As far as I’m concerned, casting a vote for someone in an internal election requires the willingness to positively endorse that candidate.

This is in contrast to a general election, where it can at times be necessary to hold your nose and vote for a complete wombat because they happen to be our complete wombat.

In an internal election, where all the candidates pass the basic test of having shared goals and broadly similar political philosophy, and where frankly it rarely makes a blind bit of difference who wins, noses can remain unpegged and ’sod the lot of you’ becomes an option.

I always go into these elections hoping for someone to believe in and support. During the last leadership election I did a lot of soul-searching and rhetorical questioning, before eventually deciding I couldn’t endorse either candidate and choosing not to vote. I have a vague memory I might have, in fact, literally returned my ballot paper with ’sod the lot of them’ scrawled across it, but that could be my increasingly addled brain playing tricks.

Since then, Nick Clegg has exceeded my expectations of him. Admittedly, my expectations were so low that he could have done that by walking on his hands across Westminster Bridge, naked, with a bunch of daffodils stuck up his chuff. But, even so, nice one Nick.

So I did at least make an attempt to choose a candidate.

Charlotte Gore’s well-argued semi-endorsement notwithstanding, Chandila Fernando’s candidacy cannot be taken seriously. He’s like the business studies student who no-one’s heard of that runs for the union executive on a platform of ‘you’re doing it all wrong’, and then disappears without trace when he loses. It’s true that Fernando asks a lot of questions that need asking - but he fails to convince on the other side of the equation, that he has the potential to provide and implement answers.

With great reluctance, I’ve also had to strike Lembit from the list of possibles. I’ve been supporting the man and voting for him since he ran for president of the National Union of Students, and I’ve always been a fan of the way he can mix levity and gravity so effectively (no asteroid / paragliding jokes please, there’s a serious point there). But at the moment I think he’s got the balance wrong, and I can’t vote for him until he sorts it out. Contrary to what detractors suggest, he’s not a knob - but he’s acting like one. When he stops, I’ll be back in the fan club.

So that leaves Ros Scott. As I recall, every student election needed a wide-eyed ‘gosh I’m an ordinary member standing up for the ordinary members and I promise I’ll always listen’ candidate. I was one myself, once, back in 1988. Earnest, well-intentioned, not part of the ruling clique - what’s not to like? I’m really not sure sure why I’m recoiling against her. Possibly I just dislike being told what to do by a lot of smug, self-satisfied bloggers (honourable exception: her husband, who appears to have been transplanted wholesale from Sir Thomas Malory). Possibly I dislike the feeling that the great and the good of the party have rallied around her as a ’stop Lembit’ candidate.

In the end it came down to two factors. In favour of supporting her, I will generally vote for a credible female candidate in any election where I’m otherwise undecided. Against her, she has the support of Duncan Borrowman.

I thought long, and I thought hard.

And in the end I put my ballot paper in the shredder.

Which makes my misadventure yesterday, when I found myself sinking fast into the bed of a misleadingly inoffensive stream that I’ve known since childhood, all the more embarrassing.

Litter picking in the Purwell

Once a month, Beloved Other Half and I head down to the nearest large park to join a litter clear-up organised by one of our neighbours.

Usually it’s just a case of scouring the park boundaries, the edges of the footpaths and the area around the skateboard ramps, using council-provided pickers - blue plastic claws with long handles - and black bin bags.

Two dedicated chaps from the Green Party usually take care of recovering beer cans from a pond off at the far end and bicycles from the river that runs along one boundary, providing a home to moorhens, water voles and (inevitably) rats.

But yesterday neither of them came, so me and Beloved Other Half got to play in the water instead.

As the photo shows, it’s really not a deep stream at all. The bed is a mix of hard sand and shingle on the fast bends, with a couple of inches of soft mud overlaying it in the quieter stretches.

So we made good progress, fishing out one bicycle and filling two bin-bags with cans, chocolate wrappers and endless waterlogged packaging from loaves of bread, presumably dumped by people who had finished feeding the ducks.

Marching along the stream bed, separated from our colleagues working elsewhere, hidden from the park on one side and the road on the other by high banks, it was easy to forget we were in a town. All rather idyllic, actually, apart from the litter.

Where it went pear-shaped was when I decided to take advantage of a break in the vegetation on the opposite bank to get out, regroup and maybe cash in my bin-bag for an empty one.

A few paces towards the middle, the stream bed got a lot softer. A couple more and suddenly my right boot was full of water. I shifted my weight onto my left leg to retreat, felt that one start to sink too, went back onto my right, and immediately that leg was knee-deep in the mud.

Twisting round to call out to Beloved Other Half turned out to be a bad idea - although I was able to keep my left foot from going more than a couple inches into the mud, my right started sinking further.

