I don't want much. I shun the latest mobile phones, fashionable nic nacs, widescreen tvs, Ipods, games consules, computers etc, I see them for the Devil's trinkets that they are. I lust after nothing, my happiness does not hang on material things......except.....The Nissan Figaro. I WANT ONE. I don't mind which colour or shade, I just want one. When one drives by I stare slack jawed, I feel like Mr Toad when he sees the motor car which has upset his lovely yellow cart, "poop poop."
Modern cars are usually the designs of the retarded but the Figaro, it's something amazing. Now, who knows who reads Lola? Perhaps a rich old lady who lives alone, childless in a mansion is reading this. Perhaps she tunes in every day and her only source of joy is my modest little life. If this is you, get in touch, buy me a figaro and I'll take you for a spin when you like. I can drive you down to the coast of a Sunday. Perhaps we could dip in and out of London town, you could revisit the places you went to during the Blitz. You can tick the box for no publicity!

I've picked my bush. On my way to work I like to track the seasonal shift. I watched over the weeks as a tree blazed with fire during the autumn months and then let go of its leaves like a pensioner's shopping. Tins of carnation milk rolling into the gutter and a copy of the News of the World whisking away on a stiff breaze.

Anyway, this morning I saw a bush, just hard naked sticks with tight buds at the end of the sharp points. "That's it" I thought to myself, "I'm having that". Each day as I pass by I shall look at it and watch as nature works its miracle. In a few months time it will be lush and lovely, home to insects and the occasional empty coke can.

I ask you all to pick your bushes, trees or shrub and lets all have a gawp as mother nature dons her beret and smock and sets to with her paint brush and palette.

I've been having rather a lot of peculiar flash backs. I've just glanced at the contents of Lofty's bag which contain clothes and I have remembered taking my costume in for the Christmas school play in the 1970's. What's that all about? One day I am sure they will be able to link brain waves to a machine which will then be able to play out your memories on a tv. That would be nice....I suppose, as long as your childhood was as happy and carefree as mine.
One technological leap I can not wait for (and I don't mind if someone pinches the idea) is a web cam/hologram thing where you can sit at home and at the click of a button you can be sitting at home with friends who are far flung around the globe. You can have a perfectly nice dinner party with your friends, chatting to them etc but really they are just holograms, a bit like Princes Leia in Star Wars when she leaps out of R2D2 ("help me Obi Wan") only better. Imagine, it will be a boon to the agorophobic.

Waking up in the morning to the sound of birdsong, we are over the hump of winter. Although it is still dark and gloomy and Vitamin D is a precious commodity I know that it wont be long before the bulbs will be poking up through the cat poo in the garden, costumes will be made for Jack in the greening (I'm planning Mr Tumnus this year), winter clothes will be packed up and lop sided Victoria Sponge Cakes will sit on trestle tables once again.
Winter isn't the winter you get on calendars with crisp snow and frosted branches, it's dull and turgid and dirty. There are no snow bunnies lollopping around my way. Bring on spring, I've had enough of cinammon scented candles to last me a lifetime.

I've been engrossed in this http://ditchmonkey.blogspot.com It's the diary of a nice man living in the woods in Oxford. I'm getting myself ready for my outdoorsy holiday in the Yurt in Cornwall. Two weeks living rufty tufty, fabulous. I am going to take my map of the stars and hopefully find some proper darkness in which to observe the heavens. We do live such pampered lives these days, ignoring the wilderness at our peril. As Morrissey once said "nature is a language can't you read?".

Went to Basingstoke last night to see Eddi Reader - cor it was good. I won't harp on because I always do but I can safely say it was blinding. Anyway, Basingstoke....

The Ladyfriend and I thought we might catch a bite to eat before the show. We walked out of the car park into the shopping mall from hell. It was like a huge maze of high street chain stores. We went in one direction after another and all we could find were shops, all we could hear were the squeak of our shoes on the floor tiles and all we could smell was air conditioned Basingstoke air.

We found an exit which spewed us out into a back alley, two hooded skateboarding happy slappers eyed us with enthusiasm so we nipped back into the Mall of terror. We decided to try and find our way back to the Anvil theatre in the hope of sniffing out some kind of food. The lights were low, infact off. They were having trouble with their electric. We could make out shapes of puzzled staff standing by the tea urn not quite knowing what to do as a crowd of fans began to form in the foyer. We foamed at the mouth as we saw the biscuits and maltesers. We were eventually let in and scoffed down a rather nice sandwhich and a packet of glacier mints but it wasn't the kind of theatreland the ladyfriend and I have grown used to.

I think someone has died. I have been walking by an office block since the summer and always have a butchers through the window. The way the blinds are set allow me to cast an eye into their tea room. Above the sink there has been a picture of the Queen. It shows her in a formal pose and some several years younger. It has been bleached by the sun and quite old. I used to imagine the workers saluting her majesty as they dunked their hob knobs. But now it's gone.

