Didn't we have a lovely time the day we went to... Anywhere that RyanAir fly to?

A couple of weekends ago, I read an article in the Sunday Times Magazine about the decline of the British seaside resort, specifically highlighting Southend-on-Sea as a town woefully decaying as tourist numbers dwindle. The author painted a wonderfully bleak vision of Southend's signature landmark, its 1.4 mile Victorian pier, occupied on that day by the author alone.

As a child, Southend was where we spent the mandatory two week summer holiday my father was forced to take when the factory he worked for shut down. I feel no embarassment in admitting this at all - at the time, all of my friends' fathers worked as engineers, and our collective summer holidays were spent in either Southend, Weymouth, Poole or Bournemouth. I did have one comparatively affluent friend whose parents were both teachers, and they summered in France, but I don't recall being jealous. We were all pretty happy about spending two weeks at an English coastal resort, and I don't recall any of us or our siblings bemoaning our poor fortune at not being able to go abroad. And yet I have already felt the need to stress that it was not of embarrassment to us, indicating that this is precisely how the English resort is viewed, almost as a 'last resort', the kind of second-class destination someone would choose if, for example, they could not afford to travel abroad.

We settled on Southend because my father used to go there each year with his mother and father. My grandmother was a true Londoner, an Eastender born within the sound of Bow Bells. Even after being evacuated to rural Warwickshire, Southend - along with Margate, where we went once too - was still their favourite holiday destination after the war. In a way I felt proud to be carrying on a Smith family tradition; on the other hand, I didn't really know any different either.

I have some fantastic memories of Southend, of the journey there, of days spent indoors and hours spent in doorways because the weather had turned stormy. If I think back to the fond memories of my childhood, teenage years and early adulthood, it doesn't take too long before I come across one linked to Southend. It's just an embedded part of my history, webbed in and around some of the personally significant events of my life. Strangely, despite its obvious tourist appeal, despite literally dozens of visits to this most beloved Victorian town, I think I've only been along the pier twice. Then again, I lived in Stratford-upon-Avon for 19 years and never visited Shakespeare's Birthplace either.

But fond though I am of my memory of Southend, would I honestly consider this - or Margate, or Clacton - a destination that my newly-extended family should choose for a weeks' holiday? Or even for a long weekend? With the advent of budget airlines and the opening up of far more destinations reachable by plane in about the same time as a drive to the nearest English coastal town, it's hard to justify making the trip. This is before you consider the fact that a location like Southend, with former attractions like the Kursal or the pier bowling alley eroded away either by changing tastes and carelessness, or the decaying grandeur of the Palace Hotel (which was a squatters' paradise the last time I was there) and the boarded-up gift shops - this combination of underinvestment and cultural ruination makes Southend a pretty gloomy place for all but the most optimistic individual, i.e. very small children.

I might consider taking our daughter to coastal Essex simply to let her see what it's like and try and explain how it was when I was younger - like my father did with me - before this slice of Victorian tradition (like industry, imperialism and innovation) disappears into the sea for good. But unless our finances take a turn for the worse, we won't be spending a week there every year.

In fact, right now we are planning our first family holiday. The locations that we're considering include Portugal, Prague or New York - destinations which are recognised as affordable and effortless to reach, much as my parents considered Southend when my sister and I were born or the Victorians intended such a location with mass populace appeal to be. And oddly, on the cusp of turning thirty and taking the opportunity to look back through my memories, one of my strongest memories of Southend is not of fish and chips purchased from a chippy by Chalkwell Park, disorienting visits to the Crooked House in Peter Pan's Playground, walking out to the Crowstone Monument (the point where the Thames meets the sea) or Scampi Fries consumed in a concrete beer garden outside The Crooked Billet pub in Old Leigh - it is none of these things that I recall most fondly. Instead it's the no doubt deceased record shop (Golden Disc) that my friend Barry made me aware of where I picked up a stack of rare records, all of which I treasure as Southend souvenirs to this day.

Of work and parenthood

Our daughter is now three weeks old, and I really can't believe that the time has passed so quickly. In such a very short space of time, not only have our lives and routines gone out of the window, but Seren - our precious little girl - has changed so much. She already seems stronger, longer and more settled, and is fascinated by the light passing through windows or through banisters. She's also started smiling genuine smiles rather than indicating that daddy needs to get ready to change my nappy soon, and seems to be getting interested in her activity mat and other toys.

