Ten recent Google Analytics favourites

Here are a selection of my favourite search queries that people have used to reach this blog in the last two months, thanks to Google Analytics. Some of these really made me smile.

"BUNHILL FIELDS" "HENRY HUNTER" - I was so, so happy that someone else  out there somewhere has fallen for the charms of Henry Hunter's grave in Bunhill Fields. Coffee?

AN ESSAY ON THRILLING BUS JOURNEY - really? Someone looking to do their English homework?

BBC DAN WALKER'S A TWAT - strange way of making your feelings known, by Googling the term; made me giggle though!

BLINDFOLD WHEELCHAIR - I'd love to think this was someone looking for kinky sex advice, but I suspect they were after a review of "The Smile Off Your Face"

CHEESE PORT CHESS - for searching for this holy trinity, I salute you.

FOXTONS JUNK MAIL HARASSMENT - yes indeed.

GRUYERE HAM MUSHROOM FILLING FOR CREPES - hopefully you found what you were looking for.

HTC HD CALLS CUT OUT - yes they do.

ONTROEREND GOED A GAME OF YOU FELL IN LOVE WITH PERFORMER - yes; so did I.

WHERE TO BUY TURMERIC IN WEMBLEY - erm, as every second shop is an Indian supermarket, it shouldn't really be all that hard?

Decision making (1)

For several weeks I've been making painfully slow progress through Francesco Nicosia's classic work from the 60s, Consumer Decision Processes. It's an academic work in a field where I have no formal training, so I'll forgive myself the slowness, although to be fair my eyes occasionally glaze over when reading it on the Overground after a long day at work.

I've still got a long way to go on it (estimated finish time: 2013) but although it's not always edge of the seat stuff (by page 80 the reader has just been informed that a decision starts with a goal and ends with an act) it is a carefully constructed breakdown of how decisions might work. Nicosia reviews the existing literature but it was the ideas of Paul Lazarsfeld that grabbed me.

Lazarsfeld's scheme, from 1935, basically postulates that at time T you have an individual with feelings or situations I(T) in his environment E(T). The environment acts on those feelings and situations, and helps shape them in turn. Of course, only relevant environmental concerns will have any effect on the individual.

For example, E could be anything from some word of mouth, to a change in personal circumstances, to an ad, to a change in product availability, to an event, to a product attribute. So E feeds into I, which in turn is changed, so another "set" of environmental variables will come into play, and so on in a constant iterative process, until the individual preferences reach a critical point leading to some tangible action, and the decision is made. It sounds lovely and simple, but the key point is that all these variables play off one another; so one particular variable will only have an effect on, or be relevant to, another variable depending on what stage of the process you are at.

I feel the marketing implications of this scheme are clear. Imagine first the universe of individual variables (circumstances, opinions and so forth), alongside the universe of environmental variables. The trick is to draw up some sort of infinite Venn diagram, and work out which variables interact with which other variables, and under what circumstances. The marketeer can then consider which of those variables he has control of, and apply them at the appropriate point in the decision process. But the hard bit is realising that each individual circumstance will be different; so are there patterns, or general rules, that can be drawn - and indeed are the decisions that are being taken to purchase the product in question the same or different?

Of course the environmental variables such as product attributes themselves are not constants; because it's the subjective opinion on product benefits that matters. Which neatly ties in with what Ward Edwards and others were looking at in the 50s (my progress through Nicosia is supersonic compared to the rate I'm reading Amos Tversky-edited Decision Making!) I won't pretend to know anything at all about microeconomic theory, but the key to "utility curves", marginal utility and a value-to-cost ratio is that the value or utility of a product is subjective. Even something like price is subjective; the perceived cost is more important than the actual cost when it comes to decision making.

In ma lugs

This won't be another pro-Android evangelical outpouring. However, since having picked up my Desire HD I've capitulated and purchased an all-singing, all-dancing Spotify subscription and I'm determined to get value out of it. With that in mind, I've been putting plenty of aural goodness in ma lugs.

