be pleased to meet up with me so we set a time on the first day of the Fair. This is good - it means I now have a solid deadline to get my pitch and two or three sample chapters together. I'm thinking now that it would be to start with a jumping-off-point-type subtitle of "Things to Love About Modern Football" and then work from the resulting list.

It's all very exciting that I'll be able to put this in front of a sports publisher in three weeks or so having had it bouncing around in my head since the middle of last year. Hopefully I'll be able to make it convincing and interesting and maybe even a bit funny - I'm planning to make some time tomorrow or Sunday to start assembling things.

More good news today is that it's payday so after work me and the girls head to the Duke of Edinburgh for a quick drink. It's felt like a bit of a long week and it's nice to be at the weekend again with a chance, for me at least to have quite a quiet one. After a hasty pint I head home, stopping at Sainsbury's to grab some wine for K and her sister and pick up a wee Easter egg for each of them (because I'm nice like that) and a frozen pizza to take on board before heading to the Queens in Crouch End to meet Will and Nick.

It's a good night chatting away about football and new jobs and films and getting drunk on aeroplanes and flying business class and various other topics. It's also nice to spend some time in male company having seemingly had a few weirdly girly nights out lately (and, of course, working as the only man in an otherwise all-female department at work).

I get home shortly after midnight feeling rather content, having listened to Born Like This by DOOM very loudly on the iPod on the way back from the pub.

Thursday

K's twin sister arrives today and as it will be the first time the two have seen each other since their birthday we make plans to meet in the pub after work. There'll be a few people there and K's baked a cake for everyone to share. I pop home on my way back from the office to pick up K's twin's presents and get the tube to Holloway Road - as tonight will be a Big Red night.

Big Red is a good pub - unusual for where it is and a bit of a North London institution. Pitched squarely at the rockabilly-fanciers of the area they serve cheap lager and cider and, crucially, legendary chilli nachos. They also have plenty of space to sit, a jukebox that seems to play the same Black Sabbath and Rage Against the Machine records over and over again, a few pool tables and a men's toilet covered in some of the crudest and most rubbish graffiti ever seen outside a student bar. Big Red also has a collection of pretty stunning, heavily tattooed barmaids to complete the image most effectively. Flirting with these living-pinup-tattoos is a time-honoured late-night tradition, one that has doubtless resulted in a fair few well-placed "fuck off"s. Essentially its a really big, really silly and quite kitsch American-themed bar with greasy food and a good mix of greasers and student types keeping the place lively.

I like it a lot - and its a place that's been a regular fixture in my and K's relationship. We even planned to go there on our first date but it was full of people watching the Euro 2008 final.

So we go to Big Red tonight and there are a few friends waiting for us. K and her sister exchange presents and coo over various products that I think have something to do with knitting. Fair enough. We order plate of the chilli nachos and down a few of the reasonably-priced pints. A few more people turn up and we get a bit noisy and messy - mostly down to the cake though, I think.

We head home before it gets stupidly late - it is a school night after all - and ride the bendy 29 (otherwise known as the Free Bus for obvious easily-avoided-Oyster-reader-reasons) all the way there.

Wednesday

I sleep a sound and dreamless sleep for the first time in a couple of nights but still have to be more or less kicked out of bed. It is a beautiful day and while it is not hard to force myself to head outside it is hard to concentrate purely on work when I get there. It turns into the sort of day you remember from school when you'd be hunched over an exercise book with the heat from the sun on your back, your eyelids getting heavy and your body literally aching to go outside and play.

The feeling is much the same nowadays except rather than going out to play, by 4pm my body is aching to be sat with friends in a nice beer garden somewhere sipping a lovely glass of Kronenbourg. Shame.

Either way 5.30 does eventually roll round and, having just received my payslip, I toy with the idea of picking up some beers on the way home. I decide not to in the end as Thursday is planned to be a bit of a big night out when K's sister arrives to begin the weekend's "hen"festivities - and instead sit down to write an entry for Who Are Ya?!

