There are two food products that suddenly increase the need for everyone around you to become nutritionists.

As soon as one produces an egg, or puts salt on their dinner, especially in the quantities I usually chose to consume, people develop some kind of Gillian McKeith-like condition, where they suddenly presume they're a doctor and need to tell you how to consume your food, and probably how to live your life.

In fact, some people's reaction is almost akin to displaying a year's worth of fat as a dining room table covered in lard, or a year's worth as a swimming pool filled with melted Mars bar.

Always confuses me on TV programmes where they show a fat person the number of Mars bars they would have consumed in a year or a month or a day, or in an hour, why they don't suddenly grab one of them and start eating. Or, probably in the case of the swimming pool jump in for a bit of an exercise-feast.

In my mind, swimming in Mars bar would at least kill off a few of the calories I was taking in. And getting featured on TV and then in the subsequent EXCLUSIVE interview in 9 magazines would at least pay for a bit of plastic surgery from Balfour Beatty.

"Someone's going to die of a heart attack."

The smugness has begun, as I open the 2nd pack of salt for my plate covered in chips and food. "Why?"

"All that salt, give you really high blood pressure and then you'll die. You shouldn't eat salt on anything, ever, because you'll die."

The worst you can do, in the yes of these people, is to put a bit of salt on an egg sandwich. They neigh-on come close to actually dying in front of you with the shock.

And they haven't eaten any salt in their lives.

Of course, you shouldn't eat too many eggs. It's good advice. Were you to eat exclusively eggs you might cause yourself some kind of injury probably involving an ASDA Smart Price egg, some butter and a mixing bowl.

But some people really do take it to an extreme which can only be taken as actually comical.

Some people I've met consider an omelette to be some kind of deathly weapon when made with more than two eggs, even if it's being divided between multiple people.

"You'll get egg bound," they say, with all the authority of Jean the local pensioner.

They can be found walking around McDonald's in disguise in a morning shouting at people buinng a Double Mc-anything, and running into Greggs during the lunchtime rush, shouting at people innocently buying a steak bake about the percentage of salt and the calculation to get from the sodium content to the salt content, quickly, easily, and without a calculator.

There’s something distracting me during lectures, and it’s something which really shouldn’t be distracting me, if we’re all honest about it.

It’s the flashing red light on the fire detectors.

I could cope with it, when I first noticed it. It flashed every couple of seconds; reliability I could cope with. But then I noticed that there was also a flashing red light on every one of the square, red little ‘break glass’ devices that set the fire alarm off.

I was in a problem. The two devices were too far away from one another for me to be able to determine the answer to a question I knew would appear in my head.

Are they blinking at the same time?

Ah, there it was. I’d asked the question. I tried moving my head from the detector to the little panel really quickly. I was missing it.

The flash was too short.

I tried looking at the one, counting the gap between flashes, and then counting the gap between a flash on the detector and on the panel. Again, this wasn’t good enough. I was clearly missing one of the flashes.

The only way I can do it is to employ further labour. But how do you ask someone?

“Excuse me, I was wondering if you could stare at the sensor on the ceiling and tap me on the shoulder each time it flashed please?”
“Urm, why?”
"Wibble"

The only response you can reasonably give in the hope they’ll comply with your requests is something like “wibble”.

Convincing them you’re mad is probably the only way they’re going to carry out your demands. They do it, probably because they're scared you're about to produce a carrot from your undergarments and prod them with it.

You might even be carrying mayonnaise. The risks are too great.

I’m going to have to say sorry. I’m kind of opposed to doing this but I guess it's kind of what I need to do. You are still here, like a beaten wife, asking for more.

A lot of people will say “well, he’s got better things to do now!” and they’d perhaps be slightly right. But actually, in all honesty, it takes me only a few minutes to write a blog and – generally – as Dom once said, I am like a machine – churning them out with little actual thought going into an individual. Rather, going into the end product. That is, a blog which is updated every single day with something whitty and insightful.

Something you could print off, show the wife and enjoy. That sor tof thing. Only, it’s not really happening at the moment. And I’ll tell you for why.

I’m still getting used to my slightly adjusted life. Alright, so I’ve just about got into the whole idea of living so close to the sea, after having spent most of my 19 years pretty much locked in the centre of two huge pieces of land. Like the icing on a cake, I am free. But aside from that, I’m getting used to living with people who I’m not realted to. I’m getting used to sort of, getting on with it. And amongst all of that I forgot how to be funny.

