Let me get this perfectly clear: bears are not the foremost thing I worry about. Oh god no. They aren’t number one on my list of things to worry about, they’re just number one on THIS list of things to worry about. There are plenty more things to worry about, which I’m sure we’ll get to later.

Through my 32 years of life so far, I was always pretty aware that meeting a bear in the wild might be a worrysome experience. And yet, at the same time, felt quite clear that it was unlikely to happen, so managed not to worry about it too much.

But things change, and we move around and, suddenly, I have become aware that bears are more of an immediate threat than I may have previously have considered them. Mainly because we keep going camping in places with special bear-traps to hide your food, and walking in places where they warn you that you might come across a bear at any moment.

But none was so definite about the fact you almost certainly WILL come across a bear at any moment as they were in Yosemite. Signs lined the road declaring capitally and yellowifically that SPEEDING KILLS BEARS … but, apart from giving me license to shout “You’re killing BEARS, dude!” at my beloved every time he goes 3mph over the speed limit on an inner city motorway 200 miles away from the nearest forest or mountain, that didn’t seem to have any tangible effect at all.

The multiple warnings of bears being everywhere did not seem to produce bears for me to see. This was both frustrating and gratifying: I like bears, ergo I would like to meet a bear. However: I am aware that bears do not like me as much, ergo I would rather that we continued to live separate lives.

When we went to Yosemite, they were really quite open about it. And the acknowledgement that we might meet a bear - and, more importantly, were being told what to do when we met one - was gratifying.

This is what I understood we should do:

What should I do if I see a bear?
Why, I SHOULD SHOUT. Obviously. That was easy to memorise.
It seemed a little harsh: I’m not keen on shouting at people, or being shouted at, so I felt a little worried about the idea of that being a factor in whether I was going to live of die. I would quite like to escape an angry bear, I thought, but I didn’t want to have to do so by relying on shoutiness if at all possible.

But still: if that was what it was going to take, that was the price I would pay: I was willing to get a bit shouty to restore the natural notbeingeatenlibrium of life.

However: in the last week, I have heard from two different sources that this is not the way to deal with bears at all. First a random show on television, then a reference in a magazine article, and both of them confirmed the same thing: That if one should meet Mr Bear in the wild, the only thing one should NOT do would be shouting. Shouting, said these very reliable sources, would be the thing that would most anger a bear. You should never shout, they said, you’d end up mauled in all manner of indescribable places. Instead, you should talk very quietly and calmly, unless it was a different kind of bear altogether, in which case you should play dead entirely.

This was no good whatsoever. There had already been a complication in advice: one book I’d read up in Yosemite had suggested you should shout at bears but play dead with mountain lions, and if by ANY chance you did the wrong thing in either case, you’d be dead within minutes.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t confirm that, when faced with a toothy predator, I would remember in the spur of the moment whether I was meant to act like an overcooked noodle or a maladjusted foghorn.

And now here were a whole bunch of other people trying to tell me that I should actually be doing quite the opposite.

Oh come ON! Don’t be mean! When given people with memories quite as defective as the one I have been blessed with, you don’t provide people with two completely opposite scenarios that they won’t be able to remember anyway and then throw conflicting advice about other emergency resolutions to the same (or possibly opposite) situations that promise to either work unreservedly or fail miserably (and result in instant, painful death).

I now have no idea what to do if I meet a bear. I may therefore just try and avoid any situation where I might have to meet a bear, choosing to be in safe places instead (like libraries and Starbucks and my bathroom), and trust that the question therefore never comes up.

But the fact is that there IS that conflicting advice out there. I don’t WANT to believe that the National Park Rangers of Yosemite are trying to make their days quieter by killing off the tourists, but it does look like the most reasonable explanation right now.

Anyway. In my new bid to become Not The Most Anxious Person On The Planet, I have decided to develop some new rules for meeting bears that will be applicable whether in Yosemite National Park or not, and should be considered the ultimate go-to emergency bear procedure.