Currently big in my headphones:

Beach House - "Walk In The Park". We've been canning the album at work for the last few months and it's a big winner chez Eoghan. The blissed-out, afterclub, post-rave "Walk In The Park" is the best if the lot.

Bach - The Well Tempered Clavier. Spotify isn't ideal for classical music, as it's not filed consistently; so you get plenty if rubbish recordings mixed in with the good ones. I've done searches for "guaranteed winners", and Daniel Barenboim naturally falls into that category. I've listened to Bach's epic several times over in recent days.

Serge Gainsbourg & Brigitte Bardot - "Bonnie & Clyde". Obvious, maybe, but what a winner (am I falling for Sheenmania?) Getting played LOUD.

Freddie Hubbard - "Suite Sioux". The whole Red Clay LP is ace but this understated masterpiece trumps the true track as the standout highlight for me. It's all very low key, but Herbie Hancock's Rhodes and Lenny White's subtly brilliant drums form a platform for Hubbard. It's a perennial Eoghan favourite and I'm enjoying revisiting it.

Jane Bunnett - "Descarga a la Hindemith". I love Jane Bunnett, descargas and Hindemith, so its just as well this tune lives up to its name. Talking of jazz tunes influenced by 20th century eastern European composers...

Larry Young - "Zoltan". Based on a theme of Kodaly, this opens up into a driving modal killer. Solid.

Hindemith - 5 Pieces for Strings, op 44. Like so much of the best music, these were written for students. Firmly neoclassical in feel but smothered in harmonies that can only be Hindemith.

Stefon Harris - "Summertime". This brilliant jazzer can do no wrong, strictly for the heads, and I'm caning all his albums at the moment thanks to Spotify. "Blackout" (from the album of the same name) is an urgent, arresting killer but from the same album check out one of the best versions of the Gershwin chestnut you'll hear anywhere.

Ed Lincoln - "Catedral". The self-titled LP reissued by Whatmusic a few years ago is one of my all time favourites and it's getting rinsed repeatedly at the moment. Every tune is essential but "Catedral" is getting a real revival with me at the moment.

Grant Green - "Future Feature". Feel the funk! This is another instant winner, a little light to begin with but it opens out into full blown catchy big band jazz funk. Ace! Also getting heavy rotation (if that's the correct term with Spotify...) is "Let The Music Take Your Mind" from the Alive! LP, which is an instrumental funk blast.

Dorian Concept - "Tropical Hands". Electro heaven. On the flipside of the Trilingual Sex Experience" 12", this one's even better. The sorts of noises kids make between their teeth imitating a kazoo, with delicious midtempo beats lathered over the top. Big.

Mozart - Piano Concerto no 25. The late Mozart piano Concertos are getting a lot of airplay with mne at the moment simply because they represent perfect musical form. Not a note is wasted throughout, and while they spring few surprises, they show music "as it should sound". Don't get me wrong, I still love playing a load of Messiaen or Stravinsky, but if you want the classical format demonstrated in its purest, most perfect way, then this is where it's at. The jazz equivalent would probably be...

John Coltrane - "My Favorite Things". Why is this such a stone-cold classic? Is it the languid pace? The tuning fork purity of Coltrane's soprano solo? The understated brilliance of McCoy Tyner's extended outpouring of modal progressions based on the theme - one of the most enjoyable solos ever? The perfect balance and simplicity of the ensemble work? The answer, of course, is all of the above.

Shit Robot - Simple Things (Work It Out) (Todd Terje remix). Like the Beach House album, Shit Robot's From The Cradle To The Rave has been played a lot at work and the album sounds really fresh. Best of all, though, is Terje's thumping house remix of "Simple Things" which just builds, and builds, and builds...

George Benson - "My Latin Brother". Surely Benson's finest moment. Wicked drums, rhythm guitar and cello form a backdrop for Benson to cut loose for a solo of the highest calibre. It was surely this solo which Masters At Work hoped to replicate when they hired Benson to play on "You Can Do It (Baby)". I only knew the tune from a scratchy edited 7" version. The LP version is miles better.

