In which I detail my top ten top tens of 2010

My top ten words of 2010
1) Minge.
2) Biscuit.
3) Mingebiscuit.
4) Weaselly.
5) Crackerjack.
6) Glitch.
7) Pencil.
8) Rubbish.
9) Larf.
10) Trickle.

In which I detail my top ten top tens of 2010

- One.
- Two.
- Eleven
- Three.
- Two hundred and twenty two.
- Nineteen.
- Thirty Three.
- Eleventy squillion.
- Seven.
- Ten

In which I list my top ten top tens of 2010

My ten top toppings for toast
- Vegemite.
- Or Marmite. They’re both nice. This war is insane, we must unite: Mar- and Vege- Miters cease the fight. That’s my new protest cry. It rhymes, so it’s going to sound really good at all those rallies on the issue.
- Marmalade and crumbled cheddar.
- Butter.
- Smoked Salmon and creme cheese. With a squeeze of lemon.
- Rasberry Jam.
- Rasberry Jam and brie.
- Rasberry Jam, brie, and marmite.
- Nutella. And wensleydale.
- Pate. With (this is important) NO ADDED JAM.

In which I list my top ten top tens of 2010

Top ten things I didn’t do in 2010
1) Go to Disneyland.
2) Learn to drive. Again.
3) Eat bull’s testicles. Or any testes at all, really.
4) Write a book.
5) Get married.
6) Implant, stow, or expel any children from my undercarriage. At all.
7) Scuba dive.
8) Cry because of a comment box.
9) Wear a hat. Oh no, wait, I did wear a hat. I did not wear a sombrero, though.
10) Become president of a small South American republic. OR DID I?
No. No, I didn’t.

Top ten films of 2010 in no particular order
- The one with that guy in.
- The one with the seven evil somethings.
- The funny one.
- The other one with that guy in, though to be honest I preferred him in the first one.
- The first half of that one we saw in march. Second half wasn’t up to much, mind.
- OOH! The…. no, it’s gone.
- That one about the thing.
- Either the one with her from the telly in, or the one with the joke about thingy.
- The sad one.
- Hot Tub Time Machine. Not really.

In which I present my top ten top tens of 2010.

Top ten favourite places of 2010

- My Bed.
- On top of a hill, looking down at the city of San Francisco.
- Brighton seafront at dawn.
- Waking up on a train, riding through misty forests in the Pacific Northwest.
- A kayak in the middle of a bay filled with phosphorescent critters.
- The bear feeding enclosure at San Francisco.
- On a plane, high above the clouds, at night, looking at the northern lights play above the arctic circle.
- On a plane, above the clouds, looking at the sun hitting the pacific.
- On another plane, a tiny one, taking eleventy squillion pictures of a city. I should really consider pilotry.
- The floor of my friend’s house, while being hugged by small boys.
- A spectacularly pretty fjord in Norway.
- Vancouver.
- My favourite cafe in Brighton, and the fact they still have the same menu.
- Actually quite a lot of other places. Ten is a stupid number anyway.
- A ferry.
- A photo booth in portland, oregon.
- Coit tower.
- My sofa, under cats.

In which I present the my top ten top tens of ten

My Top ten television shows of 2010
- Community.
- Terriers.
- Men of a Certain Age.
- Misfits.
- House.
- Cougar Town.
- Chuck.
- Lost (though that ending? Seriously? Ugh. What a waste of all the time I spent watching that show. Well, that week, plus the last series. But I wouldn’t have missed our weekly Lost viewing party for the world)
- Ru Paul’s Drag Race.
- That other thing I can’t remember right now.

Top ten cats of 2010
- My cats.
- Pickle.
- Lulu.
- Jasper
- Your cat. Assuming five of you have cats.

In which I present my top ten top tens at the end of 2010

Top ten no. 1: Top vegetables of 2010
- Peas.
- Peas.
- Asparagus
- Cucumber.
- Peas.
- Mange tout.
- Chilli peppers (technically a fruit).
- Potato.
- Yorkshire puddings.
- Peas.

Goodness me, but I’ve been rubbish. At writing. Here.
I have been successful at writing elsewhere, I mean, otherwise I would be knocking on the doors of debtors prison, by now. Or its doors would be knocking on me. Or however that works.

But I have been around. I was in Vancouver, as previously noted, where I did a bunch of amazing work that I’m not allowed to talk about very much.
And then I came back to the UK, via San Francisco, where I picked up an enormous suitcase full of the stuff that is still spread around various people’s houses, went to a one-year-old’s birthday party, and then freaked a bunch more people out at a housewarming (“Wait, didn’t we say goodbye to you a few weeks ago? Aren’t you somewhere else now? What? How drunk am I, exactly? Etc”).