So urm, yer. This is one of those posts that i always hate to see on blogs – but I’m sorry, truely I am – and you can hope that having now acknowledged this, I can move on. Much like an alcoholic is expected to do after standing up and saying their name at one of those AA meetings where everyone’s car breaks down.

I’m also hoping that at some point I might get around to writing the review of the yes man book. Who knows if that’ll ever happen, heh?

I realise it's late, and I realise that I've only actually got 9 minutes to write this blog post and post it, else I am late and will have lied to you about this being Tuesday's post.

Just eaten an egg sandwich, and I won't lie to you - my fingers are a little too greasy to be writing about anything which requires me to aim remotely at any button.

I suppose with greasy fingers it is easy to learn a language like Russian where the letters appear to be in no particular order at all. Sort of like the people who invented the language had just eaten a sandwich perhaps a little greasier than the one I just ate, and then decided that it was a good time to deliver the catagoric answer to spelling in Russian.

Good job that I went along to a free book give away the other day and managed to bag myself not only the "Word Power Made Easy," guide to improving how you write in 15 easy steps while holding an asparagus, but also a guide to teaching yourself Russian from 1956.

Invaluable resources, I think you'll agree. If anyone would like either of the books, please do let me know and I will certainly arrange for them to be delivered to you, post haste.

Or urm, Я нашел свой смысл жизни.

Indeed.

Nic x

Ideas are odd things. I'm sure no one would deny that, infact, ideas struck them when they were least expecting it and that when they were trying to have an idea, their mind became blanker than ever before.

It's with that in mind that after a weekend of intense boredom where I managed to achieve little, that I came to the conclusion that - infact - I had no ideas.

I tried to entertain myself by printing things off and "making my room more homely" as people keep telling me I need to do.

But I ended up printing off meaningless things and sticking them to my bathroom door, in what - as I keep pointing out - is essentially an office.

Next, I decided to watch a film - knowing that I could do it online, like one does absoloutely everything now.

I couldn't do it online since I am currently connected to a network that allows porn featuring fat women, but bans email accounts from working properly for fear that you might do yourself some damage if you're allowed access to the post office protocol.

Instead, I have come up with an idea that has astouned me. It's very unclear idea, but I think it could work and that is why I am sat here at a computer writing people emails to see if they're interested in getting involved with it.

To be honest, the project could fall on its arse if no-one gets involved since it is very much reliant upon some other people being interested.

It could be a good project. We shall see! Watch this space. Oh, and I might attempt to be slightly funnier next time I write a blog, since this has been a wonderfully boring piece of discourse which has resulted in my unconciousness on several occasions during its writing.

I seem to be having a lot of issues with general appliances recently. First of all I developed a magical shower which could make me no profit despite being magical, and now I'm having issues with a washing machine.

To be specific though, I'm not really having an issue with the washing machine. The machine itself sat there, doing very little and offending few. It wasn't shouting insults, calling me fat or appearing on BBC One telling people it isn't a Nazi.

As much as I'm sure the washing machine is for the intergration of ethnic minorities in the community of Britain, I have not been briefed and therefore couldn't really talk on this issue.

Instead, I am having an issue with the woman in the call centre that I spoke to after the washing machine decided that life was a little bit futile.

"What is the nature of the problemmmmm?"

The woman on the other end sounded a little as if she had been captured and locked in a call centre and forced to talk about washing machines all day: "It isn't working."

"Can you describe the issue please?"

How exactly do you explain that a washing machine isn't working at all? I decided excessive detail was needed.

"Well I put the stuff into the machine, closed the door and then put a coin in and it ignored the coin."

"So the machine isn't working?"

"Exactly"

"Is the machine washing the clothes at all, or would it not start?"

"It didn't start washing,"

"And is the machine full of water?"

"No, it didn't start - it ignored me putting money in. "

"And has the machine taken any money from you?"

The woman was increasingly annoying me with her questioning - but since our relationship was based soley upon washing machines, and not some kind of long-established friendship or common belief or activity, I let it go.

"Yes, it took the money but it ignored it."

"And are you wanting to claim this money back or did the wash complete?"

"No, the machine didn't work at all. I want my money back."

"Ok, well we can't do that I'm afraid. I've dispatched an engineer and he'll be there within the next seven days."

