When you move to a new place - be it a new town, or a new country - it can be hard to make friends. We've been in Ireland for two years and our friends consist of

• people Mr Twinky works with
• the woman who lives upstairs
• the leather-clad nonagenarian who walked along Long Lane with us at the weekend, sounding off about the Bertie-Bastard, and some chap who had written a song for Eurovision in 1978. Which came third.

And that's pretty much it. Not much for two years, I guess, although I'm not complaining.

You see, making new friends is hard. You have to go out and make an effort to actually do it. It's easier if you're a parent. If you're a mother, you can drag your spawn along to a parent and toddler group and meet other people who are desparate to talk to anyone that can string two words together and isn't Trisha. Otherwise you need to have a hobby, like meditation or clay modelling, or earwax sculpture. Something that gets you out of the home but still doesn't stretch that comfort zone. Learn a skill, learn a language, volunteer for a helpline, do some work for charity.

But, as I said. I'm not complaining.

Blah blah blah.

Blah blah canals, 1950s, blah, fishing a body out of the water, blah, taking his shirt off and getting scrubbed down, blah, oh look he's having sex, blah, sex again. Blah blah oops I'm dozing off a bit here, god this sex is boring. Look, there's the plot. Damn, I missed it.

Actually, that's a bit mean. The cinema was really nice, following the first phase of its refurbishment. It's starting to look more like a UGC and less like a Virgin cinema that was abandoned by Virgin before they'd finished decorating it. Comfy seats. Nice big screen. Annoying chinese man who stuck his fingers up at us for no good reason, lots of Taiwanese people. Fairly typical Saturday afternoon cinema.

The film itself - incredibly existential to the extent of bordering on extreme dullness. Lots of sex, but not in a good way. McGregor in a role that suited his talents. Swinton as excellent as ever. But not a film to go and see expecting to come out of it all cheery and optimistic.

I didn't watch him on Parkinson. Not much point in interviewing actors, unless they're also capable of writing their own scripts. As they're going along.

So Doctor Who is coming back to BBC One in the form of a new live-action series. At some point. In the future.

Some people will think this is fantastic news. Some people will not be particularly bothered by it. Some people will think that it's a really bad idea, that it should be left as a memory.

And there are some rabid fans. People who will leap on it, dissect it, rip it apart and say it devalues the legacy of a children's television show that ceased production 14 years ago. But they'll praise a piece of badly paced shit made in 1965 that they've never actually seen. There are fans who will harp on endlessly about whether or not it counts as real and not see the irony. There are fans who will spend months trying to work out how it fits together with the original show, the books, the audio dramas, the 1973 stage show, the lollipop cards, the comic, the 1960s Dalek movies, and a short story that they wrote when they were eight and got a B+ for.

We like that sort of fan. They're funny.

In an official statement issued by BBC Drama Publicity, it has been announced that Doctor Who is coming back to BBC One in the form of a new live-action series.

The much-awaited comeback will be written by acclaimed TV dramatist Russell T Davies and produced by BBC Wales.

The BBC has said it is far too early to discuss possible storylines, characters, villains or who might play Doctor Who - and no budget has yet been set.

I'll believe it when I see it.

I've been going through a whirlwind of exciting and fun meetings and training courses!

Last week was the great fun thing that was our Employee Forum, where I narrowly missed becoming Vice Chairman! Whee!

Today, I was due to have a time management course, but I had to cancel that because of bad time management! Instead, I get to go on a course about press handling! Fantastic!

When I was a kid, I got to go to external courses in London. Whee! London! I got to stay in a nice hotel and go to the Industrial Society for hours and hours. We didn't have mobile phones then, so nobody could call me directly. If my boss wanted to get hold of me, he would have had to call the Industrial Society, leave a message, and then I could have called him back at a break. Verging on civilised.

Now, my boss doesn't even realise I'm going to be at a training course today, and will therefore do his usual trick of calling me every five minutes.

Cnut.

With what's-his-name sitting in a box being officially last week's news, all right thinking social commentators are turning to matters at hand. The closure of MSN's chatrooms in Europe.

