Andy Ward talks to himself.

Last night I conducted an experiment in my laboratory (read: kitchen). I made myself a mug of Ovaltine. It was a long process, and in all honesty, the test tubes and bunsen burners that I’d set up were probably surplus to requirements, though I was determined to make sure I got it right, so that I could finally settle the score in my head of which was better, Ovaltine or Horlicks. Now, having already given away the result in the title of the blog, if you do want to know the score, look away five minutes ago.

The Ovaltine was fine and all, and it was certainly reasonably tasty, but essentially, it was basically just like somebody had smelted some shreddies and put them in a glass. There was nothing that made me really think “Hey, yeah, this Ovaltine could really be a contender, I see potential in this drink, maybe I should add some rum.” You can always tell if I think a drink is good by whether I decide to try and add rum to it to try and make it some kind of drink megazord. I’ve done it with practically everything I like. I added rum to milk once to make a cocktail that I called ‘Pirates at the farm’. It wasn’t great, though I would later venture to a restaurant in London where they were selling these for about £7 each. Admittedly, they tasted a bit better than mine, but still, I considered it an opportunity missed on my part.

Whilst Ovaltine doesn’t necessarily have anything to distinguish it as being supreme, Horlicks on the other hand sets its stall out from the outset. On the front of the packet is a picture of the moon. AND HE’S ASLEEP. Or at least, I think he’s asleep. I’m fairly sure I remember seeing him being asleep on the packet when I last checked. I could easily go and check now, but I’m just going to stick to the assumption that he’s asleep on the packet. Maybe every packet is different, maybe it’s a series of adventures chronicling the moon’s adventures throughout the night. I was just fortunate to pick up a packet where he’s getting some rest, rather than one of the other Horlick’s packets where he’s spitting at some strangers, swearing at a cockerel or eating from a bin. Really though, if Horlicks is powerful enough to send even the moon to sleep, it’s got to be powerful enough to power my sleep. After all, the moon wouldn’t voluntarily sleep at night, this is his time when he can come out and see everybody. Sleep during the day when nobody knows you’re there. It makes more sense that way.

Aside from that, Horlicks is also probably tastier, that’s a key factor. It tastes better than Ovaltine I’d say. It’s not as obvious that somebody has just liquidised a cereal. I like this.

Those are basically my conclusions on that warm drinks debate that I’ve been having with myself. I was genuinely excited about trying to find out which one was better. This is kind of what my whole week has been building up to. That’s not good is it?

Today, more writing. I find that music and the internet act as Kryptonite to my writing, and so instead I’ll just be sitting around in silence with one of my trusty notepads. I can’t listen to music because then my mind is just full of music and nothing else. I realised yesterday, while standing at work, that I don’t actually think at all while I’m there, I’m just stood still with a tune going through my head. Apart from that my mind is blank. The internet is the same, I’ll just sit and browse the internet without thinking, taking in information that I may one day use in a conversation or something. I found myself talking to a customer about the Haye vs Valuev boxing match yesterday, despite knowing next to nothing about boxing, and having no real interest in it. I’d just absorbed facts from the internet without realising, and was thus able to make out that I knew what I was talking about. “Yeah, he’s quite tall isn’t he? Slow though, like a slow fox. A fox on crutches or something. David Haye? Yeah, he’s faster, like a fast fox. On rocket powered crutches. Or something.”

Those probably weren’t my exact words, but I imagine it was something along those lines.

I’m going to go and put another Loyd Grossman pizza in the oven now. I think on this one he’s got his mouth hidden behind a handful of basil. He should really get together with the moon sometime for some superb collaborative effort. Perhaps Loyd could be stroking his chin with a carrot while the moon injects itself with heroin in a dark alleyway. I’m not entirely sure what product this could be used to advertise. ‘Loyd and The Moon’s heroin carrots’ would be the obvious choice, but I’m not sure that this product would have such a successful future. They’d probably both end up in prison, and if the moon ends up with a curfew then we’re all in trouble.

YOU DOMAIN!

New domain name. No improvement in quality.

I’m not sure what to say now. I sort of think that this should be the glorious moment when I smash the champagne bottle against the side of this metaphorical ship, however I’ve not really got anything interesting to say, so this probably won’t be so much a spectacular champagne launch of a flagship luxury cruiseliner as it will be roughly equivalent to a tramp throwing an empty can of Fosters at a sinking pedalo.

