It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. Similarly, it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a school teacher in possession of a copy of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, must be in want of a good slapping. After all, how is Austen relevant to the modern student, or even the modern world? It's a book presented to school children to scare them, to breed into them a fear of reading, of literature. Eat your peas, children, or Jane Austen will come and get you.

I dare say that things have changed since I was a young'un, though. I dare say that these days children aren't faced with a reading list, to be followed up by a series of comprehension exercises. After all, one should aim to intimidate students, rather than entice them. It's two hundred years old, for goodness' sake. Why do we need to read it?

We don't need to read it. We don't want to read it. We're not going to read it. Blah blah blah end of civilisation as we know it.

Jane Austen needs a little introduction. Teachers know her history - students don't. Students look at the book as a two hundred year old heap of words rather than a literary masterpiece. Faced with Austen, teenagers don't think 'oh great, a challenge', they think 'oh bugger this, I'm off down the pub.' They're not going to read the book, get sucked in, and become entranced by its charms. That's not how their brains are wired. In other words, they need context. And so, as a public service, here is the one paragraph guide to why Jane Austen is worth reading.

Jane Austen is a complete bitch. Under a veneer of politeness, she paints a world full of grotesques, and places at the centre a flawed character who you like because she is incredibly sarcastic. She writes about her time, naturally, but she's writing about the hell of families, and how awful parents are. It's writing about the nineteenth century - but it's not a historic document, it's a very thinly disguised piss-take. Remember that as you read it.

Last night, Thornton's Restaurant in Portobello, Dublin closed its doors for the last time. Reputed to be the best restaurant in Dublin, and boasting two Michelin stars, it was the end of an era. Mr Twinky and I were there.

With a restaurant with that sort of reputation, you want to be able to leave yourselves in the hands of the chef, to get his recommendation. So we went for the fixed price surprise menu. Different for every table. You've got to love that. None of your 'we're catering for 400 so that's 400 individual steak and onion pies' nonsense. Our menu chosen for us. Now, blogger ate my original post about this, with individual comments on the individual courses. Let's just say that it was fantastic. This is what we ate.

• Seared scallop on a pea juice
• Sweet smoked salmon with cauliflower mash and cucmber puree
• Terrine of foie gras and rabbit with a cep sauce
• Turbot with caviar, roe and lime leaf, in a rich butter sauce
• Champagne sorbet in a glass of champagne
• Veal with celeriac mash, portobello mushroom, and a selection of vegetables
• Summer fruits with shortbread
• Hot chocolate tart with vanilla cream and raspberries
• Coffee, calvados, and petits fours

Perhaps it was because it was their last night, they were cleaning out a fridge full of leftovers or something.

Clearly, though, this was a world class restaurant. I just hope it keeps its character when it reopens in a more central location in a month's time.

Don't blink. You might miss something.

Now, I'm probably not allowed to mention this, but I haven't signed anything to say otherwise. We're pimping out our flat to a major multinational company. Tomorrow, they're bringing a few stray actors, and a camera or two, and they're making themselves at home in our flat. By the miracle of modern technology, within a brief space of time, this will mean a small amount of cash for ourselves, and that our flat will be visible all over Ireland. People will look at the Indian throws that we use to disguise the threadbare bits of our suite and go 'That doesn't really go with the sideboard, does it?' People will look at the floor in the bathroom and go 'Tish,' and people will want to buy the product because they aspire to having attractive pieces of art on their walls like what we do.

This film has been in development hell for what seems like an age. It's the clash of two great American icons.

Superman, the man of Steel, is a man of action, a man who although he is not American fights the great American fight. Batman is almost his opposite, a dark knight, a man with no super powers, a detective. Night and day, one might say. Indeed, it's been played that way in a number of comics where the duo appear together. Theirs is a typical Grudging Mutual Respect story.

Transferring this to celuloid might be seen as a no-brainer, given the box-office attraction. But, who should be cast? Obviously, not Americans.

The current rumour is that Englishman Jude Law will be the square-jawed Superman, while Dublin boy Colin Farrell will play Batman.

It's a funny phenomenon, really. Everybody has one. The embarrassing uncle. The one who did a party turn fifteen years ago when he was pissed, and everyone thought it was funny at the time, and made the mistake of laughing. Maybe once or twice you asked him to do it again. And now, every time he has as much as a half of shandy there he is, standing on the table telling that joke about the rabbi, the rabbit and Hayden Christiansen's nipple, or whatever the party trick happened to be. It's awful. The joke isn't funny any more - it's too close to home, too near the bone, and besides you've heard it so many times before. And the uncle - he used to be well liked and respected within the family. Now he's just a joke. A victim of his own success. Well - I hope you're proud of yourself.