This is a good thing, isn't it? After all, MSN's European chatrooms were responsible for bringing together a pair of people we will call Mr A and Ms L. Theirs is a sorry tale, and we should all learn a lesson from it.

Both Mr A and Ms L, using the anonymity that a chatroom provided pretended to be something they're not. She is a twice-divorced lounge singer, who was pretending that she was an actress. He is a reasonably good actor, who was pretending to be a sex symbol. And me? I took care of them both. Which wasn't easy, because when they met... it was murder.

At first, it all seemed to be going so well... theirs was a fairy-tail romance. One was a fairy, one had a tail. They appeared together in the major motion picture "Giggly". An experimental piece, consisting of two characters giggling, it was a commercial failure, but a critical flop.

Probably because they had conducted their entire relationship in the semi-public eye of an MSN European chat room, when their controversial kiss was finally due to be shown on premium-rate streaming broadband, they chickened out. One of them turned into a chicken, while the other came out.

Clearly, the closure of MSN chatrooms could have prevented this sorry tale, were it not for the fact that there are literally thousands of other chatrooms available, possibly millions, and thus this solution is no solution at all.

Sagittarius: Occasionally, you like to pretend that you are a lithe young woman in tight fitting shorts, and climb around caves, solving puzzles. Often, you may find monsters of a variety of shapes and sizes attempting to stop you from rescuing ancient relics and raiding tombs, but you usually tackle these by shooting at them.

Your lucky weapon is an Uzi and your lucky number is just seventeen.

Yesterday evening, I finihsed playing Lara Croft and the Angel of Darkness. Part of the "novelty" in this game was making the controls so insensitive as to be virtually unusable in some situations, and an interesting bug where occasionally you could see through the back of the heroine's head.

On the plus side, the game kept my attention all the way through (unlike one of the earlier ones that I was forced to give up on), and featured the novel device of replacing Lara with a bloke for some of the levels.

Shortly after shipping the game, Eidos - the distributors and backers - sacked Core Design - the programmers of all of the Tomb Raider games so far. There is a salutory lesson here for all of us.

It often comes as a surprise to some of my junior colleagues that in terms of the actual paper qualifications required to be in my position I am ever so slightly - what would the word be? - deficient.

Obviously, I try to rectify this situation from time to time, and occasionally I go to a building site out by the airport, sit in a room with twenty people who are ten years younger than me, and try to write for three hours with out deviation, repetition, or breaking down in tears and shouting "I want to be a tomato! Tomatoes don't have to do exams!"

And then, after it's over, I go back to work, refreshed and slightly hung over, and continue running my team to the best of my mediocre partially-qualified ability.

But there's something adrenalinetastic about the relief of walking out of an exam, knowing that you've failed (because you know you didn't study enough. And there was that one question that you missed), but still feeling pretty good. Partly because you've not done anything like as dreadfully as you expected, and partly because the whole thing is over.

And then it's nice to spend an afternoon glued to the sofa, sparkling wine in one hand, crisps and dips to hand, your other half by your side, and watching the Godfather. But maybe that's just me.

I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member
- Groucho Marx

It's been alleged that the only possible justification for Mensa is the forum it provides for socially underdeveloped people, a place in which they can feel safer and definitely superior.

The same could hold true for country clubs, the Masons, the Rotary Club and the Garrick, all of which are joined strictly by invitation. By their very nature, they are exclusive - in every sense of the word. By deliberately excluding the vast majority of the world, they aim to retain a sense of being special, and retain a consistent, homogenic membership.

The exclusivity brings with it a necessary feeling of superiority. Joining these clubs is an achievement, a badge of honour. And yet, in many ways, they're not that dissimilar from support groups like Weight Watchers and Alcoholics Anonymous.

But I digress.

The purpose of Mensa is to identify and foster human intelligence for the benefit of humanity, to provide a stimulating intellectual and social environment for its members, and to encourage research into the nature, characteristics, and uses of intelligence. It's probably not the society to join if you want to go down to the pub and have a chat about which ones off Pop Idol you'd shag. But if you like doing puzzles, then it's probably for you.

There are some brands that are almost synonymous with the product. Hoover vacuum cleaners leaps to mind. The Google search engine is getting there. And, of course, who could forget Lea & Perrins?

