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My girlfriend wants to see Fat Freddy’s Drop at Hammersmith Apollo. Having never heard of them, I’m not that keen, but since I don’t want her to have fun without me, and I don’t permit her to be outside of the house in the presence of other men without me or her eunuch, I have to buy another ticket. It turns out they’re 29 quid, so I’ve come up with a scheme – Begging Letter:

Dear Fat Freddie

My girlfriend and I hope to attend you concert at the Hammersmith Apollo in November 2009, unfortunately an urgent need for driving lessons has put considerable strain on our finances. Please consider sending us some Fat Freebie tickets so that I can continue to learn to drive and come to your concert.

I know what you’re thinking, there are plenty of people in urgent need of driving lessons you can’t possibly be expected to give them all free tickets. That is why I have formulated a fable fat enough to tug on your clogged heart strings, you see, I once had a Ferret, a Fat Ferret, called Freddie. Un-Fortunately Freddie the fat ferret finished ferreting forever when the foam in my futon caught fire, it fried furry Freddie. The fashionably late firemen fought the flames, but their fight was futile, the furnace’s fumes had found forlorn Freddie and fumigated him and his fecund fleas fatally. Freddie’s funeral was in February, on a Friday, the first. I fainted from the formaldehyde fumes.

As you can see I’ve not had it easy and as I did name my fictional ferret after you (he loved his folk music) please give me free tickets.

Best Wishes

Mjohnson

I’ve just eaten a whole English pound’s worth of Iceland’s Chicken-Tikka Lasagne for lunch and it’s opened my eyes to a whole new world of food. Does this development mark the dawn of an exciting new food movement; Chav Fusion?

The idea of replacing the Bolognese sauce in a lasagne with a Chicken-Tikka curry is game changing. British cuisine hasn’t seen a development like this since a hungry maverick wanted a fry-up for lunch and invented the all day breakfast. The real genius of the form is that it challenges the convention that a lasagne contains a bolognaise sauce and opens the way for a whole new world of meat-sauce based, cooked, pasta sandwiches – all topped off with cheddar cheese. Chilli, Coq au van, sweet and sour prawns, these dishes always had the potential to be baked between pasta sheets with Béchamel sauce, we just didn’t see it.

I wonder whether this creative masterstroke was the work of an individual or a focus group: “Our findings are that a typical customer’s favourite meal is either lasagne, or Chicken-Tikka curry, if only there was some way we could combine the two. . . ” Whoever it was that made the leap they deserve a peerage - we have precedent - they made the guy that invented the sandwich an Earl. Can I dare to dream that it was the recently disgraced Kerry Katona, perhaps in some bizarre, Beadles About style, industrial, kitchen accident: ‘I’ll just have a sneaky little line behind this mechanical meat separator’ . . . whoops. . !

No matter how sceptical you are about the combination you have to admit that whoever it was that opened the Pandora’s freezer box of possibilities has at least contributed to the sum of human culinary knowledge. I often wonder how, as a species, we ended up with such elaborate cooking rituals. Who was the first person to use extract of calf stomach to curdle milk to make cheese, cheese which is mouldy milk, milk the stuff that comes from cow’s tits.

When examined there are plenty of foods which are just weird, I’ll admit, this is one of them, but ninety 99p for a meal is good value and, at that price, the fact that it’s still repeating on me after an hour probably counts as a bonus.

Update: it has apparently now made my breath smell like Pedigree Chum.

I’ve recently signed myself up to the 10:10 campaign; this involves pledging to reduce my carbon emissions by 10% in 2010 and yesterday I read about the Mayor of London’s low carbon neighbourhood scheme, this involves the creation of 10 low carbon zones, each one has committed to reducing their carbon emissions by 20.12% by 2012.

Have you noticed that today’s date is the 9th September 2009, 09/09/09, (or 09/09/09 if you’re using the American notation)? I have.

Update: It's the 4th September. Dam it - somehow I managed to get the date wrong and shot my brilliant campaign in the foot before it even got off the ground.

In the spirit of carbon reduction initiatives, based on the date, I am starting a campaign called 999 day, emergency planet earth. On this day (i.e. next Wednesday), 999 day, due to an interesting peculiarity of the date and the urgent and pressing need to reduce global C02 emissions, a dynamic group of organisations, businesses and individuals (that’s me and you) are signing up and pledging to reduce their C02 emissions by 999% for one day.

Sign up below and pledge to reduce your C02 emissions 999% for one day, today. Turn off that computer, turn off the lights, turn off the telly, basically turn everything off, don’t go anywhere or do anything at all.

Update # 2: This campaign is not going well, even worse than my attempts to make Muntazer al-Zaidi, the George W Bush shoe thrower, Time Magazine man of the year. The latest hitch is the realisation that 999% of my daily C02 emissions is actually almost ten days worth of carbon, (100% would be one day). As it stands next Wednesday, I, and anyone else that signs up for this ill fated venture, will have to sequester ten days worth of carbon. So far I’m not sure how I’m going to do this, but I do have a figure. Based on the UK average annual emissions of 9,400Kg per year, one day’s worth of emissions equates to roughly 26Kg. 999% of this figure is about 255Kg. It’s going to be tough to hit this target, but I do have a plan. Amazon are selling 10Kgs of lumpwood charcoal for £11.30, if I buy and then bury 26 sacks of the stuff, by my reckoning, I’ve just about hit my target. Who’s with me! (You’ll need about £300 and a shovel).

If you’ll allow me to leave the computer on for just a bit longer I’ll tell you a little bit about my experiences of signing up for 10:10 so far (which is a genuinely worthwhile idea, unlike my campaign). Part of the pledge is a commitment to spread the word, so yesterday I emailed my companies’ Sustainability Forum. I put together a short but convincing argument for our participation. This was basically a list of our clients and competitors who had already signed up. So far the email hasn’t had an exactly ground shaking impact. One guy did come up to me yesterday evening and say “thanks for your email, very interesting. Just out of interest why did you send it to me?”

"You’re part of the sustainability forum".

"Oh, am I? I am on a lot of committees. It’s good to be on committees you know".

That last bit is him mentoring me. He likes to give me advice about how to get on: committees yes, a sense of moral duty no.