Honor Blackman - "Men Will Deceive You". No, really. Utterly fantastic song from Honor. Also check out the version of this performed by Brady over the reggae sounds of Serge Gainsbourg's classic "Javanaise Remake", which is great in its own right. But Honor's original lick takes some beating.


Di Maggio - "Madame X". I heard this on French Radio London (does what it says on the tin...the music is nearly as good as Radio Nova) and it's brilliant. The album is worth checking out; in "Madame X" Mahlerian strings give way to an achingly lovely, deep track, with spoken vocals. Love it.

Ham, gruyere and mushroom crepes

I love Shrove Tuesday.

I was pretty hacked off that two supermarkets and three health food stores between them couldn't muster a bag of buckwheat flour, but consoled myself with vast quantities of crepes. And you can't beat a classic ham-based filling for a crepe.

Easy really: make a bechemel sauce, saute an onion and some sliced mushrooms, grate some gruyere, and add the cheese, onions and 'shrooms to the sauce. Make the crepes, keep them warm, put two thin slices of ham on each and smear liberally with the sauce. Then whack them in a hot oven for a few minutes.

Wow.

Essential spring theatre

Just a quick heads up on one or two unmissable productions this spring. The Young Vic have Terminus by Mark O'Rowe, performed by the Abbey, which I saw in Edinburgh a few years ago. I remember feeling slightly short-changed when I realised I'd splashed out £17 to see a set of static monologue with no set and seemingly no directions, but that wasn't taking into account the red hot script. The writing is brutal: not a word wasted, as the play wields its savage destruction through words. It's lyrical, poetic, hyper-surreal, intricate, sadistic, very funny and an absolute must-see. The script by O'Rowe - whose films Perrier's Bounty and Intermission are worth watching - sits proudly on my bookshelf. Terminus is the best of the lot though. I hope we see more work from him soon as he's one of the best writers out there at the moment.

Concurrently at the same venue is a joint production with English National Opera of Monteverdi's The Return of Ulysses. Staged Monteverdi is always a.joy (another fond Edinburgh memory was Jordi Savall's Orfeo) and I wanted to see this even before I heard my friend, tenor Thomas Hobbs, was in it. It promises to be a winner.

Then in my inbox and Twitter this morning was news that Battered Arts Centre have given in to popular demand and announced another One-on-one Festival. Ontroerend Goed have star billing once again and justifyably so, although it seems they are not bringing any new productions.
Logistics (perhaps the threat of mutiny from the box office staff, in off their feet last time?) have determined that there will be ten set packages of shows, each with three performances to see. The packages are all themes around a mood, so you could opt for "challenging" or "out of body" for example. At £19.50 a pop, once again it'll be frustrating if you feel everyone else around you has seen more stimulating material, but that's part of the fun. Someone pointed out that compared to last summer's festival there are fewer tickets, so that "sneaking in" to unsold performances may be more difficult. Still, once again it promises to be one of the most exciting events if the year.

Blogger Android app - a little review

As if by magic, just a few days after I started using my new phone and implored Google to introduce an official Android app for Blogger, they've done it. The app is free and available on the Market now. But is it any good?

The app loads quickly and has a very simple interface, which is a promising start. Multiple accounts are supported, which is nice, and if you ave several blogs on the same account then these can all be updated. This reveals the first flaw: the default blog is not necessarily the last one posted to, or the most frequently updated. Mine defaults to an old, forgotten blog, which is a shame.

Understandably, formatting options are minimal, but most people wouldn't want to get that fiddle anyhow. Even on my enormous HTC Desire HD, I'll be quite happy with plain text, with the ability to update the post and make it look fancy later.

Photos can be uploaded either from the gallery, or directly from the smartphone camera; this means liveblogging from an event or news situation is easy. It certainly means that photographing directly to Twitpic is no longer the sole option.

Labels (tags) are also enabled, and there's a nice GPS feature, so that the blogger's action can be automatically added: a nice.touch.

