How are you, dear boy? It feels like so long since we last spoke. Hopefully you will get this e-mail as that will mean that I am back on the Information Superhighway we like to call Internet Boulevard. It's been so long since I was hooked up to the web, man. More than a year and then some. So much has changed - now online radio stations are called 'Pod-casters' and online journals and diaries are called blogs and their writers are bloggers. I haven't yet had a chance to investigate these things so I still have no idea what blog means and why its different from diary. I have no idea what seperates bloggers from diarists.
    After sending this e-mail and a few others my first stagger into this new unfamiliar technical age will begin. I have decided it would be best to look up porn first - just to make sure that it's generally the same as it used to be. A year can be a long time without access to sex on demand (even if the sex on demand doesn't actually involve me) and things move fast. Then I think I will be on a mission to download some free music. The warning boxes will pop up to ask me if I realise that what I'm doing is highly illegal. I know fine well that it's illegal. Downloading Status Quo's greatest hits has always been illegal.
    A man called Lewis Taylor plays guitar like Jimi Hendrix and sings like Marvin Gaye. I read that in the Sunday Times musicy section. I don't believe it. I haven't heard him yet but I think if he played the guitar like Hendrix and sang like Marvin Gaye then I probably would have. Probably plays guitar like me and sings like Kev the Bastard. Probably quite a good combination in the eyes of the eNeMiEs. We'd wear black T-shirts all the way back into style and we'd rip off everyone from Roxy Music to Brian Eno. Brian Eno's probably reading this e-mail just now too - apparently he's very paranoid and monitors the internet for mentions of his name. I do too but I'm not quite as popular or mad as Eno. I do have longer hair though.
    I bought a new keyboard and mouse combo today. They are ergonomically designed to be as uncomfortable and difficult to use as possible. But that's no problem for the likes of me. If typing was meant to be comfortable they'd invent little cushions to put on the keys. Perhaps little pockets of air. Or chocolate.
    I had to buy a new keyboard because every week I write a letter to the BBC. Usually I write it on a Wednesday morning. Nobody ever reads these letters, or, if they do, they don't act upon them. The letters are all along a similar theme - Sound of the Seventies is too short. Too many things in this life are too short. What would Freud say about that last sentence? I don't think he would say too much - he's been dead for over fifty years and probably can't find his knees. Jeez.
    My letters are always sent first class and are always well written. Well-written and under appreciated. Well, I assume they are under apreciated. Maybe somewhere deep within the annals of broadcasting house in London where Radio 2's offices are there is a secretery who looks forward to receiving my letter every Thursday or Friday morning. Perhaps she always laughs when the same letter arrives on her desk. She puts it into the Programing Director's inbox. Maybe it makes her smile.
    If my letter can make a secretary in London smile then why do they not read it out every week and let so many more people smile. If my letter can make a woman in Broadcasting house smile then it has had a more meaningful relationship with a woman than I have had in ages.
    Recently, however, I discovered that my letters (sent using a variety of pseudonyms) may not be going unread. In fact they may be being read by the man or possibly the woman at the very top of the tree. Steve Harley's seminal radio show Sound of the Seventies is to be extended to a full hour long show. I count this as one of the greatest acheivements of my life. I might drop everything to start a new life as a one person perfection pressure group trying to make the world a better place for most of us. Then again, I might just go for a pint and leave the protesting and pontificating and the hassle and the chaos and the drugs and the dole and the arguing and the fishing and the principled points to people more suited to it all - like Ellie.
    On a more serious note, this e-mail, apart from being a cheery wee note to say hi to a long lost friend, is an early attempt by me to regain my muse and to get back into the practise of writing regularly. I have a new philosophy that I am trying to discipline myself enough to take up. I now think that if you throw enough shit at a wall some of it will stick and, when applied to my writing, if I write shitloads of stuff then eventually some of it is bound to be good. The only problem with this tour de force method is that I sometimes can't be arsed writing anything. Mentally I get tired and just want to play GTA 3 and shoot Chinamen. So I'm trying to battle with that side of my personality that's always happy to sit upon its laurels and not strive to do anythnig that takes too much time or effort. I am trying to write for some time every day. It doesn't matter what - funny stories, sad stories, poems, letters, e-mails, ransom notes, limericks or shopping lists - as just now I'm not interested in the quality so much as getting into the habit of using my brain for some time every day. This renewed vigour is mainly down to you telling me to start writing again, and whilst I'm not promising to come up with another work of genius like the territorial expulsion of urine, I am trying to write well enough to make some people laugh or think or smile or frown or get angry or get rich through credit card fraud and other scams. Even one other person can be enough. So thanks must go to you for this.
    I think you can probably expect to see some more long e-mails in the future. Delete them straight away if you like, they are unlikely to contain anything important. But they are all a step in the right direction for me.
    Hope you haven't fallen asleep with all that, I'm going to go now and shoot some Chinese folk in GTA 3. If only I had a heat seeking cannon. Let me know how things are in you neck of the woods and I'm sure we'll meet again on the avenue. Or maybe at my flatwarming which is as yet unarranged but I can assure you that you will be amongst the first to know when and where it is. Well, I mean, we already know where it is but you know what I mean.