And then came back again to Brighton. And then I went up to London where I held some meetings about some other work that I am allowed to talk about even less (it is most odd, I feel like, professionally, I have gone from having my name thrown about willy-nilly to being a completely hidden person with very fast little typing fingers. I like it much more, if I’m honest)

The upshot of this is: I have been on planes a lot in the last couple of weeks (and managed to miss the travel/weather craziness every time, for which I am very grateful for myself, and very sorry on behalf of others not so lucky).

Multiple are my observations about my life on planes in this time.
Several are the ones below that I can remember in the form of a short list.

1) While many of the films that exist in the world are terrible, the ones that they show on planes are still, and irretrievably, worse than the lot of them. There are now, I discover, if you dig down a little bit, quite a few good documentaries to be found on some entertainment systems. I found a very good one about a family attempting to live without a single bit of environmental impact for a year. Though I can’t deny that my enjoyment was a little tainted by the fact that I happened to be watching it on a long-haul flight. Which probably undid most of their year’s hard work. Um. Sorry.

2) The friendliest crew by a mile award goes to the stewardesses of the United flight I took from Vancouver to Los Angeles. So maniacally over-friendly were they that it took them about an hour to work their way from the front to the back of the plane. And it really wasn’t a very big plane. It was titchy. It seated about 60, and only about 40 people were onboard. Regardless, they managed to spin it out commendably - mainly, I think, because one of them was looking for a husband and somewhat convinced she was going to find one on this particular flight. It took an hour an ten minutes to get from one end of the plane to the other. It was an hour and forty minute flight.

3 The prize for mathematical numbskull crew of the year, however, needs to go to the same crew. Which might also go some way to explaining the length of time they took. Wine was $7. Beer was $7. Spirits were $7. For whatever reason, people seemed to be drinking an inordinate amount. This was very confusing for the crew. All the way down the aisle, I could hear: “So, you had two beers. So that’s seven. And seven. So that’s… That’s… bear with me….” “Ohhhhhhhh-kayyy. So! You had a red wine. That’s 7. And you gave me ten. So I owe you… Bear with me… Just one second more hun… Never was so good at the math…” and several dozen people in ears reach clutching at the seat and trying not to shout “IT’S THREE! YOU CLASSIFIABLE MORON! TEN MINUS SEVEN IS THREE! AREN’T YOU SUPPOSED TO BE ON THE BALL ENOUGH TO SAVE MY LIFE IF NEEDS BE?! GAH!”

4) Somehow, no idea how, every flight I boarded appeared to be the adultery express. The couple behind me on the flight from London to San Francisco talked in warm terms about how wonderful life would be once his divorce was in motion. “Do you mind swapping? I need to sit with my colleague?” said another pair on the Vancouver to LA flight before drinking copiously, making loud kissing noises, and talking about their (separate) matrimonial christmas plans. Do people really cheat this much? It makes me sad.

5) I still love being on planes. I still love being above the clouds. I still think nothing beats the feeling of taking off and watching the world slip away behind you. But going through security that many times in so brief a period? Yeah, that’s considerably less enchanting, I will admit.

AND THAT IS ALL I LEARNT.
Oh, apart from some things about the sky mall catalogue which I will come back to later.

Which reminds me. I will stop being so rubbish and write more, now. That is all.

I like Vancouver. It is nice. It has sunsets. And weird hotdogs. This is one of them:

One of the sunsets, I mean. It is not a weird hotdog.
The thing in the middle isn’t even a weird hotdog. It is a man. Hotdogs can’t stand up unaided, no matter how weird they are. Of this, I am glad.

Other things I have noticed about Vancouver (bearing in mind I have been in an interesting office and/or jetlagged for most of the time I have been here):

1. It does not rain here nearly as much as people suggest it does.
It just doesn’t. FACT. In fact, it barely rains at all. Maybe for half an hour, lightly, every now and again. This is an official, incontrovertible statement based on my whole four days of experience. You’re welcome, established international meteorological research institutes - you’re welcome.

2. Many many residences in the downtown Vancouver area are made out of floor to ceiling glass.
Yes, entirely. For example, right now, from my perch on the sofa in the glass box I am staying in for the week, I can watch seven television shows at once. Most of them across the road.

3. Vancouver is very foody.
A friend I used to work with in London took me on a tour of amazing foodie locations in the central Vancouverian area, today. We only ate at a couple, but I had so many ridiculously good meals, dishes, restaurants and ingredients explained to me in depth that by the time I got home all I could manage was a crisis of over-stimulated imagination and a cheese sandwich.

4. Male Vancouverians know a good shoe when they see one
I have had my lovely trainers (and they are lovely, LOVELY trainers) complimented by three men in the last few days. I endorse the shoe-loving men of British Columbia.