All of this is very nice, but the official app doesn't really do anything that Blogger-droid couldn't handle. What is really criminal is that there's so syncing with the Blower account. It seems that a post from a mobile will only appear in the main account once it has been published. This means that it's not.possible to write part of a post on the go and finish it offer home on a computer, or vice versa. As someone who tends to write fairly lengthy pieces over a period of time, this is extremely frustrating - t would be nice to have a piece of work in progress bubbling away, and add to it whenever. Have an idle five minutes. The sooner Blogger sort this out the better. Some sort of spellcheck woulda be welcome, although my HTC has this built in.

All in all, the Blogger Android app does the job well enough, although I will lol forward to improved versions providing further functionality. Incidentally, I wrote this post on my phone!

HTC Desire HD - full review

It's only been two weeks, but my HTC Desire HD feels like an extra limb already and my prehistoric Nokia feels like a distant memory (it'll still be useful, though: I'll keep it by the door as something to hit burglars with).

Once you take a little while to appreciate its full functionality, it's a magnificent beast. Perhaps the best way to describe it is that it does everything you would hope a phone to do; the sort of phone that you fantasised about five years ago and thought "one day, phones will be able to do all these things..."

I was astonished to discover that it really does work straight out of the box. The 130 page PDF manual looks daunting, but it's a remarkably intuitive phone - you don't need a PHD in geekology to make the thing work, and by spending a surprisingly painless period tweaking the settings, it turns into an object combining beauty, power and common sense.

The handset itself is beautiful. There is almost no wasted space; it's all taken up by the screen. Never having had an iPhone or similar, it seems to me like a "normal" size for a phone, but there have been "ooohs" and "aaahs" wondering what it is, and admiring its dimensions. The display has been criticised for not having the same brilliance as the Samsung Galaxy S; but the resolution, to my eye, is excellent, and is bright and colourful and looks amazing...although with a pretty major caveat, of which more later.

I've seen a review of the Desire HD which advised people to think of it less as a smartphone, and more of a PDA which can make phone calls. That pretty much sums it up, but its primary purpose, for most people, will still be to make calls and send texts. Speech quality is excellent - although I have severe problems with reception in my flat, which I've never had before. Calls have cut out on more than one occasion. Texts, meanwhile, are handled in a fairly simple manner.

Contact syncing is intelligent, simple and generally good. The phone will recognise when the same contact is listed in different places (email, phone contacts, Facebook, Twitter) and prompt the user to merge them. How this will work in practice when it comes to transferring the contacts onto another phone in two years' time I've no idea, but for now, it's a simple and "quietly brilliant" system, to use HTC's own strapline. Searching for contacts is slightly clunky, and phone numbers "borrowed" from Facebook accounts are in the wrong format to call directly. Another niggle is that it's not possible to "edit" a contact that doesn't have a phone number attached; which in turn means that you can't add a phone number manually. Instead, you need to create a new contact with the phone number and then merge with the other accounts, which slightly undoes some of the excellent work done by the phone already. There is also duplication of Facebook profiles within a contact page thanks to two different Facebook applications running simultaneously (Facebook for Android and Facebook for HTC Sense, and yes, you do need them both running really), but this isn't an inconvenience, it just makes contact pages look a little cluttered.

HTC are heavily tied in with Google; so much so that I have decided to migrate from Hotmail to Gmail. It is possible, in theory, to sync with Hotmail via Microsoft Exchange, but I couldn't get it to work properly. So I took the plunge and moved to Gmail (Hotmail now allows other accounts to pick up emails automatically, which Gmail does neatly; this was the straw that broke the camel's back). In truth I'm not a huge fan of the Gmail interface on a PC, but Gmail for Android is simple, elegant and intuitive. However, I'm not convinced that emails are being picked up in anything like real time; that's a combniation of Gmail not picking up Hotmails instantly (it usually checks every 20 minutes or so, but you have no control over this) and the Gmails not being sent to the phone in real time as they should. I'm still trying to diagnose which is the greater problem, but having emails arrive an hour after they were sent is really quite annoying when the whole point of having emails on a phone should be to have them in near-real time. You can open and view Word and Excel attachments; in theory you should be able to edit them, but good luck trying to manage a spreadsheet from a mobile.