I hung up at this point. Eventually, an engineer showed up and I washed my clothes. And some how, just some how - I appear to have gained an over-sized white vest.

Any one missing one?

I have realised I have a huge problem.

This problem is totally and 100% self inflicted and is simply caused by the fact that I have been too lazy to actually find a solution to it yet, after having had a need to, if I'm truthful, for about 2 weeks.

The thing I've done to create this problem, before anyone starts wondering is simply to re-activate my membership with LOVEFILM.

I see it as a cheaper way of getting some interesting visualising experiences for those times when I can't sleep or don't want to sleep than buying a TV licence, and also perhaps simply a way to entertain myself in this lake of placcidness that is my life at the moment.

Not that student life is boring or anything, but I get excited by the prospect of there being something other than pasta for dinner, and at thinking up new reasons why I don't want to stay out till 4am before coming in pissed and going to bed, only to miss breakfast and feel rubbish all day.

My problem is that having signed up to a postal DVD service, I have not a single clue where the postbox is.

The process is quite simple, they post you DVDs and then you post them back.

Not the same one, of course, that would be silly.

At the moment, I might just get one DVD. And even then, Royal Mail probably won't deliver it for about 3 and a half weeks.

Now that's a bold claim to make. And yes, I know, that if I truly did have a shower with magical ability then I probably would not be living where I am now.

I imagine - not ever having had a magical shower I do not know - that if I were indeed telling the whole truth then I would be quite rich and would, indeed, be frolicking around the country wearing some kind of expensive hat.

I would probably also have bought a goat with which to share my joy and, indeed, my life as a soul partner.

However, I do not.

I am simply referring to the fact that I seem to own a shower which, despite having a flow worse than a 70-year-old man with prostate issues, manages to soak everything inside the wet room which sits neatly in the corner of my room.

I'm not fully sure how it manages to achieve this. But it does.

And for this reason, tomorrow I will be telephoning The Sun newspaper in order to register my disgust.

As an aside, tonight's Question Time was made just perfect for me with the questioner who referenced "Dick Griffin." Although I'm not sure whether I should be more amused by the "fuck it, no-one's watching anyway" comment which apparently got uttered on BBC TWO this evening.

It's got to be said that not doing anything for a while makes someone lazy.

If you haven't got a job, never have had a job, are in between jobs or have just spent your life having staff to do everything for you, you have to admit that you do become a bit - well, shall we say - used to the fact that nothing really relies on you getting it done by a certain time.

You kind of get used to having the time to walk down to get each thing you want individually rather than having to get everything in one go, running back and then feeding your pet Chiwawawa.

But my life is no longer like that. I only had a few weeks off in between leaving Costa and coming to university, but the whole "let's ease you in" idea means that I haven't had anything to do properly for rather a long time - and now the work is starting to mount up a little more, actually doing it in the "everything but nine hours" that I have free each week is seeming to be quite difficult.

The problem is, I have far more interesting things in my life. Everything from washing up other people's things (see earlier blog post for details) to reading things I'm not even interested in on the Internet seem to be far more important than doing anything remotely work-like.

I need to get a job, and get busy. Because I seriously don't need to know anything more about the fact that bees are declining in this country.

For me, sharing my life with people is a bit of a struggle. So moving into somewhere where you have to live with a load of people who you don't know, and not only live with them in person but also live with the ways and their things, as well as their habits and of course their damn physical forms is odd.

And when I say odd, what I actually mean is something that I can't fucking stand.

And when I say I can't fucking stand it, I mean I stand around quietly in the corner hating the world while everyone else looks around and wonders why my face looks like I have swallowed three knives which were coated with some kind of paste made out of Marmite, crushed bones of a rat and bin juice.

I jest, of course. Things aren't that bad at all, but that doesn't stop me from being irritated easily by people who think that washing up is rubbing things with some soapy dirty cloth and then placing the item back in the sink, or people who think that the bin is emptied by some kind of fairy.

But beyond anything else, the thing that annoys me is the misunderstanding of where to place not-eaten, but cooked, food that has been used but not used. You know the stuff.

The very last coco-pop that gets chased around the bowl for a few minutes before having faith lost, some pasta that just wouldn't co-operate with the fork, or maybe just some noodles that were impossible to get rid of.

I have news. It goes in the bin. It doesn't go in the sink.

There's no need to have a small panic attack and decide that the best action is to place the entire bowl in the sink, contents intact, to allow someone else to make the difficult decision.

