Mother’s Day and is on its way, and it seems that I’ve booked my trip home to co-incide with Mothering Sunday. What luck. Now I’m going to have to pull my finger out and buy her a Mother’s day card. I can’t buy her one of the many ecards available because she isn’t connected to the internet.

The obvious solution, then, is to buy her a computer. Also, I would need to buy her an internet connection too. Which is expensive. I’d also have to teach her how to use the internet and open ecards. This is easy, but overall, I think it’s better to simply buy her a traditional card.

Perhaps next year, when I’m a rich man – tra-la-la-la-la – I’ll return home with a computer, an internet connection and bundle load of ecards for her.

Until then it’s simply a case of going into a card shop and buying a card of the paper (in fact card) variety.

There are loads of fancy things that product designers have made over the years, and I like a great deal of them. But I think two of my favourite inventions are the central heating system and contact lenses.

Central heating I imagine was just a very gradual development of different heating methods. But however it worked – it’s fantastic. When the heating comes on on a cold winter evening, you realize how much better you feel. I don’t know how famous writers used to sit crouched over their desks in the freezing cold. How can your brain work when it’s really cold? That’s genius.

The other big favourite for me is the contact lens. Well, two lenses really. You need two, or everything looks very strange. Great invention though, allowing you to see stuff in perfect detail.

Those other things that product designers have come up with – sports cars, fancy lemon squeezers – you can have them. I want central heating and 20 20 vision. That’s what the 20^th Century has given us – and I’m grateful.

Why do boilers always break when it’s cold. Why is that? Is there a reason why you have to get a boiler service in mid winter? Why do they never break in summer? Is it, possibly, that they get used more in the winter and so the likelihood of them going wrong goes up accordingly?

I think this sounds feasible. There’s that thing, isn’t there, where as soon as you ask a question, the answer becomes immediately apparent. It’s weird. I know, personally, whenever I have a question and say it out loud, the answer comes to me. That is true of this situation too – the boiler service situation.

You should make sure that your boiler gets a servicing every year – at least. When I checked my boiler recently (when, in fact, it had broken), the little BG sticker on it said it hadn’t been serviced for EXACTLY  2 years. To the day. This is a true story. Do you like it?

Do weddings still happen? Of course they do! Thank goodness as well – the foundations of any modern society. That and good quality roads and rail links. But once we’ve definitely decided to get hitched to someone, we have to consider the best place to do it. There are a huge number of wedding venues to choose from, and choosing one can put you off choosing anything ever again.

In simple terms you can get married pretty much anywhere. Once you’ve absorbed this, you realise what a mammoth job it is to choose somewhere. You could choose your local pub, or you could choose your local church. But equally, you could choose the roof of a skyscraper too.

If you don’t have a head for heights, you could always choose a disused mine shaft, although this may detract from any romantic atmosphere you’re trying to create.

If you’re really stuck for a wedding venue, you might wish to go to a special company that specialises in special wedding venues. There are a few of these kicking about and you might wish to consider one or two of them.

I got a job carrying bananas out in Australia back in ’03. It was a notable period of employment for many reasons. I worked in a team of banana humpers who each had to carry bunches of bananas of up to 80KG in weight. One of the guys I worked with looked like he had spent his entire life under an air conditioner.

He was a smooth faced Canadian who was in his late twenties but looked like he had just been born. The sun baked hill billies that worked full time on my particular plantation didn’t like his face much – because it represented a scary unknown world where people were actually civilised and had the odd air conditioner lying around to keep their faces wrinkle free.

It is true to say that when you lack an air conditioner and spend all your time in the sun, you get a wrinkly face. If you don’t want one of those, you should consider not getting a job in a banana plantation and investing in an air conditioner.

Remembering stuff has never been my forte. I’ve never been that good at it, but it seems to be getting worse. I’m not sure if it’s a general apathy which means the past holds no significance, but perhaps I need photobooks to help me remember what actually happened last week; it all just blurs into one unintelligible  stream of stuff that might have happened.

