Concealed in the cupboard.

I know. This year has been all teeth and Bertie. I ought really to go on an outing or make a scientific discovery or race half a dozen potted hyacinths because the journal undeniably lacks variety. Speaking of teeth, dental tape fibs when it tells you it doesn't shred. I find it shreds like absolutely nobody's business and I have to go after it with dinner forks.

But anyway. This post is not about teeth. It's about Bertie. Or not. Music, really. Here:

1. I love Leonard Cohen very much, but he sings about thighs far too often for my liking. It's not beyond your powers to work out that I don't think much of thighs.

2. Gordon Lightfoot has the most astonishing accent. It's very, very Canadian. So Canadian it's almost Scottish. It's really quite great. I think we should all try it ourselves some time.

3. Flanders and Swann are not much like Simon and Garfunkel. Swann wrote the music, which is probably the root of the difference. But they make quite a good parody act. Flanders does make a great many jests at Swann's expense when the other takes a solo, but it's a lot more... well meaning. Also I would quite like both of them to be my uncles.

4. It's great fun taking the earphones out one at a time and letting Simon and Garfunkel trade lines rather than singing together. It turns a song into a kind of a duel.

Only four observations. It isn't a very big playlist.

5. Johnny Cash in his later years was extraordinarily depressing.

There.

I listened to music today in a way I haven't done in years, as in behind a door and doing absolutely nothing else and for about two hours, and sometimes the same song over and over again like I used to when I knew my handful of audio tapes well enough that I could rewind precisely back to the beginning of a particular song without the aid of a counter. I should not love Bertie this much, but he's like the magic CD that never existed but contained all of the songs I wanted in one place. I am however wasting the battery.

Also I ate cake today and then had a plum for tea. I have somehow become unaccostomed to cake. And I wrote an unfortunate ending for another character. One day I might write an original character who doesn't just die at the end of the story.

I have no other news. Probably you can blame Bertie. Actually I think this is the dullest post I've ever made and should instead have done the one where I say Penelope Cruz looks very much like a dik-dik, and I mean that in a nice way because dik-diks are very pretty. They just keep their nostrils quite close to their mouths.

I am continually astonished that Hugh Laurie has become a US TV superstar. I think about this quite a lot because he's in my icon. It occurred to me today that I watch Jeeves and Wooster considerably less than I used to, possibly because I'd spend the entire episode chuckling and saying 'well, well' and being astonished. But I wonder if he shall ever come back and be comical.

I go to BBC 2 now.

I hate when I do something anti-luddite, except today, when I bought a tiny MP3 player that is now sitting in the palm of my hand that isn't typing and playing 'Anthem' at me. I've not put much on it yet, but more than I can carry in my rucksack pocket on audio tapes. I know it was wrong and bad and consumerist, but it's tiny, and inexpensive, and it's playing 'Anthem' at me. I can't stop it. I can, technically, but I don't want to, because first it played 'America' at me and now it's playing 'Anthem' at me and that's just so lovely of it. I will repent somehow. But probably I won't stop loving it.

I know why I had a problem with The Daily Show now, by the way. I forgot. It's nothing to do with the material... it's just the damnable audience. The response to humour is uncontrolled laughter and, if it's good enough, spontaneous applause. Whooping, roaring and shouting 'yeah' seems like an absurd reaction to even the funniest joke. I remember having this problem with the US version of Who's Line, even when it wasn't otherwise ostensibly different to the UK version. There needs to be a audience tone-down button.

I should go to bed. I'm wondering what Bertie's going to sing to me next. I don't know when he became Bertie. Aw. 'April Come She Will'. So sweet.