Maybe we should start off with a firework display. IN ASCII!

* * ~o~

Actually, scrap that. Not that I’ve got any better ideas. I could try and get a game of Wink Murder going, though it would probably just consist of me sitting here winking at my monitor. And I’d feel pretty guilty if anybody actually did die when they read this then. Unless it was a happy affair. Unless there’s just some old person who just stumbled upon this site thinking “Well, I’ve achieved everything I ever wanted to with my life, apart from one thing… I haven’t played imaginary wink murder in my head with a berk on the internet.” Now you can die happy. The rest of you, stay here and be depressed with me as we try and think of a brilliant way to launch this new era of the same website but under a slightly different name. Nobody leaves. Unless you already have, in which case, well done for staying so long. Even I got bored and wandered off earlier.

I haven’t actually mentioned what I’m ‘celebrating’ here. I bought a domain earlier, for the very reasonable fee of £9.25 for a year. Now my blog can be found at http://andy-ward.com instead of the 40 letter or so address it used to be. Many people would question why I’ve done this, to which I would reply that it just looks tidier in the address bar. And that’s worth £9.25 in my opinion.

That’s basically all I’ve done today, and I’ve now mentioned it. I think that’s as good a launch as we’re going to get. I’m very tired. I’ll probably end here as I might go and watch Countdown for a while. I’m dreadful at the words (which, unfortunately for me, make up 90% of the show), however I’m surprisingly good at the numbers round. I’m not sure how I work numbers, as I have no idea how I’m doing most maths, but I’m quite good at it. I have literally no idea how to do multiplication and division on paper. I’m sure there’s a method behind it, but I couldn’t tell you what it was. I could try and explain my methodology, but it probably wouldn’t make much sense. All I know is that I’m good with numbers somehow. I’m Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind, that’s me.

“This One Stop employee, he’s got a gift…”

“Who? Andy? Don’t make me laugh!”

“No, seriously, I was watching him watching Countdown earlier, and even though he was bafflingly inept with the words, he seemed to be reasonably good at the numbers round.”

“Reasonably good you say?”

“He gets the answer maybe three times out of four.”

“My god…”

[Cue rousing inspirational music as the camera slowly pans in on me proudly shouting a five-letter word at the TV. Probably 'Broom' or something equally rubbish/cut to titles]

“Andy, do you know why we’ve summoned you here today?”

“Broom.”

“It’s because you’re in the top 80% of the country for the numbers round on Countdown. Andy… you have a beautiful mind.”

“Hold on, I didn’t see the S. Brooms. Six.”

“A beautiful mind…”

[Cue more rousing inspirational orchestral music]

I’d better end this now or I’ll probably miss the numbers round at the end and the traditional ’shout a word that doesn’t actually exist at the conundrum’. Bye.

He just tried to put on a display for the family. He’d really bigged it up beforehand. For the last week or so he’d just left flyers littered about the house saying ‘THIS THURSDAY. COME TO THE GARDEN. YOU’LL LOVE IT. LOVE FROM ARTHUR XX.’ Anyway, we all went out there and he was stood in his wax jacket looking excited. “Prepare to be blown away!” He barked. Unfortunately though, he couldn’t seem to utilise his paws to light a match to set off the fireworks, and when we tried to help he just growled at us and told us to stay away. After three hours of watching him try to set up a catherine wheel with his nose, he eventually told us all to just go inside, and he’d be in later. Now all I can hear are faint murmurs of the soundtrack from The Shawshank Redemption from the bottom of the garden and the bottle of whiskey that we keep on the side at all times in case of emergency has disappeared. I think he’s embarrassed. He shouldn’t have played it up so much.

Today I actually decided I’m going to restart the sitcom I’d pretty much finished all over again. It doesn’t work as well as I’d like and I think the only way to fix this is to change virtually everything there is. This means that the sum of my writing efforts this year are currently nothing. This is disappointing, however, on the plus side, I genuinely believe that this script will be better for the change, if I get it right, and could actually end up being quite good. I mean, I say that now, but by the time it’s finished it’ll be the usual process of sitting around berating myself for being rubbish. I hope that all writers (I say this as if I’m a writer, when, as mentioned, I’ve not actually finished anything yet) think they’re terrible. That would be somewhat reassuring.