5 There are bridges in Vancouver
And they are higher are more open than you realise when looking at them from the underside. I only realised just how high, and how open, when in the middle of one. It was (perhaps coincidentally) at almost exactly the same moment that I remembered how much I fear high and/or open spaces. Particularly bridges. I had an unscheduled jog at that point, but almost entirely because of health and fitness reasons; anything else was just one of those coincidence things we were talking about previously.

6 Snow-covered mountains visible at the end of the street are very attractive
I would go so far as to suggest that other cities consider bringing in some mountains for the end of their streets, too. It they can’t afford the full-scale mountains, they could probably just get small lego mountains, and decrease the size of their streets to about 1/80th the current size.

7. This is going to get me lynched by Canadians
But being in big-city Canada is just like being in Big-City America… almost.
But not quite. It’s like watching a non-HD television show on an HD tv. A non-HD show from the early 90s.
Not in a BAD way, like.
It’s just, you know, everything is a little more muted, and I don’t get as many of the references. But I still like it very very much (and, for the record, am currently watching a non-HD show from the mid-90s on an HD television. It’s terribly good).

8. Interesting difference
People in Canada (this part) seem to care more about Fair Trade than anywhere I’ve ever been in America. It is interesting.

9. There is still a mouse in Vancouver
But only one. I have not seen him again. If he has therefore agreed to us living separate lives and to live happily in the same general area but never see each other again, then I may agree to these terms and therefore agree to return to the city at a later date.

10. Vancouver is nice
Well done Vancouver.

…In England, where it is snowing.

But also here, where I have mainly been over the last few days:

This week, I have mainly been having my head in the clouds.

I skirted the outer white fluffy petticoats of London on Tuesday morning, and arrived in a Heathrow with no delays yet from the snow, four hours early for my flight.

Behind me, on the first flight, was a couple in their early-fifties, who complained about the antisocial business of other people daring to take their own (very well-behaved) children onto planes, before waxing soppy about how perfect their life together would be once he’d left his wife.

In San Francisco, I caught up with friends - and it was like I’d barely left them (which is, actually, pretty much the case) - before falling heavily asleep on the world’s comfiest sofa (though it could have been a dining table given the weight of the tiredness hat I was wearing by that point). In the morning, I took a little suitcase filled with neat working clothes and left a large empty one by the world’s comfiest suitcase, and went and got on a plane.

I did not, as it turned out, get fondled by the security people at the airport - although I’d been reading newspaper reports promising me a good fondling for the week beforehand. They did steal my chili sauce, though. The one that I’d forgotten was in my bag. They took my sauce, unpacked my bag, and didn’t even fondle me to make up for it. You just can’t get the service nowadays.

On the second plane, I flew south, still wearing a heavy winter coat and snowboots. The sun was shining on the pacific in some strange way that made the whole ocean glow with a golden orange light.

Then landed in Los Angeles, which was sunny and flat and unending, and looked a bit like this.

You can see the Hollywood sign in that photo. Or you would if you had magic, tiny eyes, the size of magical tiny gnat’s nostrils.

An hour after arriving there, on that, I boarded another plane, seated next to a man with tinted glasses, who was in a band. And had a hat, and an apparently unshakable belief that he was very, very cool. We flew north.

I’m very tired right now. You must excuse my apparent demastering of the English language. My thinky-muscle is sleeping, but my fingers haven’t quite stopped yet. And I wanted to make notes while I remembered things.

I picked up a Skymall catalogue on that plane. Apparently, I find, from emptying my bag, I’d picked one up from a previous plane as well. I’ve never bought anything from the damned Skymall catalogue. You can, however, thoroughly expect me to get a blog post out of one over the weekend. Or possibly out of both.

Two pens exploded on me on the plane. You might have thought I’d realise the second would, after the first, seeing as it was the same make, with the same ink, at the same altitude. But no, no, by that point I was either too addled by the altitude, or tumble-dried by the tiredness, to stop after the first one. So you’d be wrong. Or I would. I was wrong already, to be fair.

In Vancouver I saw a mouse. It was running along the street, looking quite happy, though a little jittered and nervy. And quite tired. Or perhaps that was just me. I might be projecting on to the mouse. It definitely was a mouse, though. Unless, being Canada, it was actually a little tiny bear. Or a beaver. Yes. it had a tail. So it was almost certainly a tiny, tiny beaver.

And, even though it has a mouse (just the one, at current standing), I am liking Vancouver a lot. I am liking very much the mountain at the end of my street, and the food I have been given, and the worky-type stuff I have come here to do.

I especially like the fact that there is a small flat padded square section of Vancouver that has been set aside entirely for the purpose of my snoring on it.

Which I will be going and doing. Right now.

Apologies for my incoherence.
I am three quarters asleep.
And one eighth comatose.
And my right leg’s gone dead.