dear vexed reader

so here i find myself with nothing to do and trapped in my room (more about that later). and lo, i forgot about this site so spent about two hours re-reading all these new entries. i haven’t written for a long long time, and i clicked on my front page and saw my age as ’23’ (i’m 22, and am born at the end of december). then i remembered since starting od aged 16 i used to relish when january came around, as it made me appear older than i am. and for the first time i thought ‘urgh!’. ah well.

so i have magically leapt from the outskirts of york to london, where i’ve been since august. uni was fine, got the 2:1 (it probably would have been a first had i not written my entire dissertation in the last term and generally buggered (not literally. ahem.) around in the uni bars, determined to sink my final weeks of cheap-ish pints) and in a bizarre twist, committed my entire life to student television (which is, along with other things, why my diary ground to to halt). anyway, doing that was handy because i managed to get on the film and television freelance training scheme (ft2) and now i’m a trainee television researcher, to be pimped out to various companies and made to do what they say (on minimum wage, what fun).

anyway, dullish update over.. at the moment i am realising that my nothern-ness is kind of going somewhere (south?) which has left me in a place where i don’t really fit in either. first the accent became diluted, then the fondness for organic produce and fine burger companies grew, then i found out what ‘falafel’ was. most scarily of all, the guardian actually became understandable (because we all know the guardian is written exclusively for the population of nw3, the postcode in which I reside – “dear vexed reader, please don’t fear for little alfred – you can get some marrrvellous free range fairtrade organic baby car seats in belsize park”). my place of work is opposite the largest yoga centre in europe. i need help.

i spent some time with some fabulous women in leeds for some c4 documentary research, who told me i didn’t sound like i was from yorkshire, yet my workmates take the piss (ey oop, sethy). anyway, how did i get onto this crappy subject? i am being a whinger – in a year or so i’ll be thoroughly londonised and won’t be able to leave, i’m sure. i was talking about why i am trapped in my room. my flatmates have other friends round and are being braying twats laughing in an excrutiatingly annoying way (like tim nice but dim x4, but real, and in your lounge). last time i was a bit more sociable and one of the worst friends, andrew, cornered me and tried to impress me for an hour. i was cooking chilli con carne and in a rather strange twist for a friday night, started to explain the detailed working of marx’s theory of historical materialism. that’ll teach him to say to me ‘yeah, marxism, it’s a wicked thing but doesn’t work in practise, does it?’ (he found out that i did a politics degree). heh heh heh. luckily they have gone now, so it’s probably time that i did too because i need a wee.

postscript: just realised that od has become all techie since i last wrote here, and can work out your age exactly now. so much for that introduction.