Loyd Grossman made me a pizza today. I say he made me it, it came in a Loyd Grossman box, so I assume he makes them himself. The box implies somewhat that dementia has set in with Loyd, as rather than having a picture of him just smiling, as most celebrity-endorsed products have, he’s instead decided to go with a picture of him smelling a tomato and looking angry. Is he not happy with the tomato? Or is he trying to hide behind it? Either way, he has no need, as the pizza was quite tasty. He shouldn’t be concerned in any way that people might associate him with the pizza, because if anything that might be a good thing. Hopefully he’ll get over his shyness, and future editions of the pizza will see him either emerging happily from the tomato, or looking quizzically towards the tomato in the distance and shrugging his shoulders in a manner that says ‘I can’t believe I was smelling the tomato angrily, what was I thinking?’. This is how Paul Newman’s Salad Dressings panned out you know.

“Alright Paul, if you could just stand over there and smile we’ll have this done in no time.”

“Stand and smile? Is this for the salad dressings?”

“Yeah.”

“Actually, I’ve had a few ideas of my own about that.”

“Right… go on…”

“What if, instead of standing and smiling, we took a picture of me angrily kicking a piece of lettuce?”

“Well Paul, that’s… well, it’s interesting, and I’ll consider it, but in the meantime, why don’t we just take this smiling picture?”

“Ok, ok, so you don’t like that, I get it. What about, instead of that, we have me coughing on a radish?”

“Coughing on a radish?”

“Coughing on a radish.”

“I’m just not sure how this is going to translate to sales Paul…”

“What if I just smiled…”

“Yep, good.”

“… at a photograph I was holding of me kicking some lettuce.”

“Paul, I’m not sure you quite understand what I’m getting at here. How do I put this… people don’t want to see you being violent towards vegetables, that’s not going to make them want to buy your product.”

“I’m not following you.”

“Just trust me on this, we’ll go with the standing and the smiling for now, and I’ll explain later.”

“Righty ho…”

“Ok, you ready?”

“Yep, ready.”

“Say cheese!”

“Wait! One second!”

“Fucking hell, what is it now?”

“What if I were to cry… at an aubergine.”

“Oh forget it, let’s just draw the picture on.”

True story. I mean, he’s dead now, so won’t be able to confirm this, but I’m fairly sure this is how it all panned out.

This was literally as exciting as my day got. At one point I decided to mix some rum in with the Horlicks (I seem to mix rum in with everything these days, just to see whether it works. Soon it’ll reach the point where I’m dousing weetabix in rum. Something to look forward to), to see whether I could create a super drink. I thought “this could be my salvation, if I can just patent a brilliant drink and market it as the hot new clubbing drink, I could make millions.” Horlicks and rum was to be this brilliant drink. To be fair, it worked surprisingly well, a lot better than I’d expected, and miles better than various other drinks I’ve attempted to craft over the years (Jack Daniels + milk + ribena, Milk + rum + Danone coconut yoghurt drink, basically milk plus anything it seems). I’m not sure it’ll be overly easy to sell to the clubs though, since I’m not sure people will be prepared to stand around at the bar while their mug gets microwaved for a minute. Also, spilling your drink would suddenly become a lot more deadly. People would probably be coming out of clubs with third-degree horlick burns, an entirely separate degree of burns entirely, a lot more severe than regular third-degree burns.

“Doctor! We’ve got to rush him to intensive care, quickly!”

“What’s the problem?”

“Can’t you see! He’s got third-degree burns!”

“Of course I can’t see! Don’t you know I’m a blind surgeon!”

“Well, that’s a story in itself… Can we fix him?”

“I don’t know, third-degree burns you say?”

“Third-degree Horlicks burns.”

“Horlicks burns! If we don’t get him to surgery quickly then he might smell slightly malty forever! Pass me my scalpel!”

“Doctor, I’m not sure this is entirely wise.”

“Damnit nurse! Give me my scalpel or we’ll lose him!”

“Ok… but if anybody asks, I was against this…”

“Am I fixing the burns now?”

“No, you’re stabbing him in the face.”

“Is this it?”

“No.”

“Alright, can you tell me when I’m getting warmer?”

