The key to managing personal finances: cheese

Trying to work out why my personal expenses always seem to be higher than everybody else's. I mean, £269 during March sounds perfectly reasonable as a restaurant budget - until you realise it's for Thai restaurants only.

Last night it hit me: it's all to do with cheese.

When at the supermarket, at least twice a week, I always come home with three or four interesting cheeses. Blue-veined Stiltons, hearty Cheddars, smooth Brie, cheeses with bits of fruit in them, foil-wrapped cakes of goat. Peccorino's a current favourite.

And yet: I don't eat much cheese. I don't think I've finished a single one of these dairy tidbits since 1999 (when I lived in Paris, with a shop selling 320 cheeses on the next street. It even had its own cow parked in the courtyard.)

In other words, I'm buying cheese because the glorious variety of it all (OK, OK, I actually enjoy food shopping) is seducing my wallet. And this 'cheese weakness' is undoubtedly not limited to cheese: I'm sure it manifests in other areas of life. Such as my 8 black T shirts in slightly different weaves, or the rainbow of Ralph shirts in my wardrobe, or the 22 assorted spice grinders in my kitchen. Or the way I think about dessert on the way home and never seem able to edit my ice cream choices below 3 different pots at the local shop.

I've thought for a while that it was just my natural state: whatever I earn I'll spend precisely what's left after bills are paid, no matter if the work calendar's barren or I'm into the 1% club (as has happened a bit recently.) But no: this money matter has nothing to do with money. It's all about cheese.

So - I now know who my enemy is. I'm utterly seduced by the illusion of choice in today's retail sphere. Which makes solving that problem - and driving my credit card bills down - a piece of cake.

(Or perhaps several pieces of cake. Chocolate gateau, strawberry cheesecake, orange and lemon pie...hmmm.)

Resisting everything except temptation

Don't know why (perhaps because I'm in jeans today) but the urge to slide down the banister of the building I'm working in is absolutely overwhelming today. (It's a pretty good one for sliding, too.)

French students protest: we want more regulation

A real problem in France. The French government extends so far into French people's lives that many have lost the ability to envision life without it: thousands of students are on the streets demonstrating against the introduction of less arduous job contracts for employers. Their protest is that without the thickly-protected job contracts employers have to offer today, jobs won't be safe enough.

What they're not getting is that the old employment laws are precisely the problem. It's so hard to sack someone in France that employers will go to any lengths to avoid creating a fulltime position - so shaky short contracts are the norm, and in the banlieue 50% unemployment among youth is common. As far as most employers are concerned, jobs aren't worth creating unless they're highly-skilled or long-experienced, and the under-educated young just don't make the grade yet.

The only real way to protect jobs is to have an economy capable of creating them. And that's something the French government - whose high taxes and red tape are on a par with Britain's - has singularly failed to do. Hold your nerve, Mr Villepin, and push through the new employment contract. France needs it.

"My boyfriend looks like the Elephant Man..."

"... and that was BEFORE the drugs test went wrong" - sorry, obvious joke based on the Evening Standard headline. Seriously though, adverse reactions on this scale are really, really weird, and statistically speaking it's certain someone made a cock-up. If drugs make it into human trails they've already been tested to destruction on rats and monkeys, and even a mild headache or skin rash is regarded as a highly problematic outcome.

If these drugs have caused guys' heads to swell up to four times normal size and vital organs to shut down, then it's nothing to do with the drug: it's human error. I'll give you 100:1 odds that someone lost their concentration and got the concentration wrong by a factor of 100.

(That last sentence sounded quite good in my head, but somehow its pleasing conceptual symmetry doesn't quite work on the page.)

Skiers sliding into oblivion

Skiing isn't the safest way to spend your weekends - that's sort of the point. Strapped to a plank or two, you're momentarily looking death in the face, and as a result know a little more about what life is. But 50 in a single season? That's a lot of cold bodies. Think I'll stick to Triathlon; at least the dangers of swimming in Britain's rivers and reservoirs are curable with a shot of drugs.