It takes a while to come up with a theme but the one I have is good and the inspiration takes me for a while - until the Portsmouth v Chelsea match comes on BBC Radio 5live Sports Extra. Around halfway through the blog entry I am now completely distracted and instead listen to Steve Claridge talking mostly nonsense and get the distinct feeling that I am in an audience of one. There is a funny moment in the commentary as it transpires that the press box at Fratton Park is missing any sort of monitor on which to watch replays of the match; the equipment apparently having been sold off by the club's administrator.

I plan to finish the blog tomorrow or Friday - it's a good one and worth spending a bit of time on to get right, I think - and when K gets home from swimming we watch a little TV and another episode of Mad Men, which is getting better and better.

We've had three nights in in a row this week which is unusual for us (and especially for K). While this is the healthy and financially sensible option I do often find myself in need of some sort of night out by this point in the week. Had the Chelsea game been on TV I probably would have gone to the pub to watch it and scratched the itch that way. Never mind. Hopefully a few drinks tomorrow night will do the trick.

Tuesday

Another unhappily restless night features dreams inspired by Wonders of the Solar System. In the episode we watched last night, Brian Cox talked about the man-made probed launched in the 70s that is now billions of miles away and yet we can still pick up a faint signal from it. In my dream, this probe is manned - and beams back only the constant reminder that this man died years ago. Pretty horrible really.

The rest of the day is an improvement - at work we are given our passes for this year's London Book Fair at Earl's Court in April. This will be my third LBF since starting this job and its strange to see the passes come round each year. They all look the same and all remind me of the first one I was sent just before I started the job, when I was so excited I took a picture of it and emailed copies to my parents. The excitement's not really there any more, but the pass itself is an interesting milestone I suppose, marking me out as something of a veteran of the hungover-in-a-dusty-exhibition-hall-sweating-under-the-striplights scene.

Back at home I toy with the idea of writing an entry for Who Are Ya?! but decide to wait until Wednesday when I'll have a little more time and (hopefully) a little more inspiration in terms of a topic. I am also aware that as LBF approaches I need to start putting together a sort of pitch for my Big Book Idea. This will, I think, involve a few paragraphs pitching the idea, a list of chapter headings and where they will go, and at least 2 or 3 sample chapters pulled together from past Who Are Ya?! entries. I'm sure I can get this together in time and hopefully it'll be something worth taking a look at.

Instead of writing I sit down and play FIFA 2010 on the XBox until K gets home. We have dinner then watch the second Wonders of the Solar System and another episode of Mad Men, before catching a brilliant old episode of The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer on some digital channel or other.

Monday

Wake up several times in the night and stick the light on. I dream about, among other things, staying on the bus longer than usual and ending up in a part of London I never knew existed - and not just another residential part of the city, this area had monuments, palaces and wide open squares. I wonder where my brain got this from. Probably another city I've visited at some point, maybe just a random composite of generic European cities. Either way it made for an anxious dream as I stumbled around looking for familiar faces and locations, at one point wandering down a narrow street to find it was actually the entrance to a restaurant. The diners laugh at my confusion and I wake up less than refreshed.

It's safe to say today isn't the most productive day I'll have in my professional career, but I suppose I turned up in body if not mind. I'm not feeling particularly motivated at work at the moment and I suspect that my efforts and those of my colleagues are not being fully appreciated. I'm sure this is a common complaint, however.

Perhaps to stave off the dark mood I decide to fire off a couple of hopeful emails to a couple of friendly contacts regarding doing some more writing work, freelance. I have a feature idea I'd like to pitch to one of them so hopefully things might develop on that front soon.

Later on K gets home and I cook us a tasty Chicken Saag Masala. We then watch the first episode of Professor Brian Cox's new documentary Wonders of the Solar System on iPlayer which is so fascinating that my head hurts with the hugeness of it all. I say it every time I watch a great new science documentary, but when you can see science in action like this on such a huge scale - for example Cox shows how we can predict a solar eclipse to the exact minute it will begin - I'm amazed that there are people who doubt its truth. I also fail to grasp why, in a world this beautiful and with all its machinery on show people need to believe in anything they can't see. Maybe it's just to cope with the scale of it all.