In this way, there is only one brand of mayonnaise. Others try to be like it, and fail. Most resemble the excruciatingly unpleasant "Salad Cream", which has cherry tomatoes everywhere gently rolling across plates to avoid it.

The only real competitor to Hellman's in the mayonnaise stakes is home made. I'm a great believer in home made produce. Jams taste better. Home made honey is fantastic. Chutneys are more diverse and imaginative. Mayonnaise, however, is only ever almost as good as Hellman's. Hellman's is like real mayonnaise, but better. Even the low fat version's good.

However, if it squirts out of a sandwich on to your crotch at lunch time, it's a real bugger to get out. Especially if you don't notice it for half an hour. Apparently.

Sunday morning, in the newsagent. I've put down my paper, my carton of fruit juice and our two bars of chocolate for our Sunday night treat, and I'm pushed out of the way by a tiny missile woman.

She can't be taller than four foot six (54 inches, 137cm), she is blunt and explosive. I couldn't tell you what age she is, except she's at least sixty, possibly ninety. Her face is deeply lined, and her hair is thin and dark - it's hard to tell where her hair line is, or to make out the lips around the wrinkle that I'm guessing is her mouth. She pushes me aside and I stagger slightly, and she throws twenty euro at the cashier.

- Ten Silk Cut. I'm in a hurry.

The cashier obviously knows her, from the way he's smiling at her. He takes her twenty, gives her the cigarettes, and rings the purchase through the till. She starts opening the cellophane as soon as she's got her hands on the cigarettes, her hands shaking with age, infirmity and anticipation.

- I'm in a hurry - she repeats - I don't want my sister to find out I've been smoking.

Her change arrives, and she grabs it with one of her claws. The cashier rings up my purchases again. She's managed to tear off one piece of cellophane, which she throws down on to my newspaper, as though she's disgusted with it. She mutters an obscenity.

I don't know why she's shaking. Is it the fear of discovery, the excitement of the illicit, or the fact that she's done this too many times before. I don't understand her at all - on the one hand she has the balls to push in to the queue, regardless of the fact that I am taller and heavier than she is, and she has no idea how I might react. On the other hand, she is clearly in fear of her sister, who I imagine as a slightly smaller, greyer version of herself - but with a machine gun. Desperation, perhaps?

She still hasn't finished unwrapping her illicit tobacco. I pick up the newspaper, the juice, and our two bars of chocolate for our Sunday night treat, and leave.

My boss is moving house today. This means that he's out of the office today. So far he's only called me once.

He had a really bad day yesterday. He was on a high at lunch time, but by five, some of the basic assumptions on which he had built his optimism had come crashing down around his chubby little ears. I took pity on him, and helped him out. We were both working late last night.

But when I left, I left work behind me. I knew that I could go home, unwind, and watch endless programmes about houses.

I ended up watching Bargain Hunt, which came from a street in Dublin that's just up the road from me here, but that's another story. And the Miller's Tale starring Billie Piper as a shite singer married to a man old enough to be her father. That's another other story.

Boss, however, was squirming. On the phone to Mrs Boss, who was understandably nervous about the move.

- No, Mrs Boss, I have had a really bad day.

[pause]

- No, it's really not like that. It's not my fault, it's just things that have happened.

[pause]

- No, I'm not trying to ruin the move.

Excuse me? Ruin the move?

I thought moving house was supposed to be one of the most stressful events that a human could endure. Up there with dropping the soap in the school showers and trying to get a haircut at Tony'n'Guy. Marginally more enjoyable than getting your crotch waxed by a stocky hirsute gentleman dressed mainly in leather and answering to the name "Sir".

In other words, the sort of thing that you only normally put yourself through if you have to.

It appears to be different here in Ireland, though. Here, the leprechauns help you move.

The night before you're due to move, they turn up in droves. Some come in little green jalopies, some crawl out from behind the sofa - which, to be fair, is where you left them. They sprinkle their magic dust on your eyes as you sleep, to ensure that your slumber is undisturbed. Then, as your bog standard leprechaun is only an average of six inches tall, they use their time honoured transformation technique involving stimulation of the blood flow through acupressure to make themselves bigger. Once they're big enough, they wrap all of your furniture and stuff with brown paper and push it up a rainbow, before letting it slide gently down the other side and into more or less the right position in your new home.

