Amber

I probably drink too much orange-coloured fizzy drink. We're talking a likely 2,409,000ml since I was 19, when a bout of glandular fever first sent me hunting pig-like for the truffles of artificial energy boosts. Obviously GF doesn't last 20 years, but frankly by the time it subsided completely I was 20, ergo an old man and in need of stimulants. I've drunk so much of it that I sometimes wonder if I should be like one of those classic fish-aliens of sci-fi cliche that get pushed around the world in their tanks having bubbly conversations with humans. Except, of course, my tank would be full of Irn Bru or Lucozade.

Orange coloured fizzy drinks that don't taste of orange, I should stress. No, I'm a slave to drinks that taste only of themselves. If it tastes even remotely like something that exists in the real, non-fizzy-drinks world, I'm not interested. Even if it's nice. Obviously I'm not interested in a drink that tastes like a hair brush, but then noone else is either. But someone out there would like a drink that tastes like a kumquat. It's not me. (while I'm at it, why are there not a wide range of tangerine-flavoured cordials? Did tangerines upset someone high up in the drinks industry? Maybe they're not very good at networking, or something.)

Lucozade - what does it taste of? Lucozade. It's a lucozade flavoured drink. Which is quite cleverly self-referential for a sugary liquid. It's practically post-modern. Or possibly even post-post-modern. Have we reached post-post-post-modern yet? Modernism was now so long ago that you feel we must have at least squared it by now. Otherwise how would we have Lucozade and Ant & Dec?

Sunday mornings are supposed to be for getting over hangovers. If you haven't got one it's almost as if you have to invent one. So I'm drinking Lucozade to get over the torpor of having done next to nothing yesterday. I feel so lethargic I'm thinking of applying for a job as a speed bump. It'll pass. Hand me my post-post-modern drink and I'll see you later.

What did you do during the war, daddy?

Tripping the light fantastic

It sums up the summer rather neatly when I wake up at 6am because my bedroom is filled with unmanageable quantities of sunlight. Why? Because it's the first time this has happened.

Admittedly I've only been there a week, hence my shying away from using the word "EVER" in large capitals at the end of that statement, but it's still fairly depressing that it's taken one 52nd of a year to get a sunny morning. I'm sure we'll get lots in January, except I'll have been in the office for an hour before they turn up.

Getting up at 6am because my brain has been infused with pure sunlight is a lovely way to start the day, but I'm fairly sure the darkness will have its revenge and I will be blearily bashing into bollards by 9pm. This could be awkward, since I'm off to watch a play at the Bridewell Theatre. The last time I did this I slept through 30% of the play (having recently arrived off a plane from Cambodia). If I'm not careful they'll ban me as a persistent snoring menace.

[they actually have these - my friends' enjoyment of Romeo & Juliet at the Bridewell was somewhat spoiled by someone (noone can confirm who) having a good old high decibel snooze in the lighting box throughout the final, emotionally traumatic half-hour of the show].

In fact, I may not have to wait until 9pm. The fluffy clouds of doom are already gathering around the watercooler and gossiping about how they plan to cover the sun and steal my light-filled soul. I'll be in a coma by lunchtime.

The Depths of the Swamp

This is not the best of days. It's half past seven at night, and I am probably less than halfway through the world's most depressing ambition: to clear a room known only as The Swamp.

I'm moving home - slightly involuntarily* - and gain access to the new property on Saturday morning, so obviously the sooner the various dampened fragments of my life are either boxed or disposed of the better. But many of them, the particularly damp ones, are hiding in a strange basement room - The Swamp. It is a desolation, a cube of cracks and flakes and drooping webs, of high rise slugs and a vague sensation of something tickling your neck. It is not a holiday destination, and as a day trip it sucks.

Still, I have a few hours to go, and if all that room is clear of the detritus of my existence by bedtime, I shall sleep soundly. As long as I haven't just moved it all onto my bed.

S.

* I decided to play hard-ball with my landlord over a 12% rent rise. Like killing Mandy Patinkin's father, beeg mistake.