What it is to be organised within an inch of your life by E! All of the Christmas cards are written, and let the record show that it’s only the 5th of December. Spooky.

It might be described as a game: “Leafy-Poooey”, perhaps. Autumn leaves on the lawn from our beloved walnut tree in the garden, interspersed with what seemed like two hundredweight of Despoo. Oh dear. It really is a chore at the best of times to minesweep, but when the leaves are falling it’s Russian Roulette writ large. No wonder I’ve been putting it off.

Five hours, man and boy, bent at the waist, trying with my dodgy eyesight and mercifully impaired sense of smell, trying to descriminate brown from brown. I will be seeing hidden turds when I close my eyes tonight, I swear.

eMusic give away 50 downloads when you sign up, and then if you don’t cancel then they start charging you for monthly subscriptions. The basic package allows 40 downloads a month for $9.99.

Sounds just fine so far, but the problem is about as fundamental as it gets. They ain’t got much I want to download. They’re known for offering tracks by out of the way artists, indie labels and so on. That’s well and good, but they’ve typically only got one or two albums even by reasonably well-established artists. For instance, if they had more by Iron & Wine, or anything by Bright Eyes, I might not just take the 50 songs and run without paying them a cent.

It’s a pity, because everything else about it is great; the site’s good, the downloads are unencumbered by DRM bollocks and are a pretty good bit-rate. Oh well, never mind.

Madonna really, really winds me up. Really. A lot. “I like to think of my show as an art installation”. Please.

“Like a virgin, touched for the very first time”. Whatever, love.