WHAT SHOULD YOU DO IF YOU MEET A BEAR

1. Pretend to be a bear: Make your best bear face, think bear thoughts (”Fish! Bee! I like sleeping and being Furry!) and maybe make conciliatory bear noises to smooth the waters.
2. Smile: Winningly.
3. Suggest going out for coffee: In Bear. “Rrrrrrr. Orrr wrrr-wrrr-wuhr. Grrrr-wrrr-latte, Grrr?” should do it.
4. Point at a pretty cloud: In the sky.
5. Run. Run HARD. That is all.

So there. Take note, possible-bear-meeters.
Them’s the rules.

We were walking through a small town, and, in the window, my friend K noticed this snowgentleman in the window of a shop otherwise full of even worse Christmas decorations.

It is quite obvious why this might have caught our eyes, of course. But apparently whoever conceived of it or designed it or made it did their job well, because we’re here. Whether what we saw in it was what they intended, I have no idea, but still. Here is the dreaded Snowman Flasher.

Because apparently that was the best place to put the candle, and the best way to be holding it.

Whatever; you too can buy this for your home.
If, y’know, you want to.

If you DON’T want to buy it, you could, of course, replicate the spirit of it in your own garden, using something long and pointy (carrot, torch, partcularly pale dildo?) and the crotch area of whatever snowperson you have made.

If you want your neighbours to be writing outraged letters about you from now until you’re forced out of the lovely “Family” area until you live, buy this - or try your own. Because it’s a civil liberties issue: why SHOULDN’T snowmen be allowed to flash for a living, right?
Right?!?

We went for a drive to a little town down the coast, and, in case it was ever somewhere we wanted to get away for a weekend, I picked up a few leaflets for local places to stay.

On the back of one, there were comments from satisfied guests.

Fabulous place and fabulous stay — all the comforts of a perfect getaway

said one. Which was pretty straightforward and unremarkable.

Our only regret is having just one night here!

said another, which was also quite direct and what one might expect from a guest book. But the next one was something quite beyond. It wasn’t the words themselves that made it so special - no, the words were just fine: it was the things that came inbetween them that were the problem. It was like someone had taken a normal guestbook comment, and then decided to take it to the punctuation fairy, who proceeded to sneeze all over it.

The “Barn” is my all time “favorite” Place!!! -So “cozy”, “quaint” “charming” “quiet”, “rustic” & “comfortable!” Your “beautiful”, “antique” bed is so “comfortable” & “pillowy” & I’ve never ever “slept” so “well” as I do here!

It’s just brilliant. What, exactly, are they trying to convey with the quote marks, here? Is it NOT really an antique? Not really beautiful? And all of that is all well and good, but it’s the “slept” and “well” that kill me. Are they trying to communicate that they didn’t sleep? Or that they did sleep, but that the concept of sleeping well is a subjective concept that really shouldn’t really be fixed in something so permanent and official a document as a guest book comment?

Whatever the case, I just want to find this person and talk to them, because I can’t escape the feeling that it might not be restricted to their writing alone. I deeply suspect that when they talk, they do the same thing. That every time they come across a word in a sentence that they have decided might be somehow problematic or extra special or worth emphasising or not quite the word they were aiming for - or, you know, just a noun - they would raise their hands either side of their head and raise their index and middle fingers and do the bunny ear thing, drawing quote marks in the air.

I wonder whether those two fingers on each hand are more toned or slender than the others. It would certainly seem to make sense. A full conversation would be like an army of bunnies with matching sets of twitching bunny ears, marching in pairs over the horizon threatening to bunny-ear you to death. It would be brilliant - I only hope one day to meet them.

There are lots of things that mark the age of the internet. My own site is not that old, not in the scheme of things, so I will not attempt to make an argument that tries to prove how the internet was created for the purpose of snogging my blog, contentwise. The internet is 40, my site is 8 and a half. In any society, even virtual, that’s never going to be a happy metaphor.