At least, that's what I was told.

Less than a week in to Seamus Ni Chuinneagain's mammoth task - spending forty-four days living in a box in Grafton Street. And already, the world is bored.

I suspect that he's not surprised by this, stoic chap that he is.

Chatting about this with my esteemed work colleage, Wynne, he espoused the opinion that the whole idea was a bit shite anyway. Ni Chiunneagain's famous for standing on poles and doing a bit of sleight of hand. Sitting in a box is 'just daft'.

Magic, he suggests, is supposed to make the viewer think 'Wow... how did he do that?' as opposed to 'Oh... why did he bother doing that?' The first is a great spectacle. The second is sad and slightly pathetic.

We reckon that the magic here, the smoke and mirrors, is in the way that Ni Chiunneagain managed to get any backing for his stunt at all. Admittedly, the celebrity endorsement from an Irish twink was pretty much guaranteed, but watching a man in a box doing nothing is never going to be interesting. Ni Chiunneagain once - famously - compared himself to Dara O'Houdini, the first Irishman to cross the Liffey on a tightrope in a tutu. Houdini was a showman. He knew how to capture the imagination of his audience. How anyone thought that sitting in a box would have the same effect is beyond Wynne and myself. Unless Ni Chiunneagain goes mad.

Day 35 in the Big Brother Box
He's clawing his eyes out, and discussing with himself whether or not he is a minger. He's had a pee, but no shower. In a shock outburst, he has declared to the world that he has insects between his toes.

Day 36 in the Big Brother Box
He's invented an imaginary friend, but has fallen out with her because she called him a minger.

Day 37 in the Big Brother Box
He's asleep again. Oh well.

There's this guy, Colin Farrell, and he's got a thing about woks. And while that's nice, meanwhile you've got Cillian Murphy and his mate, and they've got a penchant for Brown Sauce in their tea. Meanwhile, Cillian Murphy's ex girlfriend (Kelly MacDonald) has been seen out and about with a bald bank manager, and her sister (Shirley Henderson) has had bad experiences with men, and feels that life has shat on her. And then you've got Colm Meaney, the fat Irish plumber from Star Trek, only here he's a cop into the hard gritty music of Clannad, and there's an up and coming film producer and there's the bank manager's wife. And the bus driver.

And I haven't laughed so much at a film in ages. Intermission.

Keith and I have been nominated for our company's Employee Forum.

This appears to be a talking shop that achieves nothing.

What happens will be as follows.

There'll be a top secret project. At the beginning, senior management will know about it. They'll then tell their key employees, and sometime around this point, the woman who sits next to me will know about it. Nobody will tell her, but she will know, in scary detail.

There will then be a series of top secret briefings of the key employee team, and nobody will know about these despite the fact that they'll take place in the board room amid mild giggles. Eventually, a communication plan will be agreed.

Five minutes before the main announcement, the Employee Forum will be told. That's me and Keith. Except that at least one of us will also be in the 'Key Employee' group, and we'll know already. And then I'll tell my team, and the woman who sits next to me will chip in with all the detail that she knows.

Of course, that's all assuming that we get elected. Although as we're standing unopposed, I suspect that's kind of guaranteed.

Donald Kaufman: I'm putting in a chase sequence. So the killer flees on horseback with the girl, the cop's after them on a motorcycle and it's like a battle between motors and horses, like technology vs. horse.

Charlie Kaufman: And they're still all one person, right?

This isn't going to be a standard review. I'm not going to start at the beginning, unless I start at the beginning of time, and run all the way through time building up the cultural context in which I saw this movie. And I'm not going to end with a pithy summary. I'm not going to fall in to convention in this review. I'm just going to let it happen.

I saw Adaptation late on a Saturday afternoon. It hadn't rained, there was the promise of Marks and Spencer Lamb and Mint sausages for tea. Out of the eight main channels, five were showing sport. The three of us - me, Mr Twinky, and my imaginary identical twin brother Keith were just hanging out, and the idea of watching this movie was suggested.

