Ever wanted to know what I get up to in the shower on a Friday morning?
Don't turn the page just yet - I'm not minded to reveal where I put my hands when standing naked under a jet of hot water at this time of day.
Since this column twitched sluggishly into life, the Friday morning shower has become an all too compressed period of contemplation, or rather, if I'm honest, an overdue untangling of the knotted thoughts that bedevil me as the week hirples to yet another anti-climax.
Ordinarily this column is plotted by the time I've dried my oxters and today you ought to have been digesting my take on Christmas excesses, or more precisely why I'm not a fan of overdoing it to mark the emergence of the baby Jesus from the sacred womb of Mary 2014 years past. Mainly because I can think of a zillion better reasons for overdoing it, and not just one day a year.
Then, just as I'd settled on the bullet points, the mellifluously-toned oracle that is Rachel Burden on Five Live Breakfast mentioned the falling price of petrol, and how a record low of £1.09 a litre had been reported somewhere in Englandshire. Hmm, I thought as I ploughed functionally through a bowl of soggy Weetabix. Never mind the colossal number of job losses predicted as a result of the plummeting demand for oil, this is welcome news for those such as me who opt to drive thirsty charabancs.
Then, en route to work, I found myself behind a V8 Range Rover Sport. Dithering, it was. I couldn't see past its steroid-enhanced haunches to overtake, so I drove at a safe distance and pondered its vulgar scale, its sheer pointlessness in an urban environment, the screw-you-Jack (or Jill; let's be open-minded) vanity of it. And I thought: you, pal, have more money than you know what to do with. And while cheap unleaded benefits the likes of me, the corollary is it benefits V8 Range Rover Sport drivers too. Bah, humbug.
So here's my Christmas message to all wallopers who cocoon themselves in overengineered urban tractors that will never tackle muddy fields or ford rivers: do everyone - yourselves included - a favour and punt them. Buy a capable secondhand estate car (there's a fetching Saab 9-5 Aero Sportwagon on eBay for £2000 in Kirkcaldy) and give the remaining cash to the rising number of people who need it: homeless charities, food banks, safe houses for women fleeing domestic abuse or any of the thousands of other deserving organisations. It's the season of goodwill, after all.
Next week: ablutions.
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