We also start watching the much-recommended Mad Men, which seems to be this year's The Wire in terms of word-of-mouth hype and, hopefully, in quality too. Set in a New York ad agency in the 1960s it is incredibly slick and well-written and makes me wonder why British television-makers find it so hard to make drama this good. Mad Men is like The Wire in that it does not patronise the viewer and feels no need to over-explain itself - and watching the first two episodes feels like settling into reading a novel which you're enjoying by page 10 and already wish it wouldn't end.

The other main thing to say about Mad Men, though it's been said plenty already, is the sheer amount of smoking on screen. I don't think there is a single scene in those first two episodes where someone doesn't light, finish and light a cigarette. The floors must have been covered in a thick layer of ash in those days. In many ways it looks like a dream scenario to a smoker - but my lungs and I are immensely grateful that I can't live like that now. Nipping outside for a few fags a day is just fine for us both.

Sunday

Wake up fairly early on Sunday feeling ever so slightly rough and head for the first hot shower I've ever had in this flat. The new boiler does itself proud - making the water, if anything, too hot - and I feel like I've had a proper wash for the first time in two months. Lovely.

We stick Up on the Blu-ray player as a nice, cosy way to start the day and K promptly falls asleep as she often does while I giddily enjoy my Pixar Blu-rays. It's the first time I've seen it all the way through since the cinema and it's still as touching, beautifully and rich with invention as I remember it. If only more films, and not only animated ones, were crafted with this level of devotion and attention to detail then going to the cinema regularly would actually be worth paying £10 a ticket for.

We make our way to Sainsbury's for the Big Shop and, realising that it's a Proper Spring Day, I leave the big coat at home for the first time in 2010. It's great feeling the sun again and even though I am trudging round a big supermarket with a stinking hangover I tend to feel very content with the world.

We get home and do a bit of cleaning (cleaning up after the plumber, mostly) - a time-honoured Sunday activity. Another traditional Sunday activity is Ford Super Sunday which today involves Manchester United v Liverpool and Blackburn v Chelsea so I head to the pub for the latter. After the first half in The Hope & Anchor alone I actually feel like being round some people so I head to meet K and assorted others at The Queens in Crouch End. There's loads of folks about celebrating a birthday so there's plenty of 'banter' and going over the excesses of the previous night. I drink four more pints than I am expecting to so we head home for dinner before it becomes a really messy Sunday.

It's been something of an alcoholic weekend but then it's been full of special occasions. I do plan, however, to touch nothing so boozy as a wine gum until at least Thursday, when the next round of celebrating begins.

Saturday

The plumber arrives at 9am to install the boiler he delivered on Thursday. As a result I am denied both morning shit and morning shower, as I am very much still in bed when K gets up to let him and his assistant in. Instead we sit in the living room watching a snake poo on a dining room table on Come Dine With Me (I for one didn't even know they did that) and eventually leave the house at around midday.

As part of K's ongoing birthday celebrations we are booked into Bodean's BBQ rib restaurant in Soho along with 10 or 12 of our closest chums. We end up taking the £10 lunchtime special deal which implicates us in the destruction of a rack of beef ribs each, chips and coleslaw along with a complimentary bottle of Coors Light. As a result we and our assembled rabble are two beers gone by 2pm and head for the Green Man in what I am reliably informed should be known as 'Noho', given its position geographically north of Soho. The Green Man specialises in ciders for the cider enthusiast which, happily, many of us are. Hence we sit and drink strong cider (personally I favour the Weston's Organic Vintage) from around 3pm until we finally bail out at 9pm. I chat happily with various mutual friends of myself and K, as well as some who I had previously had "issues" with and taken to basically ignoring in social situations.