Quite sad really. I reckon the owner of the picture has passed over or retired. The rest of the office have probably been waiting for years for the old bugger to go so they could chuck Elizabeth in a bin bag. I bet as I write this they are mincing around IKEA for a replacement, something modern and garish. Bolsheviks.

Lofty and I have started a turf war. We feed the ducks at lunchtime and today we noticed that there were only a few when normally there are around forty of the little quackers. We like our ducks and the ducks like us.

I was a bit concerned that a Pied Piper had tricked them into the back of his van and they were half way across Eastern Europe to appear in a circus dressed as ballerinas smoking cigars.

We walked along the river a bit more and thought we might see them at the bridge. We did. We also saw an old man with a huge bag of bread. He looked at us and we looked at him. We all knew what we were all thinking. He won today's showdown but there will be other days and other loaves of bread AND we've got time on our side.

A bit put out this morning on my walk to work. What with it being January and thoughts turning to weight loss and all, I found my route peppered with other people. There was a woman infront of me which meant that I had to alter my speed inline with her. I didn't want to dawdle, but I also didn't want to mount a takeover bid, I could have got into a right pickle and ended up raspy. Also, a youngster was walking the whole route on the other side of the road. Now, this wouldn't be a problem to others but it was to me. I usually sing on the way to work, quite loudly. It cheers me up and puts me in a positive frame of mind for the day. I don't always know the words....infact I sometimes make them up....and I don't always know the tune....I very often make that up. So how could I carry on with an audience? I'm afraid my singing is very much from the same school as Elizabeth Fraser from the Cocteau Twins - very effective when I go under the underpass. I was snuffed out today, like a wet Swan Vesta.

I've had it pointed out to me that by mentioning the smell of care homes yesterday readers may jump to the conclusion that Lola has had a flirtation with mental illness. I have NOT been in care, let me state that now. I was referring to the many evenings in the nursing quarters of one of these establishments.

By the way Shelley, if you are reading this, do you know what's happened to Michael? And guess what? The ladyfriend and I are booking two weeks in a Yurt down your neck of the woods. Put something fizzy in the fridge for July!

Woke at five this morning and tossed and turned etc but could not return to sleep. I tried to count from 100 backwards which is supposed to induce sleep. It didn't but oddly I did start to recall moments in my life which I had long sinced not entirely forgotten about but had left behind. Thinking about it now it was probably because I was counting in the early nineties. So simplistic is my mind it obviously played word association. Events from the 90/91 period featured heavily. It was quite a busy time for me, people came in and out of my life like fluttering moths to a flame, burning their wings on my bombastic nature.

Smells of rented accommodation in Slough, Care homes, a flat above a fish and chip shop and the Fridge night club in Brixton came to me this morning. It all sounds very Andy Warhol but it wasn't quite that bad although there were a fair few peculiar individuals. I wonder where they all are now? Some have slipped along the conveyor belt and out of my sordid little life unnoticed and some have been ejected from my airspace by force. I may google some names to see what pops up. It makes me wonder, wouldn't it be nice to know that when we say goodbye to someone that it will be the last time we will see them? You can make sure that you've got that book back.

Whenever you're called on to make up your mind,
and you're hampered by not having any,
the best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find,
is simply by spinning a penny.

No - not so that chance shall decide the affair
while you're passively standing there moping;
but the moment the penny is up in the air,
you suddenly know what you're hoping.

I'm having a rather smashing Christmas. I've managed to consume enough calories to enable a cross channel swim, drank so much champagne my internal organs are floating in fizz and strangely, ignited a passion for jigsaws.

Fed up with the snow thing. We have not got an inch of the stuff. Everywhere else is covered in a blanket but we have escaped it. Honestly, there's more white powder on Kate Moss's toilet seat then there is in our garden. When I grow up I'm moving from this area of moribund weather. Scotland, Cornwall or the Lake District. If weather was music we get the stuff that is played in lifts.

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.....

I will go about my business during the next two days very carefully, I shall not ignore the carol singers' tin or collect debts from poor old ladies. I shall not scrimp on my gifts or turn the thermostat down when I get home. I don't want to be wake up to a strange apiration in the middle of the night.....

But I will just say one thing nasty - that Kate Melua is dreadful. Have you heard her? The juvenile lyrics, the god awful singing - she sounds like she should have had her adenoids out.

Last night she was on tv singing the Fairytale of New York with the Pogues which was quite a shocker. I loved Kirsty Maccoll so she was on shakey ground to begin with but my word it was god awful. Her limitations were laid bare like a dropped bag of rice on the kitchen floor, her flaws spilled out all over prime time tv and I hid behind my cushion. There, that's enough. Merry Christmas to all Lola readers!

