North Norfolk is completely awash with children called “Poppy”, “Max” and “Imogen”. They stare out from huge four by four windows as their parents whisk them and their colourful wellys on half-term walks. Their looks are perfect and, when within hearing range, are massively more erudite then me. I forget I was once a Thatcherite and long for the revolution.

The other thing here is that the Poles have left. Where last year I was faced with a wall of friendly efficient service by someone who almost certainly had a maths degree now there is a swelling group of aggressive pregnant chavs annoyed by being dragged away from Facebook.

Tomorrow myself and the brother are going to try and get on the Wash Monster seal clubbing trip to one of the many sand banks offshore; we both need warm coats for winter and feel this must be the ecological way forward.

Home of the Norfolk seal reduction campaign.

Long delay since the last entry; I was rather put off by the “is the Vatican a country making it the smallest” issue that the Pub Quiz pedants set about beating me with (thanks Tony). The answer is most probably and widely held to be yes but the “grey” area is “what is a country?”, this turns out to be a casual term open to debate, I’m doomed!

I’m up in Norfolk with my brother, Andrew, and mum for a week ensconced in the Caley Hall Hotel at Old Hunstanton. Fortunately it has free WiFi so I’m not lost in an ocean of newspapers and ignorance for the week. The downside is that my laptop has a fan that constantly wails like a 747 waiting to take off driving me up the wall.

As a side note, if anyones having a US election party next Tuesday night in Hastings please invite me!

Mrs Hardy wondering how much her sons bar bills will be.

Be there or be tucked up warm at home, ah, yes, I can see the issues here…

Oh well, if you want to come and support my egotistical onward march to fame, forty years too late, you’ll be making an old guy happy!

Half way home up a rainy west hill, trailing a snake of 2 pints and half a carafe of wine, is where wisdom strikes, and the worst thing is is the realisation that by the time you reach your front door you will have forgotten every thing. Tonight I vaguely remember it was something to do with Patrick not being right with his “if women didn’t have ****** we’d throw stones at them” philosophy. I remember thinking that the only people men can talk to about emotional stuff is women and how wonderful that was. The thought then floundered on the realisation that as women could talk to other women about these things they really didn’t need us and it was a bit of an exploitative concept. The reality is that is men didn’t have ******* they’d just ignore us. Thank God, here I am at my door and I will forget this all in a few minutes…

• Barack Obama will not win the American Presidency.

Not long to check this one out at least…

Here are links to Gallop who are doing daily poll tracking and The Drudge Report; a good kick off point for American news.

Here is also a useful link to an article at Scientific American that I think is appropriate: “The Certainty Bias: A Potentially Dangerous Mental Flaw”

And best wishes to Patrick who is going into hospital for what he assures me is a minor operation tomorrow. He says he’ll definitely be back foretelling the future next week-end.

There are those amongst you who seem to doubt the depth of my absolute wisdom and it must be said you are right for there is one who’s wisdom makes me look like my money was in an Icelandic savings account. I speak of course of Mystic Meg Patrick. Those who have the privilege of knowing him know he has an opinion on all things, er, a bit like my good self, and that he is always right, er, ditto. Better still he is the master of the prediction – the future being an open book to his omnipotent mind. So, in the vein of Moses, I have decided to keep track of these predictions and bring his all-seeing light to the world. From this day on there will be a new category on this blog; “Patricks Predictions”, so we can better know what the future holds in store for us.

The first two are:

• Germany will withdraw from the Euro within a year (or two, a qualification put on later in the conversation). So the date to look out for is 11/10/2009
• Ireland will withdraw from the Euro within three to five years.

We will see…

Look into my eyes, look into my eyes…

The weight thing is not going too well, and as I have mentioned before, this is not helped by the “you don’t need to loose any more’ brigade. Last night was talking about this at the bar and it turned out that Bradley is my height, six one, and the weight I would like to be, eleven and nobody goes on at him for being too thin. Anyway if I get to eleven he’s promised to lend me one of his more fetching outfits, pictured below. Is this the incentive I need?

Bradley showing Lily Cole how it’s done.

I only called into the pub to see if I was involved with the next Pub Quiz, honest. I can’t remember my vision being blurred till late morning after a few drinks when I was a young man, what happened there?

I will be doing a couple of rounds of the Pub Quiz next Wednesday at the Cinque Port Arms in All Saints Street starting at about 7.20pm, Geography & Music are going to be the questions I’m setting, so I hope to see everybody who reads this (you know who you are!) turning up to join in, it’s a quid each and it goes to charity and not the “Steves feeling the credit crunch but needs to buy a new camera” charity, sadly.

Yesterday I said of the new Bob Dylan album “I would admit that the latest album is not, for someone of my generation, Highway 61”. I lied, last track disc two, up there with “Desolation Row”. I’ve listened to it ten times or more already trying to get the words (a BD trademark since the beginning) and I haven’t done that with music for a decade or so. A couple of times had to reach for the hankys and that doesn’t happen either, oh, okay, only in “girly films”.

As with all the best Dylan stuff you’ve not a clue what he’s trying to say but it reaches inside your head and triggers a thousand thoughts of your own, mainly, unfortunately, “what have I done with my life”, with the answer easily apparent, “f**k all”, oh well, can’t win every time…

Some men, sorry – people strive for great things, wealth, climbing mountains, going into space. Me, it’s a depression of loose stones near the winch huts at Bulverhythe. Most days as I ride the bike past there I go a little “of road” and try and cycle through this patch. So far no success. I could die happy knowing I had done this and with that in mind I know there are many rooting for me.