As we watched, I tried to take notes. Was it a clever exercise in wordplay, mixing the concept of adapting a novel into a screenplay with the idea of personal evolution. Was it a clever piece of self-referentiality, not seen since the hugely succesful metaphor in South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut?. Or was it a pile of unmitigated tosh? Until I decided this, I had no way to start the review.

Keith, however, was scribbling away like mad. He was dissecting the relationship between Streep in this, and her award winning performance in Death Becomes Her, probably. All this while lying on the floor, and mocking me.

Apathy crept over me. I yawned at the sight of John Malkovich and Christine Keener turning up to "reprise" their characters from Being John Malkovich, and I looked in vain for something as imaginative as any scene in that earlier movie.

The nearest would actually be the casting of Cage. Nic Cage was actually watchable. Cast as an unattractive socially inept lump rather than the dashing action hero, Cage was - for once - remotely believable. All to the good.

And towards the end, the movie - finally - adapts. Writers become action figures. Flowers become more sinister. Everything changes. And does it work? I don't think so.

But the orchids were pretty.

In a novel piece of street theatre, Seamus Ni Chuinneagain has announced that he's going to spend the next forty-four days living in a box in Grafton Street.

Ni Chuinneagain, well known for spraying himself silver and standing on a pole for hours on end, completely motionless (except for sneezing when passers-by drop a coin in a box at his feet), describes this feat as being like 'a modern-day Houdini, only really really boring'. Members of the public will be able to see Ni Chuinneagain as they go about their shopping, and the mood of apathy that this will engender is expected to 'bore people rigid'.

Ni Chuinneagain's publicists took a break from making patterns out of brightly coloured shells to discuss the media coverage. "We had originally hoped for live, 24 hour coverage on RTE1", they said. "But then we realised that there is nothing to this apart from hype. And one man being stupid."

On the principle that nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the general public, Ni Chuinneagain expects to make an undisclosed sum from this feat.

Following yesterday's disturbing revelations about the interactions of certain medications, I took a different route home.

You probably don't know Dublin that well, but like any city of a certain age, it's divided in to areas that used to be villages in their own right. Every year, incidentally, these villages compete against each other in a horse race around Meeting House Square, but that is a different story for a different time. Last night I chose to walk home through no-man's land. They call this no-man's land the Muesli Belt.

Too far out of the centre to count as the centre, not far West enough to count as the Liberties, not far South enough to be Portobello. It is the area with no name, just some terraced houses, an interior design shop for no obvious reason, and a building supplies shop, of which more later. It's a sleepy area, with relatively few smashed-up cars, and a preponderance of snails, both regular and homeless (I'm informed that these are sometimes called slugs). A leafy few streets, with plenty of trees with low hanging branches, perfect for picking up spiders and insects from, deliberately or otherwise.

Two young sisters on skateboards harrass me as I am walking along the street towards the chemist. Despite the warmth of the September evening, they're dressed in their full habits. The older one can't be more than twelve, and she has a mouth on her like a trooper. I shouldn't take medicine. It's bad for me. If God had meant us to pop pills he would never have given us faith healing. Silently wishing a plague of frogs on them, I step inside.

My prescription is on my mobile phone. Placebo, painkiller and penicillin, in pretty much equal measures. Large. I ask the slight South Asian gentleman for help, and he responds with a range of questions. Like my name, my address, my Doctor's name. I fluff all of the answers, and it later turns out that I only have one of them right. This means that I don't win anything this time, but I get to try again tomorrow. Hooray.

When the slight South Asian gentleman returns from the mysterious back room, he is a short stout Irish woman. She has my prescription, all neatly bagged, and I can read on the label that I got my address and first name wrong this time. I note this carefully. There may be a test later. But before that, another question.

Am I on the pill?

At this point I think it's best to explain that I'm collecting this prescription for a friend.

Is she on the pill?

It's not the sort of question we've talked about really. We're good friends, but we're not that close. I try not to think about her in that way. But if she is on the pill and taking antibiotics, the one will lessen the effect of the other. I bluff my way through this, but my eyes have been opened. I have learned a secret.