I feel like a pickled onion ready to burst out of a jar and onto a Boxing day buffet. Like a shiny sixpence in a pudding, waiting to break an old ladies last remaining good tooth. I feel like a complicated puzzle nestling between a paper hat and the snap in a cracker. I feel like a sugar lump ready to be left by the fire for Blitzen. I'm very excited.

I know in a few days when I have eaten and drunk too much I will feel a bit like that cheap flimsy card that someone has sent you that you thought liked you a bit more. Or like the back end of a pantomime cow and look like the kid in the school nativity who came from the nasty housing estate who's costume didn't look any good.

Never the less, I am very excited and ready and waiting for Christmas to begin!

Four sleeps until the big day! Went to Tesco during lunchtime and my goodness the shelves are groaning under the weight of indulgence. I got shuvved in the arse by a trolley, I don't think I was in the wrong but one can never be too sure.

Schools are off now and don't we know it. The roads are flowing freely as if someone has taken their foot off of the hosepipe. Infact, as I walked to work all I could see were 4x4's parked badly in driveways. No school run for the yummy mummies this week!

It didn't make a lot of difference on the car fumes though. My walk to work is chocka with pollution. I may have the pins of Zola Budd but I've the lungs of a coal miner.

I am a lucky ducky. Last night the Ladyfriend took me out for my birthday treat (she was sadly under the weather last week and a night of celebration was kicked to the kerb and Lemsip replaced the Champers).

I was whizzed off to Windsor for ice-skating in the park. It was bloody freezing and although I have a keen sense of adventure I decided to forego a night on the ice. It did look very inviting though with the castle floodlit behind the rink.

We scooted off to Browns for tea instead and my word what a treat. It's been a long while since I have tasted such gorgeous nosh. I sank my teeth into a lamb's rump and wouldn't let go for dear life! I was spoilt thoroughly and had to be rolled out of Browns like Violet Beauregarde.

Wrapping presents and a bottle of Cava don't mix I'm telling ya. Yesterday the Ladyfriend suggested we get a bottle out of the fridge which she had won in a raffle. I frowned as it was not even four o'clock in the afternoon but I could see she was fraught and well it is Christmas and all.

It all went fine at first, I invented the "Plate of Tape". We do not own a tape dispenser and every year I get fed up with stopping to cut a bit of sellotape whilst holding down the paper and present with my left foot. This year I turned over a plate and sat and cut about ten pieces of sellotape and stuck them to it. It was my intention to pick off a bit of tape as I went along, dashing through the wrapping like a hot knife through butter.

It was a roaring success. Until the Cava kicked in. Then merry hell began. The Ladyfriend took over and started to cut tape for the "Plate of Tape" she wasn't cutting it on the bias and so the tape stuck flat to the plate. She fell behind with the replenishment and was getting all nasty with it, scoffing at my baggy ends and generally carrying on. I told her not to criticise the "Plate of Tape" as it was my invention and far better than what we have ever done in years before.

I wont need the plate of tape when I do her presents because she aint getting any now! I'm going to give them to the workhouse.

Sometime this week some University published a mathematical formula for wrapping Christmas present YxZ=X etc. All very useful I am sure but of no help to me, I am afraid I come from the last minute school of wrapping. I cut corners, rip tape with my teeth and slash the paper as though it were cut with a chainsaw. Any matching of pattern is by accident than design and tags are hastily attached and written with a flourish.

What I'd REALLY like to know the formula for is getting tree decorations to hang the right way round. Last night I was getting into a right old state as my little drummer boys span around to face the wall and not the audience. This morning I sat down to breakfast to the sight of a polar bear's arse in my face where I should have seen his cheery face and marvelled at his jaunty scarf. Hopeless. What goods a little fairy if all we can see is the back of her tutu?

Good grief it's hot. I'm sitting in the office and I feel like an extra from Tenko. Someone has been messing with the evil air conditioning and we're sitting in a micro-climate stuffed to the gills with foul odours.

Grabbed the Christmas Tree from B&Q last night. Couldn't be bothered with shopping around, time is money etc. It's now or never and so on. Grabbed a 6 footer and bundled it into the back of the car. Nearly had an accident backing out of the car park, I couldn't bloody see a thing and why walk out infront of a reversing car anyway?

The tree is now propped up in the garden wrapped in netting all kinky like. I shall haul it inside tonight and let it out of its bondage. I daresay it will be full of mice (we have a little colony in the garden) The birds rely on me for food, the mice rely on the birds to miss a bit, the cats rely on the mice to take chances and so the beauty of life goes on. So the house will be filled with the heady scent of pine and rodent piss for the next three weeks - happy holidays indeed!