So after seven years of our relationship, Jenny finally got the baby photos tour when we were home for Christmas. Strangely, I'd never seen the photos either, so it was as novel for me as it was for her. Bizarrely, I was an incredibly cheery baby; there's hardly a photo of me where I'm not grinning like I'm on smack. Here's a sampling of some of the more entertaining ones for your mocking amusement.

I dressed better then than I do now; check out those pseudo spats!


This looks like a picture you might find in a picture frame when you buy it from Habitat.


Jenny hyperventilated at my expression in this picture. Can't think why.


One word: insouciant. Three more: where's my dignity?


I've never seen a picture of this old puss looking so young. Still miss her.

JENNY: DID YOU SPEAK TO SOMEONE SPECIFIC?
ME: NO, I CONVERSED WITH AN AMORPHOUS NOTION OF HUMANITY.
JENNY: YOU ARE HILARIOUS.

In other news, it's cold up in the Auld Country:

Guys! Are you balding? Do you want some facial fungus options that can help mitigate the effects of your receding hairline? Then have we got the handy guide for you!

Option 1: The baby-face

The classic look for the baldie in your life. Fully shaved with what hair remains on the heid buzzed down as far as it can go.

Option 2: The gangsta

Not to be confused with the Village People, team this look with a cigar for the full effect.

Option 3: Jaaaaaz

Add a goatee, sideburns and a far-too-small vintage chapeau perched jauntily on your bonce, and you have all the ingredients in place for a generic jazzy, beatnik-style look.

Option 4: The wine ponce

It took us ages to work out why this look was so clearly a wine ponce look, but we've just two words for you: Paul Giamatti. Requires a phenomenal amount of upkeep.

Option 5: The Wild Man of Borneo

The Full Beard™ offers the maximum distraction from your backwards-leaping hairline, but it's a delicate balancing act. You run the risk of looking simply like you couldn't be arsed shaving, or like you should simply be selling big shoes*.

So there you have it, folks; five looks, each as ridiculous as the last, and all of them designed to ease the crushing sense of mortification you carry as a balding, tubby gentleman. Laugh through the tears, folks; laugh through the tears.

* The Big Issue. Seller in Scotland are wont to call out "Big ishu! Bigi shu! Big shue" as you walk past.

I have no affection for soap operas, but I couldn't help but have the feeling that we've moved from the epicentre of the universe once more forced upon me when I realised this morning that our old flat appears on the map of London shown in the title sequence for EastEnders. It's only just hanging on, but extensive scientific testing* has proved that it's definitely there. How often does the Bath flat appear on national television, eh? Eh?



* Laying a screengrab of a Google Maps satellite projection over a frame capture in Photoshop, and setting the former layer to Multiply.

Christmas in Bath is adorable. Lights are strung across alleys, the entire city seems to be running on Glühwein, and the population swells as befuddlement after befuddlement of old folks gets bused in from surrounding villages to 'do a bit of shopping'.

And yet.

All this makes it a phenomenally stressful place in which to actually live. My seething temper, never far beneath the surface, regularly erupts as socially-inept hordes fanny their way around the shops, regularly pooling into gaggles of mediocrity. Entire clutches of children – the very verb that would best describe what ought to be done to their necks – roam like vapid, brutish meerkats, while oxygen thieves insist, against all the laws of common sense and physics, on attempting to push triple-decker prams along cobbled streets.

The very epicentre of this fuckwittery, it would appear, is Marks & Spencer. Take one part Wether's Originals, one part KFC and three parts mermaid, compress to a quantum singularity, and you have the apparent effect of one regular-sized M&S to attract the old, the chav and the plain suggestible.

Today, a mother-and-daughter duo were walking side-by-side, their combined bodies plus a hip-mounted basket each taking up the entire width of the aisle, as the mother repeatedly vouchsafed to her daughter "I wish it was in brown! Yeah, I wish it was in brown!" Seriously, she said this four times, each time taking the time to stop, make eye contact with her spawn, and clutch – there's that word again – her by the arm just to make sure she really got the frigging point that – all together now – she wished it was in brown. Needless to say, I killed them both.

Feel free to judge me.

I had to use a VCR today. It was horrible. One word: tracking. Another three: fucking horrible quality. It joins my little laptop in Retro Corner™ on my desk.

Apologies for the lack of updates and the disappearance of the webcam; I was hit with Fasthosts' password nonsense and was locked out of my own site. I didn't have a chance to sort out the webcam before leaving work this evening, but it should be back on Monday. Put a red ring around the day in your calendar.