...tonight's moustache party, I have just had a shave. It is a little bit shocking. I just did my chin and neck, so that the 'tache joins up with my sidies. I believe, according to my facial hair chart, that this look is known as 'Friendly Mutton Chops'.

Well, if I wasn't a bear before, I certainly am now.

...doedicurus in an empty peanut butter jar.

No, wait - that's not wot I'm doing. I am actually growing a little tired of packing my seemingly expanding life into boxes. The surf outside is firing. But I must press on. Which is obviously why you find me here.

I have smelt the worst thing of all time today. It is mouldy paint. It will make you instantly vomit your own bone marrow. I am considering pulling out my finger nails to get the reek from beneath. Ak. Ak.

What are you doing, you fuckers ?

...quiz night. After the first two rounds, I take the teams' names and scores, and give everyone a rundown of the current table as it stands. As I was reading out the scores, a young lady approached me, and requested that a team name be changed. It was altered to 'The Quiz Master Will Get Laid If We Win Tonight!' Their score then mysteriously catapulted from 15 to 20. If anyone suspected that I was a man of principle, and not open to bribery and corruption, then I'm afraid that they were woefully off target.

Now, this team - which happened to include two rather toothsome young ladies - left the building a bottle of wine, a box of chocolates and £99 better off. Yet was sweet booty ya-ya forthcoming ? Was it cock.

Ok, one for the lawyers among us. Do we have a binding contract here ? It looks like that to me. We have an offer - 'we get you laid'. We have acceptance - they win. We have consideration - the aforementioned prizes. There were plenty of witnesses. And I still have their quiz paper, so we even have it in writing. Can I legally hold this team to ending my thousand year drought ?

...amount to do this week. I should be packing and painting today; which makes the desire to spend all day blogging and going smurfing that much more prominent.

I'll tell you a bit about my weekend - in point form - as is my wont :

• I went to a chum's 30th birthday weekend. She'd hired out a converted barn up in the mountains, which slept 24 people. I only knew about five of those invited prior to the weekend, so I met lots of nice new people. w00t!
• After spending longer than I should rhapsodising to a new person about the merits of 'You're The Voice' by John Farnham, new person makes a trip to a bike shop the following morning. He returns, and says to me "You'll never guess what song was being played in the shop while I was there..." The Universe is trying to talk to us. It is saying some pretty peculiar things.
• Busty Farm Girl and I wandered into the small town nearby the following day with raging hangovers. A good selection of folk had brought mp3 players to the gathering - but no-one had brought speakers. Duh. So we went on a wild goose chase to find some cheap speakers, and didn't realise that there was some kind of carnival going on in the town until it swallowed us. There were men in drag on bikes wearing massive hats. There was a woman dressed up as a cat in a fez. We bumped into a TV weatherman signing books in WHSmith, who seemed to be a magnet for very Welshy teens squeaking "Ey, I seen yew on the teee-veee!" We went into a pub where the barmaid was still wearing her slippers. It was a 'no drugs required' afternoon and no mistake.
• We saw a book entitled 'Guns and Poses' outside a book shop, and wondered if the author had fashioned an entire career from dreaming up this terrible pun beforehand.
• The gathering in the evening was fancy dress, with the theme 'What the hell are you wearing ?' This is a fully skill idea for a theme, and brought about a good deal of invention. The show was stolen by the birthday girl, who showed up dressed as a pirate wearing a huge inflatable ship about her waist. Savvy ?
• As the evening degenerated, I quizzed a few people what type of non-human animal they would choose to have sex with if they had to. I asked an Aussie chap, who responded "It would have to be a crow," without any hesitation.
• Amongst my favourite quotes of the weekend was from Busty Farm Girl, who is on placement teaching biology in a secondary school. She was marking papers, and one of the questions was 'Why would an adolescent girl require more iron than an adolescent boy ?' One of the girls has answered 'Because she might be an emick'. Quoth she "Fucking little spastics. I can't believe I have to teach such stupid bastards". Busty Farm Girl will be shaping young minds in a school near you soon.

That's enough for now.

...pack up my life time again, which is often more emotionally demanding than you anticipate. At the moment I'm boxing my 'miscellany' drawers. You know the type. Where you'll find stuff like :

• Ticket stubs to gigs and films you can't remember going to.
• Handwritten itineraries and hand-drawn maps for journeys you cannot recall making.
• A letter which is signed off 'Sorry and goodbye'.
• A pre-first uni year reading list.
• A photo of the lineup from your football party when you turned eleven.
• Immigration papers.
• A depiction of a farting cat, drawn by some li'l art girl or other.
• The card you made of someone being blessed by Jesus, that was thrust back into your hand immediately after being opened next to the local vicar.
• Some Charles and Camilla commemoration stamps you stole from work to save for choice birthdays.
• A postcard from your sister, telling you that she misses you being on her side of the planet.
• Hundreds of birthday cards (each one from your brother will have a crudely drawn penis adorning the front in some place or other).
• Orders of service for funerals. There seem to be far fewer weddings.
• The note left for you from the girl you made an epic hot chocolate for, who you were too scared to chase after.
• Fake valentines.
• Forms with a post-it from your mother demanding that you fill it in and send it off (which remain in your drawer to this day).
• An ode prepared for you by a chum in the sixth form, which reads :
  'Lemon's funky, Lemon's cool,
  Squash makes all the girlies drool.
  Squash has style, Squash has grace,
  Lemon's loved by all his mates.
  x'

Ones like the last make it worthwhile, I feel.