We sloppily make our way home as many others are making their way towards the pub and sit around discussing our favourite songs while listening to said songs on Spotify. Later we watch the BBC pilot of the Jessica Hynes/Julia Davis sitcom Lizzie & Sarah and fall asleep amid its comic darkness. I feel that it, should it get commissioned, is guaranteed to be the new Nighty Night in its gleeful toying with quite what is acceptable on the BBC. The fact that is is scheduled at an awkward and unpopular time will probably ensure a minimum of complaints along with, crucially, minimum viewers.

A messy, boozy Saturday it may have been - but after a couple of weeks of parent-based entertainment it is nice to be a little silly and drink all day with friends.

Friday

Today is K's birthday. We get up early and she opens the few presents I've assembled on the kitchen table, as well as a book and a huge bar of chocolate my mother sent from Scotland. I got her Psychoville and Zombieland on DVD, as well as a bag of Mini Eggs, which given that her birthday generally falls around Eastertime I'm sure she's more than used to. I'm also putting some money towards her new iPod. Yeah, I'm a pretty good boyfriend when I put my mind to it.

Work is fine and when it's over I go to Sainsbury's to get ingredients for the dinner I'm cooking tonight. I get a nice looking hunk of rump steak and a pack of powder which, it claims, becomes peppercorn sauce when mixed with milk and butter - and who am I to argue? I also pick up the obligatory 3 bottles of birthday red wine and head home to chop some potatoes for home-made oven chips, some onions and mushrooms for tasty fried garnish. Needless to say I'm pretty proud of myself when it's ready and has been happily munched by myself and the birthday girl. Strange to think that only a couple of years ago I lived alone and barely bothered to cook for myself beyond picking up a frozen pizza on the way home from work. Nowadays I have a fairly respectable range of meals in my culinary arsenal. I won't pretend it's not all down to K's good influence.

Later on we get stuck into the wine and play a bit of Scrabble. I pull no punches - it may be her birthday but that doesn't stop me revelling in beating her by 50+ points. We then watch Zombieland which, despite the fact that I'm completely uninterested in zombie movies and the horror genre in general turned out to be quite funny and have a lot of nice ideas in it. The Bill Murray cameo in the middle is stunningly weird and only reaffirms my love for the great man.

Psychoville is also just as great as I remember it and such a shame that it wasn't better publicised - or at least a shame that so few people I know saw it on TV last year.

We end up, naturally, rather drunk, full of meat and chocolate and very content before a sensible bedtime.

Thursday

It's K's birthday tomorrow, so we head into town after work for a few drinks.

This is after, I should note, more tiresomely routine disappointment from the plumber - he managed to deliver the boiler, write a note saying he wouldn't, in fact, be installing it today and deposit in the bathroom what can only be described as "some sort of giant pump thing." No matter, I suppose. He's coming back on Saturday so that's only two more cold showers.

So we go to the pub - though at first I mostly try to go to the pub. I leave TPL at around 6.30 and end up on the Victoria line as the train grinds to a halt somewhere between Highbury & Islington and Kings Cross. In a mostly empty carriage the other scattered folks are unperturbed at first, but eventually we've been sat there for half an hour as power is, apparently, restored to the track. It's funny the way, in situations like this, people don't really grumble or panic - perhaps because there's literally nothing they can do about it. We, as a carriage, settle down, do some reading and, in my case, listen to The Football Ramble. Eventually we make it to Oxford Circus.

There is a good turnout in the pub to pre-celebrate K's birthday and I drink several pints of Sam Smith's Alpine and chatter away about films and funny stuff and the usual nonsense. I even get to tell the dog-in-a-suitcase story to one more person (I had thought, sadly, that I had told everyone I know) so accordingly indulged in a super-long and rambling embellished version. I seem to remember saying that if I were ever given a five-minute stand-up slot then I would simply tell that story in its entirety. I think that would work.

