Back in the day, my favourite album EVER was the Sneaker Pimps’ 1996 offering, Becoming X. It was the year 2000, I was living on my own an amazing flat overlooking the rolling hills of the east Pennines as they rose out of the western side of Sheffield. I was so depressed. I made the mistake of listening to music that contributed to my mood, music that provided a soundtrack to an unrequited love affair, music that filled the void left by the alcohol that I’d recently ejected from my life.

It was a time before iPods, MP3 players and the iTunes Store. You bought a CD and you listened to it, even recorded onto one side of a C90 cassette to listen to in the car. Becoming X met Morcheeba’s Dead Calm. Both brilliant albums, both from the depressing music capital of the world: Bristol.

And then there was David Gray’s White Ladder. Despite his oddly annoying vocal style, the songs were touching and thought-provoking. “Feels like lightning running through my veins every time I look at you.” It all seems a bit fromagificent now, but back then, having met the girl of my dreams, it had me punching my head in despair, longing and loss.

C’est la vie.

I got out of Sheffield, got over it eventually.

What I’ve never got over and never will is/are toilet roll holders. These are truly exasperating items, whose potential functionality is generally negated by poor design, poor positioning, or poor fitting.

How can anybody have a gripe against toilet roll holders? Well, I’ve been to a number of domestic and non-residential toilets in my time and I rarely encounter a toilet roll holder that isn’t depressingly rubbish.

There are the ones that are never straight, with the bar that holds the roll never retaining its supposed horizontal position. The roll falls off.

There are the ones with the central holder with the pinch points that lock it into its retainer on the wall. Only the retainer is too slack, so the roll holder falls out, or is wonky so the toilet roll doesn’t roll effectively. Instead, it bounces around an scuffs against the wall.

There are the toilet roll stands that just get in the way.

There are the toilet roll holders that are too close, too low down or just too far away.

And then there are the industrial ones where the roll is too big and heavy to roll at all, so you have to struggle against it pinging back into its start position, tearing off one sheet of paper at a time. If you can find the end at all, that is.

Or the ones with the metal or plastic flaps on top of them – why? Can somebody explain this please?

Added to this is the “front or behind” argument: does the paper fall over the top of the roll and down the front, or does it drop behind? Am I allowed to be judgemental against those who get it wrong? I think yes.

The only toilet roll holder in my property is on the inside of the outhouse door and that’s the way it’s going to stay. Like microwave ovens and toasters, I refuse to have one. They’re as useful as those stands for kitchen roll: it may have escaped people’s notice, but a kitchen roll is pretty awesome at standing upright on its own.

Having toilet rolls placed on top of the cistern may not be becoming of a budding socialite, but it saves much stress as far as I’m concerned. And if Debretts won’t have me because of my stance, well quite frankly, they’re missing out.

I’m off to visit friends for a few days from tomorrow. If they weren’t renting, I fear I may have to have words.

I’m on annual leave this week. As with other breaks from work, I always enter the time off with great intentions, only to be disappointed by my lack of activity and another task list left to gather dust; pretty much in the same manner as my window ledges and venetian blinds.

Things haven’t started too badly this week. I have three main tasks:

Any other things that I manage to achieve will be a huge bonus (aim low, etc)

The yard is sort of tidied: I swept it yesterday and jet washed the garden furniture. I now have to jet wash the paving slabs to get rid of the patterns left from jet washing the furniture. The furniture in question is now highly flammable after being soaked in teak oil. Everything within a 10m radius smells of the stuff. It still needs more.

That’s the thing about cleaning and tidying, it never ends its expanding cyclical pattern of mess and disorder. How can a mere human fight against the universal laws of thermodynamics? These efforts are futile, so why bother? One word: neighbours. I’m the new kid on the block so I feel like I have to make a good impression still.

And so it comes to my patch. It’s rather unruly and I meant to tidy it up and pull out all the dead bits back in the autumn, but it was just too damp. I can feel my neighbours talking about it now. “It never used to be that unkempt when Ali was here”. Errm, actually, dear neighbour, I only tackled that particular jungle after she’d fucked off and left me. Anyway, it needs sorting so that it’s ready for a horticultural vajazzle once the frosts have subsided. I consulted with my man today and apparently, 4-6 weeks is what we’re looking at.

