The national rail system of Britain is possibly hated for a simple reason which can be both summarised and solved in those five words.

Standing at a platform, one is almost always forced to listen to a string of announcements - the main message, of course, being that if you are carrying luggage you are a terrorist, and if you find anyone with luggage you shouldn't walk too close to them with a naked flame, or tell them when any of the trains are.

Of course, the other announcements they make tell you when the trains are. And undoubtedly, the machine will be "sorry" to inform you that the train is expected to arrive several minutes after it's scheduled, and yet on future announcements will continue to be announced as its original time.

But beyond irritating is the fact that for some reason, it is not comprehensible to whoever sets up these systems that people are not stood very close to the speakers that this announcement is coming out of. As a result, it's actually turned down to a level at which only super-tasters with their extra taste buds are able to hear from the natural position of the platform.

This is then completely and utterly different when one gets onto a train, particularly in the Southern Trains area where there is an announcement from a lady who was developed somewhere in the Middle East as a terrorist weapon.

"This is coach number 1 of 18" she will announce. Twice. After everything else she says.

The problem I have with this is that there are actually no reserved seating areas on any Southern Service that I have heard this announcement on. And yet after telling me that I should book my tickets online at www.southerntrains.com, I am informed that there are 18 coaches and that I am in number 1.

I already knew this, since I am at the front of the train. I got on at the front, and did not move. I've been sat here the whole time.

And you know what else? I've got two pieces of luggage. Touch me.

I'm bored.

This blog post has had quite a lot of hits over the past few weeks - and as much as I love seeing that, I have an unfortunate feeling about it.

For everyone's information - this blog post was not about anyone in particular. Anyone who believed it actually was, and specifically was someone who I don't actually even know might want to think about the situation I described. Do you think that this could actually have happened, be a specific person and had no-one else notice?

Really?

If you believe that I'd bother to write something that insulting (it's technically a threat) about someone who actually exists as one person, then I don't really care.

Don’t you think it’d be easier if everyone was forced to be honest about whether or not they liked you all of the time?

Aside from the complications that this might cause amongst work colleagues, some of the people in your life just aren’t very clear. To be honest, I would quite like it – in fact, no, I demand it – to be changed.

This would remove so many awkward situations from my life where I walk into rooms which have people in them who I put into the category of “unsure”, feel compelled to find something menial to do in the room to explain my entrance and then leave again as soon as possible.

To then retreat to an ideal secluded vantage point to watch for their departure or for someone who is on my “safe” list to arrive.

At this point, I scuttle into the room to complete the task I originally wanted to.

Life would be so much easier if instead of pussyfooting around the people, I was able to confidently know that I wasn’t liked – and left to continue with my life.

“Hello. Do you like me?”

“No, I do not.”

“This is fine. I will now continue with making this toast.”

“You do that. I will throw knives at you to entertain myself.”

Although, this would remove the entirely fun part of finding out someone who you thought hated you actually had some kind of odd fondness for you. But I do think it would be worth it.

There is nothing more irritating when you’re sat minding your own business in a room than someone who walks in.

I mean, it’s a fair issue really. I’m sat here, minding my own business and you come in fresh from your many adventures of the world.

You might be excited that you’ve been and bought some pasties maybe they contain some kind of exotic meat that we don’t often encounter, such as beef.

It could be, perhaps, that you’ve found someone hilarious in the city centre and decided to take pictures of them, bring them back and make a PowerPoint presentation with all of the associated cheesy transitions and a little bit of music.

But, instead, you’ve chosen to come into a room which I was sat in, make yourself a cup of tea and proceed to have a conversation with the back side of the lid of my laptop.

Of course, you think you’re talking to me. But with the amount of intelligence contained within an LCD Panel I’d be shocked if it wasn’t paying slightly more attention than I am to your inane ramblings.

I don’t care if you’ve seen a woman who looked like a right crack head. In fact, I don’t actually care if you’ve found a woman who resembles the living feminine embodiment of a dead goose who had strong connections to Osama Bin Laden.

I’m trying to read a very nice article on the Guardian’s website. I’m being nice and liberal and stuff and you come in here trying to talk to me about your great hairy testicular intellect.

Anyone would think lecturers would know better.

I’ve read a lot of blogs this weekend. Not to say that I don’t normally throughout my life read a large number of blogs; this weekend I have made a concerted effort.

