Thing One - In a vague attempt to stop my liver feeling like pâté, I shall be swearing off alcoholic boozes for the duration of February. This might mean that things become slightly livelier around these parts, or that I slowly descend into misery and frustration watching all those around me getting sloshed. We shall see.

Thing Two - I appear to have inadvertantly made my first appearance on YouTube -

Did you spot me? Wide eyes viewers familiar with my coterie of chums might like to know that I'm directly to the right of regular correspondent Dick Gappy. The recording took place at the closing dpwn sale of the soon to be massively missed Videosyncratic, the cities last bastion of comic pamphlet sales. This will have some major effects on me, though as of yet I'm not one hundred percent what they will be. I'm sure I will blather on about it at length some point in the future. What's that? Another video under this wall of text? From the same event? Why, yes it is. Me? Well, yeah, I do appear. Quite a bit in fact, but I seem to spend half of the song looking at my shoes, mainly because I was aware I was being filmed and didn't want to look into the lens too much. It'd be terribly unprofessional, don'tcha know. Plus I'd rather that you tried to seek me out in the one above as this one gives my position away rather, hence this wall of text that'll hopefully be long enough to throw people off the scent about there being another video further down the page. Reckon that's enough? Aye, go on, let's have a look at it.

Supplemental Thing - The Contact icon's still not working, so please address any correspondence to theweakened at gmail dot com in a proper email address kind of a way and it's bound to get to me. Things will hopefully get sorted when I work out how much of what I've told people about future site maintence is true and how much is so many crossed wires.

That's the question. See, I take my wander into work about the same time most mornings. Unsurprisingly a fair few people seem to be doing the same thing walking in the opposite direction, so most mornings our paths cross. There's the lass who works in the pub who I vaguely know; the disshevelled man who looks like he's trying to hold his trousers up with his hand; the black lady with the purposeful stride; the middle aged man who delivers papers and looks like he has mild down syndrome. Of course I never speak to any of them (except the lass from the pub - I know her vaguely), for I am British and in a city, so even if our paths do cross once a day, any acknowledgement of the fact would be a gross social faux pas of almost Dresden like levels. A grin, a nod, a cheeky wink, none of these are permissable because I don't know these people and were I to start chatting to them on the street I'd be hauled off and sectioned quicker than Django's fretwork.

Which presents me with the Fred issue. I spent the last couple of years of school with Fred after he moved to Shitney when we were in the third, maybe fourth year (ninth or tenth years for anyone under the age of thirty). We weren't exactly best friends to begin with, but we always got on fairly well. At around the age of sixteen, we properly started bonding over a mutual love of comics, both of us beginning to get into the titles that would eventually form the Vertigo line (Sandamn, Hellblazer, Shade The Changing Man and the like), the early Sin Cities, Cerebus and so forth. That combined with our mutual interest in narcotics brought us quite close. Still never bestest chums or owt, but good mates.

This friendship fizzled out when Fred returned to his old stomping ground - Lahnden Tahhn. He had always professed a hatred of Shitney and it's parochial ways, so as soon as he was able, he made his way off to the big smoke to seek his fortune. We kept vaguely in touch via email for a few months, but as is the way with these things we drifted out of touch and I've not heard anything from him for well over a decade. The clincher may well have been when I asked if I could come and visit for a weekend, but received no response. An ineffectual mutual snub that I regret my half of and I doubt he really remembers his part in.

By now you've probably guessed how these disparate sections of my life have come together. Often on my trudge toward employment I find myself passing someone who doesn't look dissimilair to how I would imagine Fred to look now. The age seems approximately correct, the hair is remarkably similair to the barnet he used to sport, the facial features are very much alike the ones I remember (the school photo in my possession which we both feature in seems to back these memories up). It seems so unlikely that it could be him though - his hatred of small towns and cities seemed like something he would never shake, though people obviously change during a dozen years or so. But of course, I can never ask.

I've considered shouting "Fred!" as I pass and seeing if there's any sort of reaction, but as we normally pass one another outside the local police station, I fear possible reprisals from bellowing there. I have thought bumping into him, thinking that if I heard the man speak I could possibly gauge the familiarity of his voice. Sadly our point of passing is apretty wide pice of pavement, so would take a massive deat of leaping to make it look like any kind of an accident (I didn't spot him during the snow unfortunately as that would have provided the perfect opportunity). During the summer I toyed with the idea of printing 'FRED?' onto a T-shirt and seeing if that would elicit any kind of a response, but it's too cold for that now and I'm certainly not emblazoning it accross the front of me overcoat. Except in chalk perhaps, though that'd probably lead to me being sectioned too.