We leave the pub at closing time and K and I manage to get into a fairly huge row over nothing much - effectively she feels that we're not partying hard enough and going home too early and I feel that we are, in fact, going home at about the right time for a Thursday night after loads of beer. The issue is unresolved and she heads off to bed. I eat beans on toast and watch Blackadder to cheer myself up. We, as ever, will be fine in the morning.

Wednesday

It feels really very spring-like today. It also feels about time - I'm not someone who particularly feels the cold what with my ample padding and thick Scottish blood, but this Winter has felt long and pretty miserable.

However there are still people who do get virtual pneumonia at the mere sight of a sub-10C temperature, and for those people we must have the heating on at all times, mustn't we. As a result the office is uncomfortably stuffy today, and the day is made all the more uncomfortable as later in the afternoon every awkward publisher request and irritating online job seems to come through, and implicate, me. Sigh. I should stick to my own tried-and-tested policy and never answer the phone. It only leads to trouble.

In the evening the plumber finally makes it round to assess the state of play before tomorrow's scheduled boiler installation. It's rather an exciting moment in that the plumber actually came to the door, rang the doorbell and entered the house (he rarely mananges all three) and that we can hopefully, finally, bid goodbye to the rubbish showers we've had to put with for the last 2 months. The water runs lukewarm for 20 seconds, then cold for another 20, rinse, repeat for ever. It puts me in a weird mood every morning and I'm looking forward to standing in a stream of absolutely scalding water for 15 minutes later this week just because I can.

K comes home later and we stick Che: Part 2 on the Blu-ray player as it arrived from Lovefilm a few days ago and we still haven't got round to watching it. It, like Part 1, is a very beautifully-shot and quietly stunning piece of filmmaking - though when you're already a little tired on a Wednesday evening it can be positively soporific. We gave up after an hour, pledging to watch the rest at the weekend.

I carried on reading Touching from a Distance and am generally enjoying the parts about Ian Curtis's childhood (did he really have anything else?) and teenage years, though surprised to find that he comes across as a bit of a dick and that Deborah (his wife and the author) is very open about how pathetic she is in the face of his tyrannical control over her. Toyed with the idea of giving up reading it but it's not a taxing read and I should see it through to the end really. I suppose the nice thing about reading a biography of a man you know died when he was 23 is that there's only so long and drawn-out it can be.

Tuesday

Tonight is Chelsea v Inter Milan in the Champions League. I feel bad in that for the last two nights I've spent relatively little time with K in the evening - including staying up late writing and letting her go to bed alone. No fun for anyone. But this is a big one.

Work passes mostly uneventfully - I, of course, don't change newsagents and once more mumble an affirmative answer to the shopkeeper's friendly enquiries into my wellbeing - and as it's such a nice, proper spring day we spend the majority of the day looking out of the office window longingly.

Mostly longingly; the rest of the time we look out of the office window and scowl as the racket from the adjacent theatre school wafts in through the window. Constantly. Whether it's these happy-shiny-extrovert-jazz-hands-rich-kids doing vocal warm-up exercises or howling dismal tunes from musicals, the reaction in our office is invariably "aarrgh FUCK OFF", or words to that effect. Then we see them outside, screaming and shouting, each trying to out-rah the other and running across the road to greet each other and air-kiss. I literally hate them.

I never liked drama students, especially at university. The most obnoxious group at uni was MTS (the Musical Theatre Society), a group of the most vacuous, pointless human beings you're ever likely to meet - made more insufferable by their insistence on being in a fantastic mood all the time and trying to make friends with simply everyone, presumably training for a day when anyone you meet might be the talent scout about to give you your big break, darling. Yeah, they were dicks. More often than not they were rude, dismissive and (crucially) obsessed with the sound of their own voices. Working behind the bar at the local pub where they would occasionally hold their tap-water-drinking "socials", as I did, was less than a picnic.

Anyway, after work I get on K's Wii Fit for a while to get a little exercise (as well as try to break some of her high scores) then get started on dinner before she gets home. I watch the build-up to Chelsea V Inter while cooking, then we get on the red wine during the match.