Such as a fat person may have their stomach stapled, I have been stapled to Google Reader like a certain type of old man to a heavily used, solid glass, women’s changing area. In the cold.

I’ve also had the pleasure of what I like to think of as a magical return to blogging for a couple of my friends recently – with both Alexander and Matt starting to pop something into the Internet more regularly again.

And I think reading all of these blogs has taught me a number of things. Which is, in fact, a lie. All that reading the blogs has taught me is a single thing. And even that is probably not something which I will take forward with me into life. It’s probably more like I’ve caught a 24 hour bug which causes severe vomiting for 24 hours before skulking away quietly in the night – taking with it any number of my personal belongings and a part of the lining of my stomach.

The bug I’ve contracted is one which means that for maybe two or three blog posts, I will completely ignore the many conversations I’ve had with people in the past over my blogs. They tend to go something like this:

Me: “Oh I have just posted a new blog, would you like to read it?”

Them: “Ok then, give me the link”

Shortly afterwards, the person is found dead under their bed having lost all of their blood through a small slit in one of their eyes.

In their left hand. Always their left hand. There is a note.

“The blog post was too long.”

So, while the rest of you write away, press publish and then run off like happy little children who’ve just been let out from school and found their homes have been changed during the day to be made out of entirely the same material used in The Wacky Warehouse – I’m sat here, pondering how to cut down my thoughts into a few words.

Maybe you should also read Matt and Alexander’s blogs? And see which makes you die with its length.

When you have died, please do email me and let me know!

I love watching other people. They're always doing such interesting things. I mean, obviously the ones that aren't doing anything interesting are sitting at home, watching TV - where I most certainly am not watching them.



So anyone in public is worthy of being watched in my world. Indeed, they're in my world so I'm going to watch them.

But above all, my favorite person to watch is the 'efficient mother'. She can often be found wandering around National Trust properties during the summer holidays wearing a floral skirt and practical sandals.

She's not as rare as one might think, making sure she has always packed a rucksack with items for all eventualities the night before.

She has plasters for cuts, pads for grazes, Savlon for everything.

Sandwiches for lunch, drinks for the journey, the morning, the afternoon, with lunch and the journey back.

She has a contingency pair of clothes for each of her children in case of "little accidents", a pen of anti-inflammatory in case anyone nearby is attacked by a rogue bumble bee. Or incase her one child eats a peanut.

She's even got a Nokia 3310 with £10 credit which she last topped up in June 1998 when Julie had that incident at Alton Towers.

And yet, when she walks into the symbol of the modern consumerist place - a coffee shop. She is at pains to pick up the slightly-caffeinated napkins and pick up a simple mug. And if forced to, she'll do it with a disgusted face.

And that is why people will never be mimicked by computers. Because we just don't make sense.

I have been struggling to come to terms with the message that's in a lot of books including my equivalent of a bible: Yes Man, by Danny Wallace. I think one of the reasons I haven't managed to quite come to terms with the idea is that I wasn't thinking about it right.

And for that reason, I have held off reviewing it for fear of making a complete fool of myself. Much like I hold off playing football, though, I can eventually be convinced.

And I'm sure you all know that like FIAT turn out cars that aren't quite thought through, I write whatever I feel like at that moment and get on with it. And then I deal with the consequences.

But I'm almost certain now that the problem that it tackles needs to be reversed in order to realise its true meaning. In my opinion, learning to say yes more is not about learning to say yes more- it is, instead, about learning to say no.

Which to me seems to contradict the idea of a yes man. But if you think about it, much like mince pies not containing any mince and stabbing relatives over the festive season, it sounds about right.

To explain, let's look at violent films.

Last night, I went and watched Law Abiding Citizen. In that film, I saw someone have their legs cut off with a circular saw, their eyeballs rearranged into a form of modern art with a scalpel and their balls chopped off with a hacksaw. Not once did I flinch. And that's because over the years of life on the planet I've been exposed to the idea that things like this happen in films - and it doesn't matter, because it happens all the time and it's not real.

Much like annoying friends who are always around quickly become tolerable, although still comparable equally with psoriasis, A word I've only included because I wanted to spell it, the word 'no' soon loses its meaning through over-use.

Think about it now - how many times today have you said no to things that you didn't really need to? How many times have you said no to doing anything that you've later regretted. Sat here right now, I've just said no to going out. Did I really mean to? That 'no' not only means that I'm not going to go out, but it also means that I won't get the experience of going out.