So last night, I went to see Eddi Reader and Boo Hewerdine in concert. The setting was - well, it was a dark smoky room, full of people and alcohol and heat. A warm snug of a place, which also happens to be five minutes walk from our flat.

Boo Hewerdine opened. He's not well known, which is a real shame. His group, The Bible, had a couple of hits in the late eighties, both of which he performed. I was slightly surprised to find myself singing along. These days I know him better as someone who writes &/or co-writes a lot of Eddi Reader's material, and who performs with her. Nonetheless, it was good to see him on his own.

About ten, Eddi herself arrived on the tiny stage, and launched into her set. Now, in 1989, she was huge. Her band, Fairground Attraction, was at number one for ages with the annoying (and I mean truly annoying, in the sense of me saying that I loathed it) Perfect, now a stalwart of Karaoke and the occasional advert. Of course, they couldn't follow it up, and there was something of an implosion. Fairground Attraction disappeared from public view, and a few years later, Eddi appeared as a solo artist. Her mainstream career had a couple of false starts, and never really took off in the way that it deserved. She built a loyal fan base, had a couple of minor hits, and eventually parted company with major record labels, and became an independent artist - a move which she says really suits her. She's overcome that awful stigma that hits many bands after they have a huge hit, that they can't top, and she's found her niche, and she's damn comfortable there.

All of which meant that rather than playing to huge stadiums where you wouldn't catch me dead, I could see her in my local pub. The gig had a wonderful impromptu air to it; it didn't seem to be planned, and they seemed quite happy to perform more or less anything from Eddi's repertoire based on shouts from the audience. Two vocalists (Eddi and Boo), three guitarists (Eddi, Boo and Colin Reid), and an audience enthralled.

And, about ninety minutes into her set, Eddi introduced the song that for her is the 'Embarrassing Uncle' - the one huge success that could never be followed up. "Perfect", blues style. And the place went wild. Far from embarrassing, far from loathsome. Fantastic.

I think that I caused more confusion than I meant to. I certainly attracted more interest than I meant to.

I mean, it's a simple enough mistake to make. You go into a shop, you ask them for a duvet, they say 'certainly sir, how large?', you reply with an answer that is - by most people's definitions - completely wrong, and you go home happy, but with a duvet that fits neither your bed or your bedding. It would, perhaps, cover a small country.

It's an easy enough mistake to make. Looking around the shop, after all, half of the duvets are super king size. This despite the fact that it's almost impossible to buy a super king size bed. Go figure.

So there's a no refund, no replacement policy. I can understand the reasoning behind that, but I've just spend a couple of hundred Euro (because these things aint cheap, you know), on essentially a useless duvet. So we did what anyone sensible would do. We sold it on to a friend, and on Thursday, I bought a new, smaller duvet.

My trip back was a little more exasperating. Buying the wrong size of duvet was easy. Buying one the right size was exasperating, mainly because of the paperwork that the woman in the queue in front of me was going through. It seemed that she'd bought a duvet, got it home, found out it was the wrong size and brought it back, not realising that there was a no-refund policy. Poor soul. But they gave her a refund nonetheles...

The dining room of the St Stephen's Green club was painted a deep red. Three large windows looked out over the green itself, and the sound of street chatter and the lazy rhythm of hoofbeats echoed in through the open windows. We took our places around a polished oak table, and waited for our wine and our dinner to arrive.

The food was quite delicious, and with the lubrication of a plentiful supply of wine, the conversation began to flow more freely.

"So how long have you two been together?"

"Just over three years? How many children do you have?"

"Two."

"So how long have you identified as a bisexual?"

And so the evening wore on. As one o'clock approached, the evening looked to be winding down. Although by now all six of us were firm friends, John and Stephanie had to go home to let their baby sitter get away, and there was still a healthy amount of wine to be drunk.

So John, Stephanie and Mr Twinky went in the first taxi, with Katharine, Peter and myself following a short while after in a second. We clattered through unfamiliar streets, admiring new landmarks.

And there was more wine, and there was whisky, and while there was no dancing, there was a small game that I played.

