OK, I fucking hate January so I refuse to communicate during this most miserable of months. All that fucking Christmas hype followed by a massive piss up and the biggest downer of the year - January.

Happy New Year…yeah, yeah

Still, I see the world is just as big a fucking mess as it was last year - killing, cheating…spying…

…The Scottish Executive are planning to do saliva swabs on kids in school to see if they’re being exposed to passive smoking (and what else I wonder?).

I sincerely hope that every right-minded parent refuses point-blank to give their consent to this utterly unacceptable intrusion into peoples’ private lives. What next, CCTV in our bedrooms to make sure we’re all screwing to the lastest Government guidelines. It’s just fucking ridiculous.

Of course when they detect the traces in little Johnny’s spit they’ll send round the Smoking Cessation Officer and the Five-a-day Adviser to give you a good telling off and put you on a “plan”.

That’s when you find out that Johnny has been having a sly spliff behind the bikesheds!

I didn’t really notice too much else in January because I hibernate mentally - I just can’t cope with the total misery that is January.

Well, except for the utterly pointless and vindictive execution of Saddam and his cronies. What was that supposed to achieve, apart from more bloodshed and grief? I really despair about the way our political masters seem hell-bent on leading us into disaster.

Anyway, my birthday soon and I like my birthday.

OK we’re moving house this week, all the way from Aberdeenshire to Stirling (Bannockburn to be exact).

We’ve been building up to this for quite a while and we finally completed the sale of our house last week.

It’s quite a bittersweet experience as this is the house our children grew up in. They’re both now grown up and The Laddie leaves for Perth College soon so it seemed like the best time to get going and make the move South. The Lassie has been in Glasgow for the last year already.

The good part is that we’ll be closer to both of them once we’ve moved.

To begin with we’re going to be renting a flat until we get a chance to have a proper look around the area for something to buy.

So it’s likely I’ll be off-line for a few days while we sort out the move.