Nothing, nothing, tra la la.

Hello.

I don't know what to write about. I've barely had anything vaguely interesting happening lately, at least not since I buried my head in the sand when Puffy Man became big cheese.

I was going to write a blog about how great Ashes to Ashes became in the end after suffering from Difficult Second Album syndrome, following the sublime Life on Mars. I've been disappointed by series endings in the past, expecting (but never tolerating) shoddy, hastily strung together epilogues where loose ends have become entangled and forgotten, or the production team decides on one last almighty bound over the carnivorous fish. The finale of 5 years of Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes was, however, beautifully realised, the mystery finally solved over whether Sam Tyler, and then Alex Drake, had time travelled, were in a coma or had gone mad. A very nice premise in the end, Gene Hunt emerging as a bizarre mix of Michael Landon and Gary Cooper. With swears. The coppers' purgatory was a great, if not entirely unexpected, solution to the story, and nice to see how Ray, Chris and Shaz fit into Gene's world. But I'm not writing about Ashes to Ashes today. Maybe another time.

I was thinking about writing about EastEnders. I wrote in a previous blog how much I admire the programme (click here for the Walford Police Archie Mitchell Murder Investigation and click here for my thoughts on EastEnders circa its 25th Anniversary show), but it's depressing me with how much it's turned into fucking Hollyoaks lately that I just don't want to even mention it. The way they've shoehorned Fat Cunt, Jar Jar and Rapey in, whilst simultaneously making every Walford resident under the age of 18 suddenly become a jive-talking gangsta rapper is laughable, ignorant and hardly cross sectional. Oh, and Ben Mitchell. Chickening out of the once-inevitable gay storyline and instead going for the lazy son-of-Phil-Mitchell-is-a-psycho motif is reprehensibly shoddy writing. When Lucas starts killing again, I'll be cheering him on. I hope he loses it just enough to bump off Chelsea, just so we can witness the masterclass of her death throes acting. But because EastEnders has troughed so badly lately, I don't want to talk about it.

Then I was thinking about talking about my job. But I don't want to. It's depressing enough facing off General Public with Major Apathy, and I don't want to bore you with the details, but it's reinforced in my mind how stupid, offensive and nasty people can be, especially when they can't see the person they're grunting at. The amount of fraud cases I've had to process in the past week is a distressing snapshot of Broken Fucking Britain. It's much the same as any customer services job, in that it's YOUR PERSONAL FAULT THAT PROBLEM X EXISTS. It also highlights the fact that people are money-grubbing scumbags when they want to be. I gave somebody £5 credit on their account as goodwill earlier, not that he deserved it due to ridiculously high usage. He said, "can you make it £30?". Needless to say, the answer was no. And it is due to this tiresome rigmarole that I won't be talking about my job. Probably never again.

In the meantime, I'm trying to write topical comedy sketches for a show. I've never written sketches before. It doesn't help when you've got writer's block and you're trying to not repeat anything that's already been said elsewhere, and you're unknown as I am, and if they're accepted they'll be performed on the other side of the country where you'll never see them. I might devote the day to it tomorrow, as every attempt I've made at it in the past week I've scrapped. I kind of fell into this by accident, after I was informed that a professional comedian was taking my Facebook status updates, word for word, and emailing them for inclusion as gags on panel shows and such. I won't go into any more detail at the moment about it, but suffice to say it's opened up other possibilities for me. Whether they work out for me or not, I don't know. But as much as I want to talk about it, I can't. Not yet.

Finally, there's Pearl Jam. I'm going to see Pearl Jam in Hyde Park on June 25th. Huzzah. I was a teenager in the grunge era, so have waited to see them for 18 or so years. There's the added bonus of Gomez being on the same bill, which is great, just because I've always wanted to recreate the Daphne and Celeste at the Reading Festival experience. I'd better drink lots of pop before I go. But I can't talk about Pearl Jam until after I've seen them.

There's nothing to talk about. Hopefully the next blog will be a bit more informative.