Meenzer

This has been #1 worldwide for the last three months:

Is Utrecht the Brighton of Holland? Not in that way, you cheeky monkey. But it fits the bill in terms of being smalller and nicer and generally more pleasant than the 'dam (but still with plenty of dubious substances to enjoy).

Leazes: Stick to the facts and stop asking "what if FF had stayed?", speculating about a non-existent situation is completely irrelevant to the discussion. meanwhile: Leazes: I know exactly what will happen IN THE FUTAAR. You couldn't make it up.

Amsterdam? Well, I would go with Amsterdam... but I'd be thinking of Utrecht.

If it's getting bigger too, that's not your gaydar

Mind, in terms of places nearer to Whitechapel, there's some alright parts of Shoreditch and Hoxton as long as you don't mind being surrounded by trendy wankers. And the old part of Wapping by the Thames has a lot of character and some nice pubs too.

Oi. Whitechapel's dead well connected really, making it easy to get away from. I'd say this is a good thing. There's the recently opened Overground, so (as Matt says) you could live up in Highbury or even down in my neck of the woods, south of the river, where there are some pretty decent neighbourhoods in Brockley and Forest Hill and the like. All depends how much you want to spend on rent really, but you're still talking no more than a 20-minute commute (say) on fairly nice new trains compared with the District and Hammersmith & City lines. Either way, I wouldn't particularly want to live around Whitechapel itself, no.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Cross_%28rugby_league%29

The lasses are all stunning and the blokes are all stubbly metrosexuals. It's a funny old place. But aye, you'll not run out of things to look at.

Cabaye has played 62 minutes for France since November. Using his international form as some kind of stick to beat him with for a downturn in form for us is plainly ridiculous. Obviously if he doesn't pick up by the end of the season then there's grounds for concern, but even the saintly Rob Lee went through some pretty shite spells for us. Memories are short, it seems. The one thing Cabaye really has in common with Lee is his ability to shine when surrounded by better players. That may sound like damning with faint praise, but it's not - stick a bunch of confident, on-form skill players around Cabaye (as with Lee) and he'll deliver some excellently effective fulcrum performances like he was doing early in the season. Our ragtag form over the last bunch of games shows him up for not being a game-changer or someone who'll grab the situation by the balls, but that's not what he ever was, and nor was Lee (or else Keegan wouldn't have been so desperate to get Batty on board when he did).

Yeah, the main Ryanair airport (Skavsta) is some way from the city - 80 minutes by bus - but then even the regular Arlanda airport is 40 minutes by bus, so it's not a massive difference really. (We won't talk about the express train from Arlanda as it's the best part of £50 return... )

Is it cheap? I wanna go Quite the opposite really - going out is pretty expensive, though you can get cheap enough hostels/hotels (as there's plenty of competition) and food is OK price-wise as long as you avoid the tourist trap areas. But aye, a night out in Stockholm can easily empty your wallet unless you do what we did and get tanked up on off-licence stuff before heading out.

Just got back from a cracking weekend in Stockholm, but I've done my foot in. Must have twisted it while wearing new shoes out for a bit of a boogie on Friday night. Foolish really.

Greetings from the press centre at the Swedish Eurovision final. No free booze, and the snacks are hot dogs that you have to assemble yourself. Classy.

If you do end up depressed, just watch this. Russia chose it for Eurovision a couple of minutes ago.

Do a better job please.

Why hello, my little ginger ray of sunshine. All well?

Fuck yeah Sweden.

Oo, missed this. Happy birthday to a true gent.

In the same spirit, the local park here is called Hilly Fields. I'll leave you to guess as to its flora and topography.

(As for mother dearest, she sent me an e-mail to thank me for the flowers and choccies - from the iPad 2 she won in a competition on her birthday. I rather suspect she didn't even notice the absence of anything from me. )

Ohhh Martin.... Buy her Englebert's latest single Meenzer. ( But seriously man, Englebert Humperdinck ? We'll walk it ) I don't even know how to begin to process that particular bit of information. I mean, it's clearly ridiculous. But it might just be a stroke of bloody genius...

A gambler's lot, eh...