Have actually been earning a little pocket money from selling off CDs and books and DVDs, in spite of all my charity shop efforts. But good, I think, as this clearance business has been like a full-time job for the past few weeks. So I’ve treated myself to Adrian Tomine’s new book Shortcomings. Bought from Gosh opposite the British Museum, because they have it at a discount. And because Gosh Comics is run by lovely people who will actually tell you if a book isn’t worth the money – they stopped me buying something else I was musing over.

This is from the page it fell open at just now. It looks like I’ve contrived the selection, as the topic is very Dickon Edwardssy, but it’s completely random, honest.

Shortcomings is a graphic novel published by Faber and reviewed favourably in the Telegraph. Interesting that I feel the need to note this. Yes, you say, it’s a comic book. But hey, Faber logo on the spine and Daily Telegraph praise. It is, as the Half Man Half Biscuit lyric goes, ‘broadsheet compatible’. A gushing review from a tabloid isn’t the same. Everyone wants their art, their albums, their films or books, to be ‘broadsheet compatible’. One person’s snobbery is another’s standards of acclaim. And vice versa.

Which brings me to thoughts about the Telegraph’s wonderful obituary section. Not only were they one of the few broadsheets to NOT fall for the Ronnie Hazlehurst Wikipedia ‘hoax’, but their regular obits tend to be peopled with, well, the sort of people who don’t have Wikipedia entries in the first place.

These are people who have entries in Who’s Who, that increasingly anachronistic tome which Wikipedia addicts might re-title ‘Who The Hell Cares?’ People who will never appear in Heat Magazine’s ‘Spotted’ section (a benchmark of a different sort of notability), yet will get a whole edition of Desert Island Discs dedicated to their life. I’m not talking so much about authors and scientists, but deputy headmasters of fee-paying schools. Minor bishops. Civil servants. Or people who just went hunting a lot, like Cynthia Pitman this week:

Cynthia Pitman, who has died aged 94, was a lifelong hunt follower who was still riding to hounds in her mid-eighties, always at the head of the field and undaunted by weather or terrain; in her hunting colours and black top hat, she cut a slight but unique figure as the oldest woman in Britain regularly to ride in pursuit of the fox.

For some 70 years in season, she hunted for three days a week, rain or shine, and always rode out sidesaddle (she could not ride astride), cubbing in tweeds and bowler but, after the opening meet, dressed in full skirt and hunting jacket — blue and buff with the Duke of Beaufort’s hunt, black with the Vale of the White Horse. The whole outfit was crowned by a top hat of gleaming black silk.

Among her favourite hunters was Munster Bank, a bay gelding on whom she was painted by the foxhunting artist Lionel Edwards in the 1960s, and her last horse Douro, bought from the Queen through her brother, the late Lieutenant-Colonel Sir John Miller, a Crown equerry.

The phrases I love are ‘bay gelding’, ‘cubbing in tweeds’, ‘some 70 years in season’, ‘she could not ride astride’, ‘a Crown equerry.’ I wonder if more people today can speak Klingon than can speak Hunting?

What I also love is that at no point in the article are the terms ‘social networking’, ‘website’, ‘blogging’, ‘Facebook’, ‘content’, ‘solutions’, ‘MySpace’, or ‘YouTube’. I love this. It’s healthy. Just as I try to read something written by someone dead (or over 70 and thus of another world) before I write an entry myself.

I’ve said this before, but if you’re of the blogging generation, I advise never writing an entry immediately after you’ve read something on the Internet. Dip into a book from another age. A decent old book will – perversely – make your style fresher and more engaging to read. There are millions of blogs already consulting each other like mad. They’re sharing interests, but they’re also sharing the same faddy writing style. And I believe there is a real danger of Internet Inbreeding.

If Virginia Woolf were in her twenties now, what would her diary be like? Would it be a blog?

Feeling a bit emo, need to get a room of my own. Laters! ;)

***
I’m now typing this in Highgate Library. I’ve just asked the librarian if it’s okay to use a laptop. She says yes, and that she saw me on the TV, talking about blogging. I really must mention that more, whenever people ask me what I do.

***

Tuesday was mainly spent shopping and idling. Mooched around John Lewis – now with its own Food Hall in the basement courtesy of Mr Waitrose, who breeds new branches almost as quickly as Mr Tesco. The difference between Tesco breeding and Waitrose breeding is that Waitrose will know which type of wine to choose for the reproductive occasion. Breeding with ‘good breeding’. Retail franchising with a whiff of the pedigree certificate. And here I actually AM turning into Will Self.

Ah, I’ve just found out Waitrose IS the food division of John Lewis, so that’s my first educational tidbit of the day.

Bought the fabled curtain tiebacks – ‘burgundy noodle’ style’. A bit expensive, but all the cheap ones had tassles, and for some reason I wasn’t feeling… tassle-tastic. Maybe because I’ve seen too many burlesque dancers. You have to pay more if you want no tassles on your tiebacks. It’s like the old joke about a competition: first prize is a set of tassles, second prize is two sets.

Also bought something called Manuka Honey, because my mother says it might help my constant stomach ache. You find it in health shops, carrying different numbers of ‘UMF strength’, and costing rather a lot. I chose a pot with a UMF of 20+, feeling uncertain whether I should eat it or wear it as a sunscreen.

Have also bought a new toaster. And promptly partook in the modern ritual of setting off the smoke alarm with my first slice.

***
Watched a fascinating programme (by which I mean downloaded), called TV Is Dead? The title makes me wince; I’d prefer Is TV Dead? It’s too much like the statement-as-a-question manner of speaking which young people favour, yeah? Or maybe that’s the point. (Fosca’s new label is called But Is It Art? The question mark irked me initially. But then, I now think Fosca isn’t a great name for a band either. It’s very one-word 90s like Sleeper and Feeder. Still, as with Prefab Sprout, after a while a clumsy name gets lost in the identity of the band. At least, that’s the hope. Were I naming a band now it would be called The Somethings. The Deluded Egos. The Childish Alibis. The Jobless Excuses. More Men With Guitars, Sorry. Actually, that’s a great name for a band. ‘More Men With Guitars, Sorry.’ )

The TV programme revealed that many young people can’t even name the main terrestrial channels. That all the elaborate channel idents and branding measures still don’t have much of an effect: young people just flip through the channels or listings for a programme they like. They know what they like, and they don’t know or care who puts it on.

Peter Bazelgette, head of the company behind Big Brother, remarked how TV used to be about very posh people instructing the masses. Three channels for years, one of which was off most of the time. The phrase ‘what’s on the other side’ now the stuff of history.

Now it’s the other way around – TV is crawling on bended knees. ‘Choose me! Select me! We are just like you! We even have your accents!’

I would have added that the posh and old-fashioned people are still in charge, they’ve just moved behind the scenes – Bazelgette himself, for instance. The accents of TV voices may now be Geordie (‘Deee Eeeet in the Big Brother House’) or Northern Irish (‘and noy on BBC2…’), and one of the C4 engineers working the faders and buttons was revealed to be a young man with an enormous Mohican haircut and black t-shirt. But the producer (of a programme about embarrassing diseases) turned out to be a stylishly dressed (by which I mean, vintage style) and poshly-spoken lady with a Liberty notebook. This pleased me. I’ve got the same notebook myself.

I can tell a notebook at twenty paces. The comedian Robin Ince used an Adrian Tomine notebook when trying out new material for his last stand-up show. Which is where we came in.

These entries aren’t getting any shorter or faster, are they?