The standard Facebook and Twitter Android apps are built in and are both excellent. I'm an on-off user of Tweetdeck on a PC, but in truth the branded apps work fine. Using HTC Sense, the networks are both integrated into other functionality, via HTC Peep (the built in Twitter app) and FriendStream. The latter is essentially an aggregate feed of Twitter and Facebook; convenient and that's about it - with limited functionality to comment/reply/like etc. Notifications duplicate themselves for Twitter, too - another tiny niggle. I'm rather tempted to try uninstalling the Twitter-and-Facebook-for-HTC-Sense functionality, but there may be other implications which I'm unaware of.

Internet browsing is, quite simply, brilliant. Pages load instantly via Wireless or 3G, the automatic resizing and realigning of text is superb, and there are no sites I've visited so far that have caused any problems whatsoever. As someone to whom internet browsing on-the-go is an entirely new experience, to my amateur eye the browsing experience is almost as good as on a PC. Zooming, scrolling, and navigating are a joy.

Typing on the touchscreen is...OK. It definitely helps to turn the phone to landscape, which makes the "keys" larger, but despite the screen's size, it's impossible to get close to even a fraction of PC typing speed. I had intended to use the phone to blog on-the-go, but that'll really be a chore. On that point, it's astonishing that Google haven't built a Blogger-for-Android app; that's a serious oversight and something they need to resolve quickly as there's a Wordpress app. I've tried using Bloggerdroid which is reasonable, although it doesn't seem possible to sync with the account, meaning that part-writing a piece on the go and finishing it at a machine (or vice versa) isn't possible as far as I know.

The camera is simple to use. I haven't given it a really proper test yet, but from a bit of casual use picture quality is up there with entry-level compacts, which is all you could ask for. Video quality is seriously good, as you'd expect from a machine with the "HD" moniker. Folder management is unconvincing, however; as it uploading to a PC.

The music player is moderate - does the job, but nothing as elegant to use as my iPod Nano (and, presumably, the iPhone). The headphones, in combination with Dolby Mobile, do provide excellent sound quality, however.

There is a baffling array of mapping software - with "Maps", "Navigation", "Places", "Latitude" and "Locations". It seems that the first two are essentially Google Maps, whilst the latter three are HTC's own branded mapping system. This is confusing, but I'll be taking the advice of another review and ignoring the HTC effort in favour of Google Maps. The Google Navigation is basically a Satnav; no, it's not a TomTom, but given that it's bundled for nothing, it works very well. As an aside, it's a shame that TFL haven't released an Android app combining JourneyPlanner and Travel Alerts functionality. Here's hoping.

As for other apps: "News" is simply Google Reader. I've had an account for some months but never really got into it; it feels artificial to sit down and read a set of blog posts like a newspaper, in a structured way. Instead, I tend to use Twitter to drive interesting blog matter to my consciousness. With a mobile, however, it's a different story: public transport is the perfect time to have 20 minutes to waste to catch up on some blogs and the best thing about HTC's effort is that it caches the data offline - meaning that you can read the posts on the tube. Thus my blog habits are on the increase!

That's basically it for built in applications, although the "behind-the-scenes" functionality is extensive: voice recognition, universal search, and the ability to use he phone as a wireless hotspot (in other words, to connect a laptop to the 3G), for example, are all intelligent and work well. I haven't really got any use of HTC Sense yet, although the ability to make the phone ring remotely at full volume (if you've mislaid it) and remotely lock it or delete data is clever and sensible. There is supposedly the ability to track the phone's location via GPS - in theory, a great idea if it's been stolen - but I've had direct experience of this having met someone who'd just had theirs snatched and it didn't seem to work.

