It has not been a good few weeks for the English language. First Countdown was plunged into crisis and then a lecturer at New Bucks University suggested that common spelling mistakes be allowed as variants. This really annoys me.

Yes some people have problems with spelling, but if general literacy standards at schools and universities are slipping then they ought to be addressed, not just accommodated. Do these people just have to text ‘dgree’ to be accepted on a course?

Sadly such tolerance of laziness and ‘dumbing down’ is symptomatic of a wider malaise across many sections of society. Why let historical fact get in the way of a Hollywood adaptation? Why learn another language, because others are sure to speak English? Why vote, because ‘they are all the same’? It makes my blood boil.

What is particularly annoying about this state of affairs is that, more than ever before, the solution to many answers is only a Google search or a spell-check away. It is pure laziness and ignorance. Of course language, like civilisation or democracy, is a living entity. Language evolves, mutates and changes over time as new words enter our daily vocabulary. Yet that does not mean that we ought to tolerate sloppiness. To do so degrades our linguistic traditions and the role that language plays in our lives.

I suspect that I will be called an intellectual snob (though hopefully spelt with two l’s) for having such views, but I am not…

Dumbing down jst rlly irit8s me.

With perfect timing, I am leaving the UK just as the latest series of Big Brother gets underway. I cannot abide this trite excuse for programming, and I am delighted that I will be able to avoid the vacuous media coverage that accompanies this annual event.

I have, however, coined a phrase for the way in which the British tabloids describe proceedings...

I have named it 'Illiteration' and hereby define it as 'a succession of words beginning with the same letter, employed by the tabloid newspaper journalist to draw the attention of the uncouth and uneducated to pointless reality TV 'goss'.

Example:

Busty BB babe's boozy bonks with boy band beau.

Roll on Paris

It is now almost exactly six years since I left Paris, after three memorable, often crazy years - where I, along with a combination of like-minded individuals, deluded romantics and idiot-geniuses contrived to have as much fun as possible on £3000 of British Student Loan.

So much has changed since then, but I still feel a pervading sense of nostalgia for a place I once called home.

When I finally left Paris in 2002, it felt that it was the right time to go, but ever since i have wondered how I would feel to return. I have so many memories tied up in places, people and music from my time there, that I am somewhat caught between excitement and fear at my impending return.

I should get some good writing out of it.

Next week i'm back there for a few weeks, doing some editing work for this erstwhile magazine.

If you're around and want to catch up then give me a bell.

I hear The Bowler still does a good pub quiz.

Chris

You would think that by your mid-20s, you would have had enough life experience to both manage and/or end relationships without resorting to euphemism or cliché.

The top five euphemisms that have been used on me are…

“Its not you its me” (well, obviously)

“I need to discover myself” (That wont take long. You are quite dull.)

“I need stability in my life” (So you are wrecking the one bit of stability you have?).

“You are really special to me”(So special, in fact, that you are doing this to me in public?).

“I think we should see other people” (I am…)

I think the worst part of breaking up is that it usually happens when you least expect it to. You meet for a drink, she is nice to you, normally complements on your hair or clothes and then BAMM moves in for the kill. There follows an awkward silence and then the inevitable moment when she cries. This is not for your benefit. It is a carefully stage-managed thing that women do to dispel any rumours that she is being a heartless cow. Then you sit, make small talk and you bumble on about nothing.

Some men choose to storm out in a theatrical manner. Some men chat up the barmaid or text their pretty female friends for hugs and sympathy (‘cos you know that’ll piss her off). Me? I choose the dignified option: introspection and Brown Ale. The worst possible time to be broken up with is just after a trip to the bar, because you have to sit and mull over all of the pain together until you have drunk up and can go your separate ways…

An Ipod is a useful weapon at this point. When she heads to the bathroom for tissues you can delve back into your favourite albums to offset the tears. Unless of course you were listening to The Smiths on your way to this rendezvous only to pick things up halfway through Morrissey crooning “I Know It’s Over”. You feel a salty taste in the back of your mouth and so hastily head to the bar.

You go through a myriad of emotions over the subsequent hours. Pain, hurt, anger, depression. You question how it has got to this stage? Is it something I said? Was it something I cooked? Is there someone else involved?

Until you finally reach acceptance, attempt to be positive and delve into the World of literature…

The concluding part of The Dolls House would be so much better if instead of falling to his knees and begging Nora to stay Torvald went, “actually…fuck her. Now I can watch Match of the Day in peace and put a dartboard in the spare room”. Ibsen was missing a trick there. The final act could end with him posting an advert on Gumtree,

“WANTED. Nubile flatmate. Preferably in blonde. No tarantella dancers please”.

Chris

I was listening to the Kinks and editing an article when an news story made me smile.

On Merseyside a Grandmother was faced with plans to demolish her home to make way for, amongst other things, a new Tesco. In a wonderful retaliation this lady applied for planning permission to demolish the mansion belonging to Tesco chief executive Sir Terry Leahy.

Tesco is a bugbear of mine. In my hometown, in rural Northumberland, they moved in a few years ago and, in my opinion have changed the place for the worse. They frustrate and destroy local businesses and purge towns of what makes them great.

This lady, Dot Reid, is sure to fail in her gallant conquest but hats off to her for standing up to the evil corporation.

At the end of the day;

Every Little Helps

• For people expecting a Prague diary, this will be online soon, but paid writing jobs have been a burden on my time.

I am now officially a professional writer.

I am open to interesting offers of writing work as well as translation (English, French, Spanish), proof reading and copy editing. As people closer to me will know this is a decision that I have been wrestling with for a short while, and is a big step into the unknown. However making a living out of what I love doing is a tantalising prospect!

If all else fails, I should get a decent book out of it!

Provisional title: Memoirs of a Pauper

So if you are interested in working with me, please email me here and we can discuss it further. My rates are negotiable and will vary from project to project. As I am making a living out of this I have to assess proposals on a cost/benefit basis however I will give every offer my due consideration.

Cheers

Chris

As requested by a number of readers, another extract from the diary I kept whilst in the USA...

December 26th 2007, 12pm

A couple of months back I wrote an entry about whether or not it is possible to stay friends with an ex. Filled with bravado I scoffed that it came down to a question "of intelligence and maturity". Yet writing this nursing a beer whilst my girlfriend catches up with her ex, I fear my earlier words may come back to haunt me...

Not that I feel like I have anything to worry about per se. I trust her implicitly and furthermore I am pleased that she does not feel the need to go behind my back (or at least I hope so!) for fear of pissing me off. I know couples who have to make furtive phone calls to purely platonic friends for fear of offending/upsetting their other half. But men, myself included, are insecure egomaniacs and therefore no matter how much trust is there, we still feel tension in our shoulders at times like these an itchy feeling of jealousy up our spines and a certain sense of foreboding...

I call it my inner John Donne.

I think that what makes these situations so hard is that the 'modern man' (and complete with new Ipod I consider myself one of these ) is placed in a no-win situation. If you tell your partner they cannot meet their ex, you are (rightly) pigeonholed as a selfish, mysogynistic bastard. What's more, if you labour the point in the days and hours leading up to their reunion you risk making things an awful lot worse. To paraphrase an famous Friends quote, "you turned him on and sent him off to see a stripper?!". You piss her off before she goes to meet him at your peril...

A good friend of mine fell foul of this (and for comic timing it was on Valentine's Day). He took his girlfriend out and wined and dined her. They got a taxi back to his and being the generous soul he is, offered to lend her a suitcase for her trip to London the next day. More fool him as she opened up said luggage to be confronted by an item of his ex-girlfriend's underwear. Recounting this story to us in the pub the next day, we thought it was hillarious, but she stormed off to London and their relationship went down hill from that point.

Shortly after he came to live on my sofa and was rehabilitated back into society with a mix of Playstation and tequilla, as was the style at the time.

Nursing another beer, I start to feel pathetic for harbouring such jealousy. I mean, I have met up with Ex's before for a drink. In fact if you haven't experienced the awkwardness of someone handing your spare toothbrush back in a crowded restaurant then you haven't lived! But the thing was these meetings were when we were still at the 'you're a complete bastard stage'. As as time goes on the hurt and anger people may feel at the time of a break-up can dissipate and what has gone before gets viewed with rose-tinted glasses.

That is where my insecurity is rooted.

I guess this sort of situation is inevitable whenever you return to your home town. We all have so much history there, and no matter how much we change as people there is so many relics of the past just waiting to pop out of the shadows and fuck you up. Like when you take a girl to meet your parents and they get out the baby photos. Every bar reminds you of a date, every park-bench a furtive kiss - a halcyon day forever frozen in time. These are the very things that inform who you are now. The swings that you hung around on after a house-party, the spot where you shared a coat and a surreptitious cigarette. The memories that...in years to come you will baulk at the thought of your own kids ever experiencing.

Such is the consequence of life.

