I crave bland dependability

Since before Christmas, I have been lying in bed until late morning, listening to the rain and snow hitting the window and making it rattle. Lovely.

I have always thought of alcoholics as people who drink before breakfast, no matter how late the breakfast is. This morning - as I drifted in and out of sleep - I was suddenly struck by the desire to get up and immediately begin drinking Champagne, like Winston Churchill. If you want to model yourself on a functioning alcoholic, then there could be no better example than Winston. Anyone who successfully wages a world war pissed on Champagne and brandy must be a good role model.

Anyway, you need not worry. I resisted the urge to crack open a bottle after I finally got up. I did the next best thing, which was to eat cold curry straight from the saucepan, washed down with coffee.

I was going to drive off in the courtesy car while I still have it, to look at a few Volvos within a 50 mile radius, but there have been so many weather warnings today that I will virtually look at them on my crippled iMac.

I have never bought a bum Volvo in all the years I have been spending £1000 on cars which originally sold for about £35,000, and the more I buy, the better my nose becomes at sniffing out and rejecting the bum ones by almost sheer instinct.

What I don't want is a car with 'character'. You know how people wistfully remember all those idiocyncrasies that went along with their old cars - like how they always endearingly jumped out of 3rd for no reason, or how they would only start if you spoke nicely to them whilst giving them a quarter of an inch of accelerator with the choke exactly one inch out for precisely 22 seconds? Well they can fuck themselves as far as I am concerned. I want an obedient and characterless robot as a driving companion.

I saw a wonderful dashboard sticker stuck to the glove compartment on the passenger side of a car once. In large letters it said, 'Sit down, shut up and don't touch anything'.