I’d love to have fun with the little dog if he wasn’t such a cunt. We had a lovely walk down the woods today. He ran like a loon, didn’t jump into any residual mud, kept relatively close by me, then attacked the most docile dog he met. If she’d have had anything about her, she’d have ripped one of his ears off, but she was too nice. And what can you say to the other dog’s owner in those circumstances? “He really is usually absolutely fine, I’ve no idea what came over him, I’m so embarrassed and very sorry.” I’ve just got my own back by playing with his ingrowing dew claw. And he might get shot by an angry farmer at the end of the week; there’s always hope.

Virgin on the ridiculous
Mother’s mobile phone has been annoying her since her hospital stay in the autumn and she decided that she wanted to take telly provider Virgin up on their offer of a new on and go pay monthly with them. I happened to be there at the time. Why always me? I have a brother and a sister and neither of them get dragged into these dramas.

“Get your bank details and a Virgin Media bill ready and I’ll phone them”

It was all going really well until the chap I was speaking to needed to talk to Mum. The first problem was that he was obviously overseas; Mum’s hearing is shocking and she gets easily confused these days.

I’ve never seen somebody panic so much when they’ve been asked for their bank account details.

“QUICK!!! BRING MY HANDBAG!!!”

She retrieved her cheque book. A cheque book?? And read out the sort code and account number. How can she not know these things off by heart? Because she pays for everything by cheque and refuses to save money by setting up direct debits for things.

Then she had to read out her card details. You’d have thought she’d have been asked to belly dance for Camilla.

But it all went really smoothly. The order was processed. She’s getting a smartphone. Jesus, Mary and all the saints. Who’s going to have to show her how to use it? Who’s going to move her contacts over? Actually, I should be exempt because it’s an Android phone, but I’ll still get embroiled in the drama. And then there’s getting her current number switched to her new provider. I’m just going to kill myself to get out of that one.

On the positive side, my Hannibal Lecter heart rate training seems to be going really well – I managed to keep mine at 62 during the whole process. A bit more practice and I’ll be able to deal with taking my dad to the shops without it exceeding 120.

Waking to be greeted by a beautiful Saturday morning, my emerging consciousness was hurried along by the urgency of the little dog’s pacing around the bedroom. When he wakes up, he WAKES UP. Like any of us, his first thought, other than where the hell am I? is I NEED A WEE! I’m not as agile as him so I never reach the kitchen before he starts shouting at the back door. He knows this, he knows I’m coming to let him out, yet still he throws an epi until I finally get to let him out.

It was 9am.

I’d normally just open the curtains, go straight back to bed and snooze for another hour before starting to wake up properly, but today was special, today was burrito and beer day!

Despite my best efforts to wash out my sinuses the previous evening, I woke with a headache. I’m certain that this had absolutely nothing to do with the bottle of strong red wine that I’d consumed the previous night. Nonetheless, there was only one thing for it, actually, five things for it: three cups of strong coffee, ibuprofen and Sinutab. My system revived, I got my arse into gear and left the house… on foot. Ahead of me was the twenty minute walk uphill to the main road followed by a bus journey, on actual public transport, into Manchester.

Don’t buses stop an awful lot? Every 200 yards, some fucker wants to get off or on. If I have to walk twenty minutes UPHILL to my bus stop, why can’t these buggers walk a bit further to a stop and save the rest of us the whip lash induced by the constant acceleration and braking? Seriously, when I’m in charge, there’ll be lots of changes.

Eventually, I arrived in the city where I had to run the gauntlet of the idiots on Market Street as I fought my way up to the shithole that is Piccadilly. There, I was met by crowds of my two least favourite types of people: trades unionists and police. The former were getting shouty against racists. The latter were allowing their horses to poo all over the pavements. My friend rescued me before my frown lines caused my entire head to fold in on itself. And then our day began in earnest.

Burrito. Beer. Put the world to rights. Laugh like idiots. Move on. More beer. More laughter, a bit of gossip, put the world to rights in a slightly more surreal fashion. Move on. More beer.

And so that’s how it went, in a descending spiral of ever so polite drunkenness. We finally found ourselves in a bar sat opposite some “le’bians” drinking half pints of real ale, who I actually sort of knew, but my disdain wouldn’t allow me to acknowledge them. They’re the sort who are humourless, overly serious and offensively just fucking serious and humourless and sour faced and humourless. And they look like lesbians. You know, it’s fine being gay, I’m fine being gay, it’s nice, it’s who I am, just the same as it’s fine being straight or asexual or whatever the hell. But why the fuck do some women need to wear a uniform to display their sexuality like a bloody badge? I just don’t get it. I wanted to grab these women by the shoulders and shake them up. YOU GIVE LESBIANS A BAD NAME!!!!

