1. My new mobile phone is so ridiculously impractical it is surely a joke. A very beautiful joke, but nevertheless a complete pain to use.

2. Earlier, I flippantly remarked “there is as much fat in a cup of tea as there is in a chocolate”. Five middle-aged women simultaneously screamed “What?????” and nobody has made any tea all day.

3. “Glass blocks have just arrived in reception.” Eh?

4. Wham’s “Last Christmas” is not the cheerful song I assumed it to be. It sounds Christmassy, it has bells in it, they play it at school discos – it gives every illusion of being jolly. But I accidentally listened to the words in a shop the other day. “Last Christmas I gave you my heart/The very next day you gave it away” – that’s just horrible, and in medical terms extremely unhygienic.

5. I’m dying for a cup of tea.

As I might have mentioned, I’m currently working in a Government Office. Principally, what we do here is have meetings, discuss the issues raised in the meetings, drink coffee, mend the photocopier, organise more meetings, discuss wheelie bins, rearrange meetings which have had to be moved because of other meetings, and formulate plans for special meetings in which we will have time to deal with the things there wasn’t enough time to deal with in the meetings.

But we also occasionally deal with Government Grants, specifically for companies who have had a clever idea that they need money to develop. Things along the lines of a new type of fast-running tap, or a computer mouse which holds a pen so you don’t lose it, or a new type of toothbrush packaging. The general feeling at the moment (as far as I’ve been able to gather from the various meetings I’ve attended) is that the projects coming in are not really of the quality that they used to be; however, we have to give out all the money we’re allowed to give away, or the Government will reduce the amount of money we have next year.

How about a little bit of that money for the arts? Oh, but of course, the arts aren’t really useful, are they? (i.e. not really profitable.)

Yesterday the decision was taken to give money to a man developing an anti-ageing skin cream and I lost my rag. I won’t say it’s the first time I’ve had a mildly outraged rant in the office (see previous notes about bomb scares), but this was a particularly vitriolic and sustained rant, which I performed in front of our Regional Director. But really – isn’t it about time people grew up and realised that one of the things that happens when you get older is that you look older? I used to have beautiful smooth skin, now I don’t. That is because I used to be six, I’m now twenty-four. Sorry, but “anti-ageing” is a nonsensical term, skin gets older, people look older, however many preservatives you slap on you can’t change that and why’s it such a bad thing anyway?

Even if people are too immature or insecure to accept the fundamental nature of being a living creature, and too stupid to see that they’re going to spend the rest of their life shelling out for tubs of these anti-ageing ointments and it still won’t stop them getting old, why the bloody hell is the Government funding this useless, delusional, exploitative industry for? “But it fits all the criteria,” I’m told – of course it does, it’ll make a packet, which makes everyone in the Government happy. How ironic that they should want to fund a product which is by its very definition superficial – let’s face it, the smooth-skinned smile Blair’s Government wants for the nation is exactly the same as the one Thatcher was after.

The arts don’t even come into it – rather than funding society’s vanity, what about showing a little bit more interest in real life? Or should we give out tubs of anti-ageing cream to homeless people, to victims of abuse and discrimination, to criminals who keep re-offending because the best solution society can think of is to lock them away for a few days? We could send our anti-ageing cream to the people of Iraq, perhaps, while we wait for anything else to happen to sort out the complete balls-up we’ve made of that situation. Or to the thousands of people dying of AIDS in Africa, the thousands of abused children in Uganda, the millions of people who living poverty in third world countries because they are oppressed not only by their own leaders but by the debt they owe us.

Because frankly as a nation we’re far more interested in anti-ageing cream than any of these problems, just as long as we can occasionally purge our guilt with day of crappy TV and a few meagre pledges in return for watching some minor celebrities take baths in spaghetti hoops. And it must be a comfort to so many people that, whatever else is wrong in the world, at least we won’t have wrinkles.

Yesterday I started using a new toothbrush, having noticed recently that the clever little blue bristles in my old one had started fading away. I'd been pretty impressed by this application of twelfth century dying techniques in the modern era, but as it turns out such innovation is really just the beginning of where our toothbrushes are going.

