I’m a silly boy. Sometimes I find words get me very excited. By excitement I mean real, true, visible excitement; The type of excitement where your mind flits and dances and your body goes into overdrive like it’s had too much diet coke and is suffering from a fun overload.

The words that have got me excited at the moment come from the poet Lawrence Durrell. What I love about poetry is that no matter how much you know and cherish there is always the very real possibility that the greatest poem ever is just around the corner, waiting to be picked up and loved for all time.

I stumbled across Lawrence Durrell in a dusty, ragged old compilation that I bought for £2 during one of my many trawls through the secondhand bookshops of South East England. There were about ten of his poems in the book and the moment I read them I knew I’d come across something that clicked with me. I made a mental note there and then of his name, (it wasn’t hard as it’s quite similar to Jersey Zoo raconteur Gerald Durrell) and vowed to find more work by him.

Anyway, when I was in Brighton over the weekend I found an edition of his collected works for the advantageous price of £5. Needless to say I would have happily paid much more for it, but that’s not important. I snapped the tome up in a jot and smiled from unpierced ear to pierced ear. I have to say it’s one of the most astounding books I’ve read. The way the imagery of each poem flows off the page and hits me leaves me quite weak. It’s the kind of book I can see myself taking everywhere, and as it gets battered and worn by the months, we will become firm and inseparable friends.

So hooray for me and my new paper friend.

Enjoy, Yeah baby, Go for it, I like going out with my mates and having a laugh/larf, Bring it on, lol, my friends think I’m a bit mad, I”m crazy, m8s, I’m a DJ, uber.

Something came to me whilst I was driving today. If all you ate was popcorn, what would happen to your body? Further to this, what would be the timescale on any bodily changes? Answers gratefully received.

I’ve had enough of television as an interactive medium. I was brought up in the good old days, when everything was made of wood and it was accepted (albeit because of technical restraints) that television was a passive entity, something you switched on and simply sat in front of whilst wearing a vest. Nowadays I can’t look at a TV programme without being told I can vote on this, air my views on that, get more information by pressing the red button, vote by text or find out more on itv.com/crap. I wish they would all go away and leave my addled brain in peace. I just want to watch the television. It’s not too much to ask is it?

I am currently house-sitting for a friend whilst he’s on holiday. The poor chap was burgled the other week so he thought it best that I sit idly in his house for a week, firmly in the firing line of any vicious intruders. Very admirable I think.

None of that is very important though; It simply exists to provide background info. The real reason for this blog is to let you know that I have discovered magic. Yes, true magic; as if I were in the presence of David Copperfield himself. I will elaborate.

My friend’s house has a toilet. It’s a very modern and clean one. He’s got something in it called ‘Blu Loo’. I very much like what the manufacturer has done with the word ‘blue’. They’ve given it a radical and pithy makeover. “Blu’; it’s very contemporary.

Anyway, the point is this. Blu Loo is amazing. Every time you flush the toilet a lovely seaside blue colour fills the pan. See what I mean; Magic! It’s so lovely and blue that I want to dive in and go for a swim, but of course I can’t.

That’s it really. I just wanted to let you know.

I write best when I’m out and about, and that’s why I spend a lot of hours in coffee shops. It’s an entirely pleasant existence and one I would be loath to give up. One little thing slightly annoys me however. In many of the coffee shops I frequent the signs and adverts pasted about the place blurt on about ‘Italian style coffee’. I just don’t care. I don’t want my coffee to be Italian style, I just want it to be good. I really don’t think going on about a coffee’s pseudo Italian credentials is actually any guarantee of quality. I’ve had great coffee in this country, in the USA, France, Spain, Morocco and Germany. I even had a good coffee in Belgium once. I think all this Italian shenanigans simply comes down to unnecessary marketing cobblers. Coffee beans don’t even come from Italy anyway.
“Ah,” but people will say, “it’s not about where the beans come from, it’s about the preparation techniques.”
Oh grow up. This country designs nuclear submarines. It can make a good coffee.