But my blog is a bit old. I began it ten houses ago, if anyone is like me and measures life by rented flats. It’s been a while. And that’s nothing but a matter of pride, and a point of honour. This blog has done so well for me that this year, I may start celebrating its anniversary as a way of marking all the luckiest points of my life. Or maybe I’ll forget. Like every year.

There are, however, two things that remind me how much time passes.

Two posts, rather.
And I won’t link to either of them, because if I do, the ridiculous googly traffic for them will only get worse. I just find it funny that the two of my most frequently commented upon posts are about:

Hating Th0mas K1ncade: He is, and I still can’t deny it, an American artist whose work makes me punchy. It’s bland, overworked and uninspired and horrendously disneyish. Yes, I don’t like him, but other people do. The thing is; I may not like his art, but to be entirely honest, I really REALLY don’t care that much.

And yet, for the however many years since I wrote it, people have slowly and steadily been coming to the comment box to tell me their (generally very strongly held) opinion. They either agree that Mr K isn’t really terribly good, and say just that, plain and simple. Or they seem to be fans. Superfans, in fact, who go around the internet swearing and shouting in defence of their favourite brushthwacker. And the ridiculous thing is, I fully support their right to like whatever they want. I just wish they wouldn’t be so very unpleasant about it.

A plague on ALL your houses A few years ago - four full houses ago, not including my present one, we had less than half a dozen ladyb1rds storm our North London flat. Jokingly, I referred to this as an infestation.

And then it turned out there WERE infestations, and that people were genuinely concerned about it and trying to find help in how to deal with it. Unfortunately, not only was I not really infested in the first place, I had also moved house several times inbetween.

Now, every single year, I suddenly get an influx of comments, just one at first, then a couple, then a little flurry. All people with severe ladybug issues, all looking for help. All, and I can’t say this more emphatically, ALL IN THE WRONG PLACE. I neither know anything nor can offer any solution to a sudden influx of ladybeetles. I am almost completely useless.

But this is the thing - by these two posts I am reminded how much time passes, and things on the internet go round and round and round. These two posts, which represent such a tiny, unrepresentative part of my whole blog, life, work, are the most read and most longstandingly commented things on my whole site.

It makes me feel good about having a big archive of things for people to be able to read.
Although less good about the fact the only people that want to read it are taste-free republican swearists, and those with bad insulation and a possible damp problem and no one to talk about that with but my random blog.

The point is, I know I don’t have many readers anymore; but I’m grateful for the ones I have. Even if they are here for the wrong reason. And/or to abuse me.

Point is … actually, I don’t have any big argumentative or unpleasant point to prove. I’m just aware that I get to watch the time go by by this. I may think of a better point, though, so do hang on, just in case. Certainly, if there are any ladybug research departments out there who want to add a bunch of case studies to your papers, just let me know - I have a hundred people who can help.

Big things change, huge things happen, I just here watching ladybugs invade London flats and people assert the right to like bad artists, unendingly, as time goes by.

UPDATE - In case of misunderstandings

Sorry, I just wanted to clarify, this really isn’t a boo-hoo I haven’t got any readers post, I promise you. It just really honestly amuses me that my most constant source of new readers can be found on one hand defending vehemently a man I don’t really have very strong feelings about, and on the other asking for my help about a infestation problem I’ve never really had…

“Hello, I would like some breakfast please” I say.

And, within minutes, I am hit with a million billion decisions to make. There is really only one decision I can make in the couple of hours after waking: the one about whether I actually need to get up or not. Anything else, I wish to run to some kind of well-oiled schedule. (Can schedules be oiled? I just imagine slimy pieces of paper when I say that, but you know, slimy paper isn’t always a bad thing, right?)(I don’t know what that meant. I didn’t even know while I was typing it. Sorry). ANYWAY.

In the land of a thousand choices there are, I have discovered, a thousand choices within each choice, and sometimes a few more thrown in for good measure.

And that applies, of course, all over the place, in every meal, retail experience or any situation you can imagine. But one of the best examples of this can be summed up within the simple meal of breakfast.

Simple meal indeed. She said, in a disbelieving yet knowing tone.