Everyone who's ever had kids will tell you that it changes your life forever, but a naïve part of you really believes that this is just poppycock, that you'll be more capable than them, able to assert some sort of upper hand over your child. You genuinely think that you'll be able to sit down of an evening, for example, and enjoy your evening meal - baby, after all, is such a small thing; how can she possibly rule the roost? But of course, no sooner has fork touched plate than baby also wants feeding. Oh, and that old adage about letting babies cry until you're ready to attend to them? Nice (if slightly cruel) idea, but totally impractical.

The first couple of weeks, with the benefit of two weeks of paternity leave, was really good. I'd get up at 7.00 or 7.30 and get the house organised, while my wife Michelle and Seren would generally sleep in until around nine when the latter, suddenly cognisant that she was starving would scream into life, the stomach and vocal chords seemingly awake earlier than the eyes, which seemed to stay resolutely closed.

Fast forward to my first day back at work. Few of the variables had changed - Seren still didn't sleep through the night without two or three feeds and nappy changes, we still didn't get to bed until midnight - but I suddenly had to balance the night's disruption with getting up two hours earlier and therefore experiencing two hours' less 'sleep'. And not only that, but with this start, I then actually had to work. Work which is, of course, less strenuous than 24 hour childcare or breastfeeding, I hasten to add before inadvertently offending my own wife and other mothers, but is pretty tough to do on bugger all sleep.

Worse still (from a work perspective) is that having a child really re-focusses your priorities, built up over many child-less years. Work is no longer the most important ruling influence in your life, thus you feel resentful of this all-consuming daily event that cruelly separates you from your newly-expanded family. Work, you realise, is that necessary thing that you need to do to support your loved ones, and you can't help but approach it in a different way.

But work doesn't quite see it that way. There's no concessions simply from having a baby. You are not able to work any less hard, you still have to show 150% commitment and there is no allowance for tiredness or lateness after your poor, defenseless, unknowing baby has been sick all down the back of your suit. You can't afford to coast, no matter how much you want to. And for those people who say you need to separate your work and home lives? Well, tell me how to do that and I'll give it a try, but right now I can't see the appeal.

Aside from the financial means to provide for your loved ones, the grey cloud of work does provide but one silver lining - holidays. I've never been so keen in all my life to book all my holidays in, to know when I can next spend more than just the all-too-brief weekend with my family. And finally, after nearly five years of working in the City, with its compelling financial attractiveness and my intense pride and love for our capital, the hour and a half commute now feels like a further factor separating me from my baby, a further thing to be resentful for. But I'm not about to go jacking in work just yet - my daughter looks like she is going to have expensive tastes.

Despite tieing myself up in great big bloody reef knots about going back to work, as it happened my first day back was fine. The hour-long train journey each way turned out to be a perfect means of catching up on sleep, while when I actually arrived at work all people wanted to do was talk about Seren (my specialist subject), her birth, how Michelle was and how I was coping. So I didn't get much done anyway. But that excitement of rushing out the door at 5.00 to get home has never been so welcome, and that first night coming in to see my wife and baby was one of the nicest evenings of my life.

Parenthood

At about five o'clock on the morning of 6th May - which would eventually turn out to be the day my daughter was ushered forth into the world - with my wife Michelle in intense pain from an already lengthy labour and entonox canisters rapidly being connected to breathing apparatus; with our lounge, as the intended scene of birth, appearing to be something of a cross between a medical triage and child's waterpark; with my wife moaning and groaning and the midwife telling me I'd made her perhaps the best cup of tea she'd ever had; in among this chaotic scene, I experienced an epiphany, perhaps the strongest in my life to date - we were about to have a baby, and I was about to become a father.

Now, our baby was, on the 6th May, as she wended her way oh so slowly out of the womb, precisely two weeks overdue. Therefore I'd had nearly ten months to get used to the concept of what was imminently about to happen in our lives. But somehow the true gravity of the coming change in my life had not yet fully hit me. I thought it had, after all earlier on this very page I have remarked that nine months of pregnancy repreents the perfect amount of time for you to adjust to becoming parents, and therefore felt pretty confident about the whole thing. But, in the early hours of that morning just over two weeks ago, I suddenly felt a massive wave of realisation, trepidation and abject fear wash over me. My wife didn't appear to notice - after all her focus was on the pain and on the immediate task of getting our baby out of her body come hell or high water - but I sobbed a little. Partly for suddenly feeling out of my depth, and partly because it was awful to see the one I love so much suffering such pain.