But then again, the bin won't have been emptied will it?

I should have brought my copy of "I Lick My Cheese". I knew I should have. But I was a fool and left it at home. Where no-one is licking my cheese.

If you've lost two sons, you're going to be a little bit upset. I can understand that.

But anyone who has been watching Coronation Street can probably understand why I now think loosing two sons may in fact cause nothing other than a little bit of amnesia.

Following the story line, everyone knows that the Connors (who inexplicably all have jet black hair despite their parents both being rather fair haired) have lost two sons. One called Paul, and one called Liam.

But the question in my mind is why these parents were not aware that their tragic happenings are a result of them being parents in a soap opera.

Surely there should be some kind of training scheme which allows people who give birth to soap characters to learn about some of the (not very plentiful) ways that their children will live their lives.

It's quite obvious if you give birth to a soap character that after giving birth, the child will not speak for several years. He might change appearance, and will - on occasion - disappear completely to allow you to take part in another story line where they are not involved.

Following their growing up, at around the age of 13 the child will go upstairs to listen to tapes, wash their hands before dinner or just to do their homework or something, only to come back down the stairs three to four months later looking and sounding completely different.

Later in their life, there's a huge chance that they will be involved in some kind of murder, either as the murderer, an accomplice, a witness, or a victim. Chances are, if they drive a sports car, they'll own the factory and live either by the Canal or in the Victoria Street apartments that Tony built and never sold, until a time when they get involved with either a scamming woman who'll cheat them out of their shares, or have something them taken in some kind of blackmail.

If they get rich, something will happen where the money is stolen from them or is spent on something they never actually get, and they'll go crying to either the Rovers or to the Factory where they'll work doing something menial for £5.73 an hour.

It's only sensible to assume, as a parent of a soap character, that something bad will happen.

But do me a favour? If you've lost two of your sons in the soap, don't talk about just one for the rest of your life. Because the other one matters too.

So there.

I really want to like wine.


I don’t know what it is about wine that makes me want to like it, or what it is about it that means that I don’t really like it anyway.
But this mystical thing is getting in my way. It’s irritating in a non-attacking kind of way – almost in the way perhaps that you could find people who read the Sun irritating.

You don’t really know what it is, specifically, that makes them irritating in general life – but they just really taste a little bit like urine filtered through a strepsil.

I think the image behind wine is what gives me the craving to like it and drink it. Something like the idea that Stephen Fry or Alex Trafford would sit, pondering the world, waiting to watch Question Time over a deliberated glass of 1923.
Frasier drinks it, Niles collects it. It makes me want to be part of the group.

And yet, instead, I am often found sat drinking Gallahad – the £3.99 for 12 beer from Aldi.

I bet you’ve never thought fruit could have emotion. Well, you’re probably correct. Only, here in 3B at Brighton we’ve discovered that, infact, an orange can be unhappy.

Each morning one of us wakes up to find that there’s an orange outside our room.



It’s not just any orange though. It’s got an unhappy face on it. And it’s very very sad. It’s upset. It’s upset that it’s out in the cold all night.
“Why do you not take me in?”. People say it can be heard crying during the night.

It might be similar to the phones left out in the cold when they’re replaced, according to Carphone Warehouse adverts that may or may not have been on T V and had a song attached.

I’m pretty sure I heard it being hummed last night.

Admitting it is part of the start of the cure, and I’m sure that if I admit it now everything will be fine. This is the equivalent of me announcing that I am, indeed, called Nic Parkes and I am an alcoholic.

I’m not an alcoholic, although I may have developed a slight alcohol dependence recently, through force rather than anything mental or complicated like that. Far easier to stay away from things like that, to be honest and stick to good old force.
It goes quite nicely with my speed.

So here goes: I am addicted to three letter acronyms. TLAs, as you might know them.

Obviously, I’m not addicted to them to the point that I would prefer to write this sentence in them. I mean, it’d be silly. No-one would understand you. But where possible, I do prefer to use them. Even when it is totally inappropriate to use them; when they only make sense to me, yet the writing is intended for someone else.

I’d rather tell someone on Facebook that I was going to be in the TVS than the TV Studio. I’d rather tell you that I’d just been on a LBJ than a Long Bus Journey. And I’d rather have a DAA than a Detective Agency Aunty who runs KYA. SAL rather than Simply Associates. BAD rather than meals.

