It's 2006! Hurrah! Naturally I'm a couple of days late for the actual new year celebrations, but I've had important business to attend to. I've been busy lying in bed while Lisa plucks out my grey chest hairs. And I can tell you now - it's hard to write when you're in that much pain. Technically 2006 is my fifth year of blogging, which is a bit of an achievement, although needless to say I've long since deleted the few posts I wrote in April 2002 on the grounds that they were clearly rubbish and contained too many references to nuns.

So far, the new year has brought with it much exciting news, most importantly the naming of Lisa's third nephew. After only five weeks of life, and one quick phone call from the midwife to inform Lisa's sister and brother-in-law that legally speaking they can't just keep calling him 'the baby' for the rest of his life, they've fnally settled on a name. Unfortunately, seeing as I have a policy of not naming any members of Lisa's family on this blog, I can't tell you what it is. But his middle name suggests a liking for bacon. So it's either Kevin, Porky or Babe.

I'm also quite excited, because I've wrested The Sun from Lisa's mother this morning and read Mystic Meg's predictions for 2006, which feature this bit of news for Leos like myself...

"DATES WITH DESTINY: Meetings on the 5th and 14th of any month at a race track, a casino, during a job interview and taking part in a reality TV show."

So the year ahead not only includes a lot of gambling, but I'm going to be on Big Brother too. I can't ask for much more than that. Although the BB house might be a bit full with a twelfth of the population in there.

Anyhoo, as we speak I'm in Brighton, as I was when I last blogged on Thursday. But in between I escorted Lisa back to Shotley Gate for three days, where she plied me with drink and tackled the seven signs of aging with an assault on my chest. I also managed to win £1.37 on the horses and eat a lot of mince pies. So I've started the year as I mean to go on.