Of course, my fears were unfounded, and we've both adapted to parenthood very well. As I write this, our daughter is asleep on my left arm, so I've even discovered how to multi-task too. But at the time, in that moment and throughout the day until Seren Elyse was born at 17.35, it felt like I was standing on a precipice. I don't think my wife would have noticed; in fact, I rather hoped she wouldn't as my sole focus needed to be on supporting her. Then again, with the amount of gas and air that she'd consumed I don't suppose she'd have noticed anything.

The progress of Michelle's labour seemed like an eternity, and to a certain extent that's not far off the truth. Before my paternity leave started, my manager at work joked that we should have a sweepstake in the team on how long Michelle's labour would last for - he joked that it would be around 68 hours, which we all guffawed profusely at. He wasn't far wrong - contractions started at about 19.00 on Wednesday and Seren was finally born some 70 hours later.

By the time our beautiful daughter- after all we are her parents, and therefore fully entitled to think she is the most beautiful girl in the world, which she genuinely is - was born, we had certainly made the best use of the NHS. Michelle desperately wanted a home water birth, which requires a midwife (and later a second midwife) to be present for the majority of the established labour. As labour took so long because, we later learned, of the position of Seren's head, and as midwives' shifts don't last forever, we went through five midwives in all. Michelle got something of a taste for entonox, and used up six whole canisters of the stuff, depleting the entire supply that Milton Keynes General Hospital had that day. And to cap it all, because things had taken so long, it was decided that enough was enough and the hospital should take over. Whereupon an ambulance was called, a spinal anaesthetic was administered and Seren was born, in an operating theatre, by ventouse. You can't say that we didn't get our money's worth, but it was pretty distressing at the time. I never thought I'd find myself chasing an ambulance whilst wiping tears from my eyes and mouthing apologies to my wife under my breath, but there you go. Everyone says you can't plan a birth down to the finest detail, and now I know why.

So it turned out not to be the birth that Michelle had planned for, but the result was the same - a healthy, slightly distressed but perfect baby girl. And we were of course overjoyed.

Seren and Michelle unexpectedly stayed in Milton Keynes hospital until the following Tuesday, which was for me one of the hardest and most surreal experiences of the whole thing. Here I was, someone who had become a father, someone who had graduated to this new level of maturity and pumped up with pride, forced to return to our house, alone. Our house which was still set up for a home birth with a lounge that could only be described as carnage, all towels and water and used tea cups; our house where to me it seemed I could still hear the anguished moans and groans of my wife still echoing around the now-silent rooms. By the time I returned from hospital on that Saturday evening it was so late that I could not bring myself to make dinner, despite the fact that my last meal had been a solitary slice of cold toast at the precise moment that my epiphany had washed over me; thus, after making the obligatory family phonecalls, I found myself nursing a beer and eating unhealthy snacks amid the mess and devastation of our house.

Everything in my life had completely changed, for the better of course, and that epiphany seemed so irrelevant now that Seren had finally arrived and my responsibilities had kicked in. And yet there I was at home living like a student batchelor.

Vinyl Whores

An earlier version of this article previously appeared on the website www.nominalmusics.co.uk in 2000.

When I first started publishing pages to the web in 1995 (as Red Elvis Central through the University of Essex), I ran a weekly review of between ten and twenty seven inch singles picked up at various charity stores around Colchester. This stack of vinyl, of various shades of degradation, was mostly culled from the late seventies and early eighties - commercial electronic pop, classic and obscure. My religious binge-purchasing of seven inch releases from bands such as Tears For Fears or OMD rose to near addiction levels, and by the summer of 1998 I was unable to visit a town or village without first checking out the second hand vinyl in the thrift stores - the Cat Rescue shop in Lexden, Colchester seemed an unlikely place to spend a lunch hour from work, but when it meant that I could get a rare seven by 808 State, I didn't really mind. Financial limitations (and various other lead weights around my neck, the details of which would not make pleasant reading) meant that record purchasing near enough ceased completely. After moving from Colchester to Luton in August 1998, my turntable remained disassembled for many months, leaving the burgeoning boxes of neatly-ordered vinyl to slumber in their filthy sleeves. With the exception of a few isolated forays into Luton and Dunstable's almost infinite reservoir of charity outlets, my consumption of vinyl was limited to picking up the odd battered album from the Oxfam next to my workplace. Hence, although quantity was reduced, the quality of my purchases would rise - so, instead of grasping for the Gary Numan single that I knew I wouldn't like, I would be a bit more measured. This has meant that I have instead picked up a rare promo copy of Miles' Birth Of The Cool and Lee Hazlewood's ' The Very Special World Of…'. Until about two weeks ago, I had not connected the turntable for about six months, although I still had managed to build up a neat stack of new vinyl singles and albums. My wife had also raided her parents' house and found an old record box containing all of her old sevens and twelves, so, in a moment of retro abandonment, we decided to play some.

