Celebrating the ageing process, hilly restaurants, how Road Runner nearly killed me, and other such depressing nonsense.

STOP! DON'T MOVE! DON'T GO ANYWHERE! I just found out that two thirds of N Dubz are Greek! But of course - any man with an elfin, under-3-foot stature who wears a bobble hat as head gear and talks with a speech defect because it's 'cool' has got to be from my neck of the woods. Peace out, ma hommie. Ma likkle, tiny, borrower homeboy. Izzit.


Dappy Dick. He's got a duck on his shoulder.

So, I went x-biking on Friday. As you may have gathered from previous posts, this has been the cause of many a death of mine, probably leaving you to draw but two possible conclusions (if you could be bothered to draw any conclusions at all). 1. That I am of the feline variety and my time is nearly up, or 2. that I am Jesus and I just keep rising. Flying in the face of what would have either been anthropomorphism or clear-cut blasphemy, I am neither. In fact, I am the prophet George Orwell. Prophets never die. Elvis is a prophet. So is your 140 year old Great Aunty who happens to be a millionaire.

Anyway, I regress. This time to 1640's Portugal. Some people revolted.

Back to X-biking; our instructor, Helen, is actually a sadist. She had a cold and was clearly suffering. Any normal person...no, let me rephrase...any person of the non-sadistic sort would have probably relaxed a bit in class. Taken a back seat. Driven the Ford 1903 Model A of life. Not our Helen. No, she was getting off on working herself harder, in a way much similar to this: "Ugh, come on everybody! WE CAN DO THIS! YEAHHHH. Pedal faster! FASTERRRR! *sniff sniff*" So I absolutely wasn't surprised that, when she clambered off her bike once we'd finished, she turned into a little lemon tree exuding a fragrant citrus smell.

No, of course not. She almost fell to the floor in exhaustion. Just that I figured the lemon tree might be far more interesting. Unless you know Helen, in which case - she's fine, don't worry! My Grandad assures me that lemon trees live to a ripe old age.

On Sunday I met up with some friends for one of those birthday things. The girl, who was borned on the 16th May, along with 75% of the population if my Facebook birthday reminders is anything to go by, turned 26, so there were plenty of "God, you're old!" jokes. I wonder what we'll say when she's old? "God, you're dead!"

Dinner went by sans hitch, although I ended up with a sort of yuk sum-juice moisturising hand cream as I'd used my wet napkin cleaning up my sweet chilli chin, and, ever the lazy bugger, I could not be arsed to climb the hill to the toilet to wash my hands. Yes, there was a hill. But it's all OK, I now know the secret to lovely soft hands.

One joyful event procuring from my inability to remember that, in order to get out of a restaurant alive, you actually have to pay them - or at least wash their dishes - was that I got to drive my friend Nic's brand new Golf GTI back from a cash machine (which didn't live up to its name anyway) after he'd lent me money to pay for the delights of eating at the restaurant with the hilly terrain, where one Chinese waitress was clearly stalking a particularly hungry member of our party under the pretext of making far too much small talk. Anyway, to put it bluntly, I think Nic's deformed. It took me at least half an hour of pressing and turning every single nob I could get my hands on (gross, I can't believe you just thought what you did then. You bad person.) in order to find myself sitting upright and facing the road. Nic has little stumpy legs, a long torso, and eyes on the ends of his fingers; I can't believe I didn't notice there was anything wrong before. He also drives like a maniac. It's like someone drugged Road Runner, presented him with a 1984 cc, six speed, 'blow on the accelerator and you're half way to Fiji' car and just said, "let rip. And remember, roundabouts are there to be driven over."

Thank God I'm George Orwell. I could have died twice over this week.