As John and Mr Twinky looked on, I walked to the far end of the communal garden, and stood behind a tree. The tree was slender, and dawn was close upon us, so the white of my shirt stood out and made me far from invisible. I waited until I could hear Mr Twinky laugh, and then I moved to hide behind the next tree, and a third. And, fuelled by liquor as we were, this was amusing.

As dawn rose, we spoke of returning home, to sleep in our own bed, and nurse our hangover in familiar surroundings. And around six, we returned. There was nobody there to welcome us, to berate us for the lateness of the hour, to force us to drink large amounts of water. Instead, there was a small amount of sleep, followed by a larger amount of sleep, and happy regrets.

Old Patrick raked the tiny circles of paper together with his hands and let them fall into the plastic-lined hollow of the bin. When the base of the lining was thinly covered his face lapsed into darkness but, as he set about punching holes in more paper, he was forced into the light again by the faint jangling of the front door bell. He was a middle aged man, but old before his time.

"Oh Hello There, Ms O'Connor"

Ms O'Connor strode into the lobby of the Stephen's Green Club, her three gentleman friends walking behind her. She took no notice of the fact that the stucco was peeling near the top of the walls, or the cracks in the glass roof. Nor did she mention to Old Patrick that her name was not O'Connor. This was her second home, it seemed.

After signing in her guests ("I hope you don't mind, but I've put you down as John's wife,"), we were led into the main stair well, and from there through to the back stairs which we took to reach the member's bar on the first floor.

The club had an air to it, as though it had only recently discovered the miracle of electricity. A subdued feel, of my youth in my grandparents' house, or perhaps of a writer like Joyce. The air was heavy and brown, and the member's bar was akin to a sitting room, albeit one dominated by the sort of makeshift bar that was common at the time.

Katharine quietly took charge, as John and Stephanie joined our group. Old Patrick was back downstairs, and young Patrick, the barman, was nowhere to be seen.

"I'll get you a gin and tonic," she said, heading back into the body of the club.

There was a dry hush over the room, the sort of hush that one would normally expect to feel through a smoky room, through age-stained flock wallpaper. John and Stephanie and Peter spoke amongst themselves, remeniscing about shared experiences. They were all in the medical fields, it seemed, a far cry perhaps from the worlds of architects and insurance that we inhabit. Even Mr Twinky, often the most conversational of gentlemen seemed quiet and trapped, seeking a way into the free flow of the exchange.

Katharine shook her head. She had returned quietly, and stood in the doorway, framed carefully. It was, she explained, a nightmare. Old Patrick couldn't leave his post, and Young Patrick was nowhere to be found. She had, she continued, half a mind just to slip behind the bar herself. A few minutes later, Old Patrick followed her, wearily pushing open the door.

"Has he been up yet?"

"No"

We were served by Old Patrick. Young Patrick arrived later, with our menus and our served us our second round of unmeasured gins.

As we went down to dinner, our conversation remained stilted and stumbling

...to be continued

It was Katharine who introduced the Stephen's Green Club to us. She had a membership courtesy of her father, it seemed. Every time we saw her we'd discuss the place in hushed tones. She was recently made up to a member, she said, and it was held up as - frankly - the place to go, with her friends Peter, John and Stephanie. But when we arranged a visit, dinner if you will, Katharine was forced to cancel, and our spirits were crushed.

Everyone was incredulous when it was reported that the dinner had been rescheduled for last Saturday night. Nonetheless it was true.

A spirit of anticipation diffused itself between us. We had no idea what to expect from the club. Would it be shiny and new, like the American Club in Hong Kong, full of attentive young chinese men, softly spoken and bearing infinite trays of diet cola? Or would it be a last bastion of the Dublin of Joyce, a Dublin glimpsed from time to time, populated by grimy boys and fierce and beautiful girls? It did no harm to anticipate, we thought. The truth of the discovert, I reflected, could not be found by sitting at my desk, skimming through the world on a pallid screen: the truth had to be sought.

Saturday came round at last, and we made up our mind to make something of the day. With Mr Twinky, I planned a day shopping. We started off at Arnotts, where we bought the infinitely large duvet that would sleep four easily, and progressed from there to the cinema, where Mr Twinky bought us in to Scooby Doo.

The first stage of the plot over, we made our way back home, happy and full of anticipation of the evening's excitement. All the branches of the tall trees were gay with little green leaves, and the sunlight slanted through them onto the paving. I was very happy.