My new one is definitely Space Age: bristles in three different directions, as many colours (I'm hoping it's still the blue whose fading will tell me to buy a new one), and sleek, curved and sensual, like a sex toy for your mouth. Erm ... like a sex toy. I think back to the toothbrushes I had when I was a child, and feel sorry for their simplicity, their boring tightly-packed bristles, their sheer prosaic utility. If right now even our most humdrum hygiene equipment is becoming exciting to look at, who knows what the future holds? Shaving mirrors with built in stock tickers, soap dispensers connected to the Internet so they can order refills automatically, perhaps even aerosol deodorant that doesn't freeze your skin - truly the world of Fast Moving Consumer Goods has never been more interesting.

However it's not just the toothbrush itself that has become advanced. The packaging too has progressed from the simple bits of cardboard I am used to. It's possible that there is cardboard in there somewhere, under the layers of plastic, glue, and something unidentifiable that looks cool and shiny, but is almost impossible to get into. Perhaps the real future, thanks to a conspiracy at OralB, is that only those who already have very strong teeth will be able to use toothbrushes.

I said that yesterday I started using a new toothbrush; this is a lie. By the time I'd fought my way through its container, it was gone twelve, and I'd almost resorted to a hacksaw.

Last night I had the privilege of being invited to go to a concert in St John’s, Smith Square, given by the Parliamentary Choir. This institution, which I have only recently been made aware of but whose existence brings a warm glow to my heart, is essentially your traditional choral society, with the significant defining factor that it consists entirely of people who work at the Palace of Westminster. This is a choir in which your local MP can give vent to creative energy (as indeed mine does); Parliamentary staff (literally) rub shoulders with Lords and Viscounts, as they peer (no pun intended) at their music and try to follow it with varying degrees of success.

The music itself is but a small factor in the whole exciting set up (although soloists included the splendid Catherine Wyn-Rogers and one of the country’s finest tenors, James Gilchrist, so the choir can’t be short of a bob or two – and not surprising, given the extortionate pricing of their programmes). It’s hard to explain quite how charged the atmosphere of social, political and artistic worlds meeting in head on collision can be, and as I took my seat amongst the political elite (a few chairs away from Rt Hon John Redwood MP) it looked unlikely that things could get any more bizarre.

That was before the concert started.

The performance was of Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle, a work I was previously unacquainted with. One knows about Rossini, of course – The Barber of Seville, The Thieving Magpie, pretty overtures, catchy tunes etc. But one expects a classical mass to have rather more dignity.

Far from it. The Petite Messe Solennelle is possibly the composer’s greatest comic achievement. I listened at first slightly aghast and embarrassed, then with increasing enjoyment as Rossini went through every musical joke in the repertoire; silly melodic phrases, comic repetitions, false endings…one movement waited until the soloist had finished, then finished off in a different key. And the whole thing was accompanied by a glorious mixture of pastiche, operatic melodrama and fairground music, all rendered with camp perfection by pianist Malcolm Martineau (when I told him afterwards that he made me chuckle several times, he grinned and said “that was the intention”).

The Credo has never been so jolly, the crucifixus section ludicrously upbeat. The final “dona nobis pacem,” which almost seems to take itself seriously, is followed by a ridiculous series of false starts and stops, each one daring you to think that the work might have finished, before it finally leaps in with an explosive final chord (the audience got the joke: it laughed). It was all utterly utterly inappropriate for a mass. Apparently the Credo is headed “allegro cristiano” – surely it has to be a piss-take? Even the title is a joke: solemn mass? My foot. It has all the solemnity of Monty Python’s fish slapping dance.

Rossini wasn’t a Mozart or a Beethoven, but he wasn’t a fool either. His small solemn mass is a deliberate piece of silliness, a work of comic ambitions unsurpassed even by Sir Arthur Sullivan. I’m not sure what to make of that – did he just think “these Latin words are all very serious, but hey! we can still have some fun!” Was it a more anarchic two-fingers-up to a ceremony he didn’t believe in? Or was it a still more radical reinvention of the same ceremony, the 19th century equivalent of a hippy Vicar with a guitar and a rainbow strap?

What I suspect is that it was simply a big joke, the aging Rossini’s knowing wink at a musical establishment that was never going to rank him as one of the “great” composers. Either way, it seemed entirely appropriate that it was being belted out by a choir of MPs, Peers of the Realm and Parliamentary staff, alongside four properly professional soloists and a magnificently camp pianist, with Sea Cadets all dressed up in their ridiculous costumes to do the ushering and representatives of BT waiting to give us food and wine.

