I'm back for the weekend & I brought some sarcasm with me

It has occurred to me that this blog has been wallowing in negativity over the past few postings.

For this, I apologise. In real life I can assure you that I am not a negative and miserable person other than on those occasions when I leave the house and interact with other people or when I stay in the house and read newspapers or watch television. The problem is the world, which appears to be heading toward oblivion faster than I can type supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (it took me three attempts - shut up!)

First there is - global warming. Winter arrived here in Scotland this week, only 3 months later than it should have. This would normally be a good thing except i'm feeling sorry for all the birds that have just woken up to the fact that they are still in Scotland when they should in fact have been 9000 miles south feeding and breeding like the randy feathered freaks that they are or whatever it is that they do down there. However even my sympathetic nature is stretched to the limit by the million or so soft english folk who couldn't handle a couple of inches of snow and felt the need to recover from the horrible experience by taking a day off work. Why is it other countries can survive snowfall without it causing mayhem, but Britain and especially England falls apart?

Then there is - Terrorism. Pop Idol. Where will it all end? In one giant waterlogged karaoke contest between the leaders of Hamas and the Al-Qaeda wannabes, with Simon Cowell as the judge, that's where.

My problem, well one of many, is I care too much. I want a better world, a world where man can live in peace, safe in the knowledge that he will never have to listen to George Bush and Osama bin Laden dueting on I Got You Babe. I want to live long enough to see my beloved son Niall or daughter Nigella (neither yet born, and yes those were the only names I could think of at this moment in time) grow up and marry a 7ft supermodel (yes Nigella can do that too) with a 75-year-old mother who looks like Audrey Hepburn and has a spare apartment on a beach in Trinidad which she absolutely insists on giving to her father-in-law rent free for three months every winter. I want to be there in the Stade de France when Celtic lift the European Cup. Is it any wonder I feel adrift in a sea of hopelessness? Fortunately, whilst fighting this cold, I've had some 6 weeks now (can it still officially be a cold after refusing to budge for 6 weeks?), I have some of the week's papers sitting on my lap to read, so seeing as I have nothing better to do with my time I thought I'd spend an hour looking for positive news stories.

It's either that or I could spend the time watching America's Next Top Model on cable tv - my life is so exciting!

To my immense surprise it appears things aren't as bad as they look, and, to prove it, here are three heartening pieces of news that can surely give us all hope. Okay, two.

First, Britain leads the world league in usage of toilet paper. There's a world toilet paper league?, I hear you ask. Not exactly. But according to an organisation called the European Tissue Symposium (again there really is an organisation with that name, they even have a website - I checked and its boring (I sh*t you not), I think I should have switched on America's Next Top Model), each of us in this country uses 39lbs of toilet paper ever year. This is 110 loo rolls - two-and-a-half times the European average and 20% more than Americans. Personally, I am fed up of people running this country down and I am especially fed up of people from other countries running us down. In my admittedly limited experience of European travelling, French people are the worst. But the next time I am travelling in the south of France and hear some Frenchman slagging off Britain I will be able to look him straight in the eye and ask: "Comment propre est votre derriere?" Of course they might come back at me and say that their smelly backside isn't contributing to global warming, only they'd say so in French and my language skills are limited so i'll refrain from trying that sentence.

Anyway the next positive thing of the week is Kylie Minogue. Has there ever been a more inspiring Australian dwarf with enormous teeth than Kylie? To see her step out into the public spotlight after being 34-timed by her oily French boyfriend (there's a man whose derriere won't be very propre, I bet, although to be fair to him whilst fighting cancer scare she probably wasn't in the mood) was truly an uplifting sight. Good luck Kylie. We love you. Just don't make any more records. Please.

The third and final uplifting news of the week isn't uplifting at all to me, but I'm getting desperate now and if I hurry up with my typing I might just be able to watch ANTM on the one hour delayed feed of the cable channel whose name escapes me.

Mulberry is opening a shop in Glasgow. For those of you who have never heard of Mulberry, where have you been? It is a luxury leather goods shop selling wallets and trinkets and handbags for as much as £4000. Scarlett Johansson and Cat Deeley never shop anywhere else, apparently, apart from when they are looking to buy toilet roll.


Just what Glasgow needs; a luxury leather goods shop selling handbags for as much a £4000 a time - the sign of a truly civilised city. History isn't my strongest subject but I believe Gibbon's main point in the The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was that everything would have been fine if only Mark Antony had given planning permission to knock down the Colosseum and build a Mulberry's in its place.

Oops. Did that sound negative and miserable? Sorry. It wasn't meant to be. I blame my cold and running out of tissue paper and having to resort to toilet roll.

(note to self must use less brackets)