When we had been sitting at home, ready, for five or ten minutes, Katharine and Peter arrived. We made a fine group - we three in our suits, and Katharine in her evening gown as we strode through the tourist-packed streets to the Green. We spent a while walking about the streets, watching the working of cranes and engines, and being shouted at by beggars. But as we walked, work and home seemed to recede from us, and their influences upon us seemed to wane. We were going to the Stephen's Green club. At length, we rang the bell and waited for admission to the halls.

...to be continued

Afterwards, with a sigh, she rolls herself across the bed and reaches instinctively for a cigarette. In the dark, she forgets the strangeness of her surroundings until she feels the unfamiliar surface beneath her hand. She pulls the sheet around her, leaving her lover cold but uncomplaining, and tiptoes from the room, as though fearful of waking him.

There must be a fag here somewhere. He's a smoker - she could taste it on his lips. Maybe in his jeans, over by the door, where he stepped out of them, laughing. There's a crushed packet in his back pocket, and a lighter. His wallet's in the front, and she takes it over to the kitchen window, so that she can leaf through it by the light from the street lamp across the road.

She thinks that it's odd that it's only now that she finds out his name - David. Five pieces of plastic tell her that. There's four hundred pounds in here, which she thinks is odd. She takes it nonetheless, before she returns the wallet to his pocket.

There's no sign of life from the bedroom, and she doesn't want to be here in the morning. So she starts to get dressed, and leaves the flat as soon as she's decent, fixing her blouse in the cold lift on the way back down to earth. She's never done this before, and the fear and exhilaration keep her awake until the nervous dawn.

British Television, I used to proclaim proudly, is the best in the world.

I was stating this from Hong Kong, of course, where I was living in a world of imported programs on Star TV, or TVB Pearl, and commuting to the mass-channel heavens of five star hotels where I could watch all of the HBO that I wanted. I genuinely believed that it was true.

Mind you, I was living in a country where movies were punctuated with adverts at greater frequency the longer the movie went on. Important speeches punctuated by warnings about the fraud frog - or else, the other way around. But it gave me a chance to consider the differences, and the similarities between the two main sources of English language broadcasting.

• News coverage
  There's a tabloidness in both markets. Main bulletins are pretty much uniform in their lightness. There's a middle-range of news coverage in both markets, characterised by serious presenters. The main difference comes at the top end - shows like America's Sixty Minutes, or the UK's Newsnight. One of these is serious, respected journalism. And the other is lightweight pap. And annoyingly, Sixty Minutes is extremely highly regarded lightweight pap. Maybe it was worth it once.
• Drama
  The UK's lost its way a bit here recently, mainly through trying to compete with the likes of ER, or The West Wing. There are a range of police dramas and hospital dramas, and tediously long series of these. The UK doesn't do the action side of these well. What it can do well is short seasons, intense intimate drama, concentrated into short sharp shocks. It can do quirky drama well - something that the US usually overshoots on the comedy side, although Six Feet Under is a notoriously good example of quirky drama done well.
• Science Fiction and Fantasy
  The US far outstrips the UK in terms of quality here, mainly due to the budgets, and the fact that they've got a larger market to play in.
• Soap
  The UK has two of the best in the world. The US can't come close, but it's playing to a very different market. The Bold and the Beautiful is no Coronation Street. Nor is it meant to be.
• Sitcoms
  I think that this is where I'll get to my main point. And yes, I do have one.

In the UK, we're exposed to selected, purchased programming from the US. We're exposed to all of the UK programming. On average, we can expect imported television to be of better quality than domestic. In the US, BBC America is insanely popular, but it only shows the best of British shows. It shows Jonathan Creek, or Keeping Up Appearances, rather than something like Gardener's Question Time. In the UK, we get The Simpson's - interminably, and Friends, and Will and Grace. We tend not to get shows like 'Baby Bob' or 'Newhart'. Great US hits like the excrutiating 'The Nanny' are banished to the 4.30 am slot, as well they should be.

In comparing the two products (and products they are) from a position in either market, you're not comparing like with like. Looking at the products from outside - I think I stand by my initial assertion.

May 1 was originally called "GayDay", until that noted homophobe Pope Innocent XXIII changed it to Mayday in 1203. In the Julian Calendar it's still known as GayDay, and so, for that matter, is Julian.

There was an attempt to reverse this change by the next Pope, Agnetha XIV, a flamboyant aesthete. However, there were so many complaints about His Holiness taking late-night confession from choirboys that he was subjected to Inquisition, tortured with lesbian porn, and demoted to Master of the Papal Vestments. Mayday remains unchanged to this day.