I was going down into the mud, and I didn’t know how far I’d go before I stopped - or even, for a horrible few seconds, whether I’d stop at all.

I did, of course. I was crouching on my left leg with my right in the mud all the way up to my thigh and water lapping around my unmentionables, but I’d stopped sinking.

Hadn’t a clue how to get out, though.

Beloved Other Half came over to help, but started sinking herself before she could pull me upwards. And when she stayed a safer distance away and pulled laterally all that happened was that she ended up on her hands and knees in the water.

I had visions of a humiliating rescue by the Fire Brigade, followed by an equally embarrassing jokey piece in the local paper that would have made a muddy grave the preferable choice.

Beloved Other Half, meanwhile, was taking advantage of the fact that I was plainly not going anywhere to dump all the bin-bags and litter-pickers on or near the bank - a couple of times so far we’d come close to the lot floating away downstream, shedding rubbish as they went.

Eventually, I hit on a plan that worked. I was stable enough in the mud by now to be able to bounce up and down on the toes of my right foot without anything too bad happening. This broke the suction and gave me a shot at getting free.

Beloved Other Half pulled and the right leg (complete with boot, to my surprise) started to emerge even as the left started to sink because of the shifting of the weight. Not a problem - I had enough momentum to keep moving and stop it sticking, and soon I was on the bank, with evil-smelling black gunge slopping out of my boots.

After that, it was the devil’s own job to get them off - much comical huffing and puffing and tugging while lying by the side of a main road - followed by a quick (and probably unnecessary, given what we looked like) conversation with one of the volunteers, explaining why we leaving, and a barefoot walk home, clutching our dripping wellies.

Then tea, hot shower, more tea and a solicitous visit from the organiser to check I was OK - which I was, part utterly freaked out by the suddenness of it all, part embarrassed by the sheer silliness of it.

Any real danger? No, probably not - all pretty trivial, really, now it’s over. But the moment of eye-popping terror when one leg was gone, and for all I knew the other was about to follow it, will not be quickly forgotten.

Today we see a leak of new ‘work for dole’ plans, which have had the Tories hopping up and down claiming they published the same ideas six months ago - but, if they did, they cribbed them from some dusty document left over from the days when the favourite target of the popular prints wasn’t asylum seekers but benefit claimants.

Political discourse was dominated by questions of eligibility and whether or not great swathes of the population were work-shy, and if you happened to be on the margins of the workforce (as I then was) you were permanently looking over your shoulder.

Yes, there are undoubtedly people who take the piss. And if you read police blogs you’ll be familiar with the concept of the evil poor - a real-life version of Shameless with the jokes taken out.

But you don’t tackle them by trotting out all the half-baked platitudes of a discredited government whose obsessive Puritan work ethic left it unable to comprehend how it was possible for a person to live a life not defined by their economic activity.

In fact, these proposals have nothing to do with trying to end a lifestyle choice of benefit-funded criminality. Linking a person’s eligibility for benefits to their ability to keep their nose clean is the place to start looking for a way of doing that - a difficult idea to make work in practice, but surely the root of the answer.

Instead, these proposals are transparently the same old attempt to reduce the social security budget by restricting the number of people who receive benefits. But the problem with that is there’s no point at which you can draw a line and say you’ve succeeded - the temptation becomes irresistible to announce just one more measure to crack down further and claw back just a bit more.

And before long you’re back where we were 20 years ago - with a government that wastes more and more valuable time and money in futile and intrusive attempts to direct the lives of ever-increasing numbers of harmless citizens, while the true urine extractors swiftly learn new ways of making the system work for them.

It was ever thus, I suppose, but it’s just so bloody frustrating seeing it start all over again.

Flight Lieutenant Chris Ball is normally based in Scotland but is currently in Afghansitan on an exchange with a US Air Force unit - and he seems to have chosen to while away the hours not spent in the air by cultivating a truly impressive example of the traditional fliers’ facial decoration.

Photos on BBC Online show his transformation from the very picture of dour Sam Tyleresque modern professionalism to a grinning throwback to the chaps who scrambled from Duxford and Tangmere and Biggin Hill, and who grew moustaches to disguise the fact that they were so horribly, painfully young to be dying.

Is anyone really surprised that his temporary American superiors took offence? No reason has been given, of course - perhaps they feared terrorists were hiding in all that undergrowth, or maybe his commanding officer couldn’t get past the memory of Village People videos.

Whatever the reason, the decree came down from on high - the moustache must go. Goodbye Biggles, hello Top Gun.

Except Flt Lt Ball was having none of it. Perhaps inspired by the Ministry of Defence’s obvious approval of a Royal Marines moustache-growing competition in Afghanistan last Christmas, he reached for his rulebook and fought back.

