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Christ – need to take a long hard look at my skincare regime.

Stepped up to do a nursery school run for two 3 year old honorary nephews this morning due to parental illness / work commitments. Despite warnings of potential chaos and offers to subcontract my subcontract – I was brimming with epically misplaced confidence.

After desperately googling ‘how to fit a car seat’ and breezing one of the lads through a short but dramatic meltdown, we bonded en route through sustained abuse of the car radio which stubbornly refused to belt out anything other than static.

Deeply unimpressed at my inability to play tunes and listen to Google maps at the same time, the dynamic duo were wavering on just how on board they were with this new school run structure and after christening me a succession of poo poo related names, we finally arrived to my undying relief.

‘Right – out you get lads’ I said cheerily.

‘No’

‘Ah’

Enter random pedestrian to witness my abject helplessness.

‘Don’t you want to get out and help Daddy’ pipes in this delightful Samaritan.

‘Oh no – I’m not actually their Dad’ explains I – hoping to justify my total lack of authority.

‘Ahhhh’ says my self appointed new helper… and changing tack, she generously attempted some further assistance..

‘Don’t you want to get out and help Grandpa?’

Massive shout to the guy on the plane from Bangkok who clocked us storming the aisles for empty rows on a militant seek and recline mission.

Despite tactical pivots forced by late boarders, my overexcited volume levels blowing any hope of stealth, and Safia going kamikaze with a meal redirect request that was tantamount to a confession – it was looking like an unmitigated triumph.

Beaming at full wattage and giving theatrical thanks to the gods – suddenly this chunky bearded fella appears beside me with body language screaming ‘Can I get by’ and mouthing the fatal words ‘Excuse me – I’m in 48 B’

As 13 hours of horizontal glory dissolved into the awkwardly shared armrest of defeat, he suddenly burst out laughing – goes ‘Only joking mate’ and dives into a seat a couple of rows back. ‘You just looked so happy’ he says – ‘I couldn’t resist’.

Sir – I salute you. That was some properly high end banter for a total stranger. And the poor fucker had someone next to him for the whole 13 hour flight. While others might have seethed acidly at such a noisy, smug twat kipping in regal style – this tattooed saint turned it into the best laugh I’ve ever had on a plane.

And to the elderly gentleman who saw me swipe a sleeping Saf’s leftover bread roll – I was genuinely impressed at how your glacial look of contempt managed to freeze even further when I explained she was my mate.

I guess the lesson is – when you’re trapped in a small space for hours with someone really fucking annoying (me) – those who conjure up the comedy will get through it a hell of a lot better than those who find some weird sense of self worth in disapproval.

I hope we meet again mate – legend

So we made it to 11 years of marriage.

I’d like to say it was the love, the laughter and bearing witness to each other’s souls that kept the magic alive but that would be a shameless lie. The secret is a newly discovered phenomenon called Marrakech Syndrome that I will be publishing details of in the November edition of Second Hand Scientist.

It’s basically Stockholm Syndrome but a touch warmer, slightly more tagine flavoured and with a bit more emphasis on talking relentless bollocks and laughing at your own jokes until the subject has surrendered any hope.

For those struggling couples out there – don’t give up. We are a shining example of how laziness and an overwhelming barrage of absolute shite can lead to the warm glow of resignation.

Just heading off down the pub to peer review the research.

You’re a fucking survivor Mado

PS – Expecting lavish credit for actually remembering this year xxxxx

Really exciting news. I’ve just done an exclusive multi media, multi platform, multi sensory, multi cultural, multi million pound deal to produce and star in a series of motivational films.

Entitled ‘The Kebab Chakra’ – the series will be filmed on location across Edmonton using doner symbolism to reflect the spiral of life and the transcendental gateway of perpetual motion.

Half TV show and half omni dimensional portal – The Kebab Chakra will chart the fusion of yogic exercises outside the pub, shamanic voyaging on the night bus, levitating toward the pavement, and the tantric mysteries revealed by taking too many drugs to function in the purely physical realm.

Featuring special guests like Jacob Rees Mogg on healthy canned food and the post materialist blessings of Brexit, my mate Dave dressed as Osiris, a talking duck who recites the ancient mantra of ‘Quack’ and Mr Motivator’s nan, the series is shaping up to be part weight loss program, part flatulent ayahuasca ritual and part late night bid to engage with millienials through dated banter.

The deal is totally done – been fighting off Netflix, the BBC, Sky Sports, Dave and UK Gold – but I’m starting a crowdfunding campaign anyway after a flurry of letters from my mum saying you’d all want to be involved.

If anyone would like to be on camera looking amazed as I fall over, do a couple of squat thrusts and then enter the spirit world / pass out – let me know. Only ugly people welcome as the bar is low and the network have specifically requested no-one steals the limelight.

Lamb, beef, chicken or unidentified rodent – we’re open to all races and cultures. Once the doner turns – we are all one..

Definitely feels like the tectonic shift of the last few years has been factual relativism – where objective truth as a barometer of shared reality has morphed into subjective truth as a totem of tribal identity.

It’s pretty clear that despite all the fake news warnings – people still defer to whatever unsourced version of reality they most identify with – but couldn’t help thinking about how science itself can be warped to legitimize a socio-political agenda – partly by conspiracy and partly by cock up.

Amazing how ‘Survival of the Fittest’ – a questionable term in itself – has managed to embed itself into the very architecture of late capitalism. That idea of evolution as competition does make sense on a species level – the most adaptable rather than the most rigid live on – but within a species – the idea of competition driving progress is arguable at best.

The reason humans dominate the planet is precisely the fucking opposite of competition – it’s co-operation. Through our shared abstract constructs – money / god / law etc we manage to co-operate on a mass scale and build endless new layers through sharing ideas, knowledge, networks and resources.

Communism unfortunately fed into the logic of competition as progress because it was a fucking disaster – but just because paternalist statism doesn’t work doesn’t mean cutthroat social Darwinism does.

Add in an adversarial legal system where objective truth is measured by competing sales pitches, and the patterns within our ‘Western model’ do sharpen into focus.

And yet – the grown up part of me can’t help admitting that competition probably isn’t all bad and probably does drive some elements of progress – it’s just tragic that co-operation has been cast in the role of do-gooding bollocks rather than a core evolutionary engine, while competition is fetishised into ‘the natural order of things’.

Surely the greatest achievement of the human race is creating structures that enable co-operation?