Rossini, I feel, would have approved.

I can't hope to rival James' entry for sheer bile, but a question has been bubbling to the surface here at the Uncertainty Division, namely how to deal with our cumbersome name.

I once knew a London-based music outfit (with hestitation I'll call them a band) called Noise Union who, after some consideration and a few gigs at places like The Marquee, dropped the first word to make themselves simply 'Union'. By analogy, some people try to call us simply The Division which, while making sense (being shorter, and taken directly from our name), makes me think of annoying German industrial groups (probably musical, definitely involving metal).

There are some other options, none of which are particularly nice:

• UD - looks nice as a logo, completely useless as a name, as you can't pronounce it without sounding like a caveman
• The Div - makes me think we're in some weird gang
• Improbable People - not strictly an abbreviation, but I thought I'd mention it because we've been called it in the past

If only we'd gone with our original name, Old Man Harris' Card Shop, we could call ourselves, simply, Card shop - although that smacks altogether too much of Spontaneity Shop for my liking. Dang, this naming thing is difficult.

Anyway, let the suggestions roll in.

Maybe I have a subconscious desire to watch it, but I always end up doing the ironing when Richard and Judy is on television. If it is my subconscious desire to watch this programme then it’s a frighteningly illogical desire, and one that is opposed to every sense in my waking, thinking mind. My subconscious usually wins, though, thanks to a freak of television scheduling which means that, impossibly, Richard and Judy is the most attractive viewing option whenever it is on. I always look for something else – oh, believe me, I have worn through several television remote controls desperately searching, but I inevitably end up turning back to Richard and Judy.

Last Friday I had three shirts and one T-shirt to iron, and as usual my subconscious cunningly engineered events so that I was just in time for another edition of the show. Alas, the television I was forced to experience as a result has been preying on my mind ever since. I don’t know what bothers me more – the question of what on earth the programme is doing on TV at all, or the question of what on earth these people are doing on TV.

When they presented daytime television classic This Morning, Richard and Judy would take viewers through what was going to happen over the course of the next interminably long three hours, and accompanied by some synthesised musak a schedule would appear on the screen for about two minutes. There was a kind of logic to this, it meant that if you were taking a day off school you could ensure you didn’t miss the interview with Peter Davison at 10.47, or Donny Osmond singing Puppy Love at 12.13. To the addled mind of a feverish teenager it all made a kind of absurd sense (though last time I saw This Morning absurd had clearly got the better of sense, because John Virgo was teaching a 90-year-old woman how to do a trick snooker shot with her walking stick. I suppose housewives and elderly people need that sort of thing to help them through the day).

This is all very well in the morning. But it is simply ludicrous to use the same format at 5pm. It’s as if Richard and Judy still think that their cheerfully amateur set-up is acceptable at a time when they are exposed to more than just housewives and ill schoolkids.

I don’t hesitate to blame the presenters themselves for the sheer wrongness of their programme. I am sure that ten years on daytime television has allowed them to pull all the strings they want; that any young director saying “perhaps we should update this format a bit” would get a stony-faced pout from Judy Finnegan and would be taken aside later by Richard to be politely told “now look, we don’t want to lose the charm of our programme by making it all professional, okay?” Any director not playing ball would be siphoned off to The Salon before they knew it, where they would have every chance to be trendy and modern without risking actually having a career.

Yes, the fault is with the presenters. Because there is actually no excuse for them to be on TV at all. Who decided that Judy Finnegan was cut out for television work? The woman can’t even finish a sentence, and what she does manage to get out is not spoken so much as hesitated. No doubt in her head it all makes sense, she simply has trouble communicating it. It’s like listening to your Grandmother. (Since she looks increasingly like a Grandmother, the comparison seems apt.)

On Friday, she began the programme with a warm “hi everyone, and happy Friday.” What sort of woman wishes you a happy Friday? Possibly quite a lovely one, but not somebody you would give a television show to.