“Ok… cold… colder… coldest… ok, now you’ve severed his arm.”

“DAMNIT NURSE!”

“Why the hell did we even hire a blind surgeon anyway?”

Anyway, that was yesterday. I did a little bit of writing in the end, not as much as I’d have liked, but still a little bit. I did have some ideas for my first sitcom which I ‘finished’ ages ago and want to go back and edit now, so I may try and implement a few changes soon, though having said that, I had these ideas just before I went to sleep, and have now forgotten most of them which is… good. At some point I’ll probably convince myself they were all rubbish anyway. They probably were. You see, I’ve started already.

I’m not sure what I’m going to go and do now. Probably nothing, which I’ll then come back and try to write about tomorrow for another thrilling read, like a Famous Five book in which they do absolutely nothing. ‘Five Sit Down and Think About Cake’ or ‘Five Reminisce About Toenails’. That kind of thing. Not that I reminisce about toenails. I mean, I’m bored, but at no point during the day have I ever found myself going ‘Ah, good toenail times…’ I’m not Hannibal Lector, or some similiarly obsessed toenail collecting maniac, however, this has provided some kind of inspiration for a horror film I might write. The Toenail Collector.

“What was that? Did you hear that? It came from the front porch!”

“But the front porch has been dead for 30 years!”

“Then that means…”

“It’s the toenail collector! Hide your toenails!”

“I can’t! They’re stuck to my feet!”

“Then run for your life! Or at the very least, your toenails!”

This really has ended on quite a dark note hasn’t it?

He’s licking his own legs because they taste of raspberry, and he’s left one of his unbroken toys lying about in the living room. Most of his toys don’t have a head anymore, as, slightly worryingly, he seems to like to tear them apart to find out how they work. He’s basically the dog equivalent of Sylar.

Anyway, I thought I should update this blog as I haven’t done so in about a week, which means I must have been busy doing something. I had a gig the other night, that was fun. It wasn’t brilliant, but it was ok, and I’m kind of getting back into it a bit now. Well, I say that, I’m still what I would regard as bobbins, but I’m more relaxed about being bobbins now. I don’t even remember being nervous at all for this gig. It was quite fun.

I’m still trying to apply for jobs, though given that my last few applications have seen me claim that Die Hard is humankind’s greatest invention, and argue that an egg cooker is probably the best idea I’ve ever seen, I probably shouldn’t get my hopes up too much. I still see my salvation being in my own idiocy. If I never make any money from it, at least I might enjoy doing it, it can be quite good fun, a lot more rewarding than stacking Mars bars I’d wager. Though having said that, I had a Mars Dark the other day, and it was superb. It’s a pleasure just to be in the presence of such a delicious treat. I would recommend it to anybody.

Having got a few applications out the way, I’m going to try and do some more writing today I think. I need to cure my lethargy. Doing this blog, as spectacularly dull as it may often be, is a way to keep my hand in the writing sand, attempting to fish out diamonds that may be hidden beneath the surface. Writing poor metaphors that make no sense is also a way to try and fix my laziness. Eating noodles, that helps. I love noodles, I really do. I’d love to find a brilliant noodle bar and go there now. I went to a place called Noodle Stop in Leicester Square the other week, and that was alright, though their noodles weren’t spectacular. They were alright, and quite tasty, but I’ll still continue my quest for the best noodles in the world. Or at the very least, London.

I should never really use this blog to describe what I’m actually up to, because it tends to make for a phenomenally boring read. I don’t actually do anything that by anybody else’s standards would be classed as even remotely exciting. I’m enthralled by the prospect of noodles, that’s who I am. Most people wouldn’t be able to spend all their time consuming imaginary noodles in their head, but being a somewhat more culinary-obsessed Doctor Parnassus of sorts, that’s exactly what I do. I’d like to go outside and do stuff, but even then I think most of the stuff I’d like to do outside would revolve around eating tasty treats. Mostly that requires a bit of money to do. I need some money. I often wonder if there might be a treasure chest in my back garden, but I think it’s probably too much hassle to check, and if there weren’t one I’d be in trouble for destroying everything. I can’t decide whether it’s a risk worth taking. Perhaps I’ll just head down to Ladbrokes and see what odds I can get on there not being a treasure chest in my back garden, then even if there isn’t one, I’ll still be making a lot of money from it. This is inspired, why aren’t more people doing this? Perhaps they are. Perhaps Ladbrokes is just full to the brim of old men in cloth caps making wagers on whether there are some dubloons under their apple tree. I’ve never really spent any time in a bookmakers, so this could quite easily be true. I’m going to assume it is. It makes the world a more magical place. Anyway, I should go and cook some pasta.