And the USAF backed down, beaten off by a combination of Queen’s Regulation 209, which dictates that moustaches are fine so long as they confine themselves to the upper lip and no further, and a Memorandum of Understanding between the two countries banning local commanders from instructing exchange officers to breach their own dress regulations.

A small victory in the fight-back against creeping cultural imperialism - but an important one.

This will - of course - trigger a by-election in a key Lib Dem target seat. And the BBC report, sparse though it is, suggests that’s not just a side-effect of Davis’ decision, but the whole point of it.

This is what the Beeb’s report says at the moment (no doubt it will soon be expanded).

Shadow home secretary David Davis is set to resign as an MP, the BBC understands.

It is thought he wants to trigger a by-election in his Haltemprice and Howden seat.

Mr Davis has been a passionate opponent of plans to extend the terror detention limit to 42 days.

It is thought he has privately threatened to resign if the Tories wavered on the issue. He will make a statement shortly.

There is absolutely no way in which this is anything other than desperately bad news for David Cameron, who needs this like he needs a hole in the head.

I’ve always thought Davis was one of the better sort of Tories, and was much struck by a joint TV interview he did with Mark Oaten about civil liberties when the latter was the Lib Dem home affairs spokesperson.

They were barely distinguishable in what they said, which at the time I thought reflected more on Oaten than on Davis. But now I’m not so sure.

I suppose it’s too much to hope that this is all pre-arranged with Nick Clegg and Davis is going to re-stand at the by-election as a Lib Dem?

Edit: apparently, it is. He’ll be an independent, unopposed by us.

Our not standing against him is a sensible decision - but will the Tories put up a candidate? Cameron is spinning it as a jolly brave decision by a jolly fine chap.

I remember sitting at home looking at the Cube I’d dug up - shiny, silvery and as heavy as two house bricks - walking away to do other things with the evening, but having to return to it again and again to check it was real.

And of course, at that moment in time, no-one knew it had been found except us and to everyone else the game - the first and, as it turned out, only season of Perplex City - was still on.

Well, anyway, that was a year ago and it’s old news now for most folk.

For a few, though, it’s still interesting enough for the anniversary to be marked with a series of interviews.

The first to be published was with me, and you can read it - and others - here.

Thing is, there’s no turning back from it. Greyness can be dyed - or embraced as distinguished - while general creakiness and excess weight can be argued away with vague promises of the gym. Hair loss, however, is the end to your illusions of eternal youth.

In my case, I’ve spent the last couple of years cultivating a ponytail that reached halfway down my back. It’s gone now - sent to a charity that makes wigs for child cancer patients.

For the last month or so I’d been seeing signs that screamed ‘hair loss’. From the scalp pains and the variable depth on different parts of my head, to the slimmer ponytail and the dead hamster in the plughole each time I showered, it looked very much like the game was up.

My mum, briefly a hairdresser in her youth, disagreed. So did Beloved Other Half who, despite her fondness for radically short styles, still has more experience than me in possessing long hair. Both argued that hair can, and does, thin under the stress of length.

Nevertheless, I decided it was time for the ponytail to go. If the barber discovered acres of rolling space, we’d have an answer.

I’m now back living in my home town after 20 years away in Norfolk and London. The barbershop I used to go to when I was younger is still there, although the staff has - of course - completely changed.

Once, it was dominated by a cartoon Italian with long permed hair and a moustache, a twinkling smile, and a love for the ladies. Alas, it transpired that one of the ladies he loved was aged 14 and, faced with the police, he threw himself under a train. The young lad who cut my hair barely remembered him - he’d seen him for childhood haircuts but never worked with him.

These are the things that underline the passing years.

Has to be said, young Rez did a fine job on the hair. After checking three or four times that I did really want the ponytail cut off, he sheared it away. A brief look of panic crossed his face when I cried out “nooo, I’ve changed my mind”, but it was replaced by a broad grin when he checked in the mirror and saw from my expression that it had been my idea of a joke.

After a remarkably short time, and an even more remarkably small bill, I was shorn neatly and the ponytail, still secured by its hair band, was wrapped up in tissue in my pocket. He conducted a close inspection of my scalp and declared that no, I had nothing at all to worry about in the hair loss stakes. Not yet, anyway.

And the ponytail? That’s going to charity.

I have an ambivalent attitude towards cancer charities. Heroes during one close family member’s illness, villains during an in-law’s last months. However, I was determined that I’d do something useful with the discarded hair.

The Cancer Research UK page on the subject of hair donation is not terribly encouraging. But Beloved Other Half did some digging on those ol’ interweb things and came up with a charity called the Little Princess Trust (website / Facebook group) which was set up to provide wigs to children with cancer and other illnesses that cause hair loss.

Now, I’m not generally one for excessive pinkness. And I do tend to believe that little girls are better served by aspiring to be engineers rather than princesses. But there are times to be a grouch and times to shut up and embrace your inner sparkliness.

