I put my friend in the ground today. As his ashes poured through the funnel they made a reassuring sound, like distant applause, or rain on a canvas wall.

When a loved one decides to annihilate themselves, it shakes up a snowstorm which never properly settles. When we took him in three years ago, after his second attempt, we knew it was a gamble. His overdose, in my old bedroom, last Halloween, had the depressing stink of inevitability.

We waited until Spring to do this. The roses we've placed at his plaque will have a chance at life now. At Golders Green Crematorium this morning, I’d murmured, ‘If you’re around, you bastard, send me a sign. Stop this incessant rain, which has now gone way past the depressing stage, and is now just really rather upsetting.’ By accident, design, or just good manners, the sun tiptoed out, and warmed our little ceremony for the duration.

'The thing is', he'd said, 'I'm very good at cutting words.' He'd taught me the trick, when I was trying to lose 50 words or so for an article. 'You can get rid of that one, for example.' He liked paring things down, reducing things to their essences.

Instinctively, I reached inside the casket and took handfuls of him up in both fists. Taking the long and very careful walk back to reception, I asked if they had an envelope I could pour him into, human sand leaking onto the office rug. They found a little plastic bag, the kind you might carry a goldfish back home from the fair in. I shook the middle-aged registrar’s hand with Kabuki-white palms.

Afterwards, we limped down the Finchley Road to the Refectory pub, for some reminiscing. At one stage, the Man in the White Suit, Slayer of Hamiltons, popped in. A rumpled figure, happy to pose for photos. As the barwoman later told us, Mr Bell pops in every day to have a Pinot Grigio, and to wait for the No 102 bus. It seemed appropriate. Before becoming a respected TV producer, my friend was a brilliant young political speech-writer at the House of Commons. The worlds of broadcasting and politics met head on again today. Charming synchronicity.

After that, things get hazy. At some point my friend and I ended up in a Japanese restaurant off the Tottenham Court Road, lured in by the karaoke sign outside. A drunken office party was in full swing. ‘Hello’ I said, ‘Hope you don't mind us gatecrashing your karaoke party.' And launched into Dock of the Bay. ‘This is for our friend’ I cried, ‘who loved Otis.’ My friend dangled the bag before the assembled company and waggled it. ‘What’s that then?’ shouted an office boy. ‘Dog food?’ ‘It’s our mate’ we said. ‘In a bag.’ And during the abrupt silence that followed, legged it.

On the train back home tonight, I placed the little bag in my lap, while the tipsy girl sitting opposite me grabbed her boyfriend round the waist. ‘Can I be the love of your life?’ she grinned. ‘Oh, sure!’ said the man. And she kissed him, and licked his face, like a strawberry ice-cream.

Maudlin old rhododendron-rustler is suing somebody every year

Pervy rock imp needs coitus everyday

Largely ubiquitous little ululator

Mainly a dreadful old narcissist, never agreeable

Passionately livid and noisy bloke

Christ, has everything rotted?!

Stunningly tactless, insanely narcissistic geordie

Brimstone orator bruv, marijuana-absorbing reggae legend. Erm, yes.

Jesting old ham, now loves yawningly documenting own navel

Beautifully odd noises in variously enigmatic repose

Kooky and tremulous enigma blows us so high

*****************

Over to you :)

Warning: This post contains swearing.

Just returned from the hospital, where I played the Profanity Waltz with the consulting surgeon.

You'll know the Profanity Waltz; a phrase I've just invented to describe the process by which two strangers begin to introduce swear words into a conversation to try and make a connection, or put the other party at ease.

However, the Profanity Waltz is a two-tiered process: as conversation goes on, each party subtly takes it in turns to either match the previous swear word in offensiveness, or up the stakes a little.

The surgeon kicked things off early with a 'Bloody.' A few minutes later, I volunteered a 'Sod.'

15-all.

Three minutes later, he lobbed over an 'Arse'. 30-15.

I gave myself a minute to recover, before lobbing back a 'Piss'. (The actual phrase in question being "Like Satan pissing in a lake of fire.")

So, 30-love.