Even if she was capable of making sense, everything she stutters is inevitably interrupted and contradicted by her erstwhile husband. Richard Madeley would probably do a fine job presenting a shopping channel, where the only requirement is to keep talking with bubbly enthusiasm. As a youth I made tapes of a pretend radio station, playing music and talking continuously in between. The results, a seven-year-old’s nonsensical verbal diarrhoea, are more than equalled by Richard Madeley’s professional work. If he was a seven-year-old talking into a tape recorder, his inane style would be forgivable, if still rather annoying. But he is not. This seven-year-old is a grinning man in his 50s and the tape recorder is the entire British nation.

It still beggars belief quite how staggeringly misjudged every word to escape his lips is. After Judy’s “happy Friday” greeting, he turned to her and said “I should begin by wishing you a happy anniversary.” This comment was directed entirely at Judy – I suppose appropriately enough, given its personal nature, but it was as if he’d forgotten 2 million people were watching him deliver it. I’m sure I wasn’t the only person who felt I had accidentally overheard something private; Judy blushed and giggled, and there followed one of the programme’s many moments of marital small talk during which, if it was a dinner party, other conversations would rise a little to avoid embarrassment. But it’s not a dinner party, there are no conversations to hide these exchanges, and it is broadcast across the whole nation with excruciating clarity.

Did Richard wait all day to wish his wife a happy anniversary? Did he really think to himself, “now, it’s our anniversary, but I won’t say anything until we’re on live television”? Or did he think we’d all be thrilled at the news that it was their anniversary, in which case why didn’t he just fricking tell us, instead of embarrassing his wife and every single poor soul watching the whole sorry affair?

Why isn’t there a television standards agency that will recognise when programmes have no right to be allowed to continue? Richard and Judy is the televisial equivalent of a one-legged albino runt in a litter of piglets. No doubt many people would feel deep compassion for the poor thing – but that isn’t a reason to keep it alive. Not only does it offend my sensibilities as a television viewer, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to get the cringe marks out of my shirts.

That’s all I have to say. A happy Monday to you all.

I was trying to improvise some beat poetry as I was out walking, but all I managed to come up with (beyond an idea that Tony Blair, Dorian Gray-like, has Cherie age in his place) was the following:

"A girl with a star in her eye;
Her ninja boyfriend clearly doesn't like her very much at all."

Yesterday was, of course, anti-Bush day. For weeks us British people have been happily united in talking about how we shall stand up and shout loudly at George W. Bush so that he is made aware of just how much we hate him. Oh, how shocked the American nation will be! we have gleefully been chortling over our sherry.

Being British, of course, when push comes to shove we don’t really like shouting. We don’t really like doing anything at all. Most would-be protesters probably realised yesterday morning that they had a very important quiche to put on instead. Or something.

The BBC have very helpfully put a detailed diary here highlighting precisely how nothing at all of significance happened yesterday. Some people went to London, one of them was George W. Bush; the protesters were generally outside, George W. Bush generally inside, so there was little chance for friction; a man sang some songs through a megaphone and a policeman told him to stop – he stopped.

So meagre were the actual events of the protest that a whole section addresses the fact that “One man has just been arrested outside Buckingham Palace after he apparently stole a policeman's hat.”

Whilst I applaud the Wodehousian spirit of the man in question, I must ask whether this is really the height of what we as a nation can achieve when we decide we want to protest about something. Stealing a policeman’s hat is surely the kind of thing we expect after the boat race, not when we’re standing up to challenge a lying, cheating, hypocritical, clueless maniac with no more regard for human life and rights than a wet wipe.

Oh, but wait – spare a thought for the real victims here: “The main casualty appears to be the Queen's flower beds which have now been thoroughly trampled.”

That the actions of one well-meaning but ineffective protester could cause such horticultural damage upsets me deeply. George W. Bush, having seen not a single protester because

1. they were mainly in a different place to him
2. they were mainly at home and
3. he is the most blinkered individual on the face of the earth

will go away thinking “what nice folk.” The American nation will think “what a welcoming country,” because that is all their TV networks will show. Our own beloved Queen, on the other hand, is probably inside her living room, peeping out of her net curtains at yesterday’s devastation, and weeping at what has been done to her flowers.

In short: we’re crap. The irony of the phrase “couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery” is far exceeded by the simple improbability of “couldn’t organise a protest during a state visit by George W. Bush.” Much as I hold to the assertion that George W. is one of the most useless twats in the history of the world, I am sorry to say that I have come to similar conclusions about the British people. At least George gets himself noticed.