A little book with all the pictures of last week would help me remember events and conversations that I would otherwise have no chance of recalling. I was thinking that I could have a photobook for each month – that seems like a lot, but it’s only 12 per year.

When it comes to sitting round that coal fire that you’re never going to have, with your offspring’s offspring, telling stories about what you did when you were a young ‘un – you’ll have a huge stack of photobooks with which to demonstrate how much fun you’ve had.

Having a child is one of the most amazing experiences anyone is likely to have during their short spell on Planet Earth. Once you’re sure you’ve have a little person growing in your tummy, you have to face the very real situation of choosing a name for your kid. If you don’t choose one of the many baby names out there, your son or daughter will grow up without a name.

On the plus side it will be very hard for his fellow people to ridicule his name. If you don’t have a name it is quite difficult to think up any nick names, and your little spawn would receive their name from any physical improprieties – such as being tall.

No one is quite sure what would happen if you did not give your baby a name. Would the State give it a name? Is there any precedent for this? Anyway, the important thing is to give your child a name, as it saves a great deal of confusion later on.

When I was living the beautiful city of Melbourne, I got a job working in corporate events. I’d done quite a few jobs before this, most of which were out-with the city limits and involved picking peaches and staring deadly spiders in their hairy, 6-eyed faces. So I decide to get some real work, and I eventually landed a job with company that dealt with new houses across the city.

With over 3 million citizens, it’s no wonder that there were so many of these events going on. I was hired as a waiter-come-servile person, handing out Champagne and dishing out vol au vants to fat businessmen – and some slinky businesswomen. The tips we got were great and we certainly got to eat well – there was so much wastage at these events!

I remember one particular waiter I was working with – a Canadian – who was particularly good with the female clients, being as he was a handsome devil. And for a Canadian, he was pretty charming, too. Over the time I worked there he developed a reputation for himself with the ladies, but I couldn’t really understand why these female pillars of the Melbourne business community found him quite so appealing. Why did he receive so many 50 dollar tips?

This young man was in charge of the coats, and as such he had the key to the room where they were all kept. He was particularly keen to be in charge of all the coats, but one day a businessman at one of these events asked me to put his briefcase in the room, for safe keeping. I couldn’t find this Canadian, so I went up to the coat room to see if he was there. I pushed the door and to my surprise found it unlocked.

To my lasting astonishment, they were playing scrabble.

I try to keep it to myself these days. Only when questions of food arise do I have to make noises to the effect that I am ‘one of those’. It’s not the admitting of it, I’m not embarrassed. It’s just the arguments that ensue. And it isn’t that I don’t like a good argument, especially after a few lagers, but it’s just that I’ve had such arguments on many occasions, and they usually goes the same way.

“But do you eat eggs?”

“Don’t you think broccoli has feelings too? What about pulling little carrots out of the ground? That’s torture isn’t it?”

“If anyone told me I couldn’t eat meat I get really angry. Are YOU telling me I can’t eat meat? Do you want a fight?”

“Are those leather shoes?”

OK, they usually get me on that one. It’s just so hard to buy vegetarian shoes. So I let myself off with that one. But being a vegetarian, it’s all you need for a heated debate.

I never really appreciated air conditioning until I visited Bangkok, a city of where the heat is often just too much to handle. I could never imagine there was a place where the outdoors could be as thick with heat as it is indoors in the UK. It is so strange to leave shopping malls that are cooler than the street outside – much cooler. It’s like walking from the outside to the inside, not the other way around.

The air conditioning of some of the hotel rooms was very impressive, giving plenty of relief from the constant, exhausting heat. But if you move down the scale of accommodation, then you unfortunately find that the air conditioning units are equally down market. The efficiency of a hotel air conditioning unit is far better than the flimsy fan you get in a £2.50 room down the Khao San Road. It can barely cool the hairy chin of the nearest blood engorged bed bug sitting on the ceiling.

Yeah so I’m just going to say a few words about I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, it’s kind of travel related isn’t it? They all go to Australia and eat insects. That’s pretty travel oriented. But I’m not sure if sitting around arguing with B-list celebs and being woken up by rats in the dead of night is really getting the most out of Australia.

I suppose the country is perfect for visiting Brits, where the black hole of British culture can be experienced in the heat of the Aussie sunshine (ooohhh just kidding). For some of those celebrities it will be the first time in Australia, and it seems odd that they’ll be stuck in a small patch of spider-infested jungle, perhaps without getting the chance to explore more of this insanely exciting country. And, whilst penned in under the tropical canopy, they’ll be watched by millions of Britons, sitting inside in front of their glowing boxes, rain thrashing at the windows of their red brick boxes.

I’ll be watching, that’s for sure.

Underfloor heating systems provide their lucky owners with heat from under their floors – that much is clear. But in this short guide we’ll discuss what those owners can achieve with the various heating levels available on some Japanese underfloor heated floor systems.

Level 1. This level should be sufficient to keep you warm in Autumn, not too hot but probably just right. This level is what underfloor heating is actually for.

Level 2. This is a nifty little level, and is just a little bit too hot. If your mother in law (it’s always the mother in law, isn’t it?) comes round to visit and she is spending a little too much time there (i.e. she has actually walked through the front door), you can simply switch your heating to ‘2’ and she will start waving her hands in front of her and claim to be having a ‘hot flush’ even though she is far too old for that sort of thing.

Level 3. If you’re toying with the idea of having a bigger gathering, then the 3^rd mark on your heat controller will be sufficient to get everyone in the mood. This is in most underfloor heating guide books, but it is usually in  Italian, and doesn’t often get translated into the English section of the guidebook. The English version suggests it is a good hangover cure as it removes impurities caused by drinking large quantities of cheap Belgian lager.

Galloway Forest Park has been awarded ‘Dark Skies’ status, meaning that it is exceptionally easy to see millions of stars from within its boundaries. While there are even more remote locations in the UK in which to go star gazing, the park in south west Scotland has been given the status because of the large number of people who can reach it relatively easy.

People from Scotland’s central belt, the north of England and even Northern Ireland (it is near a ferry route) are within striking distance of Galloway Forest Park. The International Dark Skies Association has awarded it ‘gold status’ – the highest accolade available.

The United Kingdom and many nations with heavily populated areas suffer from a great deal of light pollution, meaning that much of the night sky is obscured. While there are measures that can be taken to prevent light pollution – such as having shields on the top of lights that prevent light shining upwards – large conurbations will always give off huge quantities of light.

With 6 billion people on planet Earth, and more on the way (unless we stop fornicating – stop reprodusing anyone? Stop reproducing? No, didn’t think so) our chances of seeing the galaxy clearly in a few hundred years are very low indeed. I suppose we have to cling on to these small pleasures – after all, few things jog profound thoughts more than seeing the light from millions of stars that is already many thousands of years old. The Galaxy or X-Factor? I know which stars I want to see.

The ones in X-Factor.

So I was thinking about getting caravan actually, you know I got a few quid tucked away; just like my granddad and grandma up in Tyne & Wear – they’ve got a lovely little spot on a farm, with a caravan on it. I just want a modest one, you know, with a gas stove perhaps – but gas has always frightened me. I’d have to get holiday home insurance if I did just in case I blew myself up.

Just like Popeye does in that rhyme – ‘turned on the gas and it flew up his ***’. I wonder if Popeye had holiday home insurance for that eventuality. I think he must have because he appeared in a fair few cartoons following the incident, as is well documented.

I guess I might not survive a gas explosion, but if I did I’d be glad of the money. To buy another caravan. But the truth is, the kind of musty, 1965 super caravan I have in mind might not be insurable. It’s worth a try, I wouldn’t want to start spending windy nights alone up on a hill in my fibre glass gas risk without it. It’s worth shopping around if you are considering getting insured for your clapped out caravan.

If you haven’t yet bought your caravan it’s worth checking that a drunken Brad Pitt with an unconvincing Irish accent isn’t already resident. Because he might go crazy and blow up the gas canister and then you’d have to say goodbye to that caravan before you’ve even started.

London sometimes seems to have it all – with 7 million people living within its limits, it has a wealth of services to choose from, and sometimes we forget to look elsewhere for the things we need. The counties surrounding London might not seem like the place where high tech industry exists, but in truth there are some burgeoning firms in these counties. One such busy set of services are those of web design. Essex, Hertfordshire, Oxfordshire, Surrey – they all have a great deal of website firms to choose from.

But sometimes the high prices charged by London based firms means that choosing a more local firm is more economical. People sometimes fail to look closer to home, but often, they’ll get a better deal both in terms of price and service. More local Essex based website design companies, for example, offer a more down to earth approach to selling their search engine optimization services – we design services.

The way that the internet works means that web companies can work anywhere there is broadband. This also means you can choose a web company closer to where you are located, so it’s easier to keep in contact with them as well as to give yourself a warm fuzzy feeling that you’re helping out your local economy.

My friend is going away to South Korea, just her and her zombie strawberry blonde Barbie doll on a pig, and I’m going to miss her. She really is great to have around. If she wasn’t here, I’d literally have to make coffee for myself all the time.

But I wish her well on her big adventure. She’s going to meet new people, experience new things and eat lots and lots of dogs. The two biggest exports of South Korea are mobile phones and dogs. Everyone knows that.

I think the authorities are going to crack open that pig just in case there are any naughty things in there, and Barbie too I shouldn’t wonder. And that strawberry.

Kolean Aventure Rady: I want you to send me some mobile phones that I can sell on eBay and some dogs that I can eat. If you do this I will come and visit you lots and lots.

South Korea is a highly advanced south east Asian nation that offers a unique blend of history, culture, modernity and of course dogs.

One of the things people mostly know about South Korea is that they eat dogs. I think I’ll wrap this baby up.

As everyone knows, this article is about travel. So anyway – Champagne eh? We all love a bit of Champagne – and you know, it’s those little bubbles that get you so tipsy so quick. It can really be a matter of seconds before you start feeling the effects.

But for the Champagne connoisseur, it is also about taste. But if I’m honest, personally, I think it tastes pretty much like Babycham. Nothing wrong with Babycham mind you – I used to like a drop of that. The only downside was that you had to drink 20 litres of it before you got pissed. And you weren’t really pissed in the classic sense – it’s just urine poisoning from too much liquid that gives you the dizzy sensation.

It’s a badge of wealth or success for many people. It spurts out in a rather phallic way, and when the white froth does come out – everyone knows it’s time to celebrate.

Yes, it’s true, if you want to show everyone that you’re going to celebrate and you’re willing to pay lots of money for sparkling wine – then Champagne is the ideal way to do it. Joking aside, there really isn’t anything as nice as feeling those little bubbles on your tongue, and the unmistakable taste of those Champagne grapes on your tongue. It’s also great to get sloshed on!

Corporate events do not always fill us all with extreme amounts of joyousness, but the truth is that they can actually be a lot of fun. You get to see your colleagues in a different setting, possibly a bit drunk – and if you’re out of town – possibly in the sack too.

But what would be the best kind of corporate event? Well I reckon it would be great if all the employees, delegates and prospective clients all flew out of leaden old England, through the clouds and across the ocean to perhaps some Caribbean island.

This would be great; work and business would be a total farce. You’d just spend your time trying to stay awake while you nurse your hangover. What else would you do? Well, you’d probably just spend your time whispering sweet nothings to Audrey from Accounts, and, once you’d failed, and dealt with all the tedious business talk, you’d go and get drunk on drinks with paper umbrellas sticking out of them.

That’s just the sort of corporate event I’d hate but also kind of like too.

Travelling is really about the time you spend travelling. It’s not about sitting by the fire when you’re an old codger and showing pictures of your travels to your grandchildren. It’s about the time you spend there – that time is now – because it’s always now, isn’t it? That means there’s no time, just the illusion of it. But if you do think time exists, you should get some photo books.

Even if we accept that doing it is better than looking at a picture of it (still talking about travelling here folks), you still need somewhere to store all your lovely photos of all the things you think you saw. Like that hermit crab on that beach near Kuching. Like that elephant in Bangkok with flashing ‘tail’ light. Like those two topless blonde stunners from Sweden that you found yourself sandwiched between on the beach in Fiji. Pictures are still good.

Nowadays you can get your whole trip put into a photo book – this is much easier to look at than a stack of pics, which can get covered in greasy finger prints. It gives the whole event a kind of importance and reduces the risk of losing or damaging your pics. You can cut out all the boring stuff and just leave in all the sexy, exciting ones, so that all your friends think you spent all day every day shagging and lying out in the sun. Which is actually what you did, isn’t it?

It’s party season again, and everyone is wondering what ridiculous things will happen at the work do. Hopefully there’ll be a good bit debauchery and drunkenness and people looking embarrassed on Monday morning. In many cases, we’ll never know the catalogue of faux pas, the list of inappropriate passes between colleagues that will occur on the big night. But I reckon there’ll be plenty.

More importantly than that though, is what will we all wear? Isn’t it exciting? We all have to wear smart casual clothes – so that pretty much means a suit for most of the geezers and a dress for the birds. Crucially there’ll be loads of free food and – even more crucially – free drink too.

There’ll be some dodgy music and some dodgy dancing to accompany it too. I’m sure, we’ll all be up there making a tit of ourselves.

If you’re having a Christmas party, have a great time.

The TV is on in most people’s homes, and if you have a child it is really hard to prevent them from being distracted by it. There has been some research recently that suggests you shouldn’t let your little ones watch telly before they’ve reached the age of 2. But surely in terms of learning language and understanding human behaviour, the TV offers a great way to teach your little ones about the exciting new world they’ve found themselves in. Are TVs actually educational toys?

Of course, TV can only be a part of the learning process. You have to give your kids as much interesting, stimulating stuff as possible. In truth though, when they are really small – like around the 6 month mark – they are more interested in playing with their hands and toes than playing with any educational toys! But some provision has to be made to stimulate their minds without giving them attention deficit disorder.

It’s important to combine fun with your kid’s education – as it is of course a period of wonderment for them.

It’s a pretty weird idea really; someone giving you a name. Invariably it’s your parents. They choose the name that will be your label until the men in tall hats slide into the furnace or oversee the packing of your body back into the Earth. That’s your brand name for a good few decades. So when it comes to baby names, you gotta be careful.

So what’s best? Give your kid an anonymous name, or give it a really stick-out-like-a-thorn name? It’s hard to say – you never know – if you give your baby a really outlandish name such as Demetrius, he might be drawn to the stage. Nothing wrong with that mind. If you call him Colin, he might be attracted to accountancy. The abuse or lack thereof that a kid gets at school could shape his entire life. So which baby names are you considering?

If you give your kid a really powerful name, and he or she fails to become powerful – the shame could be too much to bear.

I know someone who’s called Leaf; you’re never going to have anything like a normal life with a name like that.

But I guess you could always change it if you want. People who start a new life in the UK often discard their original name because it is too difficult to pronounce. But another reason might be that it’s a lot easier to integrate if you have a common name.

And that’s mostly what I’ve got to say about baby names.

We all want to get married and become totally complete by doing so, don’t we? Or at least, we want to use our weddings as a superb excuse to go somewhere exotic and get a tan. The options for the wedding minded are literally only bound by the number of places you can get married these days. So you can get married pretty much anywhere, except on the M25. Wedding venues eh?

You can’t get married there (on the M25). Ok, if you can get married there, then you can sue me. Or marry me. But not on the M25. Maybe on a quiet B road somewhere in Hampshire. I accidentally walked into Hampshire one cold winters day (coming from Surrey). It was really nice but I wouldn’t want to get married there.

When it comes to wedding venues it has to be combined with a really good holiday, so that when you get divorced it doesn’t hurt so bad. Yeah?

So what are these global hotspots for wedding venues that I speak of? I don’t know, maybe Las Vegas if you really want to be tedious. Or just get a cheap wedding in a registry office and spend the 5 grand you saved on a 3 month holiday.

My house mate sometimes leaves his cookware lying around, without having washed it. Isn’t that naughty? Not to worry though, as he invariably leaves it unwashed having made a tasty meal that was shared with myself. He’s from Palestine too, which means I’m basically doing a bit of mental globetrotting when I eat his food.

He made this thing with tahini and cauliflower – it was weird but I liked it. He’s a chatty sort of fella, but as long as you keep his attention on what’s in his cookware – and away from the history of the Middle East – you’ll have a fun time.

Being from Palestine he obviously is not too keen on the old Christmas time thing, and sadly for him he’ll be on his tod for xmas. But I reckon he’ll have a few mates around and have a bit of tahini and cauliflower; to be honest that’s a lot more tasty than the nut roast that I’ll be having in my cookware.

Do you know that I was going to buy my mum some shopping using Tesco home delivery, but all their delivery vans are booked up. Shit eh? I tried ASDA but they’ve nothing either. This means I’m gonna have to carry 12 tonnes of shopping back across the moors much like Superman might. Luckily I am Superman (at least when it comes to table football) so it’s all fine.

As every invisible person who reads this blog knows, I went to Spain recently. A great country; but they haven’t got a clue when it comes to blinds. They have roller blinds on virtually all their domestic windows, which block out every single bit of light. They were rubbish. Don’t get me wrong, they weren’t cheap blinds at all, but they caused me to sleep for 12 hour stretches.

Personally, I need the sun to wake me up. There’s no way I can stay awake once the sun is sending it’s happy little rays through my window. In summer time, I’m up as soon the sun is. But if I’m in Spain, sleeping in a room with closed blinds, then there is no way I’ll wake up in the A.M.

The dark just makes me sleep. It doesn’t matter if I’m fully rested – if it’s dark, warm and quiet – I will sleep. Spaniards think we Brits are all crazy for not having them in our own homes – with our thin curtains. But if you came from a country that was covered in cloud for 50% of the time, you too would give those little rays as much chance of heating up your pale skin as possible, wouldn’t you?

If I was a dog, I reckon I’d be well into buying dog clothes. However, as a dog in the 21^st Century, you just don’t have the autonomy to choose your own clothing. For the fashion conscious dog, the risk of their owner buying them some garish dog coat – or a jersey that clashes with their rusty fur – is quite high.

That’s why it’s important for dog owners to take buying clothes for their dog very seriously. How would you feel if all the dogs in your street were wearing trendy hunting jackets and velvet waist coats – when you are lumped with a Union Flag t-shirt drawn tightly over your stocky doggy body?

It certainly takes time and thought when it comes to buying the right dog clothes for your hound. And the problem is, you can’t really ask them what they think of their new diamante dog collar, can you? But once you’ve slipped such an item on their neck or body, you should take note of any puppy dog eyes afterwards. If they really don’t like their new clothing or accessories, then they may try and rip it off with their teeth; a sure fire sign that they do not agree with your choice in dog clothes.

Look out for a waggy tail and perky eyes after you’ve fitted your dog with new clobber; then you know they’d rather wear it than play ‘fetch’ with it.

The future of reception furniture looks bright, I think. I’ve been casually mulling over what the ideal reception furniture would be like. Once you reach the reception of the hypothetical place you’re visiting – perhaps you’re going for a job interview – you’ll no doubt be asked to take a seat while someone comes along to get you.

In the future, this seating will of course have an automatic massage facility. This will ease the tension you no doubt feel before your interview. It will register how tense you are, and adjust the frequency of its vibrations accordingly.

In the arm rest of this superb piece of reception furniture, a little electric door will slide open – and a lovely warm mug of peppermint tea will rear up in a very friendly manner. You take a sip and you begin to feel the tension in your back lessen, your heart rate begins to slow down.

At this point a concealed foot rest will gently nudge your feet off the floor, so your heart has to do a little less pumping. This remarkable piece of furniture will also have a high quality sound system contained within it, with speakers to either side of your head. From these speakers you will hear Enya, possibly a bit of Frank Sinatra on a quiet day.

This is the kind of reception furniture that is sure to make your interview that bit less stressful.

It’s true, I drive a 1999 Ford Fiesta. It doesn’t look like much, but it hardly ever breaks down. This is because when you lift the bonnet (is that what it’s called?) you discover that there’s pretty much just an engine and an oil thing in it. When I’m cruising down the High Street though, I feel like Rubens Barrichello (some say I even look like him). I imagine I’m going as fast as he does, even when I’m clearly stopped at a red light. I can feel like this because I’ve invested in some wicked F1 Merchandise. Hat, racing jacket, boots – you name it.

And yes, it’s true, I’ve spray painted my car red, and my mate Brian hand painted a logo for a certain brand of American cigarettes on the sides. It doesn’t fool anyone, but at least we’ve tried.

I’ve pretended I’m an F1 driver all over the UK. I even went on a road trip around Scotland with it once. It never broke down and it never broke the 65 mile an hour mark. Plockton, John O’ Groats, Edinburgh – you name it, and my car has held up traffic in it.

When you have vision that isn’t quite as good as you would like it to be, you don’t always know what you’re missing. But when I got contact lenses for the first time, I couldn’t believe the detail that was laid out before my very eyes.

It took me a good hour to learn how to put them in. The Optician who oversaw my contact lens training was patient with me at first, but after an hour he was clearly exasperated with my lack of progress. Eventually though, I got them in – and a whole new world of minute detail was before me.

I got them just before a long trip to South East Asia, and I was pretty glad I got them as well as a pair of glasses. The glasses were stolen by a nice young lady in Kao San Road, so I needed those lovely disposable contact lenses.

I did run out at one stage in my trip, but I was in Kuala Lumpur, where you don’t even need a prescription to get contact lenses; so I got loads and saw everything with perfect clarity, all around the globe.

It’s a big responsibility, putting on your own party. You need to get everything just right so you have an atmosphere in which everyone is likely to enjoy themselves. While alcohol is often a pre-requisite for any kind of social gathering, there are plenty of other party products that can create the right kind of mood for your guests.

The range of party products available makes it quite hard to decide what to get. The small things like banners and party poppers make a big difference in re-enforcing the idea that you are not at work, you are not in a formal situation: you are having a party.

Depending on what kind of party you’re having, you might also want to think about investing in some Champagne bubble makers to lighten the mood, or perhaps some confetti if you don’t mind going a bit of vacuum cleaning afterwards! You might also want to get some kind of dressing up gear for your party goers to help increase the joviality; masks, tiaras, crowns – you name it, there is sure to be an appropriate item to wear.

The more you put into your party preparation, the more you and your guests are likely to get out. So get you thinking hat on – and then get your party hat on!

If you travel around a lot, then you need good transport. This transport might take the form of a bicycle, and if it does, you’ll need to make sure your tyres are pumped up. If they’re not pumped up, then you’ll find it much more difficult to go anywhere fast. Sometimes, if you do have a puncture, you might not realise you have one.

You might think that for some reason you’re finding cycling much harder than usual. You might think that you are just not feeling very energetic, or that your fitness levels are down – but if you look down at your tyres, you might notice that they are bulging slightly.

If you do suspect you have a puncture, then there is no need to worry. It is not a big problem and can be fixed with relative ease. Many companies sell puncture repair kits for just this eventuality. As part of the repair process you will probably need to put your inner tube in a bucket of water in order to identify where the hole is. Little bubbles will come out at where the problem does lie. You can then dry the tube off and apply the repair sticker.

If you don’t have time for this, then you can simply buy a new inner tube if you wish.

I went to a video games show recently, and I was struck by how many exhibition stands there were there. Pretty much every company that was there used them in some way to demonstrate their main services and what sets them apart from other firms.

I was surprised by how versatile they were, as they could be used to display really big images. Some of them were very effective and communicated certain feelings or ideas very well. One I saw showed a huge blue sky with little fluffy clouds, which really gave a superb impression of space and freedom. This represented the open ended mind set of the video games company involved.

Printing technology has come on a very long way, and pretty much any visual idea can be placed onto these kind of exhibition stands. There are a wide range of companies that provide these kind of services, and many will help will all aspects of the design and printing process. It is worth finding out how much experience the company has – and you should also look at some examples of previous stands that they have been involved with, as this gives a good impression of their ability.

I use a huge number of different containers to put my stuff in, from drawers to cupboards to boxes. But what really pisses off my nearest and dearest is the fact that my favourite storage solution is the floor. The floor is such a versatile solution for storage solutions, I simply can’t better it.
It really doesn’t go down well; hanging jackets on the carpet. Neatly storing books and dvds on the rug. But it works for me. I don’t have to rummage around in drawers of cupboard where things can so easily get lost – simply stretch my arm out and find the desired item.

The best thing to do, if you can’t be bothered with finding storage solutions, is to not keep buying stuff. This is quite difficult as our future security relies upon us buying more and more things – that’s how capitalism works. Once people have accumulated too much stuff, they have to put it into storage – which again helps boost the economy.

I don’t have a holiday home, but I do plan to have one at some point – and when I do, I think I will definitely get holiday home insurance. When I have my holiday home, I’ll want to have all the mod cons of my actual home, and so, with this mind, I think that having insurance would be very beneficial – because if all that expensive stuff – TVs, hi-fis, microwaves – got nicked, it would cost thousands. Literally thousands.

So paying just a few hundred pounds a year seems like a good idea for my peace of mind. All I’ve got to do now is work out how I can afford to buy a holiday home in the first place. Spain, maybe France – these are options indeed. I want a place like the one in that film Sexy Beast. There’s a great scene with the Mediterranean Sea in the background. I’d like that but without the scary character in that film. Because having that guy in your house is just another reason to get holiday home insurance!

I have fond memories of what was one of my first self catering holidays. I wasn’t exactly catering for myself – my mum was catering for me and my sister. She was catering for herself.

I was catering for the Lego man who was on a wagon containing stuff to be sold at market. I think I Iost his hat somewhere in that self catering cottage. I was gutted. Those little hats are not very common in boxes of Lego.

Aside from this slight drawback, it was a good holiday overall. The holiday cottage was in Dumfries, Scotland. The garden backed onto a corn field; as a ten year old I was hugely impressed by the ears of corn in that field. I was unused to such an arable spectacle. It would be like finding a pineapple growing in my garden today.

I’ve seen a lot of corn since then, and a lot of pineapples, as it happens.

It’s amazing how easy it is to self publish these days. With the powerful tools that many of us have in our home, we can come up with some pretty awesome printed items. But one thing, I discovered recently, that most people can’t do at home is make photo books.

I only came across them when my best mate Alfred was showing me his holiday snaps from Magaluf. These pics were pretty good – but they were made all the more interesting by the fact that Alfred had got all his images printed a photobook! It was great – it really added a certain professionalism to his photography.

Apparently, it’s easy to have these books printed – and it doesn’t cos that much; I think it’s worth it anyway! I’m off to Athens for a holiday next month 9get away from the February cold eh?) so I’m definitely going to get my pictures put into a photo book when I return. I’m planning to out do my mate Alfred by quite a bit and I don’t mind admitting it.

It’s going to be a lot easier to keep all the pictures together too – as I always used to damage them or to accidentally erase my hard drive – not a good idea!

I went to Ipswich once with the missus. We rented a room in what we thought was a hotel, but what in reality was a pub with a loud band right beneath the room we occupied. We were staying there because we were about to move into a new flat. We had all our belongings in storage. Ipswich is a nice place but that night it didn’t seem so nice.

To be honest, when we were in that room listening to heavy metal come through the ceiling (we couldn’t even watch TV) we thought we would have had a better night if we went and slept on our sofa in the storage Ipswich place. It just shows that you should find out about any hotels you are considering going to, so that you do not face the rather uncomfortable feeling of having an immense sound system pumping through the ceiling while you are trying to watch the latest episode of BBC1’s EastEnders – even those cockneys don’t have to put up with this.