A professional to the last, the surgeon suddenly got fully on his haunches and blurted out this diamond-studded classic: "10 percent of fuck all is fuck all."

40-30.

And, actually, Match point.

There's only one direction you can go after that. And, sadly, I bottled it.

Game, set and match to the NHS.

This is hilarious... ly awful.

http://www.splitting-images.com/celebrity_list.html

You can imagine the agency being run by Merchant and Gervais, in a sitcom.

Who's the worst-alike, do you think?

At the behest of Gatz, am posting this again in its own thread.

It's absolutely brilliant.

http://www.anagramtubemap.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/

Like the best things on the Interweb, it's a ridiculously simple, 'Why-Didn't-I-Think-Of-That' idea, beautifully executed. Hampstead Heath being a 'Hate Shamed Path' is a particular favourite.

Londoner or otherwise, what does your local anagrammised rail station say about your area? Can you come up with any better anagrams? Any other favourite examples of uniquely stylised tube maps?

Fraser's Thursday mail-out is generally a thing of wonder. But this? This is genius.

http://leasthelpful.com/

Hurrah for Sherlock! And for Mark Gatiss, an elegant, kind and charming man who, 10 years ago, at a book launch, signed the complete published League scripts for a, um, very refreshed fan - not once, but twice, in the space of 45 minutes: "Ah, hello again! I think I've signed this for you already...?" "Yes! But I enjoyed your signature so much I thought I'd get it a second time."

I was going to talk a little bit about Arcade Fire's Intervention from 2007's Neon Bible. "Awww" I said to myself, back then. "That sounds Christmassy!" Before I'd heard the lyrics, obviously.

I was going to offer my sub-Greil Marcus theory on Intervention. About how it must be one of the most terrifyingly prescient songs ever written. Historically, it lies at a precise intersection between post-War trauma and financial ruin. Win Butler's radar appears to have anticipated the coming Crash - karmic payback for the Middle East, perhaps - and the timely lyrics seem to bear this out ("The useless seed is sown"; "There are some debts you'll never pay").

As my Canadian aunt points out, Canadians do a really good line in malaise.

So, I was going to suggest Intervention as the unofficial anthem for 2011. And also say that if, as some of us suspect, the unspecified Bad Thing that's going to happen to the UK is going to happen in 2012, then: fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy ride!

But sod it. I've got some good news for a change. I've been holding off posting this, as I'm mindful that some here are facing redundancy in the New Year. I'm so sorry. I hugely hope your fortunes change.

But after the kind of year I've had (break-ups / suicides / generally screwed over), I can only think God must be a fan of the naffest and most contrived Docu-soap 'Journeys'.

After 2 years unemployment, I start work on 9 January, for a magazine.

More than that, on the 5th Jan I've a job interview with a well known listings mag for a major editorial post. Down to the last 8 people for interview, which is extraordinary and fantasy land in itself, but made even better (and a fraction more relaxed) by knowing I'll have the buffer of a real-life job to fall back on if I don't get it.

Dunno how long this luck will last. Dunno how long this *job* will last. But it'll make things slightly more comfortable in the short term.

I'm seeing out 2011 tonight with my mum, who's similarly taken all this filthy year had to chuck at us and then some. Enormous hugs to those suffering in their own way during what has proved, for quite a few, to be a deeply appalling 12 months.

Huge thank yous to those who gave support, comfort and friendship during this time - it meant, and means, more than you could know. This Blog is filled with warm and decent people. You.

So. Happy New Year. May 2012 treat you with love, kindness and respect.

xxx

Look at this man.

Is he not a prince among men?

Actually, he'd doubtless argue that he was, rather, a magnificent Queen among men. He really was.

Following an illness, Maurice Huggett, owner of the Phoenix Theatre Bar, Charing Cross Road, and true Soho legend, has died.

I'm sure some of you will be acquainted with the Phoenix / AKA Shuttleworths; a hive of hangovers, teeming with sozzled actors, out-of-work soap stars, comedians, musicians, writers and assorted hacks, tumbling over one another in a delirious heap, as opposed to engaging in anything so cynical as 'networking'. Mostly because, after a night in the Phoenix, you'd be hard-pressed to remember anybody's name.