You know what’s simple? Cereal. I used to eat cereal at home: that was simple.

I was never particularly a breakfast person before I moved to San Francisco. I was pretty boring about the whole thing, in fact. Only started eating breakfast at all a two or three years ago, and stuck rigidly to a small set of staple things: Special K with dried fruit of trail mix spinkled on top; ryvita and vegemite and, at the weekend, something fancier, like a full cooked breakfast or something brunchy - a variation on eggs benedict, most often. Or, in fact, always.

And it was another one of the things that I didn’t think I’d have to think about to much. The cereals I knew seemed pretty universal; they would be over here too, right? In fact, I knew I’d seen them in supermarkets; it would all be very simple.

Ha. Again with the word ’simple’… I really should know better by now.

Fact is, you can’t rely on anything to be the same. Everything’s tailored to fit the tastes of whatever market it’s being made for, and everything is made with the resources most plentiful. Special K, the thing I seized upon on my first shopping expedition, feeling relieved to have my hands on something familiar? Familiar, but not the same. It’s sweeter, and quite possibly made out of corn rather than rice.

So. I started a big journey through breakfastland, in search of something that was either familiar, or that I could make so, because it was so yummy. I’ve had grains, breads, meats, eggs and various forms of batter.

And I’ve ended up eating porridge every day. Plain. Made with water and only a pinch of salt. But that’s not for lack of imagination, I promise. It’s by way of:

CEREALS

American supermarket aisles, as a rule, are very, very long. American cereal aisles are very long, very brightly coloured, and very tightly packed with cartoon characters you’ve never seen before promising you nutrients you never even knew you needed.

“400,000% of your daily requirement of flopsaflavin B!” says a speech bubble coming out of something that could be either a parrot or a banana.
“Oh” you think “I didn’t even realise I was lacking in flopsaflavin B” - quite correctly, as it turns out, since it turns out to mean ‘plastic toy dust’ or something as nutritionally unnecessary.

There are boxes that seem to be entirely composed of things you shouldn’t eat for breakfast: miniature chocolate chip cookies that you pour milk on and eat with a spoon. Little brown and orange balls that taste of chocolate covered peanut butter cups and contain more sugar than if you simply cast a bowl made out of chocolate and peanut butter and munched down on it. And that’s probably available: I just haven’t found it yet. There are things with marshmallows and with nougat. Real chunks of fruit, real chunks of muffin, god knows there’s probably one out there with real chunks of the Berlin Wall in it, I just haven’t found it yet.

No, wait, I have. I have, and it was called granola.
I actually went through a granola phase earlier in the year. How MUCH of that phase was due to the fact it was called ‘Aunt Fanny’s’ and the word fanny makes my inner-child giggle, I cannot say.
But quite a lot, basically.

Granola has something in common with museli, in that it’s made out of recognisable natural foodstuffs, but in granola they’re clustered into little groups, rolled in honey or syrup solutions and then baked in the fifth circle of hell until they’re hard enough to kill a person if dropped on their skull from a second floor balcony. I used to marvel at the Barbican because someone told me the towers were so tall, you’d split someone’s skull in half by dropping a penny off the top. Drop granola, and not even dental records would identiify them. I like granola, don’t get me wrong. Most have the benefit of feeling good for you, though only if it’s because you had to work to damned hard to eat them.

Speaking of hard, Grape Nuts are another crazy phenomenon. Taken from castrated grapes and deep fired in kilns for several years to reach their famous consistency. “They won’t soften in milk!” exclaims the box, excitedly. No. They won’t, and for good reason. They’ve been developed by dentists for nefarious profit-boosting purposes.

That may not be actually, technically true. But I imagine evil dentists do love them for the the tooth cracking side effects.“Grape-nuts? Profit-raisins more like!”, they must joke, at their EvilDentistCon parties.

And this is not to say that these things aren’t nice.
Everything’s nice. Mostly everything. Mostly everything tastes like it was engineered with a hyperactive eight-year-old’s favourite boost-foods in mind, but in a nice way.

