I wake up in the morning, reluctantly, unhappily (I love sleeping) and earl-ily when Mel plonks a cup of tea next to me (bless that saintly woman) and announces in her bouncy, early-morning-manic kind of way, that she’s off to swim. She’s leaving me for David Lloyd. Again. This is often accompanied by the delicate sound of a list. Things to do before work. Email the pension guy (known alternatively as ‘God’ or ‘The Muthafucka!!!’, depending on recent performance), water the garden (not today; pissing down out there), sort out her ipad (battery’s dead) or phone (battery’s dead), pick up chopped liver from the butcher… I hear none of it, just washes over my semi-consciousness as it tries to hold desperately to the bliss that was oblivion.

Then the paper bangs through the letterbox. And I’m awake. I love the paper. But today there was no ‘bang’, there was no nothing, no paper. Didn’t arrive.

Ok, this is the post-technical world, I can turn on a tv (NEVER before evening, unless its football or Olympics. Whisky, any time, tv: show some control), I could look at a thousand ‘news’ sites and get information way more up to the minute that the newspaper printed 8 hours ago, I could turn on the radio. Remember radios?

But that’s not what I want, so that’s not what I do. Instead I pine. I want my news in paper form. Clumsy, unmanageable, dirty, forest-killing, world-ruining, ozone-depleting paper. Love the stuff. Can’t get enough. Its my guilty secret, along with about 300 others, that’s not really a secret.

When it finally arrived, I learned of the events of the Olympics, the bit when I was in bed. We won a gold in the taikwando. Again. Jade Wassername; won in London, gold yesterday. I saw some of it. And, having never watched it before, thought it might be a cross between Bruce Lee and Usain Bolt. That’s some ‘cross’, I grant you. But its not. Its two babes trying desperately to avoid being kicked in the head. Really boring to watch. Tai Chi is much more fun. Even in slo-mo.

Jeremy Corbyn wants to attract Tory voters. By, errr, aligning himself with a whole host of hard-left parties of fringe nutters. The Socialist Party (which has a massive 200 members), the Alliance of Workers Liberty, 120 members, and the Socialist Party of England and Wales.

How is that going to attract the vast majority of Blairish New Labourite Champagne Socialists who are fleeing his party as fast as their guilt-laden Bentleys will carry them over to Theresa May’s donation office? But they’re ‘working people’ too and don’t like the cut of Corbyn’s jib. Personally I’d like to cut his jib off and stuff it where the sun don’t shine. But that’s because I’m a ninja warrior. Sorry, still in that part-sleep wonderland…

Happy Friday

A xxxx