So, I consider myself a classicist. Not as a profession, but having spent a good part of my life thinking in classical terms, musing over classical stuff and boring strangers at parties about classical topics, until I get myself a "proper" job and a "proper" profession I shall continue to think of myself as a classicist.

Following in this frame of mind I just wanted to write a blog about some of my favourite ancient greek and roman moments - CLASSIC memories if you will. ho ho ho.

My most prominent memory has to be when I first saw the Parthenon. I remember being extremely excited about seeing something which already, at the tender age of 16 I had dedicated so much of my time to. I was confident that I would be able to impress my mother with my knowledge of "metopes", "pediments" and that from 100 yards I could easily point out "a lapith". And yet, aside from a teenage angsty sense of wanting to prove myself (i would later discover that citing classical knowledge to a parental unit only really gets you so far) I was genuinely excited. I've always loved the classical stuff and was preparing myself for an onslaught on the senses. A magnificent, glorious structure which had risen above it's age and modern society to still inspire awe within its thousands of visitors.

What I however, had not anticipated, was the Greeks. Although this could easily turn into a rant about one particular American tourist who I saw wandering around the Acropolis at one time stopping to point at the Erectheum and announce to the rest of the tour group "y'all go on ahead, i'm gonna check out the naked chicks" I shall restrain.

No no, far more disturbing to my impressionable 16 year old mind was the site of a bleary eyed, club-handed Greek builder in control of a bloody great big crane. Which, to my dismay was in situ right in the middle of the bloody Parthenon. Now in its time the Parthenon has put up with quite a lot. Turks and Christians have had a pretty good bash at it over the years - most epic fail has to be the Ottoman turks who stored all their gunpowder in it. It was subsequently blown up.

And yet, despite all of these attempts to destroy it, it has survived. I think it can also be said that no one has ever doubted that it would survive. However, when I was standing there seeing this crane swinging wildly in the middle of it, I, experienced doubt. Not proud of it, but I did. Thankfully, I have subsequently been proven wrong i.e the building is still standing... So clearly the manically eyed Greek had some skills, or maybe just luck. Anyway, point is, it's still there, and that makes me happy.

So this definitely makes one of my top classical moments. I will write more about other moments for me but right now, I could do with a cup of tea. Sweet.

Crunchy Nut...ARGH! Run for your life!

Cereal. Start to the day. Set me up with a cup of tea (hint) and some cereal and I will consider myself extremely content...and yet, somehow, it causes me many problems in my mundane day to day life.

I am currently enjoying Crunchy Nut Cornflakes, undoubtedly a classic choice. It is probably a horrific thing to confess to but pretty much every morning whilst I'm chomping a bowl down I do sometimes stop and think to myself..."these ARE ludicrously tasty!". In my head I always add a note of surprise to this statement and I'm really not sure why. It's not like at any point in the advertising process have I been told anything other than the truth - that they are ludicrously tasty. Granted an advertising campaign based upon something like "these taste like toxic waste AVOID!" would not be (obviously, likely) or conducive to Kelloggs adding to their massive profit, but it just surprises me as to how utterly tasty they are. And believe me, it has always been clean sailing with me and crunchy nut cereal, yeah, we've got history. Motherfucker. Sadly the story is actually not at all worthy of a "motherfucker" I might have gotten slightly carried away there but I felt it fitted with the "history" aspect. In reality, all that actually happened was that Crunchy nut cornflakes claimed one of my baby teeth. Not in a siege or anything, not as part of a ransom... It really was quite ordinary. Damn, quite regretting the "motherfucker" now.

Just to clarify though, I am by no means some kind of dental obsessive who recalls with glazed eyes and dribble every dental experience I've ever had. It's just for some reason I do remember losing one of my first baby teeth to crunchy nut cornflakes.

Perhaps it was a particularly painful extraction, perhaps I nearly swallowed said tooth before someone upped the parenting skills and intervened or perhaps...PERHAPS all along, it's because CRUNCHY NUT CORNFLAKES ARE SO LUDICROUSLY TASTY.

Hum.

I really should get paid for such shameless promotion. Doubtful, seeing as I have likened crunchy nut cornflakes to a ransom and torture situation... Still, might be worth a shot (no pun intended). I could play the whole "come on guys - think outside the box - and I don't just mean the cereal one. You've got to appeal to a wider target here, think of all the gangsters and mafia types who can't relate to your cereal! This, THIS is your chance."

Will report back.