The Little Princess Trust was set up by the parents of Hannah Tarplee from Hereford, who died in June 2005 of cancer, aged five. It helps parents of children with cancer and other illnesses that cause hair loss to find and pay for realistic-looking wigs made from real hair.

And, obviously, the hair has to come from somewhere. Hence the donations page. The rules (lifted here word-for-word from their website) are simple:

1. Ensure you have at least 10″-12″ of clean, good condition hair.
2. Hold the hair tightly whilst cutting it and securely tie the follicle end of the hair ensuring all the hair is lying in the same direction.
3. Package the hair in such away that it cannot become tangled.
4. Send it to;
   
   Little Princess Trust
   43 George Road
   Edgbaston
   Birmingham
   B15 1PL

It turned out, when measured, that my ponytail was exactly twelve inches. So off it goes.

I think I’ll stay short-haired for a while now. It’d be sad to turn 40 looking like a member of Status Quo, after all. But its nice, and a trifle ironic, to reflect that my brief panic about getting old has resulted in an action that will - hopefully - help someone young whose battle is simply to get where I am now.

The essence of a stupid decision is that it achieves exactly the opposite effect to the one intended - and that can certainly be said of this bowdlerisation of the Pogues’ Fairytale of New York, where any offence prevented by censorship is surely dwarfed by the offence caused by butchering the soaring vocals of the doomed Kirsty MacColl.

The BBC reportedly said: “We are playing an edited version because some members of the audience might find it offensive.”

Well, bollocks to the BBC.

It’s all a matter of context. Stick a fist under someone’s nose and call them a faggot or a slut and it’s offensive. Script a scene between two characters, one a self-deluding alcoholic and the other a dying junkie, and it can be art.

Doesn’t have to be, of course. Could still be offensive. But not in this case.

The Pogues are said to be amused. MacColl’s mother Jean thinks it’s ridiculous. And, according to BBC Online, Pogues fan Kevin Caswell said: “The lyrics are what make the song and if I were Mr McGowan I would ensure you were never allowed to play this poetic, touching and classic song.”

It’s not a corporation-wide ban. Radio 2, which during my youth was what you found when you looked in the dictionary under ‘bland’ and ‘inoffensive’, is playing the song in full.

And so is everyone else.

For it is a well-known fact that only five Christmas songs have ever been written which aren’t so toe-curlingly awful that the songwriters should have been taken aside as schoolchildren and advised to go into accountancy.

Of course, not everyone agrees on which five. But here, courtesy of YouTube, are my choices. Plus one bonus winter song from the movies that’s a delight to watch.

Number five

I was tempted to say John Lennon’s Happy Christmas (War is Over) here, but let’s face it - as a song, it’s a bit of a dirge. Very worthy, but in the ‘anti war Xmas song’ stakes I’ll pick Stop the Cavalry by Jona Lewie any year.

Number four

I’m not big with the Christmas carols, but the vocals on this duet between Bing Crosby and David Bowie are to die for. Little Drummer Boy, of course.

Number three

The perfect antidote to over-sentimental Christmas tosh - from 1981, Things Fall Apart, by Cristina.

Number two

A bit more jingly, but still from the early-80s school of sardonic seasonal slices of life, comes Christmas Wrapping by the Waitresses.

Number one

Kirsty and the Pogues, naturally. What else? See it here live in all its uncensored glory.

Special winter bonus

Finally, from the movie Neptune’s Daughter, here are Ricardo Montalban and Esther Williams performing Baby it’s cold outside. How about that choreography?

The turning point was the Calamity Clegg dossier, which rather underlines the potential downside of this - the mere fact he’s being written about doesn’t guarantee that nice things are being said about him. But didn’t Oscar Wilde once argue that it was better to be notorious than unknown?

If you feed both their names into the BlogPulse trends tool from Nielsen and ask it to compare what proportion of the chatter in the blogosphere is about each of them, the results are interesting. Here’s the graph:

You can see very clearly that, apart from the spike caused by the launch of Huhne’s campaign, marginally more attention was paid to Clegg during the first two thirds of the campaign. There wasn’t much clear air between them (compared with what you get if you add John Hemming to the mix, or even CK or Vince after the first ‘will they stand?’ flurry was over) but you could see a slight advantage.

And then came the day of the dossier - Huhne attracts more interest, for obvious reasons, but he managed to keep at least a marginal advantage for most of the time since then - although there’s a hint in the last couple of days that they may be even again.

So what does it mean? Not a great deal, probably, except that Huhne has once again managed to muscle his way into the forefront of people’s attention. How good a thing this is for him and the party depends on what they’re actually saying.

And, of course, neither are exactly setting the world apart compared with more important issues like Britney Spears: