I’ve got a terrible cold at the moment, it’s been getting quite distressing. If only phlegm was worth something I could have made a nice little stack of cash selling it off. I was sat in the office on Wednesday thinking the front of my head might explode all over my filing, and that wouldn’t be good at all. Every time I get a tissue it reminds me of Noel Edmonds gunging people on a Saturday night.

I’ve been travelling about the place a lot over the past three weeks, which I think is where I picked it up - colds are bad, though. I reached a high point around Thursday afternoon where blowing my nose produced a sound exactly like the raptors on Jurassic Park, it was truly something to behold. To cap it all off I’ve now got a cold sore the size of Malta on my top lip.

I tell you all this mostly to disgust you, but I suppose these things are normally a sign that one should cut back somewhat - perhaps it’s time to have a little relax.

There’s a man up the street who works for the local council, every time I go to get the train at eight o’clock in the morning he’s always there, sweeping the leaves. He’s clearly a hard worker, but this puzzles me - what urgent need is there for the local authority to pay someone to haul themselves out of their bed at the crack of dawn to sweep leaves? I suppose that commuters are a delicate lot, and God forbid anyone slips and dirties their suit. It’s a tough world out there, it really is.

Further up the street are some workmen labouring (but not enough to work up a sweat) just past signs that warned the road was closing for three months at the beginning of June. Just this past week the road has been a hive of activity, what was a south London crater is turning into a reformed bit of tarmac. I find it odd that these chaps are suddenly working that much harder now their three months are up, given the area was dormant for the last couple of weeks when I first arrived - you would think that these sorts of chaps have some schedule to keep to, a tight timeline of events to be fulfilled. Now me - I leave things until the last minute, I’m not brilliantly well-organised unless I try very hard, these things do tend to be a bit of a rush. On the other hand, I don’t build roads.

There we have it - a microcosm of society in a hundred metres.

Dear Facebook,

As I’m sure you’re no doubt aware, I left you in the middle of last week in a fit of pique, an inelegant protest at your shockingly bad update. New Facebook? Are you all too young to have heard what happened to Coke? It was in the Eighties…never mind. The very simplicity that attracted so many to you has been wilfully abandoned for a new interface filled with more white space than this paper which has been left intentionally blank. I’m confused when I use it - perhaps this is a new ploy, introduced by the R&D department, whereby people are more seduceable by insidious advertises in their state of abject puzzlement. Or maybe it’s designed to keep over-22s out of the picture by introducing technology that only the kids can possibly get down with.

Of course, leaving isn’t leaving with you lot, it’s just logging out for an extended period, because you save everything just the way it was in order to make the inevitable comeback that much easier. I would resist, if only you hadn’t rendered the entirety of society incapable of any other means of communication.

I shall have to come back, but please be fully aware that it is under duress and your ‘New Facebook’ remains utter crap. You should still change it back.

Yours unwillingly,

Sam

I visited my MP’s constituency yesterday, it was great fun. When I got back to London I had to negotiate the Underground and then fight my way through London Bridge railway station. I live in Forest Hill, which isn’t particularly foresty but it does have trees - I can see several from my bedroom window, which I certainly wasn’t expecting when I moved to the Big Smog. I would have been happy with a seedy alleyway that wasn’t full of nappies, I don’t have big expectations. When I got to London Bridge it appeared there hadn’t been a Forest Hill train in approximately three weeks, which meant that seven thousand people were stood by the timetable board waiting for the platform number to appear for a train that was imminently departing. It was particularly gruesome - I think I saw some old women get trampled in the melee, people were running along the platform and diving into the train to make room. Even normally it’s not a proper commute unless you’ve left a nose mark on the window and have newsprint from some obnoxious pillock’s Telegraph running down the other side of your face.

This was particularly bad - the trains always remind me of a really old kids’ programme I used to watch on channel 4 on a Sunday morning that had little red chaps going round with oxygen bubbles on their backs, they were blood cells. It was all about how the body works, but it was always pretty busy near the heart. The other thing that came to mind was a stark simile of convulsion - like John Prescott eating packets of biscuits, we’re forcibly imbibed and then ejected from our vessel. I’m surprised there aren’t any more incidences of people getting severely injured on the way into work. I feel for all those people in the City, I really do, but if 5000 jobs going means I get a seat on the train then I think we have to maturely consider the fact that the economy has to reset itself and there is natural collateral as part of that.

Sigh - quarter past seven, means I have to get my packed lunch sorted. I love it really, but that kicks in around 10am.

It’s probably slightly prejudiced of me, the way I expect to be stabbed everywhere I go in London. You get these free papers like ‘The Londonpaper’, or ‘London Lite’ thrust in your face every time you walk near a tube station, something to distract you from the daily grind. Reading through (I think they’re some sort of A-level project) you get a bleak picture of stabbings in the supermarket, muggings gone wrong or cyclists under trucks - in jaunty language and no more than 200 words. It’s not like they have papers to sell, so they must be telling me the truth in a fair and balanced way.

I was thinking, though, about the change from a really small place (Bangor) to a really big place (London) - there was one murder in six years whilst I lived in Bangor, with its heady population of around 20,000 (including students, making it the fourth smallest city in the country without…). If you translate that to London someone can expect to be killed every five days, which is considerably lower than the official figures, it seems - 127 people murdered in 2006/7, making it about once every three days…interesting. Perhaps I shall be asking for a stab vest for Christmas.

I have my first free day in two weeks, an intense two weeks of induction and training and meeting the squillions upon millions of people I will be working with this year. I’ve forgotten precisely every name, I think it’s some sort of condition - possibly inherited from my father, who didn’t know my mum’s surname when they got married. I have learned from this things and will write down all important details as soon as I get engaged.

Anyway - free day. I did have high-minded plans for this blessed occasion, but as three o’clock rolls around I’m still sat in my pyjamas and trying to fix my mp3 player, which appears to have developed a hormonal cycle, and as you will no doubt read in upcoming blogs is crucial to the sanity of anyone who commutes. If I can’t close my eyes and pretend I’m Andy Williams at quarter to eight in the morning whilst being violated by several bleary-looking business types I’d probably hurl myself off the train. I was going to nip into town and perhaps visit a museum, or something, which I suppose is still viable. It’s very exciting, being having such cultural delights at your disposal - in Bangor an afternoon’s exposure to cutting edge modern art and perusing what the world has to offer meant a trip to Tesco.

But wow - a new blog! Isn’t this exciting. Technically it isn’t really new, I’ve just changed the name and deleted lots of stuff, but you’ll allow me the indulgence. I chose No Added Succour a) because it sounds fancy and b) because it describes how I feel about London. It’s a curiously soulless place, devoid of emotion in the same way that an aging Hollywood film star can’t move her face. I think London has had too much botox and I intend to find out why.

But seriously, so much to do and so little time. I’ve got to find myself in a year, whilst I find myself in a city rammed with 8 million people. I’ll be leading somewhat of a double life as there are many things I can’t share on here, but the fundamentals stay the same. Here goes nothing…