If you were to consider all the food that’s generally consumed at Christmas time and then represent that indulgent thought as an HTML colour code, it would probably be somewhere around the #854e0e mark. My normal diet – as I was discussing with my girlfriend earlier on – is probably more around #78850e. I’m trying to say that I usually eat more green stuff. “I think we need to return to our normal diet,” I said as she gazed out of the window, pondering a life where she didn’t have to listen to some bloke go on about his nutritional intake. “We should give it a name, too. How about ‘Our Diet’?” It’s not a bad name, but I think ‘The Our Diet’ has more of a ring to it. So, much as I appreciate the fact that there’s a half-eaten chocolate cake sitting in the kitchen, I’m going to have a The Our Diet Salad for tea. If anyone would like to reveal their post-Xmas detox tips – perhaps call it ‘The My Diet’ – you’ll help the burgeoning waistlines of a burping nation.

The reason I’m representing food as six-digit hexadecimals is that I’ve been up to my ears in website code all Christmas. Forgoing the traditional Yuletide family activities, such as losing heavily at board games while under the influence of gin, or gawping at the television while EastEnders characters beat seven different kinds of shit out of one another, I shut myself away with this book and set about revamping my website. A more self-indulgent activity you can’t imagine: attempting to present yourself as vaguely interesting or important to an internet audience who are far too busy watching videos of dogs being sick or students being whipped with inner tubes to really give a monkeys. I was embarrassed to even reveal to my family what I was doing. They probably though I was just reverting to being a sulky teenager. (Which doesn’t take much reverting, I have to say.)

Of course, three days at my parents house isn’t really enough to master the intricacies of PHP and CSS, but through a long process of trial and error, I’ve finally finished it. If you want to make me cry, you can tell me that it looks terrible in Netscape 0.98 on a Macintosh SE running OS 7.5, or something. Or, worse, you can just tell me that it looks terrible. Or ever worse, you can say nothing at all. If there’s one thing bloggers can’t stand, it’s silence. For god’s sake say something. Anything. Call me a wanker if you will, but please ensure you press “Submit”. (If you bother looking, you’ll see that I’ve disabled comments throughout the entire site – one small, tiny act of defiance against the World Of Feedback. Agh.)

For Christmas I received some tokens, a book I already had and some wine that I’ve already drunk, but that’s my own fault for ignoring requests from my family for present ideas. While we unwrapped gifts, my laptop was whirring in the corner of the room downloading various torrents: a compilation of Peter Ustinov’s appearances on the Michael Parkinson show, and 3 hours of footage culled from Question Time, Newsnight and the Nine O’Clock News during the Falklands Conflict. Sod your new episode of To The Manor Born, that’s festive entertainment. Anyway, I succeeded in downloading more in one morning than my parents had in the previous month, and they received a warning email from their ISP that they’d be hit with an extra charge in the next billing period. “So that’s how you repay us for our generous hospitality,” they could have said, but didn’t.

Jenny’s off to Mumbai on Saturday to work on the Indian launch of Grazia magazine for 4 weeks, would you believe. While she’s away, I’m planning to descend into complete debauchery – you know, paint the bedroom, sand a few skirting boards, tile the bathroom. If anyone fancies coming over and join me in this hedonistic orgy, just say so. Now. And please ensure you press “Submit”.