I went to London yesterday. I thought I’d do a stand-up gig, as I thought I should probably practice for Sunday, when I’ve got another, bigger gig booked. Unfortunately, it’s a night where it’s very much first come first served in act terms, and I got there late because I was too busy buying some Monster Munch, so wasn’t allowed to perform as they were already full. I then had to spend my time just ambling around London on my own, which was pretty depressing really. I usually don’t mind it, and I’m usually quite entertained by London, but for some reason I just felt really down. I’m not really succeeding at anything at the moment, and I wasn’t even sure whether I wanted to do the stand-up gig last night. I nearly just stayed at home because I’ve become so wracked with self-doubt that I don’t think anything I do is any good and nobody will enjoy it. To be honest, I suspect I’ve made a complete hash of my life and I’m not sure what I can do anymore, however having just said that, Spotify seems to have taken the time to recommend drug trials to me. I’ll be honest, selling my body to science in the hope that I’ll become the next Wolverine does appeal somewhat. Though being the idiot that I am, I already consider myself to be a modern day Wolverine, based only on the fact that I’ve never broken a bone. Now, I’ve never seen my bones, but I can only assume that this is because they’re made of metal. Maybe I’ll enrich a shark with uranium and let it bite me. At best I’ll become some kind of superhuman shark beast, and at worst I’ll get some kind of advert out of it wandering about with my shark bite visible to the world while people scream about seeing my true colours shining through. Just like a rainbow. A scarred rainbow.

To cap off a fine day yesterday I thought I’d go and cheer myself up with some ice cream, so I went to the special ice cream shop and asked, quite clearly I thought, for some rum and raisin ice cream. You can imagine my surprise then when the man at the counter instead decided to get me pomegranate flavour. How do those two things even sound the same? Rum and raisin. Pomegranate. I was too polite to say “How the hell did you hear that as pomegranate?” instead assuming that the mistake was mine. I’m not sure anybody can actually understand what I’m saying, leading to the tremendously unique situation of not actually having a first language.

“Somebody call 999! My house is on fire!”

“Hey everybody! There’s a pomegranate party at Andy’s!”

“No you berks! Call the fire brigade!”

“He says there’s bobbing for apples as well! I’m there!”

I saw an interesting family though. They were stood in Leicester square and performing to a crowd. I say performing, two of them were stood there looking sinister while the dad kept dancing with people. They were kind of dressed like the Addams family, indeed, I think that’s who they were meant to be. They were cool. This was very much the high point of the day. I also gave some money to a beggar, and less impressively, some other people who just asked me if I had a pound. They said it was so that they could get home, though in retrospect I’m not overly convinced. When one of them saw that I was willing to dole out pound coins so freely, she then asked whether her friend could have a pound as well. I gave her 30p, pretending that was all the change I had, then stealthily jingled away with my pocket full of change into the night.

I’ve got two more stand-up gigs booked at the moment. I think after that I’ll see whether it’s something I really want to keep doing. I can’t be sure whether I’m doing it at the moment because I genuinely enjoy doing it, or whether I just think I could be quite good at it, so keep doing it to see whether that’s true. I’d really like to be the best at something, or at least know that people thought I was good at something. These companies I go to think I’m completely inept. I never did get feedback from the company I went to, even though I emailed them and left a message on an answerphone asking them to call me back. I thought about turning up to the office whilst I was in London and forcing them to explain to my face whilst I peeled an orange in a sinister way, but unfortunately if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past year, it’s that I’m completely incapable of peeling an orange in a sinister way. Usually I just sit there spraying citric acid all around, sometimes I blind myself with it, that’s not sinister at all.

“So tell me Mr Binns… what was it that made you rej- ARGH! Hold on, hold on, I can’t see! My ey- ARGH! Wait, just stay there, I’ll be with you in a seco- oh for fuck’s sake it’s on my jacket now. I just washed this this morning! Are you still there? Mr Binns? Mr Binns?”

