Lottery winners vote to invade Afghanistan with Gordon Brown*

* = not really. It's SEO baby.

No seriously. It's weird not having a home. A home in the sense of somewhere that I call home.

I live in London. I have lived in Cape Town. I was born in Zimbabwe. So where is home?

I was walking through Westfield London, looking at the hordes of people and they were all foreigners. Foreign to me that is.

I am not really British but I live here. In my passport it says that I am British. I also have another passport that says I am South African.

Not a day goes by that I don't think about moving back to South Africa. But the South Africa that exists now is not the South Africa that I know.

I left it in 2003. A lot changes in seven years, especially in a place like South Africa.

Going back to Cape Town is nice because the place hasn't moved on. It is a fishing village and that's its charm.

The problem is that at some point I am going to have to stop running. At some point I am going to have to commit and say this is my home. Where that is, I don't know.

I am not someone who wants to dress in the South African rugby jersey and I am not someone who feels emotional when I hear the South African national anthem.

I miss the county - and not in some cheesy "the pulse of Africa beats in my heart" rubbish.

I think to myself every morning, "when I am 40 or 35 or 50 or 60, I'm going to give up the endless fight that is London and move back to Cape Town" but then I think about Cape Town and what I would move back to.

Life in Cape Town is superficial. It's skin deep. It's easy and it's dangerous. The place annoys me and it infuriates me. Cape Town is limited. It is small.

London is big. London draws you in. London is someone who you serve. No-one is bigger than the city.
You feel like you can't leave London. When you're not in London you feel like you're missing out.
London is hard and it's tough. It's difficult. The people in London are like they are in New York; no-one gives a fuck.
Oddly, the same can be said of people in Cape Town.

I just look at the long-term prospects for South Africa and it doesn't look good.
When I think of the future of South Africa, all I can remember are the words of Mzukizi Gaba, a senior member of the ANC who once told a police officer, who arrested him for driving on the wrong side of the road; "The day Mandela dies, we will kill you whites like flies!"

Oh, I don't know where this is going. I know that comment is incendiary and I know that it's bad to leave it at that but ...

Whatever. Right now I am thinking of a place that I'd like to call home. Is it in London?

If London was by the sea and had a marvellous temperature and a lovely mountain and all my friends were here and there was no overcrowded Jubilee Line, I would start to call London my home.

Clare Short marries Jordan and Alex Reid in Haiti*

* = have you heard of SEO? It's all about cramming relevant facts into the headline. We're taking it to a slightly new (ridiculous) level...

It pains me, it really does. I wake up in the morning and I think to myself, "I really should write something on that blog..."
And then I roll over and think about it and drift off to sleep.

Well, not really.

I spent so much time building this little thing up, writing it and caring for it. It's a bit like watching a plant in the garden wilt and slowly die.

There is something that I am working on and enjoying it, even though at the moment it's in need of updating...

http://yearofcox.tumblr.com
And no, it's not pictures of willies.

I have taken a really cool picture which I can't wait to upload. If only I could find the lead that attaches the camera to the laptop. Bollocks...

Oh, I'm sorry but where did 2009 go?

And - can you believe that it's already nearly February?

Can we talk about music for just one second. In particular, one song...

When I hear the first few notes of the tune my back teeth start to ache, like when you bite into ice cream.

I'm going to type the first few words for you and perhaps you will scream and run to the dance floor in some sort of twee mock excitement.

Or you could do what I do and battle to keep your dinner down. You ready?

"I gotta feeling. That tonight's gonna be a good night..." Oh god.

You know how the rest goes... "Too nize the night. Let's live it uh" etc.

I've tried to pin down exactly what it is that makes me loathe the song so intensly and I think the reason is that it's too contrived.

There are other songs like it;
Chumbawumba - Tubthumping
Lou Bega - Mambo No. 5
Baha Men - Who Let The Dogs Out

Those are songs that, at the time, everyone thought were fabulously hip but were actually just destined to become a disco filler at weddings when the drunk dads in suits stagger about the dance floor.

"I Gotta Feeling" is just as bad as the rest of them. It's safe. Contrived. Phony. It's a bumper sticker of a song. It's like the "joke" that the presenter's sidekick tells in the morning on the radio.
It's the FW: FW: email that contains some lame quote about ambition and destiny.

I don't think I'm being sufficiently rude enough. Although, why have I decided to attack it now?

Murphy's Law dictates that as soon as you cultivate an intense dislike for a piece of music, you will then hear it as often as possible - gym, radio, shopping centre...

I think it's quite enough for one day.