Tracking your movements: the world's their Oyster

Here's a thing. I knew Oyster cards kept records of their user's movements around the Tube and bus networks; what I didn't realise is how easy it is to get at that info. All you've got to do is find out what the card's serial number is and borrow the user's PC; doesn't everyone tick 'Remember me' these days?

I use the Tube network a lot, and the detail of just knowing which stations I've been through, and when, would tell someone pretty much everything they needed to know about my day - so I've decided to switch to an anonymous card, although they requre some sleight of hand to get hold of.

Getting some black looks

Witnessed an altercation on the Bakerloo Line this morning. An angry black guy - not sure what had annoyed him - was screaming at station staff about "This fucking white bitch" and "Some fucking white English person." Yet the staff didn't appear to have called the police. Perhaps the rules of Blair's police state mandate an exemption for blacks: after all, the book of political correctness makes clear that only white people are racist.

Wonder what'd happen if I (as an equal-opportunities-favouring white person working predominantly for an extremely diverse client) started yelling about "Some black bastard"? My feet wouldn't touch the ground until they reached court.

At least I managed to deliver my usual retort to odious people as I passed: "What a nasty little man you are."

A toothsome hoax

The best way to introduce any new idea into the mainstream: start with a hoax that's believable.

You'll come one...

Odd name for the prison that'll house whoever gets out of Abu Gharaib alive: Camp Cropper. Does it mean you'll come a cropper if you get locked up there? Or that torture photographs taken of you will at least be nicely framed?

Six boys for every girl

Something clicked in my mind yesterday: one of those patterns you see often enough that eventually it becomes clear. Every London girl has six principal boys. Six male associates that might not last beyond her twenties, but which provide a useful social network for the seven-tenths of London's young female population that wasn't born inside the M25.

First there's the boyfriend, the guy she's either living with or is generally to be found with on Friday evenings. Generally around her own age and generation, he may feel closer to her than she does to him - she may consider it a lot less serious than he does, but he provides an essential part of her identity to be 'part of a couple' when it suits her.

Then there's the ex-boyfriend, to whom she's still close, given that he was one of the first people she met in the big city. The ex-boyfriend makes the boyfriend extremely nervous and they're rarely seen together. She meets the ex-boyfriend for lunch more regularly than she admits, and frequently shares intimate details of the boyfriend with him. Despite which, the ex-boyfriend is no threat to her current relationship; for her it's OVER, although the ex-boyfriend wouldn't say no to an old-times-sake shag.

Third comes the male pal. The male pal really is a friend, and nothing more; he may be going out with her best friend, or she may have known him from school and got together when she discovered they both work in London. The male pal is as close as it gets to a real platonic relationship; this male associate is there precisely because there isn't any mutual physical attraction.

Fourth comes the workmate. Different from the male pal in that the commonality with him comes entirely from work. They'll have coffee, discuss the office, bitch about politics; office gossip is the reason he exists in her life. As a male, he also gets kudos from appearing close to a young unmarried female co-worker, so it's satisfying for him too. The workmate does present a risk to her other relationships if it develops into physical attraction, so the male she choose for this role may change frequently for safety.

Fifth is the older male. Generally eight or more years her senior - with enough differences of opinion and cultural reference points to be interesting - he's the guy she feels safe with. Their shared times, for her, are full of banter and laughter; she doesn't consider him romantically; indeed, it barely registers on her that he's male. And it's possible that some older males feel the same way. Many, however, seeth with utter passion they know they must never reveal, and this inner turbulence causes great pain - which they never, ever show.

Sixth and last is the secret guy. The role is always there, even when the guy in question doesn't exist. He may be an invisible friend, an idealised person she goes to for support (even in her own imagination) and likes to keep people guessing about. She'll stick Post-Its to her monitor with notes like 'Call Sam', but the number will be that of her own spare mobile; it's not important whether the secret guy really exists. What's important is that the role does: something that belongs to her, and her alone. If real, the secret guy may be a foreigner, or someone without money, or someone below her social group; the interest factor lies in doing something outside her normal zone of experience. Generally, however, the secret guy is George Clooney.