I had completely forgotten the feeling and emotion attached to playing records compared to the neat convenience of CDs or MP3s. To today's youth, at least those not influenced by dance music or into indie (where the 7” is once again fashionable), vinyl must seem so old-fashioned and inconvenient compared to the minimal effort required with digital media.

But that's exactly what makes playing records so exciting - the effort involved by the listener through dusting the grooves or calibrating the tone arm means that he or she is actually somehow overseeing and participating in the act of letting the music play through the amplifier. There is also the feeling of holding something delicate and precious - whilst a CD can play through a misplaced fingerprint, a vinyl record can be terminally damaged by a slight scratch or from the transfer of oil from the fingertip. Add this to the fact that a vinyl single or album is housed in a very flimsy cardboard sleeve (as opposed to the immaculate sheen of a plastic CD case) and one begins to comprehend why avid vinyl consumptives want to treat each individual piece as carefully as an antique dealer would handle a Queen Anne table. Vinyl is physical, music made through contact, whilst digital media are somehow more precise due to the technologically-advanced nature of their recording and playback hardware. One imagines vinyl as having a finite lifespan, whereas CDs seem to be built to last forever. Also, the sonic manipulation of digital media is essentially flawed to the point of impossibility, despite the intervention of new mixing consoles and certain avant-garde elecroacoustic composers - where are the CD compositional equivalents of works by Steve Reich, John Cage, Pierre Schaeffer, Christian Marclay, or even the scratching dexterity of hip hop’s finest? Put simply, it can't be done. In two of music's most forward-looking genres, vinyl is still at the very heart - where would rap or any one of dance's viral tranches be without the use of turntable and vinyl record?

Listening to old vinyl relics such as my first seven, Nik Kershaw's 'The Riddle' or Michelle's pile of late eighties pop dance singles rekindled the old feelings of youth and teenage experimentation that the purchasing of CDs actually prohibit. This prompted us to remember trivial things like 'I was doing this on the day that I bought this,' or 'I was going out with so-and-so when I bought this,' or 'I remember what else I bought that day.' These pieces of plastic are like points along a continuum, events separated by days and weeks of saving for the next single or album. Perhaps I'm reading it wrong, perhaps it's music in general that we use to measure the passing of time, but I don't think CDs or MP3s can or will have the nostalgic impact that vinyl has. Is anyone, after all, likely to recall the first MP3 they ever downloaded? (For the record, my first was the free album Bovine Life II : Social Electrics, a collection of obscure electronica created using filesharing.)

Recording to CD is now a cheap and cost-effective way of mastering that can be done from home, a by-product of the bedroom-based self-build ethics that punk facilitated. Ironic then that punk's teenage snarl and 'fuck you' attitude has lead to the decline of vinyl, replaced instead by the mature, tamed spirit encapsulated as the zeroes and ones of digital recording media. Listening to The Stooges' debut album on remastered CD feels so clean and pure, yet the sleeve and potential within the songs tells you that this should be dirty and ragged - perfect for the filthy grooves of a vinyl album and battered cardboard sleeve. Inevitably, it is difficult not to accept that CDs - in all but sound quality - are superior and more convenient than vinyl records, no matter how much audiophiles will try to convince you. We want simple lives, no matter how complex our listening ear, but vinyl will always remain a quintessential part of music's development. We could not have anticipated MP3s or hard-drive recording, so what's next? You can be assured that vinyl will still be there in some shape or form, even if it's reduced to the mere ghost of a sampled scratch on a future digital hip hop opus.

How To Give Up Your Obsession With Self-Help

Last night on the train home I sat opposite a large woman, not necessarily fat, but one of those very tall women whose weight is in proportion with their frame. She was wearing a dowdy grey woolen suit of the variety that no-one sells anymore, nor indeed have they done so for the last half a century, and the kind of brown flat-soled shoes worn by ageing members of the church. Her entire appearance suggested a frumpy, late-middle-aged civil servant, but far be it from me to judge a person on their appearances. She also reminded me, oddly, of Christopher Biggins. In fact, if Biggins had been a woman, went shopping for a suit and shoes - in the Second World War - and then worked ceaselessly as a lowly civil servant for fifty years, then he basically would have been sat opposite me last night.

