I hadn't listened to Queen's Innuendo album for a very long time... it's a hell of a lot better than I remember it, and I remembered it as being very good! Amazon's price of £7.99 would encourage me to buy it if I didn't already own a copy.

Hey Hugh and Sandra, did you know that there's supposed to be an apostrophe in your film title?.

No problems with these Xiao Xaio films - they use no punctuation - just plenty of stick man violence.

Sometimes I worry whether I'm a sciolist... is this question proof of my sciolism?

Got my car back! Yay... I'm mobile again - until the exhaust goes!

I feel sick. I had been very critical of a coffee whitener, used in the office, but I had never sampled it. Deciding that if I was to be truly critical, I should at least have tasted it, I put some in my first coffee of the day.

The product in question is "Coffee Compliment". I object to this product for two reasons. Firstly, its name - the word "compliment" means to be nice to someone, it does not mean to complete. In this case, the namer of the product almost certainly meant the homophonic "complement". Ignorant swine! Secondly, the contents of this coffee whitening product consists not of milk, so much as some milk proteins alongside glucose syrup and vegetable oils... in other words, the so called "compliment" is actually sugary lard - I call that more of an insult!

So, I am now on the outside of a spoonful of the stuff. I feel sick because it tastes disgusting (despite someone's protestations that it is, in fact, really nice and creamy) and I should have known better than to disturb my stomach with it. At least I can now now authoritatively say how disgusting this product is. If you feel like using some, my advice is to learn how to drink your coffee black!

Of course, it's conceivable that I may have become some sort of weirdo without realising it. One is always the last to know when personality faults develop. I may have become a dangerous, unstable soul, living on the edge of my own sanity. Alternatively, I may have had one too many coffee-a-chinos or lime flavour alco-pops.

Whatever my nature happens to be, I can only be clear of my intentions and aspirations. I want a future. I want a future where I am occupied and happy, where my life does not exist solely within the confines of a screen or an office, and where the people I choose to spend time with are the same people who would choose me as their companion. I want to be pleasant to everyone I deal with and for them to enjoy my company. I want to be a good friend and a tough adversary. I want to raise a solid family. Above all, I want to spread joy and bask in merriment.

The last 12 months have been phenomenally challenging. I've learnt a lot. I would never have believed it if someone had told me a year ago that I'd be planning to appear in a musical 7 days from now and that I'd also be planning to play the second full run through of a musical I'd co-written within that same timeframe. To (mis)quote a lyric from the latter musical, "This is a strange new world".

Looking back to my entry of a year ago, many of my thoughts above are consistent with what I wrote back then. I have been a lot more confident over the last few months - I've felt almost indestructable at times and I have come to accept that I'm too old not to act in an adult fashion when it comes to planning for the future. So, here's to the next 12 months... I hope they are as varied a tapestry as the last 12.

I'm somewhat under the influence... under the influence of lager, bacardi breezer and chicken soup... which means I'm likely to speak my mind.

I certainly spoke my mind to a certain person in Cuba Cuba, who refused to believe what I had to tell them. Still, I think I emphasised my point by saying - "I'm going to leave you with that thought... before you decide that I'm some sort of weirdo"

I couldn't take it any more... I broke down tonight.

Well, actually, my car couldn't take it any more and IT broke down. As I suspected, the alternator is playing tricks. I was a most placid break-downee... something to do with not giving a toss.

Thanks to Mal and Chris for what was a most successful world premiere of the musical masterpiece that's been brewing over the last 5 months. Note to self: listening to Les Miserables on the same day as playing through a musical can seriously affect the way you play every song.

Excellent website - The University of the Bleeding Obvious!

I received the following email today. It must be the best thing I've ever found in my inbox:

As a celebration of the Latin spirit, the hamster got out his banjo last night for a little love song - wait for the ending.

If muesli be the food of love, pass me the milk...

Were the archives working, you'd be able to check that this time last year, I wished Ol a happy birthday (well, you can see it now, but only because I linked it). Thankfully, in the intervening 12 months, I've managed to discover better ways of communicating with him than a random message on the front page of my website.

23 seconds on a bucking bronco last night... surely a new personal record!?

What a happy ending - Karyn is paid off!... of course I can't help but wonder whether she would have been better off working to pay her debt off, rather than begging.

Today's words are "appropreate" and "economize". While both could benefit from a change in their spelling, and though only one of them is spelt absolutely incorrectly (the other being simply an unacceptable variant), it's interesting to note that the word "economise" can be used "inappropriately"... at least it can if you're a sodding imbecile!. Rant over!

The belated weigh-in was worth the wait. I have -3 on last time, giving me a grand total of -56. I should be delighted...

Big thanks to Chris... the writing process of our musical may not be finished, but the conclusion of the first draft last night was a triumph!

I'm feeling a bit small... this is probably dramatic irony, since I'm yet to be weighed and will probably have gained mass since last time, a cheeky two weeks ago. However, I'm in loose clothing, and I can't help but miss the tensions in material that reminded me that I was, at least, physically present.

The highlight of my debating career was when I spoke in front of Clarissa Dickson Wright in Aberdeen yesterday. She judged a round I was in, and her feedback was very positive... she's now my favourite TV Celebrity Cook.

Today I had another gig, which you can find out about on my AshleyFrieze.co.uk site. The gig went well and I surprised myself by preparing for it as I did. I did the housework... the HOUSEWORK! Vacuuming, cleaning... cleaning a toilet is a great way to memorise lines! Or at least it would appear to be so, since I forgot not a single one of them!

I'm writing songs these days. I'm not claiming to be any good, but I'm trying to work out what makes a good song and a bad song. Perhaps one of the areas that interests me the most is the lyrics. To this end, I'd like to publicly swear about Daniel Bedingfield's abysmal goddamn excuse for a song otherwise known by me as that sodding piece of shit!. Read the lyrics - they're bloody awful... the singing is not too good as well. Having said that, the tune is almost not too bad...

It has too many references to heart and soul - proving the absence of them in the song-writing process. Try to avoid using the word "today" in any song - it rarely works, especially if you're trying to use it to make a rhyme - it's facile, childish and nasty! Too many uses of the word "life" and he only goes and rhymes it with "wife"... aaagh! Then "And I breathe you into my heart and pray for the strength to stand today"... WHAT!? Aaaaaaaaagh!!!!! Someone pass me a power tool it's time for emergency trepanning!

I am so cold... and puns about my surname do not seem to help!

It always used to make my laugh that Yoko Ono had made a film about her backside... in fact, I think she made a film called "bottoms", which was not specifically about anyone's backside. I found some info on it here and have quoted my favourite bit below:

Yoko on the Bottoms Concept:

"People's behinds have right and left and top and bottom. And each part moves separately. I thought it would be visually interesting to film close-up. Conventional movies have a background and part of the picture moves. In other words, there's always a stationary part in it. If you have close-ups of bottoms, the whole picture should move. Moreover, you can't control how your bottom moves, unlike your face, regardless of your intelligence. Cabinet ministers and laborers, beautiful women and ugly women are all equal when they take their clothes off. Their bottoms all have innocent looks beyond their control. I put an ad n the paper saying, 'Intelligent-looking bottoms wanted for filming. Possessors of unintelligent-looking ones need not apply.'

More of the London trip diary has made it online. I'm really trying to get shot of a pad of paper that I have sitting around covered in my scrawl from the trip. It's hard work to type it up, so I'll come back to it later... I know... but I'm so good at being lazy!

I'm a terrible diarist. This is why Blogger is a good thing. I have access to it from both work and home and I can add entries to this weblog with minimal effort... and it just works. I write what occurs to me, when it occurs to me and it's sorted.

On the other hand, I sometimes try to diarise mini-adventures I've had. This relies on my taking notes around the time, or writing up the story soon after my return from the adventure. It's rare that I complete such a diary. You'll find a variety of these incomplete adventures in the Incredible section of this site. I've just started a new diary. There's a chance that I'll be able to finish publishing all of it - primarily because it was written in long-hand and only covers a small time-frame. Having said that it is, in itself, an incomplete account of a longer trip, but I think it stands alone as a description of the journey I made between leaving work for the last time in 2002 and starting my Christmas activities in London.

The AshleyFrieze.co.uk site is now in a bit more shape - albeit almost a blank shape!