In terms of Android Store apps, I've only installed a handful. Angry Birds really does live up to the hype; Google's Sky Map and Goggles are both ace. Stupidly, the Desire HD doesn't have any obvious simple way just to jot down a note (shopping list, for example); I installed InkPad, which does the job.

So where's the catch? The Desire HD has a reputation for having a poor battery life, but it's far, far worse than I expected. With the moderate use I give it, the phone really struggles to make it through a single day. There are several solutions.

The first is to stop using so many apps, turn off unnecessary syncing and generally tone down the multitasking. This I refuse to do. There's absolutely no point in having a machine with the processor power of the Desire HD if you don't push it. Besides, as I mentioned, I like to be able to have emails and tweets coming through in  real time as if they were texts.

Next, there's an app called JuiceDefender which is, quite simply, brilliant. It intelligently manages your wireless, 3G and GPS use so that they're turned off when not needed, but will still allow connections to be made every so often to check for emails and tweets, according to your syncing settings. This works like a dream, although sometimes I'm not automatically connected to my work's WiFi - a minor irritation. While it's all customisable (more so if you pay £3), there are default settings; I anticipate setting JuiceDefender to "Aggressive" or "Extreme" for a weekend away. It's a simple, unintrusive app, which HTC should take some inspiration from. An essential installation, and the premium version is worth the investment.

However, by far the biggest juice muncher is the screen itself. This is something that you simply have to compromise on. I have the screen set to switch off after 30 seconds inactivity (which is annoying) and the brightness turned right the way down to 15% - making visibility a problem outdoors. Even so, the screen routinely uses more than half of the battery. Sorry to sound like an old man, but there's absolutely no point in having a sumptuous, high definition, colour-rich, super-bright screen, if you have to have it turned down to near-dark just to get the machine through the day. HTC really need to think about battery life and/or battery management as a matter of urgency before their next model is released, because it's very nearly a dealbreaker.

As it is, though, the HTC Desire HD is a stupendous piece of kit. Within a fortnight, it has become an essential part of my life - no exaggeration. HTC really have put usability and simplicity at the top of their priorities - with devastating effect. Connectivity ain't ever been so good.

Bunhill Fields

One of my favourite places in London is Bunhill Fields, just off the City Road, just a few minutes walk from my work, and my favourite place to have a wander at lunchtime. There are a few "celebrities" in there.

John Bunyan:

Daniel Defoe:

William Blake:

But my favourite memorial of all is a different one.

Yes, it's quite large and prominent. But it's dedicated to somebody called Henry Hunter. The epitaph is quite brilliant - so much so that I had to copy it out in full.

Beneath this Pillar, raised by the hand of Friendship sleep the mortal remains of the Rev. HENRY HUNTER D.D. who through a long Life deemed by those who knew him alas too short, served with unwearied assiduity the Interests of Religion, Literature and the Poor. In him to distinguished Talents and a capacious Mind were united Energy of Disposition, Affability of Manners, Benevolence of Heart, and Warmth of Affection. In the Hearts of those who were blessed with his Friendship is preserved the most sacred and inviolable Attachment but his best Eulogium and his most durable memorial will be found in his Writings. THERE he has an Inscription which the Revolution of Years cannot efface. When the nettle shall skirt the base of this Monument and the moss obliterate this feeble testimonial of Affection, when finally sinking under the pressure of years, THIS PILLAR shall tremble and fall over the dust it covers his Name shall be transmitted to Generations unborn. READER! Thus far suffer the weakness of affectionate Remembrance where no adequate Eulogium can be pronounced and when no other Inscription was necessary to perpetuate his Memory than HENRY HUNTER. Thirty one years he was Pastor of the Scots Church London (...) and on Wednesday the twenty seventh of October 1802 left his Family and his Church to deplore but never to retrieve his loss and silently took his flight to Heaven in the sixty second year of his Age.

They don't make 'em like that any more, do they! Saddest of all is the fact that most of the office workers are oblivious to the charms of Bunhill Fields - it's simply a shortcut to Pret. Shame on them for not even turning their heads.