Sugar pervades. You’d think they were sweet enough already, but a cheerful national character is not, apparently, an impediment to having just a little more sugar. In everything. Even savouries are sweet, the sneaky bastards. Just when you’re expecting them to be when you’re expecting them to be entirely savory - even boring things like Sooper Dooper Fiber Hoops and Bran Platters and Shredded Wood and other things that are meant to be invigorating for body, mind, heart and bowel alike - a sweetness will pervade, no matter how little you might expect it.

That’s not to say that there aren’t benefits to be found in pop tarts or bowls of chocolate chip cookies submerged in milk, and I may yet explore that in multimedia form. We’ll see.

MILK

Milk comes in these giant breezeblock-style cartons which you modestly try to resist until you realise that a) you don’t have to go to the shops as often and b) the fridges are all designed for such things and anything smaller looks a bit pathetic, like it’s hanging around in the fridge door waiting for its mum to come and pick it up.

So, as it turns out, it’s actually a lot more convenient. Thought if you’re used to the idea of popping down to the shops for a carton of milk, a couple of cartons of juice (same size), some fizzy pop (generally even larger), and perhaps some wine (annoyingly standard in size (though much larger bottles ARE available (am I in multiple quotes right now? Oh, yes, how dreadful of me (Sorry) I’ll stop it) if you should want them), and in a glass bottle which is heavier to begin with) and if you are used to, perhaps, the crazy-insane habit of walking home, then you can expect to look like some kind of knuckle-dragging ape after a couple of weeks. These things are HEAVY.

So, if you drink milk at all - or any milklike substance, you have choices. More than you’d think you would need. You’ve got milk, plain and simple; then half&half, which I think is half cream half milk; then you’ve got 2%, which is semi-skimmed; 1%, which is half way between semi-skimmed and skimmed (so that would be skimmed-semi-skimmed on a milk compass, I suppose); and non-fat, which is skimmed, and pretty self-explanatory.

If you can’t drink milk at all, there is soy milk, rice milk, nut milk and, bizarrely, normal milk that manages to be lactose free.

In my house, where we have a conflict of dietary requirements and allergies, we started off getting different milk, until we realised that was insane in terms of volume, and ended up getting lactose-free non-fat milk. Which, some would argue, is, in fact, non-milk. It is milk with all the things that make it milk taken out. It’s basically a carton full of milk-void.
Tastes quite nice in coffee, though.

COFFEE

Clearly, if you live here, you will make coffee to your own taste.

But, while out and about, in diners, restaurants and cafes, you will be amazed and delighted at the concept of completely free refills, as many as you want, and generally without asking for them. You will be amazed by this until you realise you’re basically drinking sequential cups of red-hot brown water. I’m not sure if it’s just the west coast (though other places I’ve been have been as bad), but I’ve powered through about seven cups per sitting without it having a noticeable effect on my level of wakiness. That’s just wrong.

It’s coffee. It’s meant to wake you up, that’s kind of why you drink it. If it was spectacular-tasting, people wouldn’t mask the flavour of it so often with cream, milk, sugar, syrups etc. You drink it to wake up. Thus, making it piss-weak and super-hot, as they do, defeat the object. For me, at least.

It’s one of the benefits of going to otherwise dreadful just-the-way-you-like-it chains. There I can say ‘with THREE EXTRA SHOTS OF ESPRESSO, DAMNIT!” and not look like I’m asking for something alien, or wrong. Unless I actually shout. And/or use the word damnit. While shouting. That would almost certainly be rude.

TEA

If you’re a tea person, and I know a lot of you are, then you’ll be presented with a whole different deluge of choices when requesting a brew.

“Can I have a cup of tea?” will result in a laundry list of exotic place names, colours, and flowery sounding concoctions. You’ll probably want English Breakfast Tea - and be sure to ask for milk if you want it, it probably won’t come as standard.

I don’t drink tea. Outside the house. I drink vats of iced green tea at home, but that’s a different topic (one for my ‘How To Pee Like A Racehorse In Ten Easy Steps’ chapter). Other than that, I don’t drink tea.

