A good day, only slightly marred by overhearing someone in the Co-op say “Hey Siri, show me my shopping list.”.

Once again I have left the company Christmas party with hiccups. As ever I’m sure nobody noticed.

Tonight I passed an open window at the university and heard a choir singing Silent Night and it was almost uplifting. You have to be permanently on your guard these days.

Horrific euphemism on 24 Hours In Police Custody: “Injuries not compatible with life”.

I should have put that on LinkedIn.

Send me an email every day and I’ll unsubscribe. Send me an email once a year and I’ll think “Who the fuck are you?” and unsubscribe. Send me an email once a month and I’ll keep reading.

As if anyone in their right mind would want to visit America at the moment anyway. It’s like when my awful brother-in-law banned me from my sister’s wedding.

I might be available for a peerage soon. I should up the networking.

Couldn’t they think of anyone worse?

iPhone updated its iOS overnight and now all the icons are slightly bigger. I guess the designers are getting older.

Decaying and weak Trump criticises European countries.

Someone got out of bed on a Saturday morning to go and chuck apple crumble at the Crown Jewels. In spite of everything, now and then this country can still make you feel proud.

Loveday Ryder. The learner driver scandal might be serious but I can’t get beyond the fact that the chief executive of the Driver & Vehicle Standards Agency is called Loveday Ryder.

I walked down Oxford Street, Bond Street and Piccadilly in the rain on a Friday evening three weeks before Christmas and I can’t stress enough what a bad idea this was.

Farage is a lot like Boris Johnson in that he can dish it out but not take it. To quote a wise man, he doesn’t like it up him. Like the Tories did with Johnson, they’re going to have to hide him from the media for the next three years to stop him self-combusting. But he’s all they’ve got. Difficult.

If Bernard Manning were still around he’d definitely be supporting Reform UK.

Maybe compromise on Eurovision and let Palestine enter a song. See who wins then.

I will probably have to delete that. (Timeless tweet.).

Did anyone do a deep dive into JK Rowling’s gender issues? It’d be interesting. Using a non gender specific name to write her early books is understandable but choosing a male name for her crime books when she’d have sold more using her real name? Then all this campaigning. There will be a reason.

I saw that Martin Lewis Budget special last night. He was very disparaging about premium bonds. Shows what he knows. He’s probably overdrawn, don’t listen to him.

I’ve won £50 on the premium bonds. I might buy myself a Christmas present.

Apple Music has confirmed that my musical taste remains both that of a middle-aged man and a 14-year-old girl.

The cleaner is moaning that we have no Christmas decorations up in the office. "At my other job for Christmas today they had a sheep, a donkey and a baby cow". Just what we need in the office.

On one hand I want all the Twitter people to move to Bluesky, but on the other my heart sinks when I see some of them have arrived.

Three teenage girls walking along the street singing “Hopelessly Devoted To You” then one of them points at the sky and exclaims, ‘Look! A unicorn’.

Our business rates are going up by an unaffordable 45% from April. I must have missed the furore about this.

I’m reading a novel written around a hundred years ago and it keeps mentioning the seventies, eighties and nineties, meaning the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s. It never occurred to me that people living in other centuries talked about recent times in decades like we do.

Bring me the head of the head of the OBR.

BBC News still going on about Rachel Reeves “lying” this morning. But they’re not biased.

As far as I can make out, the media are now furious with the Chancellor because the public finances are stronger than they thought they were.

It shouldn’t be forgotten that Sir Tom Stoppard who is now being acclaimed as “one of Britain’s greatest playwrights” came here as a refugee.

Seeing Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia at the National in 1993 remains one of the best theatre experiences I’ve had. Coincidentally it’s being revived at the Old Vic in January.

Introduce yourself with 5 cars you’ve owned: The one where the driver’s window dropped down inside the door. The one that fell apart on the M5. The one that rotted in a field. The one that filled with water. The one that doesn’t start.

We had a fashion shoot in the office today. As you'd hope, a model needed a nap in the kitchen and the place stank of cigarettes. Bless them.

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I just had to open the boot of the car to look for a book and a gang of students saw the secret library. I hope they’re not the sort of students who crave books.

Introduce yourself with 5 concerts you’ve seen. The Buggles Divine Pussy Riot Sigue Sigue Sputnik Yazoo I doubt anyone else in the world has seen that combination (or would want to).

Odd that the cut of the cash ISA level to £12,000 to encourage younger people to buy shares is being reported as a bad thing. Over time you're going to make more money investing in the stock market than by sticking cash in the bank.

Along the same lines as my tweet about the tide turning against Farage, this could be the Arsenal team that wins the Champions League.

I famously know nothing about cars. How are they going to calculate this pay-per-mile for electric vehicles? Surely people will lie if it is self-reporting?

Outrageous bitchiness at the despatch box from Badenoch. This should be the end of her.

Even more reason to abolish the OBR now.

So much has been pre-announced that the Budget speech is only going to last five seconds. “A penny on beer and fags. See the media for the rest.”

Many years ago, when the boy was learning French at school, I set the dishwasher to speak French. It just asked me to “Vérifier l'arrivée de l'eau”.

“The problem with those food waste bags that decompose is that sometimes they decompose before you’ve filled them.”, he says, scooping a mound of rotten vegetables and teabags from the kitchen floor.

I probably shouldn’t say this but I get the feeling the tide is turning against Farage.

I’ve been to the Kentish Town Recycling Centre twice today. People get OBEs for less.

10 years since Blackstar. Goddamn, you’re looking old.

We lived through this and some people think things are bad now.

I can’t get over how good Lambrini Girls were last night in London. If you get a chance to see them, take it.