No longer a Luddite

After ten years of being behind the times, I have what can ony be described as a posh phone. IT's the HTC Desire HD. It is truly a stupendous piece of kit. Some of this is old news, of course, but the ability to be able to take great pictures, access the internet, receive emails in not-quite-real time, manage Twitter and Facebook accounts, and synchronise contacts so that you can see the same person's phone number, email, Facebook and Twitter all in the same place - that's space-age stuff (hardy surprising given that the computing power in one of these dwarfs that in Apollo XI). The Android operating system is great - although heavily tied in with Google. I have taken the plunge and am slowly migrating to Gmail from Hotmail (update your address books: eoghanlondon@gmail.com will reach me).

The only down side, and it is a massive downside, is the battery life. I'd been warned it was poor, but it is really abysmal. Circa 2002 the main selling points of upmarket phones were small size and lengthy battery life; nowadays phones are enormous with terrible battery life. Que sera.


All the same, it's an astonishing piece of engineering. I am very, very excited by it.

We also bought a new laptop today - not a particularly posh one, but more than adequate for our needs. A £9 copy of Microsoft Office (thanks MetBenefits) is now installed, and we're firing on all cylinders. One thing I noticed about it is that in contrast to computers a few years ago, it works straight out of the box with minimal installations and preamble required. In fact the only work that needs to be done is to uninstall all the junk that Packard Bell and Microsoft have shoved on there.

Dave Godman

The other day I had a pub conversation about "who you know who should be given the MBE". To borrow a phrase from Sir John Stevens, Gordon Brown and others (last used last night, which got me thinking) - the everyday heroes.

Mine would be a bloke called Dave Godman. I went to a primary school in Bounds Green called Rhodes Avenue. It was a pretty decent school as they come, and I was mostly happy there. One downside was that there was no organised sport whatsoever, except for rounders in PE lessons.

Dave was dad to a lad called Joe, several years below me, and set up and ran the Football Club (ironically, Joe paid no interest in football whatsoever, if I recall). It was far and away the best thing about going to school - this would have been 1991-94 for me. Every Wednesday and Friday lunchtime we'd bolt our lunch down in record time (five minutes was considered VERY slow), go down to the local rec and have real training sessions. We had everything we could ever need: cones, bibs, and we'd all get changed into our best football gear (for some reason I had a particularly hideous stripey top and nasty burgundy jacket from a jumble sale that I decided was my training top...I've no idea why). We even started to play matches against other local schools; who could forget the first competitive game, against Coppetts Wood, which finished 5-0, shortly followed by a 14-0 win over Coldfall - a fifteenth goal was scratched from the records as we accidentally started the game with twelve men! - and the home game against Copthall, which was 19-1. Sadly, I was massively crap, and didn't feature in most games - although I played most of the return match with Copthall, by which time they'd got their act together, and held us 2-2.

It's the same all over the world, but the best players sat at the top of the social tree by default. In the year above, there was Chris Condon, a really nice lad whose mum (Clare?) used to come and help out at the training - she was quietly brilliant. Chris was probably the best player we had. There was Ankeet, a powerful full back, and of course the rocksteady central defensive partnership of Shona and Eleanor. There was Johnny, a skinny lad who always used to wear an Arsenal jacket, who I used to think was brilliant. In my year there was Dillan Leslie-Rowe, who used to play up front; Dominic Hill in midfield; and my best mate Liam Charalambou, a brilliant keeper, although he used to throw massive strops whenever he let in goals - so much so that he was eventually usurped in the first team by Harry in the year below. I also remember Jonty, who was an irritating kid, but a tricky playmaker. Then there was Duncan, who famously broke his toe midway through a match but kept quiet because he didn't want to be substituted.

The school hall, where we used to hold our meetings at lunchtime and have a team talk before the training, was a sacred place. Once the doors were shut, Chatham House rules applied. We were men in there, and everyone was equal. Petty squabbles and minor bullying disappeared ("Stop screwin' around" Dave would drawl, and we'd shut up instantly). Dave would talk tactics, and we'd hang on his every word.