If I did, I’d go a little crazy, every time they, at the fancier establishments, brought you a cup of hot water and a box of teabags to choose from on the side. “Look here, matey” I would say, in my best Queenly accent (and yes, she would totally say ‘matey’ in this situation, I guarantee it) “I would like this here teabag, right?… But can you take it away and pour some actual boiling water over it? This off-the-boil tepid shit simply won’t do at all” (Please stop grousing at the back, I have it on good authority that this is how her maj talks all the time).

Iced tea’s nice though. I don’t know why we don’t drink more of that at home. I always did, but that was mainly because I’m too forgetful to remember to drink anything at all while hot, so had to find a way to redeem it. Iced Tea is nice - though unless you are the honeymonster (and depending where in the country you are, but it’s a pretty good rule of thumb all the same) I’d advise you to get unsweetened and sweeten it to taste afterward.

COOKED BREAKFASTS

The american standard - or at least the one I’ve come across most often - comprises of eggs, bacon, pancakes and toast. And then there are the other things. I’ll break this down some more…

EGGS (ANY STYLE)

Or just eggs. TWO EGGS, the menu will say, usually with a confusing (ANY STYLE) following it.
They won’t explain the available styles, of course, they’re so generic that they think there’s no point. It’s one of the chief mysteries I had adjusting to life in my first year in America. The fact that there are a known set of rules to many things. And they’re strict, and people will look at you funny if you don’t know them. But if you don’t* know them, there’s no real way of finding out what they are. Because they’re sometimes particular to the region, the situation, the time of day: and even if they’re NOT, people find it hard to understand they might need explaining to someone what they are, or why they’re so weird.

For some reason, it reminds me of the time I was in a train station in Bologna, passing the time waiting for my friend, who was trying to find the bathroom. I read the only book on the bookstand that was in English, which happened to be the Italian to English phrasebook, for use by Italians travelling abroad (most likely to the UK). I remember one page, that had the indispensable phrase for any tourist in London:
“Excuse me, where is the nearest tube station?”
And the indescribable follow-up question, which only comes (for a Londoner) with a side order of the image of someone’s face if asked it:
“Why is it so far away?”

It’s not exactly the same question, but it does sum up the disparity between “questions every tourist wants to ask” and “questions no local will know how to answer”.

The thing is, if you say “Hello! Wwhat do you mean ‘any way’, exactly?” the answer you’ll get most often is “Oh, yaknow. Like, “Any Way”.” which doesn’t exactly help. Feels like a poor Italian tourist having to deal with the answer “Eh? It just IS. That’s where it is. What’s wrong with you?”

So. here are the few ways I know to order when the menu says TWO EGGS (ANY STYLE)

Sunny Side Up: - Just fried. Generally, be aware, fried eggs are fried very lightly, so expect not only the yolk runny, but often some of the white too.
Over: - Fried, then flipped, so the yolk is sealed in, and the whole thing cooked through.
Over easy: - Same as above, but much more lightly cooked: The yolk (and possibly white, as above) will be runny.
Scrambled: - You know what scrambled means. Can be many variations, from egg-salad-lumpy to almost like puree and packed with cream. I have no sense of the rules for being able to request one type or another though. Sorry. I’ll look into this.
Poached - Means poached! Yay. V soft though, obv.

Omelettes are also available. Any omelette can be made with egg whites (because you get the protein but not the fat or cholesterol), or with “beaters” which, as far as I can tell, appear to be egg whites, with the yolk left in but some yellow colouring, so they feel more like you’re eating proper eggs.

One of my favourite breakfasts is Green Eggs & Ham, which I kind of made up myself, but is basically just a mash-up of other things. For two people, it’s made with one egg (sometimes two) a bunch more egg whites, some torn spinach leaves, some thinly sliced lean ham, a spoon of wholegrain mustard and some salt and pepper and things. It’s really good, especially if served with nice granary toast and a couple of spoonfuls of salsa. Salsa Verde (made out of tomatillos rather than tomatoes) is nicest with it. But it’s not a breakfast if you’re going to the gym or otherwise being active. Not enough carbohydrates. Anyway.