So it is time to resort back to one of my favourite past-times - top 5 lists. I bloody love top 5 lists. There was an epic afternoon spent in the summer when a barage of e-mails was exchanged and pretty much everything top 5 was covered. My favourite was "Non-domesticated animals that would make potentially amazing pets" because I combined two of my greatest loves in life - a top 5 list, and yaks. With a yak obviously storming in at number 1 above llamas, aadvarks, duck-billed platypii and a warthog.

Another top 5 list which especially springs to mind was the result of one particularly cold, grey monday morning. I was struggling more than usual to get up when I received a text. I'm not sure how everyone else reacts to receiving a text in the morning but my reaction whenever anyone texts me before 11am is always "WHO is texting me....? WHY is someone texting me? And then it always descends into the same vicious circle of "I bet it's bloody vodafone. I'm deliberately not going to read it until later because I know it's going to be vodafone telling me about my voicemail personal greeting. YEAH?! WELL VODAFONE CAN BUGGER OFF. I FUCKING HATE VODAFONE." Having worked myself up into a seething mass of rage by this point I'm usually awake enough to bother getting up and reading said, troublesome text.

Happily, on this occasion it was not actually vodafone but a friend asking me, and I quote "Top 5 songs to get out of bed to in the morning?!"

Made my day. Right then.

For the record, my top 5 songs to get up to in the morning currently (they change regularly) are:

1) Fly away - Lenny Kravitz

2) There There - Radiohead

3) One clear way - David Kitt

4) What I really want - Alannis Morrisette

5) Black Swan - Thom Yorke

Over and out.

Now I have heard on a very distant and vague grapevine (ie cab chat with colleagues... you start to scrape the barrel) that there are yet more plans to "re do" oxford circus. I will control myself before I get completely carried away with what constitutes "re-doing" in my book and what actually always seems to happen in reality.

Anyway, the point is that the rumour I heard was that they are planning to build a system for pedestrians like the one in japan. I.e everyone has about 2 minutes to cross the road and each time more people cross the road than have EVER DONE BEFORE. Strangely enough (or luckily enough, whichever) there are people who seem to find this sort of thing worthy enough to film and subsequently put on youtube so...: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGgfT4TG_k0&feature=related

Now this sort of system is apparently what is being planned for oxford circus.

I really wish I could just walk up to whoever had this brilliant idea and just put them out of their misery before it gets sadistic. I wish to follow the advice the government, my parents and society in general has been telling me to do my entire life and "just say NO". But of course, they won't let me. Bastards.

So my (long winded) point is, how can anyone who has ever had any dealings with the great British public assume that en mass we would be able to function in such a succinct and organised way.

Reasons why include:

1) The British love to jaywalk. We're all shit at it, but persist anyway.

2) London is one of the world's top tourist destinations...think of all the japanese tourists who come here, searching for something different! London is a place where they can try something new, like cross the road at a different time and point to the rest of the city. It's a bit out there, granted, but surely there is a risk of London's tourist industry being damaged by this.

3) To be as difficult and obnoxious is in our blood. For such a small little island we have to be upstartish and irritating in some ways, therefore, mass road crossing... just no. I can literally picture at some point or another every individual who crosses said road, stopping and thinking to his or herself "I'm not going to follow the crowd; I'm going to stand in the middle of the road, the masses will protect me..."

4) Just imagine the rage, we don't do patient

5) Without the opportunity for dodging moving vehicles, slow people and of course the epic movement of tapping one's foot whilst stranded in the middle of the road, we'd all get chubbier and chubbier until we became mass blobs rolling around the streets of London.

Possibly.

Anyway, it just wouldn't work, we'll have thrown away all the money on something pointless long before then. Whenever I see a photo of Boris Johnson I get the feeling he's plotting something along the lines of "Hum...I like cycling,let's build a giant statue of a bicycle with fountains and lasers".

Brilliant.

is this it?

Having recently succumbed to the sparkling delights of twitter I've decided it was time to embrace modern technology with both arms and start a blog.

In the past I have rejected the self-indulgent prospect of a blog but now I consider myself a temporary londoner, I'm all for being selfish. I've embraced the other traits, "head rage" screaming aloud in ones head at slow walkers and delays on the tube (oxford circus is the primary cause in both instances), forgetting how to make eye contact after so many enforced hours of avoiding strangers' and finally, perfecting the art of the sigh combined, ever-so-skillfully with the sharp intake of breath at the price of EVERYTHING.

Therefore this will merely be a place for me to muse about pointless things. I doubtless will probably be the only person who reads it as I am not fond of shamelessly publicity. We will see. It will also, as the title might suggest, an unstoppable continuous attempt for someone, at some point, to make me a cup of tea. Nice one.