But there was more than that. The school actively discouraged the Football Club. Dave used to have to jump through hoops to get permission to take us out, and the school provided no support whatsoever. None. Everything that we did was organised by Dave, with Clare's help. In the sanctity of the hall, Dave would rumble about the ruling powers and how we were always on the brink of being shut down (the Chatham House rules were just as well). For us, it was an unspeakable thought, but galvanised us together. The school  never had a good word to say about football, and never lifted a finger for Dave, but made damn sure to make a fuss when we won a match.

Sometimes, without warning, Dave didn't turn up. We'd sit in the hall with increasing frustration. No Dave. Time would go on and on, until we'd drift away in bitter disappointment. Next time he's turn up saying "Sorry lads, I had to sort a guy out who's losing his job..." Never before was someone's impending unemployment met with such a lack of sympathy! We couldn't care less about Dave's trade union work; what about football training?

Dave would sometimes play himself in training, and it was honour to have him on your team. He was grizzled with a craggy face and a cheeky smile - he seemed to be a bit older than the other dads, but it didn't matter at all. He always used to bang on about the new astroturf centre which  would be the ultimate playing surface and was just around the corner. In four years we never came close to seeing astroturf!

I wonder where Dave is now and how he's doing. I hope he realises even a fraction of the extent that we respected him - he was our idol. After school, picking up Joe, he'd be surrounded by throngs of kids wanting his opinion on the latest England squad or Spurs transfer rumour, giving out his wisdom as friendly and patiently as ever. If I ever met someone who inspired dozens of people, and made them feel better about life, an everyday hero, it was Dave Godman.

A lonely Christmas

With every unexpected death there's someone who'll feel the pain most. A December night, minus five on the scale and a blizzard on the way, and a light has gone out in someone's life. For me this is a stressful situation as I gather my thoughts, try to follow protocol, hoe I'm not forgetting things, concentrating on doing a good job, and keeping new colleagues under my wing. We are not the only people present. There is a newly bereaved brother. He is keeping up appearances, answering stupid questions, trying to be helpful. The realisation has not yet kicked in. The loneliness of someone alone in the country will not manifest itself for a few hours.

Hours pass as officious feet trudge muddy footprints through the hallway, radios bleep, hard male voices converse mixed with hushed tones at appropriate moments, occasional, accidental, stifled bursts of laughter break out. Hustle and bustle is everywhere, paperwork flows. Finally it is all over.

There is a week until Christmas. What would have been family affair has suddenly turned into a void. With any luck there may be a friend or colleague who will take pity. I hope so for his sake. I pass on final information about the coroner, mortuary, an apology that due to health and safety we cannot clean up the mess in the now silent living room. I mutter a limp euphemism about this not being pleasant. With an effort I look him in the eye, attempt a smile, which I hope conveys something approaching empathy, and, ridiculously, my final words are almost as if I'm saying goodbye to a mate after a pint. "Take care."

Suddenly the stony, glum resignation falters. I see shoulders slump. I know what this means. I shoo everyone out the front door and make sure not to look behind me as I pull the door shut. Some privacies are inviolable.

Hours later, nearing the end of a continuous 27-hour working day, hysterical exhaustion invading, I stare out from the window of a deserted, stifling twelfth floor over central London. Outside, nothing but a whiteout - the snowpocalypse descends. On an always-on radio somewhere on the other side of the bleak office, Chris Rea's "Driving Home for Christmas" comes on, and I have a little moment to myself which I am glad there is nobody with me to share.

A week later, it's Christmas night, and although I'm not really the praying type, that poor woman's lonely brother, who I'd never met and probably never will again, is in my thoughts. Christmas is no time to be alone.

Struck off my Christmas card list

A big "sod off" to:

• The Tories
• Labour
• Robert Peston
• Rupert Murdoch
• The Telegraph

Anyone else? I am pretty riled today.