FANCY SCHMANCY EGG DISHES

First, and almost only, there is Eggs benedict - which I’ve long been planning not only a post about, but a whole blog about. The rest will follow. In fact, we’re barely there on breakfasts - we’re yet to touch on biscuits, waffles, the crazy non-puritan attitude toward booze at brunch, or home fries or the lovely, lovely pancakes I call “yes”.

I don’t call them “home”, clearly. And I don’t call them right: not with the lashings of bacon and maple syrup I pile on top of them. But wholeheartedly, and homeishly, and with all the love in heart, I call them Yes.

And more about that in part two. three. Whatever. This post is only SOME of what I have to say on the matter. Sorry, I was planning on sitting down and writing things because that’s what a blog is, and I thought I should publish it, perfect, finished or no, because that was the point of my exercise. So the next part will come. Sometime…

“THE WEEKLY CEREAL”

I was really going to have a feature called that, you know. On this blog, or more accurately, on the podcast I sometimes think it might be a great idea to make.

I was going to do a weekly feature on the podcast-that-isn’t in which I would try a different wacky American cereal and then review it for your pleasure.

But I haven’t done a podcast. So it isn’t on there. So I’ll stop saving ideas up for that and put them here in a chapter for the book I’ll never write instead.

Also, seriously? The noise of someone eating - and particularly eating cereal - is one of my top ten most hated sounds in the whole wide world. It actually makes me want to hurt people. So why would I ever have inflicted that on you? It makes no sense. Particularly as YOU might all want to hurt somebody, and the person you would want to hurt would probably be me, and so all I would have ended up doing is would be setting up my own death mobs. Hoardes of them, roaming the earth, slathering at the mouth at the idea of silencing once and for all me and my big cereal chomping gob.

Or perhaps the rest of you aren’t as aural-sociopathic as me. Or perhaps you’re just not willing to admit it.

So maybe I should just do it - or maybe I should do it in writing. But then, you know, “And now, number 7: Froot Loops. Number seven. Froot Loops.” Doesn’t work quite as well with words as it does in multimedia, perhaps. Maybe a short video series. Actually, that’s not too shabby an idea.

Anyway. I should start the actual post.

The Weekly Cereal: or Breakfast of Chamignons.

Actually, not that sub-title. Mainly because I don’t think there’s going to be anything in here to do with mushrooms, so it’s slightly mileading. It IS a good title for something, though, so I should save it for the moment an idea worthy of it rises up to deserve it. Or a cafe. If I ever get to run a cafe I will have a whole brunch menu based on literary puns. And that, my friends, is why no one’s ever going to let me run a cafe.

I should start from the top again.

In fact, I should just start this whole post again, it’s got a bit unfocussed slightly quicker than usual. Not that much quicker, but… Never mind, I’ll be back in a minute. In a different post.

Sorry to go quiet. Head in a mess. Anyway, back to these because I’m sick of losing all my best thoughts to 140 characters on Twitter, so I’ve decided to try and have a 140 word thought at least once a day every so often on my blog.

I appreciate there are innumerable explanations for trousers pulled halfway down (/up?) legs. Signals of toughness, weight lost in jail, guns stuffed in trousietops.

I have never seen men with breeks slung so low. Watching another shuffle onto the bus, his belt around three inches above his knees, useless, his hand forced to hold them up anyway, I averted my eyes, for fear of laughing. You must not laugh. They look so completely idiotic, they MUST be terrifying. My only thought was:

a) Is the challenge to find a style SO STUPID that you look tough despite of of rather than because of it? What next when this passes? A nice polkadot dress? Gangsta y-fronts outside your trousers? A rubber penis strapped to ones head?

b) You’re not that tough if escape from a crimescene makes you waddle like Jemima Puddleduck, pal.

