"Day 47 in the Big Brother house."

Big Brother is back on the telly tonight. And little brother, Ben - one of my four new housemates - will be, I imagine, quite pissed off that I'm taking that fact as inspiration for this post.

I'm contractually obliged, he said, to write about my new abode on my blog. And perhaps he's right. (I never did read the contract.) But I'm pretty sure he won't be happy that, despite all the good times we've shared, its the return of Channel 4's beleaguered reality TV show that has compelled me to write.

I've made up my mind. And I'm going to run with the analogy.

15 Kingsgate Road, my new house, is not unlike that of the compound at Elmstree Studios, where tonight a dozen fame-seekers will wheel in their suitcases and roll out their desperation.

Here, at Kingsgate Road, there are fewer fame-seekers but no less desperation. If this were reality TV - and it very nearly is, with all this digital equipment - Bill would be playing up to the camera, Adam, playing it down, Nic, the gobby posh one and Ben, a young boy on the verge of manhood.

Think Glyn from series 7.

And me? An agoraphobic, web-cam wielding recluse? I'm the perfect housemate.

Powering down.

I am today simultaneously impressed and disappointed by modern technology.

I'm finally blogging from a coffee shop in Birmingham - here's me, looking a little worse for wear (and like I'm leaning on that guy's arse). But it took me some time to get here.

In what may have been an act of defiance, my phone switched itself off last night, when it's battery died and the whole thing powered down for the first time in ages.

It's like it was saying to me, "hey! Silent's not enough, buddy. I'm powering down."

This led to a series of panic attacks. What if someone needed to get in touch with me? What if someone died? Or, worse still, what if my other communication devices join forces with the phone, form some sort of union and go on strike!

Thinking that I ought to check the former before fearing the latter, I tried to give me mum a ring. But, lo and behold, her number was stored on my phone. My sister's too, and my best friend's.

Don't worry, I thought. I've got backup.

But, when you're standing on a train platform in England's second city, having your phonebook backed up online is really no use.

I needed to get inside and find some wi-fi. This shouldn't be too difficult, right? This is England's second city, after all.

Well, I don't know how they rank these things, but finding wi-fi was pretty difficult. And when I finally did, my MacBook dimmed and whirred, as if to say, "sorry boss, the phone was calling me a 'scab'," and powered down, it's battery dead. It had joined the strike, the aluminium encased bastard!

And so the last hour or so has been spent, scouting Birmingham for a power outlet. Starbucks didn't have one spare, neither did Costa, and security weren't best impressed when I stole power from a Coke machine in the Bullring (though the act itself was rather empowering).

So here I am now, having been thrown out of Europe's biggest shopping centre, sitting in the concourse between it and my train back to London. I'm powered-up and connected; I've Skyped my friends and family, they're all fine. But I'm terrified to check my iPod. If that powers down I've got a two and half hour journey in silence.

What will I do? Read?

Good timing.

I couldn't have timed my return to Shrewsbury any better.

In a strange sort of reverse ethnic cleansing, the beautiful market town I once called home was this weekend left practically empty. Its townsfolk - arguably its least appealing quality - had hit the road to Wembley to support their local team, who in a weird twist of footballing fate were to play in the country's premiere stadium.

The streets were both eerily and delightfully quiet - football fans free to frolic in their fighting someplace else. All but one, I discovered, remained, here at Shrewsbury train station.

"You going to the match?" a lady shouted to another, who stood under the shadow of her hulking, skin head husband. She looked at him.
"Nah," she said.
"Why not?" the other asked. "I didn't think you guys would want to miss it."
"It's, er...him," she said, craning her neck to look up at her man, who had the word 'England' tattooed on the back of his. "He's got a football ban."
With that he bowed his head - partly in shame, I thought. Partly to reveal another tattoo. It was of a dog, burned to his scalp, now forever burned on my memory.

The man had a tattoo of a dog on his head.

Before I had much more time to think about that, my train arrived. I couldn't have timed my return to London any better, I thought. And with that left town.

Underwear still a big drawer

Picturing a crowd in its underwear is the worst possible advice to give someone nervous about addressing a classroom full of school children. Still, it's the advice I received a couple of years ago, right before I spoke at the Priory School in Shrewsbury.

It's also the advice I chose to ignore this afternoon, when I returned to the same school and to the same children - all grown up, their voices and bra straps having broken under the full force of puberty. With their lip gloss and their lethargy they were almost unrecognisable. And surprising in their intellect.

I was there to teach them about business, but - as per the cliché - they ended up teaching me. One girl told me how she'd secured the rights to all the pin boards in the school and that if anybody wanted to hang a poster they'd have to pay her for the privilege.

"It's premium ad space," she said.
"It's a monopoly." said another.

The kids were 14!

At that age I didn't know what was or wasn't 'premium ad space', nor that 'monopoly' was anything other than a board game - and a boring one at that.

I guess I was too busy picturing people in their underwear to care. Not much has changed in that respect.

Great, white and blue

It took me a little while to get into the band, The National. Might be because their name is one word short of The National Front. It's more likely because I didn't have their CD.

But I got Alligator yesterday and it's brilliant. In fact, I've been playing 'Mr November' for almost eight hours straight.

I think it saved my life.

Though lyrics like, "I'm the great white hope/I'm the new blue blood," do little to separate the Indie rockers from that other 'National' group, there's something about lead singer, Matt Berninger's baritone and the energy with which the band pop out the 4-minute wonder that gives me hope.

Even if I'll never be great or white. Or blue even.

The National – mr november

'Sorry' seems to be the hardest word.

I don't know if that's true. I find 'proliferation' very hard to say. 'Sorry' is easy. I say it all time - too much even.

• "Sorry, I thought you said it was fancy dress."
• "I'm not your father, sorry."
• "Sorry, no speaky English."

The last one's a bit of a cop out, to be honest. But it's something I've been doing a lot of recently. (Not 'copping off', mind you. Nothing's changed in that respect.)

But I haven't been posting much and I am sorry.

In a post entitled 'Cop Out', fellow blogger (and one time 'real life' friend) Wanderingjess perfectly captures my feelings of late.

I've just been beat lately, a little emotionally drained and a little too scattered to blog. (sigh)

And now I'm wondering, like Jess (but with an 'o' not an 'a'), do I bring you up to speed with the recent happenings not covered by this blog?

Or, like the first episode in the returning season of an American TV show (which is quite how I see my life), gently reintroduce the themes (social faux pas) and characters (me) that are recurrent in this blog?

This being the Internet - and me being quite lazy - I'm going to opt for the latter.

But please, browse the archives of this site, expect more regular updates and, inevitably, more social faux pas from here on.

Right, I'm off to a fancy dress party...