One year on ...

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How has life changed for us all?

Personally, my life has changed even more than it did when Princess Diana died. In fact, I can't remember anything before 9/11; I've even started counting my age all over again (wish me a happy first birthday).

Immediately after the 11th, I began to comb my hair a different way. I've altered my viewing habits, my fridge freezer, my clocks and my floral arrangements. I've changed my calorie intake and my underwear; I still change my underwear whenever I hear loud noises, such as overhead jetliners. I've developed an aversion to brie (but I'm still ambivalent about raspberries). I sing in the shower and perform short plays on the bus.

I've even considered taking a different newspaper.

When I leave my house, government agents silently appear at my side and steer me back indoors, "to protect my essential liberties". I am able to recognise President Bush for the world-bestriding statesman that he is, rather than the pretzel-choking moron I thought he was; he is truly, to throw his own words back at him in an identical sense, a "man of peace".

I fight tyranny and oppression wherever I find it, through the medium of online forums. I turn left instead of right, buy regular not large and have stopped biting my toenails. I no longer view dentists as mortal enemies, but greet them as my brothers.

I surf where once I only shuffled.

I changed my friends, my fish, my mind and my wife (twice). I lived as a hermit and spent time diving for pearls in Kuala Lumpur. I avoid tall women in short skirts and seek out dowdy librarians in provincial towns.

Quite frankly, I can't conceive that my life could change any more radically, unless I am spontaneously turned into a mollusc. Or a journalist.

The time it takes

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to sit through all the adverts, trailers for next year's films, studio & chain logos and branding sequences, no smoking warnings and every other procrastinating insert at the cinema is, coincidentally, almost exactly the time it takes you to realise that you're not that bothered about seeing the film after all. If you can even remember what it was you came to see. Rule #1327 in the book of alienating your customers: bore them to death with animations of your tired little logos while making them wait for the product.

Here's a free clue for the studios: nobody will ever watch a film just because it was made by Universal (or Paramount, or whoever it was - like I fucking care). The only thing I would ever want to see of Universal is one of their executives face down in a trough of pig shit, gently expiring in a deeply ironic fashion. He who pays the piper should at least shut the fuck up while they're playing.

The collapse

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of British Energy could leave Britain facing an energy crisis in ten years' time as the current nuclear power plants reach the end of their lives. This represents an excellent opportunity to justify a large programme of investment in renewable, clean sources of energy (simultaneously reducing our reliance on imported fuels). So what will the country do now?

Well, it's obvious, isn't it? We're going to build more nuclear plants! Within ten years, we'll have reactors based on new and untested technologies in every beauty spot in Britain (most of them in Wales, Scotland and the north, of course). After all, what is Windermere if not a giant source of coolant for a power plant? And if that isn't sufficient, we'll probably drop a bomb on Birmingham so that everyone can warm themselves around the irradiated remains.

After all, we know that no situation really becomes a crisis until we've done our best to make it into one:

• Transport crisis? We'll wreck the railways, push up costs and prices and then pump billions into new roads - on top of dismantled lines!
• Important Earth Summit coming up? Hey, let's invite the business leaders who got us into this mess along to help! If we give them more opportunities to make money, maybe they'll clean up in gratitude. We can always cut costs by leaving the Environment Minister at home!
• Privatised utilities going to the wall, needing bail outs from the taxpayer? Let's privatise the Tube! Let's have more PFI deals in the health system!
• Middle East looking unstable? C'mon, we've got to help the Americans start a new war in the region! There's no "crisis" until WW3 is underway!

I'm a rationalist, get me out of here...