Halloween is big round here. It’s weirdly big in much of America, I understand, and I’ve never done a state-by-state comparison, or really researched the subject very intensely, but from that position of expertise, I can state clearly and authoritatively that San Francisco is the most ridiculously Halloweenny place in the whole world.

It’s not just the decorating of houses, gardens and windows - inside and out, there are orange and black decorations that hit the shops sometime in August, alongside the ‘Back to school’ things, all fangs and claws and cheap sweets and all those kinds of things.

And costumes. Oh so many costumes. Where in the UK most costumes tend to be ghoulish or in some way morbid - at least traditionally, here they appear to be wish-fulfillment or just costumes for the sake of it - a giant cavalcade where people get to dress up like they wouldn’t dare to the rest of the year. And boy do they seize the opportunity - with both hands, and a leg lock and a mouth full of hair, do they seize it. They seize it hard.

And the pattern seems to follow the usual when grown up people are allowed to dress up in costumes, the normal thing: men are superheroes, celebrities, animals, fictional characters, inanimate objects. For women, the main costume appears to be a variation on ’slutty’. Slutty nurse, slutty cat, slutty firefighter, slutty bee. If you can take a costume, reduce the skirt to something resembling a belt, squeeze the top into something resembling a very small fruitbowl filled with over-ripe melons, then you have the perfect female halloween costume.

Then there are just random ones, ones that COULD be a vampire, or a robot, or a character from a popular American TV show of yore that I’ve never heard of. And they wander the streets, NOT just on the night of halloween itself, but during the day of it as well, and, in some cases, at the end of the week adjoining halloween because they’ve been wearing their costume to work as well. To their job. Their proper, grown-up, real live job.

Last week on the bus home one day there was a Luigi (from Super Mario), a vampire, a robot, a slutty something, and a woman wearing a white cardigan and jeans and carrying a Storm Trooper helmet, which frankly isn’t trying hard enough.

And there were several others, but the great thing about San Francisco is that the coming of Halloween affords the opportunity to play an unending game of ‘Halloween Costume or Everyday Wear?’ Because any day of the year, rugged individualism thrives in the San Francisco dress sense, and you stop noticing it so much until you try and work out whether people are dressed funny for the occasion, or just because that’s what they always wear.

“Halloween costume or Every day?” we hiss at each other, walking down the road and spotting a gentleman dressed like a particularly unconvincing version of Amy Winehouse. “I say Halloween”.

“Actually no” comes the reply “I saw him in Safeway last week”.

“Halloween or Every day?” we hiss, seeing a woman dressed in bright yellow shiny trousers, a tight black top, yellow cropped leather jacket and with yellow threaded through tiny plaits in her hair.

“It’s so hard to tell, I mean, that’s a great deal of pain and time, putting that yellow through your hair. But what IS she if it’s halloween costume?”
“Toxic waste? Or a bee”
“Toxic bee”
“Should we ask her?”
“Hell, no”

Because that’s the problem. It would be one of the best internet games ever. Look at the picture, click on the button saying whether it’s a halloween costume or just every day wear… But the problem is that the person setting up the quiz has to know, in advance, which one it’s supposed to be.

And you know the problem with that: that the only way of knowing for sure is to ask the person.
Can you imagine actually doing this?

“Hello, I was just admiring your costume”
“What costume?”
“Erk.”

“Hello, are you on your way out to a costume party?”
“No, I am just a common-or-garden nutter, please hold still while I stab you with this sharpened spoon”
“Erk.”

“What a great normal everyday outfit one might wear to work, do you know where I can get one just like it?”
“Are you stupid? I am clearly dressed as the ghost of Sarah Palin’s political career, do you think I would wear this by choice, what’s wrong with you?”
“erk.”

“That’s a particularly outrageous slutty nurse outfit, you basically look like a medical prostitute! Did you hire that from the costume shop down the road?”
“No, I’m just a nurse, I’m on my way home from work. Wait here while I get my actually-a-firefighter boyfriend to come and beat you up”
“Erk.”

Etc.

Never mind. It was a good idea in theory.