The game, the result, was a disaster. Chelsea out of the Champions League and no more excitement of the European variety for another year. I got that sick feeling in my throat when Samuel Eto'o (him again) got on the end of Sneijder's ball and poked it past Turnbull. No matter. More wine and K to cheer me up sent me to bed philosophical. Maybe red wine is more conducive than mere lager to helping one deal with the cruelty, heartbreak and general misery of football? We shall see.

Monday

Head to work via the newsagent as usual for a bottle of Diet Coke. I'm not sure how I feel about the bloke who works in there in the mornings. He will always, always, say "Hello sir, how are you today?" and if I respond he'll say something banal about the weather. This is fine, of course - I'd much rather have a friendly guy to buy a drink from in the morning than some grumpy person or (my pet hate) someone talking on the phone and barely acknowledging you at the till.

The main problem in this situation is that I go in there wearing my headphones - meaning that to have this Groundhog Day-style identical mini-chat every morning I have to take my headphones off; which is a bit of a faff. What's wrong with going in, picking up exactly what I buy every morning, smiling, paying and leaving? He mentioned it once - saying something like "You always have your headphones on, you never respond when I say hello". Now that I feel like I'm being rude every time I go in there, I have to make extra sure to smile and appear chatty. It's a nightmare.

I would find a new newsagent but this one is perfectly positioned on the way to work and to go anywhere else would mean going out of my way - and I'm simply not prepared to do that. We've only been at this house for 2 months and I miss my old morning newsagent. The man in there used to completely ignore me and pretend I had never been in there before - even after a year of going in there every weekday. Perfect.

Anyway, I get to work and have a more or less relaxed day. The Big Work we have on at the moment is turning out not to be so big after all, meaning it is easy to approach without panicking too much.

In the evening I walk down the Passage to Sainsbury's to meet K and do the weekly shop. Usually we do this on a Saturday or Sunday morning - and there is certainly a different clientele at 8pm on a Monday. A couple of confused looking stoners ahead of us in the queue spend around 15 minutes paying an £8.65 bill in 10ps. In the end they have to leave their multi-pack of Crunch Corner yoghurts behind. Shame, I bet they were gagging for those.

We get home in good time and eat some lovely posh burgers - the kind we got used to picking up to take to barbecues last summer. Biting into them instantly made me long for the summer: hanging out in beer gardens in shorts, getting pissed all day at the weekend, barbecues, walks in the park and, this summer at least, the World Cup. Can't wait.

Wrote my Beckham piece and posted it to Who Are Ya?! before bedtime. Was glad to get it done as it's been 2 weeks since I updated the blog and I think it came out quite well. Writing it made me realise how important a footballer he is to me and fans of my age, and how we're unlikely to see anyone quite like him again. When, in many years' time, we are asked to name the footballer of the early years of the 21st century, it will be him every time. Though I've written enough about him now - the piece is here.

Sunday

The bedroom is slightly too warm and I slept fitfully. With no comforting lamp to put on or music to lull me to sleep I spend much of the night too warm and feeling uneasy. I dream that as a result of my dodgy approach to electrical installation in the workplace I am to be relieved of my duties at the Hula Hoops crisps factory. Understandably devastated I attempt to plead with my female line manager - perhaps by demonstrating my passion for working for the Hula Hoops corporation I would be able to keep my job? It doesn't work.

We go to visit one of K's old school friends, to see her new house and two kids. This is nice - the children are very friendly and fun to be around - but it puts me in mind of similar visits paid when I was a kid, visiting the circle of family friends in Rochdale of a morning and playing with other kids' toys while Mum would drink tea and natter about local gossip. It is a rather grown-up way to spend a Sunday morning, but luckily Cars is on the DVD player and I can indulge both my inner coffee-morning-dad and my inner coffee-morning-kid. It makes me glad that these particular kids are Pixar fans, as I fully intend my future children to be the same.

