Can I just start off by saying that the world has gone mad? One hundred journalists converge on a sleepy country town because two pigs have escaped. Sheesh. And *I* thought it was a slow news week…

Couple of updates. Of course, since writing my anti-anti-drugs rant, it has come out that the Cabinet Minister in question was none other than Home Secretary Jack Straw. Couldn’t have happened to a better bloke — kinda puts his moralistic rants against the BBFC into a true light. Sure, the BBFC had passed three porn flicks, but I’ve seen one of them and, believe me, civilization in this country is not about to collapse as a result. Seems that Straw would have been better off trying to keep his own house in order, and letting the rest of us get on with watching “Charlie’s Private Sessions” or whatever.

The work situation continues to fall apart. I was shifted next to the boss on Monday — and as a result, wasted half the week trying to get everything working again. Five feet may not seem like much, but in computer terms, it’s several galaxies. On the orders of my boss’s boss, I also had to take down my ‘I Love Callisto’ sticker, which is now lying face-down on my desk. The purpose of this is hard to judge; it was apparently in case any important visitors came out of my boss’s boss’s office, but I can’t recall the last time anyone important visited our FLOOR, never mind him. The sheer pettiness of everything that’s going on at work right now truly defies belief.

Life is quite hard enough as it is. The long haul up from Christmas to Spring is always the toughest part of the year. When it takes the repeated use of a cattle prod to get me out of bed in the morning, it’s clearly not going to be a good day, and things tend bad to worse from then on. What I would personally favour is an extension of the already semi-official Christmas shutdown — never mind until January 5th, go for broke and make it March 22nd.

For what, in general, would you miss? Not a bank holiday in sight, the only two feast-days of note are Burns Night and St.Valentine’s Day. Sports-wise, forget it, apart from the Superbowl, an overblown, steroid-crazed spectacle which is usually about as exciting as a Serbo-croat testcard [You can tell I’m a Vikings fan — our season usually ends, quite sensibly, around New Year]. The weather sucks. Travelling in to work, the train carriage becomes an all-you-can-eat buffet for bacteria. The delights of a cold beer are strangely muted when the temperature is below zero anyway.

What I should really do is emigrate to Antipodean climes for six months, but for that, I’d have to rely on the remote chance of a lottery jackpot [Not so much remote, more “bleedin’ inconsequential”, especially since I don’t usually buy a ticket, which is, I admit, something of a minor difficulty vis-a-vis becoming a millionaire]. Taking three months sick leave might pose a problem as well. So, instead, I’ve got to grin the rictus-like smile of a Lemsip’d up cold victim, throw another pig onto the fire, curl up and dream of warmer days to come — knowing full that when they arrive, I will bitch incessantly about the heat, stink, sweat and grime of summer in the city…