I am trying to update my blog every day at the moment, which is a project as doomed to failure as the poor coriander plant desperately seeking the limited light of the kitchen window.

Nevertheless, we persist!

The problem is that the days are so packed full of incident and life, and the desire to document every single detail is very strong in me, even though that is impossible as one would need to stop from experiencing and doing things every so often in order to write them down.

I really love hourly comics, where once a year online artists draw what they’re up to over the course of the day. I find the illustrated banality charming. But I suspect my readers – and I know you’re out there, like the aliens pretending to ignore Jodrell Bank – wouldn’t be impressed if I took up the same approach to blogging.

Today’s news is as follows. Now is the time to start playing breaking news music in your head.

1) Samira Ahmed likes my album! She’s been a lovely associate since she stumbled on my New Malden blog many moons ago. I really appreciate her both buying it AND tweeting about it, the kind of double whammy my other so-called friends could learn from [1].

2) It sounds like I might be setting up my own stand-up comedy night. This is both a terrifying and thrilling conceit, at this stage, that needs to be turned into an actual event for when we are actually allowed to have actual events.

There have been many terrible things about lockdown for so many of us, but one unexpected advantage is it has at least helped me stay in the present a little bit, rather than dwelling on the past and worrying about the future. Because, well, lockdown is a kind of eternal present, isn’t it? It’s hard to worry about the future when you’re not sure when it’s going to begin.

But now it’s getting a bit warmer and the humans are getting more optimistic, I need to think about what events I want to put on, and how to go about it. I think we can all agree that the world needs more laughs at the moment.

3) Our sketch comedy podcast is going to be rebroadcast on a community radio station. I find this tremendously exciting, but as with 2), this is a nascent thing rather than a big, details and posters announcement. But after the joy of hearing a song of mine played on the radio; it would be a similar pleasure to hear me pretending to be a pirate.

4) I did a helpful thing, and was rewarded with a sausage roll. This is the kind of society I like. It’s what Ursula Le Guin would have wanted.

5) It was also a frustrating day because my mind had been flirting around like a moth all day, and I’ve found it hard to make myself do tasks, like a dog who knows absolutely that his dog is calling him but has detected a really fascinating smell and frankly the human stuff can wait. I am hoping that tomorrow I will be more successful at achieving the boring, practical tasks I failed to do today.

6) I have new glasses!

[1] This is cod passive aggression, but it reads like actual passive aggression. Therefore, it made me laugh and I kept it in. Behold: the writing process!!