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Looks like Wifeswap spawned a whole new range of these household documentaries. Where we take a peek into Joe Blogg’s home and watch ‘people like us’, as opposed to the nutters on Big Brother. Or so I thought. Personal Services Required … just where do they find these people? Did they advertise in Nouveau Chav magazine?

RUSSIANS!

What an intro!

I think I am addicted to weeklies. It all started quite innocently with fishing out a copy of Love It! Magazine to read in the bath. Next was Take A Break, followed by Real People and there isn’t an end in sight.

… so how can you beat it?

Sounds helpful enough, doesn’t it?

Keep reading …

Christmas! The time where most people visit their parents for the holidays. Like some twisted new episode of Back To The Future, we end up in our former bedrooms. Only that they’re no longer our bedrooms. No time was wasted to transform the bunkbedded, postered havens of our childhood into guestrooms (but why. Parents’ visitors don’t stay over night, do they?). Mine’s now ‘the library’. Even the bed has gone. I am reduced to sleeping on the sofa in my own bloody room.

As far as your average office is concerned, Christmas started in early November. (No, not retail-Christmas, that’s in September). Those annoying email forwards are getting more festive, you’re sent the first virtual snowball fight (where’s the fun in that?) of the season and eager admin workers are subtly asking where last year’s box of tinsel has been stowed away. You’re secretly hoping said box of tinsel burnt in a big stationery fire, but that never really happens.

"Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you"

Or is it? Welcome to the ludicrous world of Facebook where my girlfriend can join up and her sister is already my friend but try as we might it appears there's no way for my girlfriend to actually attempt to add her sister as a friend. The best they can do is see the other's posts on the wall of my page and various mutual friends' pages.

I meet the graffiti artist known as Eine (Ben Flynn) on a quiet sunny pavement a few doors down from the Kemistry art gallery where some of his work is being shown. I'm not good with interviews but unlike my two previous attempts for this site, I've done some research and even printed off questions. If you've ever wandered about Shoreditch, Old Street or Broadway Market after the shops have shut you're probably familiar with Eine's work: single letters spray-painted in bold colours on the shutters of various shops.

Fuck you, Head & Shoulders. Better still, shove your head and your shoulders where the sun don’t shine. And follow up with a pineapple for good measure.

First of all, I do not know a ‘bloke like Micky’. And I don’t know anyone who does. Why? Because people like Micky tend to be sectioned and removed from society very quickly. Because they know their hair is a ‘weapon to be used’.

Jobs. Actual permanent, proper jobs. Because someone somewhere in a galaxy far, far away has invented the concept of money, it would appear that most people need one. There’s the jobs people want to do, and then there’s the jobs people never set out to do, or didn’t even know existed before they were planted in them by a temping agency.

Once you have a job, it’s hard to let go. Other jobs could be even worse. After a while, you assume some kind of bizarre dual identity. The one that’s You, and the one that’s the ‘Work-You’. The You wants to tell the Work-You exactly where to stick it, the You says ‘what the fuck am I doing here? And how do I get out of here quickly, without anyone noticing?’.