So - six male roles. I don't see comparable patterns with guys; young London males seem to have anywhere from 0 to 100 female associates, without them occupying particular social slots. But I think every twentysomething female in the capital would be able to identify these six in thirty seconds or less.

Prescription drugs: a tester's guide

Uurgh. Complaining of a churning stomach this morning, the boss suggested I take some of his proton pump inhibitors to settle it a bit. I've always felt the non-medically-advised ingestion of prescription-strength pharmaceuticals to be an ideal pastime for the modern workplace, so of course jumped at the chance, piling one in on top of ibuprofen and a Rennie.

Since when I've been feeling... drowsier than a drunk iguana in the sun, so thought I'd better find out more about them. Hmmm... so the molecules bind (covalently, mind - in other words irreversibly) to the adenosine triphosphate system that produces stomach acid. Of course - adenosine triphosphate, ATP. The molecule that carries energy around. I've just deep-sixed a stretch of my body's pipeline capacity, and I'll be this way for 24 hours until the affected cells go the way of all flesh. Bbbrrrrrzipt.

Platonic relations

This page is so good, how come I've never seen it before? "Joelogon's Foolproof Guide to making any Woman your Platonic Friend." It's one of those things (like the cartoon laws of physics or the Shitlist) that's been on the Internet practically since DARPA switched the thing on in the 60s.

Cheek by Jowell

Know what the real problem with Tessa's troubles is? It's that the story's landed on the political desk instead of the financial desk.

The story's a juicy one: a UK cabinet minister doesn't think to ask about why her husband needs to raise a £350K mortage on their home, then pay it back a month later. I believe Jowell genuinely trusted her lawyer husband and made a pact not to speak of such matters; she's never struck me as corrupt, even if (like all the Blair babes) she's not really up to the job intellectually. But we've got the wrong kind of journalist here.

The structure of the alleged scam - raising a legitimate loan, then bringing offshore funds in to pay it off, thus having a believable reason to move large sums of money - is a variant on a classic money laundering scheme. So why haven't I seen the term 'back-to-back loan' used in any of the thousands of column inches this story has generated? The method's been around since Meyer Lansky and the Mob got started.

Throw this one over to the financial desk, political journalists: it's not for you.

One, two, three (glance around) nine hundred and ninety...

I learned several things this weekend. Among these was that when your daily routine involves 30 stomach crunches, entering an informal competition to complete 1000 of them isn't the most sensible way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Today, my stomach muscles are like petrified wood and my gut's gushing battery acid.

It took over an hour to complete, which means my average wasn't even ten a minute. Unless you've built a really, really tough core, your internals reach their limit after 100 or so and you've got to recharge for anything up to a minute before you can lift your legs again. At least nobody was counting the 'mulligans' when your shoulders/back aren't in proper contact with the floor, or your thighs don't get past the vertical.

It's a gas, giant

Sometimes you read things that just blow your mind. And a recent New Scientist contained two of them.

One article riffs on 'farming' hydrogen with algae. Harvesting the gas in a way that creates no environmental damage whatsoever. The countries best suited to do it - Middle East, Africa, lots of deserts - are those with an energy-exporting infrastructure anyway. Mindblowing. Not even cracking it out of seawater with solar panels and arcs: this is warm, life-spawning wet technology, slow and steady and human in scale. Brilliant.

Also: several hundred extrasolar planets have been detected by the wobbles they throw onto their stars. But I never expected we'd actually be able to image them directly. But someone's starting doing it. Not just detecting or inferring earth-sized masses, but a method for actually photographing them, with resolution that could resolve rainforests, vegetation, signs of life. The author expects a resolved image of an extrasolar planet in his lifetime. (As an aside, it's interesting how many astronomers no longer see the search for life as an issue: we're finding so many planets life is a statistical certainty now.)

Incredible stuff. It's an amazing universe we live in.

One of those blogs you post when you haven't got anything to say but think you ought to

Weird. There's such an incredible amount happening in my life at the moment: work, life, money, yet it's all taking so much time and clicking together so naturally I haven't felt any need to blog about it. This has got to change.