(Incidentally, I do tend to assume that the majority of my fellow commuters are civil servants. I don't know why. After all I've never even met a civil servant. Do they even exist?)

The woman was reading a book entitled 'Now, Discover Your Hidden Strengths'. It makes a change to see someone reading something other than 'The Da Vinci Code' or Harry Potter, I'll admit. (Surely someone must by now have seen the potential for 'The Harry Potter Code' with a foreword by John Grisham and Tom Clancy. That way no-one would need to buy another book again. It would be like a new bible for commuting civil servants. Or what about inventing a piece of software that auto-writes Chick Lit? You'd just load in which great job the central character has (but hates), the name of the good-looking but unreliable ex-boyfriend-slash-love of her life, some amusing scenes where the main character, despite working in PR or marketing and clearly being in possession of a not unsubstantial intellect, shows how ditsy she is. Throw in some pre-programmed mini-break locations and a pivotal one night stand and I think you've got yourself a reliable formula to produce a lifetime's supply of similar but subtly different trash fiction.)

I think self-help texts have their own formula too. You just have to take a look at their covers to see that. They generally have a lot of white, with the title emblazoned in red or blue boldly at the centre. They're not very exciting covers, as if making these books look like medical journals will somehow subtly enhance the book's accuracy; but then, just like the latest Dan Brown, they go and stick a load of praise on the front and back covers from some doctor or society that you've never heard of and suspect may not actually exist but is designed to make you think that This Book Really Knows Its Stuff. Sometimes you might even get praise from individual readers of the sweetly sycophantic 'This book changed my life' variety, usually attributed to things like 'Mr A, Sheffield'. Another formulaic feature would be their titles, which editors and publishers and marketing types must spend ages deliberating over, perhaps even longer than some of the books took to cobble together. The titles all have bold aspirations encapsulated within them, usually including phrases starting with 'beat', 'banish' or 'say goodbye to', or they try to appear practical with things like 'how to' at the start. Using a word like 'understand' or 'discover' makes the reader think they're on a road to self-discovery. Other formulaic inclusions may appear as black and white cartoon illustrations (trivialising a problem always helps), an abundance of exercises designed to encourage inward-looking thinking (and the ultimate conclusion that even if your parents didn't directly screw you up, they certainly wanted to) and a higher price than a similarly-sized work of fiction, perhaps to make you think the author knows his subject and thus commands a higher fee.

Here are my observations:

1. No-one reads them all the way through

Ask anyone whether they've read each of their no doubt large collection of self-help manuals all the way to the end and they'll look sheepish and admit they haven't. Not one. You'll see them look uncomfortable as they mentally assess just how much they've spent over the years. (For irony alone, surely, their collection will include Alvin Hall's 'What Not To Spend'). I swear no-one gets past chapter three. They give up, frustrated that they're not instantly healed after reading fifty pages of cognitive behavioural clap-trap that hasn't told them anything beyond it actually being socially acceptable to be overweight / shy / in debt etc, and those exercises which take time and are often quite painful. Thus they give up. Take a look at chapters four onward - there's nothing there but blank pages. They know you'll give up.

2. There's never just one book

Like oxygen molecules, these books have to come in pairs. The author will typically have written another book, curiously published at precisely the same time, on a subject so similar to the book you're reading that he feels it justifies a text and title all of its own. And yet 90% of the content will be the same as the one you're currently reading, and it will still try and tell you that it's okay to be flawed and that your parents are to blame. You know that they are just trying to sell more books by seizing on your insecurities. You know this. But you'll buy the other book too. And read neither.

Take this no doubt seminal text that my fellow rail traveller was reading - 'Now, Discover Your Hidden Strengths'. Doesn't that title sound a little like it's an isolated tome from a much larger series of books? It's full title is actually 'Now You Have Unsuccessfully Read The Three Previous Books In This Series, And If You Have Any Self-Worth Left At All, Let's Discover Your Hidden Strengths And Give Up On This Halfway Through Too, Before Tackling The Next Three Books In My Lucrative Series, Concluding With "Now, Learn How To Swindle Cash Out Of People With Low Self-Esteem".

3. You can't get rid of them

You'll never, ever give one of these books away to a charity shop or sell it on eBay. You can't : what if you were to go through the same problem again? You'll keep it, just in case (even though you never finished it). And secondly, you've written all over it in the sections they leave blank in the exercises. What if the old volunteer in the charity shop or the purchaser on eBay could read what you've written, even when you wrote in pencil and then were really careful to thoroughly rub it out? They'll think you're messed up won't they? Strange that you didn't feel this way when you boldly handed your cash to the spotty student cashier in Books Etc to buy it in the first place.