"Well," thought I, as my flight back from Brussels touched down on Friday afternoon. "It's early evening, Mr Twinky's at work, I could make him dinner." And so I hit the grocer's, picking up a selection of fresh fruit and vegetables, all ready to make my favourite new dish - salsa (see earlier entries for details). I was also thinking about chicken in a white wine sauce, and some sliced and grilled aubergines. And so I did some prep, and settled down in front of early evening television, awaiting Scott's return. And when he returned, I started to fry off the chicken, and slice the aubergine. Or eggplant, should you prefer.

It was on the final slice of the aubergine that I realised that for whatever reason, I was really holding it pretty badly. Let's just say there was more contact between knife and finger than there should have been, and save the gory details of the flaps of flesh hanging from my digit. Besides, I couldn't see it that well, because of the sudden pumping behind my eyes, and the awful way that it just wouldn't stop bleeding.

"We're going to casualty," said Mr Twinky. And it turned out that he was right. Now this is only the second time that I've been to a casualty department in my life, and the first time where I've been going there for treatment myself. They're called Accident and Emergency these days, and I'd clearly had an accident. This was more than could be said for many of the other couple of dozen people in the room, who were probably there for an evening out. Certainly one guy was only there to watch Coronation Street and Eastenders, and once that was over, he limped back out again, his foot wrapped in a Dunnes bag. Coincidentally we saw him the next day in O'Connell Street, still drunk.

Occasionally, a small nurse would stick her head out of a broom cupboard, and one or other of the new arrivals would be called in for a wee chat and a little bit of sympathy. I was called at around five to eight, just towards the end of Coronation Street. "Look!" I said. "Blood. I am not malingering here. How long will it be before I can see a doctor?" The response - four to six hours - was longer than I had anticipated. But she was such a cheery soul that I couldn't bring myself to be sarcastic. After all, I've seen ER. I know that she has problems with her violent Estonian boyfriend, so I gave her a nice smile and thanked her. And then we settled in on the hard plastic chairs, watching the stream of people come and go.

Treatment is through a secure door. From where we're sitting, it looks like there's a small room through there, perhaps a waiting area. In the first half hour that we're there, nobody is called through this door. Occasionally people arrive and are let through, but there's no sign of any rhyme or reason to it. None of them appear to have had accidents or be emergencies. I am slowly bleeding to death in a hospital of the mad. At last, a woman sticks her head through the door..."Albert Jackson?" There is no Albert Jackson.

"Maybe he's dead already," mutters Mr Twinky, and I have to poke him in the ribs. Since dinner's been put on hold, he's been forced to eat machine-dispensed chocolate, and he is now on a Yorkie-buzz. "Or," he continues, "Maybe Albert's gone to throw himself under a bus so he'll get to see a Doctor more quickly."

And at that moment, I knew that the evening had slipped out of control, and was veering steadily towards the surreal.

Is hard to find, Perhaps it's the fact that as a result of the superficial banality of Belgium that they have been forced to delve into the realms of beer and chocolate to make their name - still a better cuisine than most of the UK. Perhaps it is the fact that for a civilised young belgian man it is disgusting to have dirt on any part of his body.

Whatever the wonderful thing about Belgians is, it probably isn't the smile on the face of the guy cruising me on the moving walkways that run through the airport. A slender figure, with the affectation of a shaved head and a goatee, the sleeves of his regulation uniform tight against his biceps (airport ground staff, for those of you picturing this). A slight swagger in his hips, his eyes firmly on mine as he approached and passed, like so much robot sushi.

But it could have been just my imagination. Maybe I had spinach in my teeth or something, and he was staring at me out of incredulity, and not lascivity. So I turned to watch him as he sped away from me. And he'd turned too. Very, very nice smile.

Today's lyric comes from Aimee Mann's fantastic recording, Whatever

Today's the fourth of July
another June has gone by
and when they light up our town I just think
what a waste of gunpowder and sky
I'm certain that I am alone
in harbouring thoughts of our home
it's one of my faults that I can't quell my past
I ought to have gotten it gone

Oh, baby, I wonder -
if when you are older -
someday-
you'll wake up
and say, 'My God, I should have told her -
what would it take?
But now here I am and the world's gotten colder
and she's got the river down which I sold her.'

So that's today's memory lane
with all the pathos and pain
another chapter in a book where the chapters are endless
and they're always the same
a verse, then a verse, and refrain.