I was fairly drunk at this stage, my friend asked if I’d ever been to Cologne. “Have I ever been to Clone Zone?”, I responded at the top of my voice. I could feel the Guardian-reading disapproval stabbing me in the side of my head from the other side of the table.

We left shortly afterwards and by some miracle I made it to my bus without getting run over. Retrieved my ticket in an almost dignified manner, and found a seat without falling over and burping beer and fag breath on undeserving MOPs. With some foresight, I’d taken my earphones with me so I listened along quite merrily on the bizarrely convoluted journey, tapping my feat and concentrating very hard on not bursting out into song as I’d normally do in the car. And thus I made it home.

So, afternoon drinking. Do it. It’s great in moderation when you’re with excellent company. Know when to stop and know how to get home. But just don’t even think about making any plans for the evening. Twelve hours after waking, Tina is back in bed and lights out is fast approaching.

Most days can be beautiful if you do them right. I’d be wise to remember this.

Defeated by fatigue, I have brought myself to my bed. The neighbours are making a racket with their bins. What on earth are they up to? It sounds like they’re practising a street performance act or something.

You often see that sort of thing in the centre of town: a group of kids spinning on their heads while a boom box thumps out hip hop music. This is fine, they’re doing something they enjoy, maybe making a little bit of cash. What isn’t fine is the way passers by congregate around to watch, but give them such a wide birth that the circle of onlookers leaves no space for others to get by and woe betide anybody who encroaches on the huge empty space of the impromptu performance area.

People are stupid. I must try to remember this and see them as no more than cattle being herded through town, driven along by the call of the retail giants who try to lure them into their emporia to buy things that they don’t need or necessarily even want.

Shiny thing make it all better.

Sleepytime make it all better.

I’m going to make my fortune as a star of radio and TV comedy drama. It’s been decided, all I need to do now is to make it happen.

Maybe I should leave this post right here.

How on earth can somebody with no experience and a mediocre command of the English language suddenly become the next big thing? Well, I’ve heard Milton Jones on the radio and he’s utter shit, so if he can make a living out of it, anybody can.

Something that brings confidence is the knowledge that no matter what the situation, somebody will find it funny, whether appropriate or not. In addition to this, I have a ready made comedy partner who can actually read and that’s got to be worth something.

So where do we start? We need a setting and we need think of something funny happening in that setting.

Setting: Tina’s bedroom, almost sleepytime, school day tomorrow.
Players: Tina, Tina’s imagination, the little dog and… where the fuck has that massive spider gone that was on the ceiling above my bed a minute ago?

I’ve already moved the sleeping dog from on my feet once and now he’s lying beside me, snoring loudly. He makes a noise like a pig, he must be fast asleep, so I take the opportunity to see if I can get to his ingrowing dew claw. Our telepathic link kicks in and before I even touch his foot, he jumps off the bed, flaps his ears indignantly, and goes to sulk underneath the bed.

Somebody who has a dog with a troublesome dew claw might recognise this scenario, nod knowingly, and smile. Others might think, why the fuck don’t you just drug the dog and get him when he’s unconscious?

Of course, situation comedy requires very clever people and teams of writers and lots of other things that I haven’t got a clue about. I’m going to leave that to my comedy partner to find out about while she’s sat twiddling her thumbs, pretending to be looking for a job,

Job Centre Plus person: “So, Miss Unemployed Executive Type, what have you been doing to look for work since you last came in?”

Miss Unemployed Executive Type: “Well, I’ve signed up to this site, searched here, here, here and here, looked at these positions and approached these employers, but I have a very specialist background and I’m actually looking for part time work as I’d like to try to set up my own business.”

JCP: “Tesco are recruiting in your area, they have lots of part time positions.”

Miss UET: “Did you take the blindest bit of notice to what I just said to you, have you read my CV?”

JCP: “We’re not here to take notice of people. Unless they don’t show up, then we notice that they haven’t been in to be signposted.”

Miss UET: “Signposted? What does that mean?”

JCP: “You know, S-I-G-N-P-O-S-T-E-D!”

Miss UET: “Saying it slowly doesn’t really help, please explain what you mean.”

JCP: “Well, it’s not really my field of expertise, you have to speak to your personal adviser, but I think they show you where to look for jobs, how to put your CV together, tell you how to attend for an interview, what to say, what not to say – you know like, don’t swear – that sort of thing.”