I only noticed this today when I wanted to read back everything i’d written in a lecture and noticed that things appreared all over, abbreviating every single thing into three letters.

And if we think about it: three letters are not enough to justify anything.

Three letters are like using a Ronan Keeting version of Father & Son off of an audio cassette recorded off the radio when the song was released, when you’ve got a broadcast quality copy of the Cat Stevens version ready to be used, and in your computer.

The English language is beautiful. I love it. I love writing words. I love writing incredibly long sentences. I love writing really long blogs for you to consume, and for Blaine to moan about. And yet I love TLAs.

I think I might be a little ill.

Everyone has dreams. I'm sure I normally have dreams - in fact, I know that everyone has dreams even if they don't remember them. And I know that because some scientist or sleep-person decided that they wanted to study the whole dreaming thing and worked it out somehow.

Although how you work out that people are having dreams despite the fact that they constantly forget them is completely beyond me and to an extent probably suggests the sleep-people prefer sleeping to doing actual work.

"Oh just tell them everyone has dreams but they forget them, no-one will ever know," the cocky scientistologistism person would say.

To even further make this absurd there are actual websites that talk about how you can improve your recognition of dreams by setting alarms during you REM sleep.

I can think of two reasons why I would not think that this was a good idea:

1) Surely the whole point of sleeping and having a dream is that you get to enjoy being asleep. These wondrous things that you have called Dreams are meant to be slightly odd and not ever turned into fantastic stories with special pretty colours, although perhaps it would explain how bizarre some Children's books actually are.

The dream that inspired this very post, that I had last night featured me inexplicably finding moles in my pond at home. After getting into the pond for no apparent reason, the moles were left on the side sort of lying in the grass.

One of them was badly injured, and for some reason I was instructed to despatch it. Upon attempting to do so, it spoke to me.

At some point, I enquired as to why this mole could speak, although strangely ignored the fact that the moles looked more like some kind of skunk crossed with a rat, only be to be told: "We could always speak, you just never asked."

This, for me in my head, was enough to answer the question and explain everything fully.

I don't even really know what a real life mole might look like.

2) Aside from enjoying being asleep, there are people that you live with that won't appreciate being woken up by your alarm going off at 4.45am in order to get you in the middle of being in REM, and will be reasonably annoyed when you (as the website I just read) suggests start keeping them awake by opening up a noisy old notepad and scribbling down your bizarre stories.

If anyone would like to learn how to remember your dreams, the website is here.

Having come back to looking at the English language again after a year off something struck me while I was sat in a lecture this week.
It snuck upon me like some kind of dragon that had been hiding since perhaps the days of Cadbury college.

Obviously, it hadn’t had any food for a year or so, having to survive on what was left over at the end of the day from Costa and a couple of faggots that I chucked in there occasionally.

I really don’t like faggots, by the way – and I think that, frankly, anything contained within another piece of an animal’s body in order to keep it from sort of, well... Flowing away, shouldn’t be permitted within society.

It should be an outcast. We should treat it like we treat people in the street offering you saviour from life, or samples of a new product which causes your legs to dissolve during the night.

Is it not slightly ironic that one of the words we use to talk about our language (quite a complicated theory in itself) is actually not an English word.

To me, this is an example of political corectness gone mad.

Genre.

It’s almost offensive. It’s even more offensive when you hear someone like me who has to pronounce it perfec tly saying it. Becuase then it is clearly french. It’s not even hiding a bit. It’s out there, loud, proud and smelling of garlic.

Living at university means that you have to buy a TV Licence if you’ve got a laptop or an eyebrow and use it to stream live broadcast television within a communal property.

If you’ve listened to any media at all, you’ll know that students must buy a new TV Licence each time they change channel, and that a lot of students (99% of them infact, according to the leaflet) will bring a laptop to university with them.
According to the adverts on the radio at the moment, having a laptop means it becomes the centre of your life and you watch TV whilst ‘IM ing your friends’.

To me, that sounds painful rather than an enjoyable experience, but each to their public-funded own.
What the adverts DON’T say is that the TV Licence is only needed for watching live or near-live TV. That means you can use catchup players without having a TV Licence, and without breaking the law. As much as the adverts try and convince you that “if you watch streamed TV on your laptop, you need a TV licence”.

So, essentially – it’s pay £100 or so quid for a licence, or crash burn and die because you own a laptop and this means you’ll be prosecuted.