It means that tomorrow, I might wake up to be greeted with the many moments of not-really-funny humour that are always immediately followed by a "you had to be there," comment. As boring as it might sound when sober, unless you were there and enjoying it at the time, by saying no - I have still missed out.

So, in fact, it's not about saying yes more - it's about saying no less. And learning the power of no. And I think I might be getting there.

Just a quickie to remark at the fact that this week, I have not yet made any journeys on a bus which pollutes the air and destroys the planet - choosing instead to use The Big Lemon busses that serve Brighton & Sussex Universities. They're old buses too, fulfilling my needs to gorpe at the past.



It's difficult to explain to people why The Big Lemon is so good, despite using buses which are old and have clearly had quite difficult lives, but because I have the wonder of the written word here, I can probably just about do it.

At the start of the whole process, a plant grows and takes in some carbon - it is turned into oil, and chips (generally) and various other things are cooked in it too. All of this fat is collected by The Big Lemon, and it's taken to a special place - and not that one your mother refers to.

This special has chemicals and tanks, and the magicians inside can turn Waste Cooking Oil into a type of fuel that runs in Diesel engines. I really wouldn't ask what the process that takes place between the cooking and being poured into the tank of the bus is, since it might cause me to emit a little bit of carbon myself. Just a little puff, out of my left ear.

But we can safely assume that the bus now has the fuel in it. And it starts and runs.

Now, have we worked out why this is so good? Because we're still burning oil, and we're still emitting some carbon. So why's it so good? This is the difficult bit.

The carbon we're releasing has been captured during our lifetimes and therefore - our burning it has not contributed anything new to the atmosphere. As part of a sustainable world, more of the plant which produced this oil will be planted in order to produce more oil, and will capture the same amount of carbon again. Making it that absolutely gorgeous thing: carbon neutral.

The problem, my dear friend, is that I don't totally believe in global warming. But I do like the idea that something magical happens in order for me to get my hair cut five miles away.

Thanks to the return of the wonderful Alexander Trafford to the world of having a proper blog and writing things about stuff on it, it got me thinking about some stuff and how what I'm actually doing by signing up to every single site that comes into my life claiming it can revolutionise it by putting together some statistics into a fancy graph.

There are things out there that can measure steps you take, synchronise it onto your iPod, be synced using a piece of software called iTunes and uploading using ANOTHER piece of software onto the Internet, where it's made into a fancy graph and someone on the other side of the world can work out that you ran out of milk and had to go to the corner shop.

All the while long, Mildred the 107-year-old next door has not only run out of milk and gone and bought some, but she's already had a bowl of cornflakes a a nice cup of milky tea to start the day.

And not once was the Internet involved in the process. But with me, and with a lot of people of what I refer to as "my generation" - there is little that can be done without the Internet.

It's even worse that to accompany my non-internet activities, I feel the need to put the Information on the web. For a long time, I have had a 'bookshelf' on the right hand side of this page, as some way of almost waggling a book in your face and holding up a poster which says "I'm literate". And thanks to Alexander, I have succeeded in this - Readernaut.

I think part of the reason that I feel compelled to publish information like this is not, like Alexander says he does in order to put it into pretty graphs which I can then put into some kind of newsletter for distribution with my Christmas Cards, but instead to simply boast about the fact that I am reading, and how quickly I'm doing it. Because to me, speed counts.

And if it's published on-line, and you're watching me - I might well manage to read books really quickly.

20091201-readernaut.jpg

Readernaut is an interesting little site that at the moment doesn't seem to have been discovered by many people, but which - like twitter - has little proper revenue generating potential in the future but offers a service which I think everyone would like. You can add notes, take quotes from the book and reference them properly and at the end, you can write a review of the book.

Of course, to me - this does leave two revenue doors open, with one of them quite similar to twitter - in offering the data that users submit to the directory for a cost to places like Amazon and Google who might want to sell books to people based on the views. And the second most obvious one being to sell books based on what people who like what you've read, have also read and liked. And from that explanation, I think the revenue door just got slammed.

Particularly because the site uses Amazon's database of books anyway, it's hard not to simply assume that that revenue door has some Jehovah Witnesses behind it, and that we're waiting for someone brave enough to come along and give blood in the hope that all of the bad things will go away and we can re-open it.

But, of course, having no obvious route to making any money at all is a clear way forward in this Web 2.0 industry, so what do I say? Well, that the site will go through the Internet's ranks like a Juggernaut. Obviously.