10am, London Train

Leaving home in the early light of a drab North Eastern morning and sleepwalking into a commuter filled Metro, Colorado seems a very long way away. My journey will call at London and Chicago en-route and I will not arrive at my destination for at least another thirty six hours (assuming all goes to plan). Watching commuters slouch, yawn and grumble through the concourse at Central Station, I count a number of faces that wear the pale, gaunt expression of wanting to be anywhere else. Many of these ghoulish types are young and belie the look of tired resignation that comes with wanting more from life. People who thought that a University education would allow them to escape the monotony of the nine-to-five, and who have a whole five days of drudgery between now and blotting out reality on a Friday evening. These are our binge drinkers, our recreational drug users. These are the by-product of New Labour - a generation who dared to believe only to have their aspirations and dreams student-loaned into the ether.

Nursing a coffee, I allow myself to reflect on this and recall that only this time last year, I was one of these suit-clad zombies watching their 'temporary' position sliding towards a modicum of permanence. Thinking back to the dark days of winter 2006 still makes my shoulders slouch. One year ago I was doing a monotonous job that I was stupidly over-qualified for, for a cause I didn't care about and for a boss who was a bona fide fool. To cap it all I was single. I still recall the crushing depression I felt clocking in at the start of every week, where my only escape was tilting my computer screen out of the view of my colleagues and sending long, detailed treatises to friends in which I plotted my escape. I got to the point where I needed so much more from life and the day that I left that gulag of mediocrity was the day I began to live again.

I am sure there is a lesson there somewhere.

So much has changed in my life since then, and nigh on everything for the better. I feel challenged and am looking to the future. Sitting here travelling with my girlfriend I feel genuinely happy - although to paraphrase Harold Wilson, 'thirty-six hours in a confined space is a long time in a relationship!'

But no matter how much changes, some things are always the same. Writing this somewhere south of York, the train carriage heating is not working (not a bad return for 96GBP!). The franchise might change, the livery alter, but the fact remains that the British train network is an absolute fucking shambles and in itself a metaphor for modern Britain: overpriced, below standard and constantly making excuses for itself.

Roll on London.

It seems that you cannot pick up a newspaper or watch the news without encountering an item on immigration. If the proclamations of doom springing from the pages of the Daily Mail are to be believed the The British Isles, so overburdened by the weight of illegal immigrants, will soon flip on its axis and capsize - leaving millions of Brits clinging to bits of garden furniture and desperately trying to make it to the safe haven of France.

That's assuming that the French let them in of course...

Reflecting on this over a quiet pint in my local pub, my attention was drawn by a rather plump, obnoxious woman in (possibly) her late 30s. From the way she was dressed I would assume she would be on a reasonable income, but the idiotic things she was coming out with just go to prove that intelligence and financial security are not inextricably linked. I was so amazed by her rant, I took it upon myself to transcribe it for posterity.

"I don't think these immigrants should be allowed to come over here. I mean many of them do not speak no good English. They come over here, take our jobs. This is our country, this is our language and they should be prepared for that. And I don't care if they are escaping torture, they were born there and should stay where they are. I pay my taxes to help British people, not scrounging asylum seekers"

A few minutes later she piped up again. By now the conversation had turned to buying property in Spain (yes it wouldn't be Britain without talking about house prices). "I'd like to live there" proffered our portly commentator, "but they would have to speak English because I wouldn't want to have to learn Spanish".

Thankfully they were so engaged in conversation, they didn't notice the smug-looking man in the corner writing all this down and smirking into his Guinness.

Well England were denied in the Rugby, but in a few hours we will see whether Britain's Lewis Hamilton can clinch the title in the Brazilian GP. Given how much the Hamilton fairytale has reinvigorated F1 after some of the dross of previous seasons, it was suprising to read the following revelations in Saturday's Guardian,

Lewis Hamilton has been warned by motor sport's governing body to curb his celebrations if he wins the championship in the Brazilian grand prix....It emerged yesterday (Friday) that before the Chinese grand prix a fortnight ago...his team were told by the FIA that he should not dance or hug his father in the aftermath of victory

Apparently this is due to the 'hypersensitive' situation between Hamilton and his teammate Fernando Alonso, but if these allegations are true it all seems ridiculously over zealous. Part of the attraction to events like World Championships is such moments, and it seems ludicrous that the FIA would seek to put such restrictions on their largest commercial asset and pasteurise the human element of the sport.

As is often the case, little is straight forward in the political theatre that is F1

Photo courtesy of Flickr/bayonetscott