My best birthday booty so far has been a pocket notepad and pen frrom my housemate Damien and his girlfriend. I like collecting notebooks so I can keep track of my thoughts over time.

Still enjoying the sun and planning some more displacement activities.

Douglas Coupland wrote in Life after God that all your most vivid memories occur before the age of thirty \"After that, memory becomes water overflowing from an already full cup. New experiences just don't register in the same way or with the same impact. I could be shooting heroin with the Princess of Wales, naked in a crashing jet, and the experience still couldn't compare to the time the cops chased us after we threw the Taylors' patio furniture into their pool in the eleventh grade\"

I'm not sure yet whether or not the above is true, but I do know that my guitar has been gathering dust in a corner for too long. There are glaciers to been seen and jungles to explore and mountains to climb and words to write.

A cursory glance revelas the following - Its seem that MidBritainers are environmentally aware but likely to consume more than the rest of the populace. They are concerned about their health but drink more wine than any other section of British society (and ingrained into the research results there is no referrence to beer consumption - maybe beer is for the proles whereas getting smashed on wine is socially acceptable).

It is a curious piece of research in that it appears that the label and demographic were invented first and then the reseachers went looking for a focus group who fit the bill (read the Methodology section). Maybe I'm missreading it. despite the positive spin placed on things I suspect that whereever MidBritain is, I for one would not feel welcome there.

\<img class=\"alignright\" style=\"float:right;\"
src=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3013/2413241564_2cf56361ec.jpg?v=0\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" /\>

\<img class=\"alignright\" style=\"float:right;\"
src=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3017/2412416875_7e4913e31f.jpg?v=0\"
width=\"300\" height=\"300\" /\>

I'm sure I'll improve with time.

I started this blog in 2003 to document a journey to Thailand that I was making an I guess I just stuck with it. I need to keep moving though. That's the only time I seem to be able to write to the best of my abilities. I want to summon up the honesty that the best bloggers seem to have, or that ability to chronicle the minutae of life. If I don't learn how to do this then my blog will become nothing more than dry lists of places and people. I think I need to take a short holiday from the realms of blogging to relearn how to write. Sorry for the inconvenience this might cause if you are a regular reader but I think it will benefit us both in the longer term.

Well I didn't actually hallucinate but I had a mysterious dream in which Zach Braff (of Scrubs fame) decided to have surgery to alter his ethnicity - He became a black man in order to broaden his appeal and so that he would no longer be typecast as the nerdy white guy. I'm not quite sure how the surgery altered his ethnicity but it was apparently successful and he went on to a variety of new roles that he could only hitherto imagine playing.

I'm not sure if the above dream means anything but if in real life Zach does undergo such surgery then I can obviously eke out a new career as a psychic gossip columnist.

Maybe I'm using being uptight.

I hate going to barber's shops.

I haven't done a top 5 list for a while so here is my list of 5 things I miss about my homeland

1) York. As in olde York. The one built over two millenia by Romans, Saxons, Vikings and Normans. The one with esoteric bookshops and cafes tucked into improbable niches in the city's serpentine streets. I have never been to New York but for all it's cultural cross pollination, I doubt the tea is as nice.

2) Dogs in pubs. They seem to be a rarity in non rural areas, but in large areas of North Yorkshire you can barely move for tripping over some Landlord's mangy hound.

3) The Tea. Yorkshire tea (as in the brand) is actually really, really good.

4) The Yorkshire Riviera. The costal region stretching down from the desolate splendour of Robin Hood's bay through the modern day Gomorrah that is Scarborough to Hornsea, it's my favorite seascape anywhere

5) Flat caps, whippets et al.

I've been relearning the guitar though, which is semi productive. I'm learning to play this song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9OxbJQf3vI

I'm not very good yet though