It’s been a while. Sorry about that. Compensation claims will be considered via the usual channels, and cheques posted on the first day of the second month of the tenth year following the claim, maybe. Reasons for my inability or unwillingness to post an update on my scintillating existence are many and various, so, in the absence of anything better to do, let’s consider them in turn:

1. A godalmighty bloody cold. Now, Jenny had a cold which began just over a week ago. She battled on stoically, while I lined up the most impressive array of anti-cold measures known to Britain in the hope of staving off the inevitable. The most potent of these, alongside various lemony and garlicy concoctions, was this stuff called First Defence. You’ve probably heard of it. It’s made of, like, menthol liquids distilled to a highly concentrated ooze, to the point where one molecule dropped from a helicopter over Birmingham has every sinus in the West Midlands looking like a Barratts show-home. But you have to shove it up your nose and squeeze the cap, injecting this potent brew deep into the soft tissue of your skull. You spend the next 15 minutes in pain clutching your head, the walls, the postman, whatever is handy, and then 15 minutes later you start feeling pretty good. Thing is, as I say, all it does is stave off the inevitable, and 6 days later I got bored of taking it, and instantly the cold thought “right, then – here we go, lads, let’s get the bastard” and immediately I was struck down. This stopped me enjoying my Saturday, a bit like the effect Ted Rogers used to have, but by Sunday it was only streaming and highly contagious, so I went for lunch with Jenny’s mum and her great uncle, because I’m the kind of miserable sod who’ll take a free meal even if it puts the elderly of North London at risk of illness or even death.

2. I found myself horribly short of work, and looking into my September crystal ball (I’ve got 12, you see, labelled JFMAMJJASOND and arranged in a 4×3 grid at the foot of the bed) I saw a frighteningly clear image of me scooping cheesy Wotsits out of the gutter and cursing their frailty when subjected to a light dressing of tap water and malt vinegar. Poverty didn’t suit me, so I spent last week trying to have some ideas. Most of them were shit ideas, but some of them were alright, and I got a handful of commissions, which would be great, but I also landed a stint in an office at the BBC for a couple of weeks, so now I find myself horribly snowed under and with not even enough time to swear loudly about the situation. “All Or Nothing” is a phrase frequently uttered by the foolhardy in pursuit of glory, the idiots, I’d rather have “Medium Amounts Of Things”, which I’m considering fashioning into a modern battlecry. Oh, and Scritti Politti are playing a private party next Thursday for a chic media organisation in Hoxton, which further adds to my burden. I’d ask for your sympathy if I thought I deserved any and wouldn’t get a blogger’s finger stabbed rapidly and repeatedly in my left eye. We’ll also be doing a slot at the new Rough Trade megastore on Brick Lane at some point in the next 6 weeks. Apparently.

3. That might be the end of the excuses, actually.

Other things: I’ve got to think of a band name. It’s a long story, but it’s for a hair-brained, short-lived project I’m working on. I’m terrible at thinking up band names. Especially something that’s supposed to sound reasonably contemporary, haha. I do what everyone else does, and just sit there, looking around at nearby objects, hoping for inspiration. How many bands I’ve nearly been in called Lemsip, The Malfunctioning Wristwatches, Cable Tidy, A4 Paper or Sister’s Graduation Photo. Actually, they’re all fine, aren’t they! No, no of course they’re not. Suggestions welcome, and will be rewarded with cake, perhaps.

Oh, another excuse for my absence: I arranged all my CDs into alphabetical order, put them into boxes labelled things like “A-C” or “T-Z” and stuck them at the back of a cupboard, well out of the way. I realised I don’t listen to them anymore, I just listen to MP3s. Go cyberman, eh. Go, life laundry techno boff.

Oh, and I went for lunch with a friend of mine who works at The Independent. She’s been put in charge of making their website better. The meeting was ostensibly about her picking my brains (I’ve no idea what ostensibly means, if I’m using it wrongly let me know, cheers) so I asked her beforehand whether I should prepare some opinions or make up some half-baked ones on the hoof. She opted for the latter, so when she asked me questions over some expensive Turkish meze, I didn’t really have anything to say. I need preparation time, you see. Something similar happened to me a few weeks ago. I went out for lunch with a high-powered chap from the technology wing of Saatchi who, knowing that I write a weekly technology column for a national newspaper, wanted to get my opinions on, I dunno, Blu-ray versus HD-DVD or something. I had no opinions on the subject whatsoever, I tried to tell him, he thought I was joking, so when he’d done his big spiel over some expensive tapas and asked me what I thought of the issue, I came up with the only sentence I was supremely confident of uttering: “I need to go to the toilet”. I went to the toilet and sat there for three minutes, moaning gently with embarrassment. By the time I emerged, he seemed happy to talk about normal stuff that I could join in with, you know, cold remedies, freelancing, band names. Thank god for that, eh. Phew. Narrow escape. Doubt I’ll ever get a job at Saatchi, though.

Medium Amounts Of Things!