It seems whenever I have travel crises I console myself with drink and nostalgia TV. When my flight to Edinburgh at xmas was cancelled the other year due to storms I watched Fast Show videos and sank Scotch. When I missed my train (6 hours) and had to take the bus (12 hours) yesterday, I arrived at my Mum's empty flat and watched several hours of This Life, punctuated by Father Ted, and drank lots of Kronenbourg.

I haven't seen the anniversary special of This Life, but inevitably the original looks a bit dated now. If it were made now, Miles and Egg would be surreptitiously downloading porn (maybe the girls would too), Millie would be at odds with her relatives over her wearing or not wearing a veil, Keira would be a rank underachiever rather than a taboo-smashing whirlwind. Anna would be a self-harming binge-everythinger and nobody would have a problem with Warren's homosexuality, least of all himself. Their Tube journeys to the office would be fraught with delays and paranoia, and they would be taking coke, not E. Any allusion to E would involve depression or downmarket teenagers flogging it for a quid a throw. And of course, their computers, not their stereos, would be playing Gnarls Barkley, Lilly Allen and Babyshambles, not Underworld, Sleeper and Portishead. That's the problem with the bleeding edge- it soon heals up. Happy Christmas to y'all.

In the unlikely event of you buying a postcard or poster with a cartoon on it, what would it be ? I've decided I'm wasting my time drawing people that I like and admire-it's time to give 'em what they want.

Bike thieves saw through my chain and nick it. I buy a new one. The gears are crap. I take it to the shop. They fix them. They're still crap. I go again. The shop is closing. I cycle off. I get a puncture. I push it home. I fix the puncture. I have dinner. Now I'm so knackered I can only spend about an hour on the drawing I'm working on (my first "proper" commission, for "proper" money). To be fair, I still have about a week, though it's amazing how fast time can fly. Hopefully I can finish it this weekend- last night was a marathon session that resulted in finishing most of the B&W draft.

In the meantime-

Alexander Litvinenko- A Russian spy ! Poison ! A leggy blonde ! If only routine massacres in Chechnya for the last ten years had fascinated our media so much.

Princess Diana- Face it, she's dead. If you cried at her pointlessly young death but bought any of the rags that hounded her in her life, then you're still a hypocrite. Now concentrate on turning your guilt into contempt/envy for Jordan/Kate/Robbie/Whoever.

Impending Wogolanche - The photo that's been printed in all the papers this week of a thronging visa queue outside the British Embassy somewhere in Slavowogobongobongoland is several years old. If we can't get the actual words right, can we at least try with the pictures ? It would be ever so nice.

I suppose I deserve it. What other result could there be of reading the Express,other than high blood pressure ?

I don't mind playing gigs for no money, to no people, with crap sound, in draughty rooms upstairs from pubs where people would stab you for a laugh. (Not that last night's gig at the Cambridge Boathouse was anything like that). I just get incensed by how completely oblivious some singer-songwriters are to the cliches inherent in the format. I've said it before, but I'll say it again, to anyone who is thinking of picking up an acoustic guitar and a dictophone-

1) What makes you think that your emotional torment is any more worthy of public broadcast than anyone else's ? If you're going to take your lyrics direct from your diary then do us a favour and at least change the first person to third. Or here's a real challenge- write a song about the person/people who you believe to be the source of your misery and then change the 3rd to 1st ! Dare to try something other than begging your audience for sympathy !

2) Mumbling does not make you sound like John Martyn.

3) Screaming does not make you sound like Jeff Buckley.

4) Hitting the odd deliberate bum note does not make you sound like Ravi Shankar/John Renbourn/Jimmy Page/Davey Graham/whoever.

I read an interview with John Prine recently where he said the great thing about Bob Dylan was that he made OK to still perform music even if you didn''t sing like Pagliacci. That may well be, but listen to "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" or "Tombstone Blues" and you'll hear a torrent of ideas and imagery which prove exactly why he could get away with that. It was also 40 years ago, as was the angst of Leonard Cohen/Joni Mitchell etc ad nauseum. It's the idea of being unable to escape the shadow of all that, especially in the utterly diluted form of bedsit whiners, that really makes me want to sell my guitar.