4. They don't work

This is the saddest thing of all. They promise so much but don't do anything. But that's because they rely on your self-discipline and your commitment. When you cast the book aside and claim it's just not working, it's never your fault though is it? At the very least you will attempt to blame the author, while those who have read far enough will have learned enough to realise that their dear parents, who spent so long tirelessly providing for them during the reader's formative years, are in fact to blame. Yes, they are to blame for your lack of commitment to really making a serious effort at looking inside yourself. That said, a self-help text is no substitute for a counsellor, which is the real reason they don't work.

My companion's book sounds to me like the book equivalent of those careers advice chats you have at school where you complete a questionnaire with your qualities, and end up being told you're perfectly suited to a) working in a shop or b) being on the dole. And how does this book expect to teach me, for example, that my great hidden strength might be a natural excellence in skydiving or singing lead in a Norweigan Death Metal band?

This has all gone far enough. Too many innocent individuals are buying book after book in the misguided belief that it will genuinely cure them of their various insecurities. There is only one solution, and that is my new book 'How To Give Up Your Obsession With Self-Help', which esteemed professor types are already claiming to be the definitive work on the subject, and 'The best tenner I ever spent!' by a Mrs C Biggins (Civil Servant).

Thou shalt not laugh whilst travelling on the tube

In the often mind-numbing drudgery of commuting, one of the more unexpected things one finds oneself doing is bursting out laughing in a tightly-packed tube carriage during the morning rush hour. People look at you first with annoyance and then with a degree of concern, as if to suggest that they think the rat race may just have got to you. Clearly you have lost the plot, yet another victim of the modern condition who's buckling under the pressure of the City. They put railings at the top of the Monument to stop people like you throwing yourself to your death, you know. People stiffen, clutch at their possessions as if any second the chortling psychopath they perceive you to be is going to rob you (or worse). Laughter, at least the last time I checked, is a natural human behaviour. Clearly this is not the case on public transport. One should be seen and not heard, it would appear.

But laugh out loud is exactly what I did several mornings ago upon chancing upon a short letter in this morning's Metro, the free paper for commuters, each copy circulating between God knows how many travellers on an average morning - you wouldn't pick a paper out of the bin (unless you were homeless which is an entirely different scenario), but it is socially acceptable to retrieve a copy of the Metro from the grubby floor of a tube train. It is not socially acceptable to laugh, however. Double standards, anyone?

The letter was written by Steve Ainger, and concerned the title of The Darkness' last effort, One Way Ticket To Hell And Back. Steve's sharp-witted comment suggested that this in fact meant they needed to purchase a return, not a single. It couldn't have been more than twenty words, but was so precise and so instant that I almost fell off my seat laughing. As it happened I didn't have a seat, so more accurately I almost fell over. Well, in fact I wouldn't haven fallen anywhere so sardine-packed was I on said morning, but I think you get the gist.

As it happens, I know Steve, and worked with him for nearly three years. Steve is perhaps the funniest chap I've ever had the good fortune to work with. He and I also shared a love for the least celebrated nineties indie bands and all things Morrissey, and his dry office rhetoric was both infuriating and infectious. One of Steve's methods of passing time in the office was to play a game of verbal 'either / or' with his immediate colleagues - he'd find two totally unrelated things connected only loosely by alliteration, and ask his colleagues which they would prefer. Simple, funny and invariably straight out of left field, normally delivered just when the office had quietened down and was earnestly beavering away. The same is also true of his regular Metro letters, which are usually shoe-horned in between serious gripes and comments from the public and catch you completely off-guard; his curt little observations on culture, politics and life in general are something of a regular feature in the letters pages, and are always guaranteed to make you guffaw quite unexpectedly.

Steve has also dabbled in stand-up comedy at open-mic nights, which to my chagrin I have yet to experience. But, from what I know of Steve, and if his Metro letters are anything to go by, his wry brand of comedic wit and observation would go down a storm, and I believe he has a number of Michael Stipe gags in his repertoire. If things don’t work out for Steve in PR then I think he’ll have plenty of options for alternative careers.

In his own inimitable – but subtle – manner through his series of regular Metro letters, Steve has become part of the fabric of a commuter's life, as much as, say, rainy Monday mornings, delayed trains and the Waterloo & City Line being closed, only in a way guaranteed to make you smile rather than wince in pain. Long may it continue.