...criticised by my so-called friend Pinkwellies, who claimed at last night's quiz that I was "scraping for content". Well, especially for him, here's something else I found littering my hard drive :

Which brings me quite nicely onto my next point. The Heart-Stopping Alleged Lesbian was at the quiz again last night, looking more adorable than I can ever hope to adequately explicate here. I was almost unnerved by how pleased she seemed to see me, and beamed an awful lot. She also seemed to be looking at me an awful lot during the course of the evening (although she could probably say the same about me). Now, when you catch someone's eye across a busy pub (not with a fishing line), what should you do next ? Should you instantly look away abashed ? This is the tactic I have been almost involuntarily applying thus far; and I'm as good as certain that it's the wrong one. What should I actually be doing ?

I didn't get the chance to ask one of her mates if the girl I always see her with is actually her lebanese lover, which was remiss of me. Although the evening wasn't entirely bereft of reconnaissance, as I have invited her (and admittedly all of the others on her table) to my leaving party; and I have also been invited to a party at which she will be in attendance. So two good potential 'get to know you' opportunities.

Oh my god. What the fuck am I like ?

...things I found strewn across my hard drive :

...set this morning for amount of absolute shit that dropped into my inbox after just one night - 457 messages. Yes, that's 457 people who I suspected might love me for a fraction of a second, before realising it was actually *NO-ONE*. Harumph!

Anyway, onto slightly less whingey matters. I am being interviewed by a reporter from The Rag this evening. The subject of his piece is 'The Dangers Of Blogging'. Now, I have already devised wot I think is a moderately comprehensive list of the associated perils and pitfalls. But I would like to know what you think The Dangers Of Blogging are, please.

...can be found here :

What is it to be an 'animal' ?

"I'm a little surprised this issue hasn't been tackled before in another case," Lucci said.

Well, quite.

...'three strikes' month is going atrociously. I was doing pretty well until this weekend; when I managed to fall off the wagon so spectacularly that I broke my arse-bone.

Mind you, considering this is my last month here at The Edge Of The World, I guess it was inevitable. As was the hatching of a plan for a leaving party. It will be a job keeping my guests from desecrating my house any further, as everyone believes the house is going to be demolished after we move out. However, the landlord has recently stated that he might U-turn on this issue, and find more tenants before deploying the wrecking ball. Pop goes our deposit.

But this is by the bye. The important thing is that we are having a party. It is going to be a moustache party. Anyone who shows up sans moustache has to pay a fine (most likely a forfeit), and also have one drawn on in permanent marker. This will be on December the first. Anyone wanna come ?

...The Walrus yesterday, and he told me a lovely story.

He was in a pub a few miles away from where he lives. This particular hostelry is decorated in quite an eccentric fashion. A woman with rather large coiffeured hair is sitting at a table. Above her is a fake branch. A small stuffed bird sits atop the branch. Or at least it did for a bit, before plummeting into her hair. She feels a sensation as it lands, and has a cursory feel of her hair, but finds nothing.

Now, the stuffed bird has landed the right way round, and is nesting in her bouffant, looking perfectly forward. Her company are almost unable to talk, so weak are they with laughter. After a while, she twigs that everyone is laughing at her, and wonders why. Her husband tries to tell her, but is also rendered almost speechless. She manages to flip the stuffed bird out of her hair, which lands on the table. She shrieks.

Our bouffanted heroine doesn't see the funny side, and implores her husband to go and complain to a member of staff. He is still uncomposed, but he sucks it up and takes the stuffed bird to the man working at the bar.

"This sparrow fell into my wife's hair, and I really must complain," he says. "It's an awful thing to happen."
"No it isn't," says the barman.
"What do you mean, it isn't awful ?"
"No sir, it isn't a sparrow," he says; "it's a linnet."

Everyone in the bar falls over.

...blog my dreams, but I've had two notable ones this week :

1) There's an epidemic of some new-fangled disease. Symptoms include delirium and incredibly hairy hands. Fatalities' last words all concern some long-lost Van Halen album from the mid-seventies. It is a jazz odyssey. I figure maybe I can help find out what's causing the disease if I locate said album. But can I find it on Google ? Can I jizzbiscuits.

2) I had this one this morning. People who've been very naughty are sent to a corrective school - Blog School. Aaarrrrggghhhh!

Does this mean I should eat less cheese, or more ?

...nice the other night. Surf-Film-Maker Chap's girlfriend is a junior school teacher. She is puzzled by the fact that an eight-year-old girl in her class had become obsessed by her boyfriend, despite having never met him. Indication one was on parents' evening, when the girl's mother asked her how SFMC was, and seemed to be on first name terms with him.

Then when they went on a school trip last week, the girl asked if she kept any photos of him in her wallet. She does, and showed the girl - who snatched the photo, and started kissing it. She then announced that she was going to run away with SFMC, get married, and they would join a choir together. Although I love the thought of SFMC joining a choir, I don't think his lady has anything to worry about just yet.

...for my 'three strikes only' month. One is that I've just handed in my notice to my landlord, so I'll be out of The House Of Rock by the close of November. This will necessarily entail a leaving party. Crumbs!

Plus, I might be going for a weekend in Bundoran with Surf-Film-Maker Chap, me ole chum Jellycube, and her chap. This will necessarily entail smurfing, and... You know wot else. Begorrah!

In other news, I got sent a joke by The Walrus (my dad) via the medium of SMS. It didn't go quite how I expected :

Little 5 year old girl Daisy, sees a group of workmen turn up next door to build a house. She takes an interest and starts to talk to them. The builders with hearts of gold adopt her as their site mascot. After a week they present her with a pink hard hat & gloves. Even a wage packet with £5.
"Goodness," says mummy, smiling; "are you working there next week ?"
Daisy replies: "I think so mummy, provided those cunts at Jewsons deliver the fucking bricks."