Yet this remarkably warm and welcoming dive is about as far removed from The Groucho, or the rarefied environs of Soho House as it's possible to get. Probably 'cos it's actually free to get in before 8pm, leading to an interesting mix of regular punters and faces. I remember the night Jack White and his new best buddy Jude Law popped down, while everyone studiously ignored them - no mean feat, as the place was, typically, rammed to the rafters.

For a while in my life, all roads led inexorably to The Feen. I've met and made so many friends here, and commenced pleasantries with - and broken up with - a couple of girlfriends too. Also held my 40th birthday party here. Ugh.

Some sample memories: an hilariously awful blind date with a novelist in 1999; watching a completely off-his-gourd Simon Munnery falling *upstairs* into the street; ordering a mescal, with worm inside, tearing the worm in half, in the process squirting the contents of its innards in my face, and accidentally dropping my half in the ashtray. Then going to the gents and thoroughly washing it under the tap, before bringing it back to the table to eat it properly again. It's that kind of place.

Through it all, Maurice reigned supreme (or like a Supreme), dancing, pouting and gliding around the hubbub in a vast and never-ending collection of legendary waistcoats to a piped soundtrack of Fiddler on the Roof, offering advice, comfort, support, and an inexhaustible supply of friendship and queenly asides. In Quentin Crisp's phrase, "one of the stately homos of England."

Even if you'd not been back for years, the minute you walked in again he would tightly embrace you (and more than likely effect a cheeky grope) like the Prodigal Boozer you were.

Old-school Soho, or the received version of it, is long dead. But there were (and still are) a few characters around who acted as conduits for its naughty, scurrilous - and fiercely libertine spirit. I'm really going to miss him.

Maurice Huggett, 1945-2011. R.I.P. There is not a waistcoat large enough to wrap around your heart.

Well, that was a good shift.

In the face of widely publicised nationwide strikes and walk-outs, a highly embarrassed top brass stepped in, and we've all just been paid an emergency, non-taxable hand-out, in cash. (We'll wait and see if any additional monies earned come through too.)

After that, the night went from strength to strength, as evinced by the following conversation with a young Bangladeshi lad, sorting mail beside me.

"So, is you full-time then, bruv?"
"Who me? No mate, I'm just a Christmas casual, like yourself."
"Oh, you is a graduate then, innit."
"Ha... about 20 years ago."
"Eh?"
"Well, exactly how old do you think I am?"
"26? 30, maybe?"

I gave him my last Rowntrees fruit pastille in gratitude.

(Please press play on the Youtube video and then read this simultaneously. Go on. It’ll be a laugh.)

I’m going back into work tonight. Tonight, and every night until Christmas Eve, as I agreed when I signed my contract. A contract I now know not to be worth the paper it was printed on. The pay dispute incurred after a soon-to-be-privatised Royal Mail hired the cheapest, nastiest, most incompetent recruitment agency it could, has now become a national news scandal. For the privilege of working for minimum wage and being treated like scum by pinched-faced hirelings with additional duties, the Christmas Casuals and I are not going to be paid – perhaps ever.

But I am still going back into work tonight.

I am 41 years old. I’ve worked all my life until the last two years, during which I’ve been pretty much continuously unemployed after being made redundant, along with some brilliantly talented colleagues. There’s been the odd freelance writing gig, but it doesn’t pay the bills. All I want to do is work. And that is what I intend to do, cycling 10 miles across town in foul weather in order to do so.

Not for Royal Mail, not for David Cameron’s bland, branded, PowerPoint-presented vision, not for any boss. Just for me, and the admittedly dimming sense of pride I feel in doing a day’s work; in feeling my back ache after some manual labour; and, yes, probably like old Boxer the horse, in feeling halfway alive simply by doing so.

And that is why I’m going back into work tonight.

For the last week, I've been working nights as a Xmas casual for the Royal Mail, ensuring letters to Santa are distributed swiftly and efficiently throughout the capital.

