So yes I am a failure at every level- artistically, socially, financially, spiritually. Funny thing is that it doesn't bother me that much because I am alive and I honestly never thought I would live this long. I really expected to be dead by about the age of 25, having lived fast and loose. It's easy to feel like that if you are suicidal from the age of 16, if you have breakdowns, if you spend your life dodging little whirlpools of depression here, and there. But seriously, it's nice to be here, it's nice to see the sun in the morning, smell the traffic fumes as I walk to work, suck back on my morning coffee and watch the passing parade, drink at the Colombian pub on Oxford street where the gayboys hang and the freaks stroll by. It's nice to wake up, having slept. It's nice to do my job, make my students laugh, give them something they can take with them, something different. It's going to be nice to get on a plane again and go somewhere good....Indonesia, Thailand, maybe the Philippines or even go back to Europe. It annoys me that after all those years in Europe I didn't ever once set foot in, or eye on, the Mediterranean sea. I want to enjoy the party islands....Ibiza, Corfu, even Crimea could be really something. What was it that Milan Kundera said about himself? "I am a hedonist in a world politicised to extremes." I'm a hedonist too, in a world that no longer has a clue about politics and keeps electing people like Bush, Howard, Blair, Putin. The braindead masses have been hijacked and co-opted by the shiny new modern fascists. But don't worry everyone. Just switch on the TV, watch Big Brother or whatever reality drivel is being pushed down your throat and everything will be just fine. Keep believing the marketers, the Hollywood formula films where the good guys always win. And then go back to sleep.