On the other hand, my citric infusion does mean that I am kryptonite to cats. I’m not entirely sure how this will come in handy, but one day I’m sure it will.

Well this has been fun, even bordering on the slightly therapeutic. It’s really gone on for quite a while though. I’m going to go and eat a yoghurt now. Bye.

Good news everybody! Tonight on BBC1, starting at 11:20 PM, there’s a new series of The Apprentice USA! Hooray! Release the balloons!

Really though, everybody should be excited about this. It’s a tremendous programme. Think about The Apprentice UK, and then crank the ridiculous up to maximum. And crank the actual point of the series up to maximum as well. You see, whereas here in the UK, the eventual winner ends up with some daft prize like colouring in liquorice allsorts or trying to flog the latest Amstrad product (‘It’s a briefcase AND a pen!’), from what I’ve seen of the last few series of The Apprentice USA, the winner actually gets to build a giant tower block of their own, or construct a casino, something impressive like that. I’m fairly sure that Tim, one of the former winners of The Apprentice UK, got the reward of having to market a toothbrush, which is hardly comparable.

“It’s a toothbrush… AND a pen!”

“What? So I’m scribing on my teeth?”

“AS YOU CLEAN THEM! YES! … Hello?”

What also makes The Apprentice USA so brilliant is the presence of Donald Trump himself. People here seem to assume that Alan Sugar is some kind of brilliant maverick, but they probably just haven’t been witness to the insanity of Donald Trump, in which the boardroom scenes are basically just an opportunity for him to play some kind of demented buckaroo, seeing how far he can push things before he gets wheeled off to a home. There have been weeks where he’s decided to fire everybody, and indeed, one week it just became like watching a reinactment of the Stalinist purges, where one person up for a firing said that they thought another member of their team was crazy (who wasn’t even in the boardroom, and there was absolutely no evidence to suggest she was crazy in the slightest), before Donald Trump then summoned her from the safety of the mythical ‘I’ve not been fired yet’ house, and fired her based on this piece of fiction, letting everybody else go free. He’s a maniac. Apparently there’s 15 episodes in this series, though it’ll probably only take 3 until everybody’s been fired and Donald Trump has to craft himself some kind of Pinocchio-esque apprentice out of the boardroom table to make the whole thing seem worthwhile. It should be fun though.

I also went and watched The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus yesterday. I thought it was good. A magical film. That’s my review, so expect to see that on the front of the DVD when it’s eventually released.

Now I am going to go and try to prepare a stand-up set, as I might do a gig tomorrow, and maybe eat some noodles whilst I’m there. Both fun activities. Bye.

Last night I received emails from Guardian Jobs informing me that they’d been hacked by a hacker (who else?) and that they’d managed to acquire details that I’d used to apply for jobs through there, probably my address, email address, telephone numbers, probably my CV too. Many people would be concerned by this, I’ve remained remarkably calm in the knowledge that this is a crime essentially comparable to robbing Stig of the Dump. I’m actually quite excited about it. If somebody has stolen my identity, then in my idiotic head this means that technically I know longer exist. I am now Jason Bourne. Admittedly, a Jason Bourne who’s potentially looking at strangers running up an obscene amount of credit card debt in his name, rather than having $5 million stored safely away in a Swiss bank account, but still a Jason Bourne of sorts. Or the Jackal. He was also a man without an identity. Actually, that’s probably not true, I think the Jackal’s problem, and indeed, Jason Bourne’s problem, was that they actually had loads of identities. Too many if anything. That’s probably what’s happened here, I’ve had my identity stolen my some kind of trained assassin and they’ll use it to commit heinous crimes in my name and gallavant about the world with my passport. Admittedly, they’ll find it somewhat tricky to get into my character, and it’s a fairly niche identity to use.

“Bourne, we need you to play a One Stop employee who writes about cakes in his spare time.”

“What? Why?”

“Don’t question my methods Bourne. Can you do it?”

“Well, it’s funny you should ask, because it just so happens that I have the perfect alias…”

I actually did baffle a company with an alias of my own once. I used the name ‘Andrew Ward’ instead of ‘Andy Ward’, and they thought I was an entirely different person. I mean, as far as brilliant alter-egos go, it’s not exactly going to go entirely under the radar of Interpol, but for a moment I considered myself some kind of master criminal, expertly able to slip into different personalities at the drop of a hat. I say different personalities, it was me, just with a slightly more formal name.