Despite the fact I live just 10 minutes from the sorting depot I specified in the application form, the tinpot recruitment agency the soon-to-be-privatised RM hired this year have placed me in another depot altogether, 10 miles across London. That's a 10 mile bicycle ride there, and 10 miles back again. By the time I begin my shift, I'm absolutely knackered. (Particularly after last night's stinging hail, drenching rain, and uphill gale.)

Couldn't I take the tube? Well, sure - but it's expensive, even with an Oyster card. It'd be half my wages (minimum wage, £6 per hour) wiped out before I knew it. And yes, I've tried repeatedly contacting the recruitment agency. They simply will not answer calls or emails.

I've been writing up my daily experiences on my Facebook wall, as a series of vignettes, and thought I'd share them with you too. As a friend says, "For all the stories about how desperate unemployment can be (and is), little is written about how miserable and dispiriting this kind of poorly-paid casual work can be, and how it really is no kind of substitute for real work. I fear that this kind of thing is the future for an awful lot of people."

DAY 1:

At 3am, I woozily ask a truculent line manager if I can have a 5 minute walk around the block, cos I'm falling asleep. Denied. "Some people have come in from Kent!!" he berates me. Yeah, but I bet they didn't cycle in, in sub-zero temperatures. For another thing, Kent's, like, about 10 miles away. I guess geography isn't the Royal Mail's strong point.

DAY 2:

Back again from the 'Prison': cages everywhere, miserable screws, strictly regimented breaks, terrible food, and everyone's wearing orange. Tonight, I offer to help fellow mail sorters locate missing postcodes (as envelopes invariably leave them off), with the aid of my iPod's London A-Z app. *Silence* *Shrugs all round* Me, embarrassed: "Well, just thought it might help..." *More silence* *More shrugs all round* RM: officially not giving a toss about you.

DAY 5:

A crate of envelopes explodes on the sorting desk beside me, nearly taking my hand off. I've been caught sending a single 'goodnight' text at midnight. I hadn't even know it was verboten. "I expect you to keep your phone in your pocket!" the line manager with the wispy moustache and comb-over thunders. Whereas I expect you to swivel on this until your rectum caves in, my good man.

His co-manager's a howlingly offensive little witch, who looks like she used to carry out executions for the Khmer Rouge, and misses it. At 1am she waddles over and wordlessly dumps a mountain of envelopes bound for Australia or something on my desk. "Ah, no, hang on" I say, when I discover her mistake, "You've brought me the wrong pile." The human toad silently jabs her finger in the direction she wants, um, me, to take them back to, while she goes back to standing in a corner and glowering at enemies of the people.

Towards the end of the shift, we discover there's a serious backlog of payments. Far from being paid a week in arrears, we've now been told we may not get paid for anything up to 2 months after the gig finishes, in three weeks.

Hey, I'm not complaining. I'm just grateful to have some work at 41 years of age.

DAY 8:

The little witch has ramped up her unpleasantries, hurling crates directly at people then stomping off to glare at invisible spiders.

On my left sits K, 21, who wants to work with difficult kids. A former difficult kid herself, who left school at 15, she wants to study for a diploma, but was informed by the authorities that the only way she could afford to go to college was if she got pregnant. She recently turned down a job in a Montessori nursery after being offered just £4 an hour. "My cousin is a postman here" she tells me. "Says out of all the Mail depots in London, this is the most horribilist."

On my right is G, mid-30s, who trained to be a nurse, but is finding it impossible to get a placement in a hospital. Not like the old days, she says.

Later, I pluck an envelope addressed to 'David Cameron, 10 Downing Street', out of the sorting sack. It has no stamp on it.

In these times of crisis and despair, and especially at Christmas, we must take comfort in the words of the eponymous Spaceman (aka the angel Gabriel) in Chris de Burgh's 1976 hit A Spaceman Came Travelling, and his vitally important message for the world:

LA LA-LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA,
LA LA-LA LA LA LA LA,
LA LA-LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA,

LA LA LA.

I'm not sure what the odds are on this one, but maybe the Massive's mathematicians could tell me?

About a month ago my mum was travelling in Jordan, when due to a mix-up, she ended up in a different hotel from the one she'd originally booked. She stayed for a night, enough time to befriend the owner, who at one point complained about her bad back. As my mum has some medical expertise, she gave her some physio for it, and left the following morning, catching a taxi back to the airport and the UK.