I’m not sure anyone actually would realise the difference between LIVE streamed TV (needs a licence) and on-demand streamed TV (doesn’t), and whether or not anyone actually cares about either and the difference.
So it’s time to change to a life without live TV.

This change has no effect on you really, other than the fact that you realise how much good the whole BBC iPlayer and 4od services are, and they are bloody wonderful.

I have never before discovered so much TV by looking through the lists on the iPlayer and pressing download – but this is one big feature that these services really need! At the moment, the BBC are the only people allowing downloads of their programmes (as far as I’m aware).

This is one of the things that has happened as a result of me using the services more. I’ve noticed where things don’t quite perform correctly – and where they could be better. So urm, because I’ve got very little else to say here is my list of desires.
DOWNLOADABLE PROGRAMMES – It’s sometimes, actually no – almost always – impossible to stream a video on the Internet on a university network at peak time, when everyone else is trying to do it as well. If I can download the programme it means I can watch it without having to wait for it to buffer – even if I have to wait for it to download, and sacrifice some hard drive space.

ADVERTS – I know this has to be done; I know that these services have to be funded somehow and advertising is obviously the answer to this. But there are so many ways that this can be done without causing a problem for people. ITV’s player is the worst for this, and I’ve known the ‘forced adverts’ part of their player actually stopping me from skipping around in the video. Channel 4 get it right, so why can’t ITV?

SPEED – If a programme is live, I understand if it’s being recorded off air and being encoded – making a short gap (maybe a couple of hours if we’re waiting for all the formats before revealing any of them at all) between the programme and it coming online. If it’s been recorded, then I’m worried why it’s not being delivered into the programme and being encoded to go online within minutes of the end of its air slot. I know the BBC try their hardest (I think i’ve read a blog about this), but it shouldn’t be difficult should it?
Ah, now I feel better. At some point soon, I’ll be back on form – I hope.

I made a suggestion the other day which has probably been made hundreds of times before at times of boredom by many many people, and was even in an episode of dinnerladies by Victoria Wood.

Put quite simply, we were a bit bored at the thought of having to cook for ourselves each day over the weekend - being as we've spent the first 6 days of university life pretty much floating around in a daze while the camp guy and the woman who shakes over in the restaurant have delivered to us many things.

We were talking about food and being bored, and probably alcohol - because we are students - and doing so while wearing trackies and sat in a very very comfortable position with our feet probably on multiple chairs.

One of my new flat-that-is-actually-an-office-with-a-school-staff-room-attached-mates said she had a lot of tins. She opened her cupboard to reveal that, indeed, she was probably single handedly responsible for a tin-miner's death, if not two.

"You could take all the labels off so you got a surprise whenever you cooked?"

When you make a suggestion like this - things can go two ways! You're either shot down quicker than shortly after an armed police officer decides he wants to commit suicide, or you're emotionally shot when you realise they actually think it's a good idea.

Why? Because if they do it - you know that whenever they actually come to eat some tinned food, they're going to hate you because it was your suggestion, and therefore your fault that for dinner they're eating tinned peaches, while for breakfast they're eating curried baked beans. In a mug.

She went for the second one and did it straight away. This was most definitely a mistake when yesterday she woke up craving soup.

In the end, she had an entire broccoli for breakfast.

It's a whole new thing to me to find a load of pictures from a club that I've been at on Facebook and look through them to actually find myself and tag myself, and people I know.

I mean, I'm not saying that I don't like the idea, but it is slightly weird that you have to look through not knowing whether or not you're going to find yourself doing an impression of a Leprecahun having sex with a goat.

And it's not even because you're drunk, or whatever, it's because geniunely you do not see a photographer at all, at any point.

Just a weird world that I'm in, to be honest, where nights are too short, days are too long and everything involves drink and music. And then getting up for breakfast.

Because you cannot miss breakfast.

So this, my friends is why I do not have enough to say to be writing a blog every single day. I've also gotta apologise for my lack of updating some pictures on the site (like the header) - I have new graphics for them, but I do not have the ability to upload them.

I'm on a network that judges POP3 to be a 'dangerous' protocol, so the fact that FTP is supported shocks me.

Yes I am neglecting you, and I'm really sorry about this.... But, to be honest, I am currently finding staying alive rather difficult. Please don't introduce anything else into the mix such as having to write things. Like I'm doing now, actually. Shit. Better stop that.

Nic x