Miss UET: “Do you think my specialist adviser will signpost me to these job searches and employers that I’ve already done?”

JCP: “Oh no, they’re really thorough, they take you through all the jobs in the Evening News.”

Miss UET: “Really. Has anybody ever told you that you’re a useless waste of space?”

JCP: “Yeah! How did you know that? My HR manager told me, they put me on retraining, that’s why I’m on the front desk now!”

Stand up
There’s always stand up of course. I’ve been to an open mic session at the women’s comedy night at the local comedy club. The audiences are VICIOUS. There is no way a novice would get a laugh at that sort of event, unless they managed to get some audience members fighting.

It’s a worse scenario than when you have to give a presentation at a mandatory training event: as soon as you ask “has anybody been in this situation/seen this/done that?” you are toast. They’re wanting whoever has the mic to make them laugh with as little effort from themselves. Do not rely on audience participation.

So without that, you fall into the safe sort of areas that are deemed to be funny for women, or were in the 1980s: men bashing; willies; sex; periods; shopping; being fat. Oh, that’s still Jo Brand’s routine today.

Or you could dress like a dwarf wearing a latex Mrs Doubtfire mask, talk like Stephen Fry and call yourself Sandi Toksvig then Radio 4 will be jumping over itself to drag you onto its oh-so-funny-here-are-the-same-Oxbridge-types-again panel shows.

Comedy isn’t for me. If was to do comedy, it would have to be at least as good as Frasier and nothing, absolutely nothing I could think of could ever come within a million miles of that genius. Although the idea of being a Sandi Toksvig impersonator who goes to bingo and shops at Aldi might have some legs, even if she doesn’t.

The vast majority of schoolchildren have rudimentary enlightenment into all things birds and bees in what used to be called sex education classes. Starting early on in secondary school (in my day at least), the gentle introduction covers how our bodies change during a magical time in our lives called puberty; girls get periods about every 28 days and some girls stop having periods at the age of 14 when they become professional mothers. I think some classes now do things with condoms and bananas, but back in the early eighties, we were terrified into not having any sex by the government AIDS campaign.

We didn’t have gays back then, just Larry Grayson and Liberace, so we didn’t need to be told about that sort of thing, which only happened after some lesbians invaded the 6 O’Clock news and sat on Sue Lawley.

So essentially, we were told about breasts, periods, sperm, the biology of reproduction and certain aspects of secondary sexual characteristics such as hairy foo-fahs and armpits, oh and sweat and the needs for having a bath and using antiperspirant.

If I was responsible for sex education classes, I’d tell it to them straight: learn to masturbate from an early age because when all else fails, you can always rely on yourself.

The girls would also know from an early age about something terrible that creeps up on them from their late twenties: facial hair. Nobody tells you about this stuff, it’s just there one day. Of course, eyebrows and things are always there, and basic lessons in plucking would be included in the syllabus, but forewarned is forearmed when it comes to beards and moustaches.

The subject would be tackled on a number of lessons, based on need:

1. Bleaching
Sometimes acceptable, but with excessive growth, you need to be careful not to end up looking like Pai Mei.

2. Plucking vs waxing
When my moustache started to become noticeable, there were just the odd couple of darker, thicker hairs that grew at the periphery of my mouth. These could be dealt with quickly and relatively painlessly with a good pair of tweezers (spare no expense here, go for Tweezerman every time). As the years have passed, however, I need to bring out the big guns and wax the whole bloody lot off. This leaves the top lip red, numb and swollen for a number of hours afterwards, so do it when you know you won’t need to leave the house. There may be blood.

Now I’m in my forties, I notice myself checking my chin regularly throughout the day for signs of bristles, running my finger over my chin in a manner akin to a pondering philosopher. There’s also the accompanying face, whereby I stick my chin out slightly and most probably push out my bottom lip with my tongue.

My moustache gets the imaginary Dali treatment.

The problem with facial hair at my age is that I’m now too long sighted to be able to see them, so plucking them requires some sort of Ninja mind trick and a few hopeful stabs with the tweezers.

Of course, my little niece is so blessed to have me has her auntie and life mentor. I will teach her things that nobody else dare mention. She’s an absolute beauty and she’ll grow up to be a stunning young woman, but I’m already eyeing up her eyebrows, waiting for the day when I can give her her first pair of Tweezermans.

Best auntie in the WORLD!