You might laugh you might frown...Walkin' round London town...Sun is in the sky oh why oh why would I wanna be anywhere else?

B'jour, mon amis!

I've decided that "b'jour" is French for "g'day" so feel free to start using it, but make sure to cite your source correctly.

Much to my delight, this past weekend saw the opening of the Cans Festival Part 2. Staged in the same disused railway tunnel as the previous festival, this time around instead of stencil artists the focus was on more traditional graffiti art. And as per last time, the calibre of the art was astounding. There's some supremely talented people running around out there, and when they're not smoking blunts and stabbing up yoofs they're creating some truly impressive art.

Got my performance review which was disappointing but hardly surprising. The culture of this place is such that you're only measured on your most recent project and then ranked against your peers on a bell curve type dealio like in school. Therefore, as in school, the highest performers are pulled down and the lowest performers are pulled up and everyone else is averaged out into a vast smear of mediocrity. So despite working my arse off to try and impress everyone and set myself up for promotion next year, I'm ranked right in the middle of the grey wasteland known as "consistent with", which means that even if I pull off an absolute blinder of a year (highly unlikely given my level of motivation) it's still almost impossible to make the grade for promotion. It's typical of the dog-eat-cat nature of this business and this organisation and one of the main reasons why I've decided to get out. I sent some feelers out last week and I've got an interview with a specialist usability consultancy later today, so fingers crossed. The woman I'm speaking to graduated from Canberra Uni and worked in the public service...two degrees of separation strikes again! I'm hoping that by getting back into a small team environment and focusing solely on the work that I love doing my soul and my faith in mankind will be replenished.

Add another double entendre town name to the list, as Dr Phil and I went biking this past weekend in Titley. I got my first puncture coming down a wicked steep downhill run over chalk stones and log steps, which was a kind of right of passage I suppose. All I know is I haven't had to fix a tyre since I was about 12 and doing it in the middle of the forest is a lot more frustrating than you think. I was a bit disappointed with the layout of the ride as there was far too much road riding to start with and it ended on a huge mutha fuka of a hill climb. Plus, Dr Phil has been hitting the donuts a bit too heavily lately so his fitness was way down and we were forced to stop off at a pub halfway through so he could visit the ladies toilets to change his tampon and have a cry. We were there so long that the guy who follows behind and takes down the route markers caught up to us and it was a Hansel and Gretel-esque race for the finish from that point on. Instead of energy bars they gave us these free sachets of tropical flavoured protein gel which I've not tried before but I hear are pretty good for a quick energy boost. Unfortunately, they had the precise texture and sensation of swallowing a gobful of some Hawaiian guy's cum...or so I imagine. Ladies, back me up! So after we'd snowballed that stuff back and forth for a while we continued on our way and eventually overtook a whole gaggle of stragglers, which I'm sure did wonders for Dr Phil's flagging sweaty gasping sense of self-esteem.

Ok, it's time for a grandpa moment: young people take a lot for granted, they think everything's infinite and that life can only ever improve. But as you get older you realise that time is precious because nothing lasts forever and anything you have can be lost. Take bananas, for example. Bananas are finite. I've eaten a lot of bananas in my time but I'm pushing 40 and, as a conservative estimate, I reckon I've only got a good 9000 or so bananas left in me. That kind of puts things in perspective, and makes it all the more annoying when I get a bad banana. Young people, they get a bad banana they just throw it away and reach for another one. But I don't have that luxury. I have to make every banana count, savour it, make it last, wring every last molecule of potassium-drenched goodness out of that sucker. And if there's the occasional brown mushy bit, well that's all part of the banana experience so I'm just gonna enjoy that as well. It's a cliche, I know, that you can't fully appreciate something until you've lost it, but I would go further and say that you can't fully appreciate something until you've lost it and then got it back again...

I've found a lovely delicious banana...her name is Salette.