We go back to K's parents' for lunch then get the train back to London. On the way I manage to finish That's Me in the Corner and start straight onto Deborah Curtis' Touching from a Distance, her biography of Ian Curtis. I'm never quite sure about biographies of rock stars, especially those written by their family members and therefore unlikely to be completely truthful, but I will give this one a go - not least because since watching the films Control and Twenty Four Hour Party People I listen to a lot of Joy Division and find Curtis a pretty fascinating character.

Back in London, K fiddles with her new sewing machine (an early birthday present from her parents) and I fiddle with setting up this additional, non-football blog. Later I read the news that David Beckham has ruptured his achilles tendon and will almost certainly miss the World Cup. I'll write about this for Who Are Ya?! tomorrow, I think.

It's been a nice weekend in Dorset, but it is nice to be home - even after such a short time (barely 24 hours). Every time I go away and return I am surprised how happy I am to be back in London - something I never thought would happen when I first moved here almost two years ago. It's also nice to get back to the flat - I'm really enjoying living here and the lifestyle K and I have cultivated for ourselves over the last couple of months.

Saturday

Woken up at 8.30 by an alarm I seldom have to set - more often than not K's phone alarm is set early enough that I am woken first by its noise and then again, later, by her gentle pottering and dressing activity. K's not here this morning, however - she went to her parents' house in Gillingham, Dorset, last night while I finished work and went to the pub.

Felt very hung over this morning, more so than I have recently. This should be expected in that I managed to get through a pint with the girls from work in the Duke of Edinburgh, two cans at home over a baked potato and several Alpines in a variety of Sam Smith's pubs in town before getting the nightbus home at 1am. This one hurts, though.

I head to Waterloo at 10.30 for the 11.20 train to Gillingham. On the way I continue reading Andrew Collins' third memoir That's Me in the Corner, which covers his journey from layout-boy at the NME in the mid-80s through his editorship of Q magazine and various appearances on TV and radio. His story is not one of an inexorable rise to fame, interestingly - more one of doing bits and pieces of work and moving around different jobs to make himself more happy or have more fun. If anything he is less famous now than he was in the 90s, which makes his story (like his current podcast partner Richard Herring) an unusual one in the scheme of 'celebrity' memoirs.

I'm finding the book incredibly inspiring, in a way. Mostly in that he is doing the things that I want to do, and, at 25, the things I feel like I should now be on my way to doing. This new blog is, I hope, a step in the right direction. I want to be writing for a living - and if not for a living then at least for some adventure. It's something I've come close to before with Rock Sound and am building towards with Who Are Ya?! and, in the summer, an established football website. I'm also still planning to build the book pitch Who Are Ya?! is supposed to be the source material for. The time I have planned to make that pitch is just over a month away...

I feel like I might currently be wasting opportunities. I don't write enough in the evenings when I'm essentially just killing time until, firstly, K comes home, then until bedtime. I am sticking to my New Year's resolution to read more - now I need to write more. I have also developed some decent contacts in the worlds of journalism and publishing over the last year or so - I need to exploit these more.

I'm therefore resolving today to get my book pitch together then maybe sniff out some small pieces of freelance writing work. Neither of these are beyond me - as ever, I just need to focus.

I also need to work on updating Who Are Ya?! more often - the founding discipline of 1000 football-related words every week has proved difficult to stick to (particularly since starting the Football Basement podcast) and yet I feel proud of myself every time I complete an entry.

I arrive in Gillingham by 1.30 and soon we head off to Stourhead (a National Trust property) for a nice walk in the early Spring sunshine. We have a half-pint in the nice little pub they have there then head back to K's parents' house for dinner and a few more beers. In the evening we watch the ever-enjoyable Harry Hill's TV Burp followed by a terrible and seemingly interminable Cameron Diaz film called In Her Shoes on ITV, then send K's sister out to get Chinese at 10pm.

I end the day a little drunk, certainly sleepy and feeling more resolute about my career path - after all, writing is the only thing I've ever been really good at.