Rewind.

Back in August, thousands of miles away, your correspondent is taking one of his endless cycle rides into oblivion, to get over the pain of being dumped. One night, returning from Walton-on-Thames, about 20 miles from home, my old iron war horse of a bike finally gives up the ghost and dies. At 4am. In Kingston. A long way from London. I'm utterly distaught. The streets are deserted. If a cab doesn't come along, and soon, it's going to be a very long walk back to town.

Fast-Forward.

Two weeks ago, the Jordanian hotel owner, visiting London, treated my mum to lunch, to hook up again, and thank her for the physio. Over the course of the meal, they exchanged some family details, and what have you.

Rewind.

Back in Kingston, back in August, I've finally flagged down the only black cab prepared to stop for me, and help ferry my wretched bicycle back to the Capital. It's a kindly, middle-aged Arab guy, and as we have a long journey back to London, we get chatting - about ourselves, our careers, our names, families, my mixed-race heritage (I'm half Arabic) etc. As he drops me to my door, he accepts only what I have in my pocket - rather less than the actual fare would have been, and furthermore, spends the next 20 minutes attempting to fix my bike himself, gamely muddying his hands on the greasy chain.

Fast-Forward. Yesterday. Mid-afternoon.

My mum receives an email from her new friend, containing some news neither of us will ever forget. Last week, while chatting with her husband, who occasionally works in London as a cab driver, she mentioned my mum and myself to him etc. And he suddenly exclaimed, "My goodness! I wonder if..."

Hi,
I hope you're okay.

On Saturday afternoon, my mum and I discovered my mate, her lodger, lying fully dressed on his bed in what used to be my teenage bedroom, having decided this whole Life thing wasn't really for him anymore.

I hope you never have to make a discovery like this yourself. I can basically tell you: it's not a lot of fun.

He'd tidied his room first, and laid everything out in neat piles. This is typical; as well as being tremendously funny and smart, he was also an incredibly kind, generous and thoughtful man. So much so, he died after my mum returned from her 4 month vacation; as I live in the downstairs flat, I don't see him all that often, and after splitting with my ex this July, and being similarly unemployed, we pretty much confined ourselves to our respective quarters.

There is a lot to sort out. He hasn't left a will. There was nothing to leave. The paperwork will be a nightmare.

The police separately grilled me and mum for hours about our relationship with the deceased, and kept us under virtual house arrest, due, as they said, to a "suspicious death", while my friend was lying upstairs for hours. Could I leave the house for a second for a breath of fresh air? No, you may not. Sit there, don't move. Eventually, someone conceded I was probably free to leave, about half an hour after they'd spotted the pumpkin-faced inquisitors climbing into their car and driving away. The coroners finally marched in, without a word, to take my friend's body away around 1am. Good work, lads.

I'm just hoping we did the right thing by making his last two years as comfortable as we could. We took him in after his previous sectioning and life-ending bid. I was determined he shouldn't fester away in a hostel, and so we just tried to give him a safe, comfortable and peaceful environment in which he could get back on his feet.

I'm incredibly glad that the last significant encounter I had with him was last Tuesday, when he offered to give me some of his dole money after I'd moaned on Facebook that I was now poorer than I've ever been in my life. I thanked him profusely, told him I didn't need it just yet, but might see him again in a couple of days. And then I hugged him. I cannot tell you how glad I am that I did that. I just can't tell you.

I'm going to try to go to bed now; more productive than just crying endlessly and staring at the walls, which has become something of a default position. He may now be at peace, but I don't think I will be for a long time. Unfortunately, I cannot sleep, because I cannot stop crying.

I want to thank a tiny handful of people who have been in touch, because it means so much, my God, so much. (If ever you're in doubt about calling, texting or emailing someone who you know is in a right old bloody mess - please, do it. They will be more grateful than you'll ever know.)

Anyway, I want to dedicate this performance to my friend, because he loved it so very much. Wherever you are, and whoever you are, I hope you can hear this, and I love you.