So it's all over, now watch out. I fear for a terrible financial year, since we've all spent money we haven't got and are in limited states of mental health (having shot people without discretion on computer games on giant screens in living rooms with twelve year olds and sang 'Everybody Wants to Rule the World' far too many times on kareoke in the next room with their elders)

I still see streams of idiots heading for the sales standing at crowded bus stops- fools- you wait for those letters. I just got one. It does not make for New Year cheer when the printers packed up and the dishwasher's defunct.

Congratulations everyone! Rage Against The Machine our Christmas number one! I don't care it's not a great record, I don't care about Christmas number ones, but it's a great feeling that so many people voted to stick it to the motherfucker! May they play it long in to the night.

It lightens our hearts here in Julie and Paul land. I suddenly feel well!

Happy Holidays

Deal Or No Deal? Predictably Copenhagan is a morass. We sure have to seriously THEORIZE our politics. It won't do.

I tell you other things that wont do. Yesterday the printer exploded. That printer was an expensive piece of kit and little more than two years old- but suddenly springs, yes springs, sprung in to the air and a metaphorical cloud of very expensive ink dust filled the room. Can they fix it - NO.

Today, and I can't believe this is happening except that this sort of thing always happens at Christmas- the dishwasher packed up.

Thankfully I've been laid up in bed.

The worst thing ever invented may be 'Planned Obsolescence', maybe they even plan it buggering up at Christmas as part of their BIG CON.

As predictably as Christmas itself, I'm sick.

It's OK.

You draw the drapes, turn off the phone, sip Lemsip and whisky, sleep for a day or two, listen to the sounds from outside and the ticking of the radiator.

You shiver and shake sometimes. Realized it first with a cold sweat in the Misty Mountain yesterday noon- running errands. It must have been the brats at Sundays family party- with their germs.

I will sometimes rise and watch Columbo.

I reach for books and put them back again

But when you're ill- Bukowski is best- he wrote good poems. Ones with lines like

'gravy barks like a dog' and the paper is always fine.

He's very fond of animals- not so keen on people.

Gravy can bark like a dog.

Apparently these posts are getting a little grumpy. Actually tonight should change that- but not quite. Spotify+ Apple + Bose (Bose arrived today, fitted by clever Julie). Very simple, I'm like a squirrel on hazelnuts. Too bad this new combination of technology shortens your attention span so you only seem to listen to the first ten bars of any song before move on to the next nostalgic gem- it's musical crack; The Ruts! Funkadelic! Duncan Browne!(?) Wishbone Ash! Robert Wyatt! Blue Cheer!!! it won't be long till I'm on to Steve Hillage and Gong. Is this a good thing? I already feel rather edgy.

I'll have to play some Jamaican stuff; Sly and Robbie- but they rattle the windows. Those people at Bose know what they are doing.

Love to all for the holidays when I've promised to rest and recuperate. Gotta get my head together. No Parties- always a disaster.

Yeah, Sly and Robbie.

Topics to write about?- well I guess it's what you find yourself doing and fearing in this mad world. Today's world took me sadly with the news that Gordon McLean, architect of no parish, resident of Soho benches, wearer of fine suits under adversity, the last of the Soho I understand as worth enjoying, and university tutor, is in UCH with pneumonia and all the rest (critical that is). At the same time the postman delivered me a very fine copy of 'Low Life' Jeff Bernard's brilliant musings, mostly on hospitals and horse racing to be honest. It's good to know that Sally, Jeff's old nurse, is with Gordon as I write this. There is some continuity after all amongst low lives.

I was in the Coach of course and said a Soho prayer for him, but they had a fucking Christmas tree and Yee Olde Victorian advertisments for singalongs. Christ how things have changed for the worse.

Earlier had a jolly 'Christmas drink' (I'm joking) with Nic in the White Horse. We mused on the unsexyness of Australia amongst other things (Der yerr wanna do it agin?- Der yerr wanna go outside?) and the impossibility of me developing some kind of career path because of all the twenty five year old cunts coming up behind even if I wanted one in the first place and I despise even the word.

Julie arrived home resplendent in a new military trench coat and Russian hat, and to boot she'd been pushed and pulled in knee therapy in some other hospital. She enjoyed the experience so much the coat and hat were irrisistable. Very Carry On missus.

Kirsty's Home Made Christmas will now make me throw.

I never thought the word 'discharged' would be so delightful. But I was discharged today from hospital with nothing but the most amazing and unique case of gout of the nose. Gout is a form of arthritis and grows lumps here and there when you are not occasionally in intense joint pain. (There is a lovely story of the Count of Medici very grumpy indeed laid up in bed with gout when they had no anti-inflamitories). My own case astounded the surgeon as 'unique' and he even asked if he could have the rights to publication! That doesn't half make you skip to the pub opposite as soon as you are done. 'You are done' was also a delightful phrase, having sat in the waiting room for hours contemplating death and bombs in Iraq on the TV screen they so helpfully provide to entertain you with the hell of the world while you just sit there with other people waiting to be diagnosed with something awful. Some writers would say we get to like it. They may be the best writers.

How come we are in the age of celebrity and there are no celebrities?

Where are the Richard Burtons or Peter O'Tool's of yesteryear? the Isadora Duncans, the Valantino's, The Francis Bacon's, the Jeffery Bernards? Instead we have Katie Price on the cover of every tabloid every day doing precisely fuck all and somebody, not unsurprisingly, has even threatened to kill her. We have Cheryl bloody Cole as some kind of expert on what? Precisely what does she represent- the epitome of the non entity made good I suspect, the tyranny of the bourgeois?

Bloody Hell, just spent the WHOLE EVENING (Julie out photographing burlesque) listening over and over to the Foo Fighters. The Pretender, My Hero, Times Like These, these to me, with the benefit of lots of whisky, a day of 'crits' (how I hate that word- and to be honest everything the system involves- I really just want to talk abut architecture in a beautiful way) and damn fine speakers and amp (never buy cheap) have suddenly become essential, and I mean that in a bigger way than just ' I like it' What you like matters fuck all. The issue is what might it mean! Much to the annoyance of Pat next door I'm playing this stuff over and over again and might even forget to eat! Rock and Roll can still sound like salvation. That is a very,very good feeling. Maybe I'll flood Theory 2 with the Foo's tomorrow.

Stone Temple Pilots did the same thing to me.

And Zeppelin of course (saw them at O2 - guest list-you need to have good pals).

Refill.

I can't help it, I like the Foo Fighters. I wouldn't say I'm a fan, I don't buy their actual albums, I ask other people to buy them for me, but coming in out of the rain tonight, realizing you've forgotten basic supper ingredients, Julie out at some lecture and so on; the Foo Fighters slot right in quite loud and appropriate, and we have new neighbours to educate. Of course it's the Greatest Hits album which marks me totally middle aged, but you'll all get old sooner or later and buy greatest hits albums because you have to trust somebody else, and I hope I can still shake my head (hopefully with hair) with the best of them till I die. In fact, I'm sure I'll listen to this album more than I will the Nirvana Greatest Hits I also possess but never play. This may make Dave Grohl very clever, he certainly looks very clever, he has a very good look . He has...er...moved on (in my opinion). 

I remember dancing to Feels Like Teen Spirit for the first time- I smile as I think about it, some dingy SOHO nightclub with the eminent Jo Hagan spinning the discs and me and Alex de Rijke smashing the place up in a virtual way (because we are both rather polite young architects back then). Now of course, Alex is a real architect.

The Foos are also sublimely AMERICAN. It takes me back 

The Foos may be the new/old Cult.