Anyway, now one of two things can happen.

1. I can pay an organisation £13 a year to make sure that my details aren’t used for credit-based bad things. Which is at least 4 times what my identity is actually worth.

2. I can give the thieves a day’s head start and then track them across the globe for sport, culminating in an epic battle with my evil alter-ego on a volcano.

I think we all know which one I’m going to choose.

Jon: Garfield! Dinner time!

[Garfield comes bounding down the stairs]

Garfield: It’s about time Jon, I’ve been sat up there eating shards of my own leg for the past three hours, what the hell took you so long?

Jon: Well, I’m glad you asked, you see, I’ve prepared you a special treat for tonight…

Garfield: Oh Christ, you’ve not invited Glass Paul around to dance for us again have you? Because I’ll tell you now, I’m not hoovering him up this time.

Jon: Even better than that… Ta da!

Garfield: Jon, what the hell is this?

Jon: It’s lasagne! I thought you might enjoy it.

Garfield: Jon, you know I only eat tuna, what do you want me to do with this?

Jon: Just give it a try! You might like it!

Garfield: Jon, I’m a cat alright. Cats like fish. Nine out of ten cats have absolutely no idea what lasagne even is.

Jon: And what about the one who does?

Garfield: He hated it Jon. They all hate it.

Jon: But surely you can just give it a quick try… I mean, it took me a long time to make…

Garfield: Jon, I appreciate the effort and all, but I’d rather just have tuna.

Jon: Give. It. A. Try.

Garfield: … No.

Jon: Garfield, I’m not joking, if you don’t have a mouthful of lasagne I’ll burn your house down.

Garfield: Jon, you wouldn’t do that. You live here as well.

Jon: You think I wouldn’t? I’m not joking Garfield, I’ll do it.

Garfield: Go on then, call my bluff.

Jon: I’m lighting the match Garfield. I’m lighting the match. Oh yeah, do you see? Do you want the curtains to go up in flames Garfield? Is that what you want?

Garfield: Go on then John, light the curtains! See if I care! Heck, why not start by burning your stupid lasagne!

Jon: I STAYED UP ALL NIGHT MAKING THAT FOR YOU YOU UNGRATEFUL BASTARD! TRY MY LASAGNE!

Garfield: DO YOU EVEN HEAR YOURSELF JON? YOU STAYED UP ALL NIGHT BAKING A LASAGNE FOR A CAT! LASAGNE FOR A CAT JON! YOU’RE A MENTALIST! GO ON! BURN THE CURTAINS! KILL US BOTH!

Jon: OH I’LL BURN THE CURTAINS! AND THEN I’LL BURN YOUR BRIOCHE!

Garfield: YOU BAKED ME BRIOCHE AS WELL?! FOR FUCK’S SAKE JON WHAT ARE YOU SOME KIND OF ONE MAN CAT BAKERY?!

Jon: NOT YET! BUT MAYBE ONE DAY! OR SO I THOUGHT…!

[Jon sets light to the curtains]

Garfield: NICE JON! NICE WORK! START A FIRE! DO YOU WANT TO GO CALL THE FIRE BRIGADE OR ARE YOU TOO BUSY CHECKING YOUR CAT TIRAMISU?!

Jon: HOW THE HELL DID YOU KNOW ABOUT THE TIRAMISU! HAVE YOU BEEN IN THE FRIDGE AGAIN?

Garfield: SEEK HELP JON! YOU’RE NOT ALL THERE! YOU’RE NOT ALL THERE JON! MMM! CATS LOVE LASAGNE JON! OH YEAH! CATS LOVE LASAGNE!

[Garfield grabs some of the lasagne with his paw and scoops it into his mouth]

Garfield: TASTY LASAGNE FOR CATS JON! YOU MENTA- Actually, you know, that’s not too bad.

Jon: Really? You like my lasagne?

Garfield: I hate to say it, but I could quite easily get used to it.

Jon: Garfield?

Garfield: Yes Jon?

Jon: I love you.

Garfield: That’s… good.

Jon: Garfield?

Garfield: Yeah?

Jon: You’re on fire.

Garfield: Goodbye Jon.