Back home, hounded by the skateboarding sisters, yelling their obscenities at me, and hurling foam bricks. I'm exhausted. Older, wiser, and slightly scarred.

Edinburgh
My hometown, and so a strong contender. The best source for chips, when I was a nipper, was Brattisani's. No idea if this is still the case. Alternatives to fish include Steak pies, Mince pies, Batter sausages, deep fried pizzas, Mars Bar fritters, apparently. Standard condiments are salt and sauce. Not a mushy pea in sight.

Glasgow
Similar to Edinburgh, but with vinegar replacing the sauce. A better range of fish, including the special fish, which is like a regular fish, but with 'special needs', and a slightly superior batter. Still no mushy peas.

Dundee
Just got it all wrong. The chips were too hot, the traditional way to eat them was with a little wooden splinter. They burned the roof of the mouth, and were just not nice.

Elsewhere in Scotland
The village of Comrie boasts the last chip shop in the country to use animal fat to deep fry its chips. No idea if that's true or not, but a damned fine chip shop nonetheless.

London
I've limited experience, but I've always been disappointed. The variety and quality of the fish seems better, but the accompanying range of pies is disappointing, with moist pastry, probably due to them probably being oven baked from frozen while still in their tin foil cases. Yes, they offer mushy peas, and curry sauce, but eating from a London chip shop wouldn't be a special treat that I'd look forward to.

Cambridge
Pitta bread filled with chips and mayonnaise from the Gardenia kebab shop in Rose Crescent, in the late 1980s. Different and good.

Dublin
No pies at all, which is a disappointment. Vinegar, Glasgow-style. No sign of a mushy pea. But a good range of freid fish and chicken, the return of the batter sausage, and a pretty good range of burgers and oven-baked pizzas accompanying the usual fare. Plus garlic chips, cheesy chips and curry chips, which are essentially regular chips with a pot of dip.

Errors and omissions
I'm sure that someone will disagree with me about London. I could just be thinking about one chip shop. In Wanstead. I'm sure that somebody thinks that Harry Ramsden's chips are the best in the world (They're not, they're rubbish). Where is the best chip shop you know?

You know how it is, don't you?

I'm in the chipper on a Sunday night because quite frankly neither of us feel much like cooking, we just fancy a bottle of beer and some cheap fat and carbohydrate with our Songs of Praise, and the phone goes. I'm stood at the back, out of the way, and reading the Environmental Information poster, reminding me not to tolerate people who litter, and there's a buzzing in my pocket, and a vibration that's just strong enough to notice, but not strong enough to give pleasure.

That's me last night, that is.

- Hello, we've got a virus on the computer.

- That's nice. How did you do that?

- It wasn't me, it just says...

I can't hear the rest of what he says, because someone is shouting at me.

I'm trying to keep out of the way at everyone in the entire world, but this young man has cycled half in to the shop, one hand on the handlebars of his Chopper, an almost dead cigarette dripping from the other. I catch what he's saying the second time. Do I have a phone?

Of course I have a phone. I'm trying to talk in to it. There's a sick computer at home that needs full care and attention, and I can't tend to it in its hour of need and Flash Harry on Two Wheels wants to borrow my phone. Or take it. I can't be quite sure.

- Can you go outside? asks Mr Twinky. I can't. There's a man on a bicycle between me and the outside world.

He's asking everyone else if they have a phone. Then I realise that's not it. He's trying to sell a phone.

Because that's what it's like down our way. We have junior ruffians, small league crooks. Kingpin here probably found a phone that had been dropped in the street, and now he's hawking it around the local fences, trying to get rid of it.

The local fences in this case seem to be the chipper, the internet cafe and the Indian restaurant. As he's got one or two young sisters in tow, he probably can't go much further afield.

This is how the great criminals and miscreants of the world get started. A chance encounter, starting small. Famously, Al Capone stumbled on a miniature of Tia Maria in the street and sold it to his Aunt Wilhelmina. Clyde Chestnut Barrow robbed his sister's piggy bank by holding her up with a water pistol. I should have asked this guy his name. He's going to be famous.