There is cold morning air. It lurks behind the heavy fire escape door, waiting for the door to burst open before it strikes its first victim. It has sat outside patiently, kept out by rubber seals and wooden doors and now it relishes an early morning victim. This cold is not like The Snowman in which everyone is mercifully warm and flies through the air despite the blizzard spitting snow into their faces. There is no small boy in a thick brown coat being flown into the air by a smiling frosty figure. Instead there is a taller one in the same stripy pyjamas and a batman shirt. He is in what seems more like a carpark than a snowmen’s christmas jig. There is no snow, but the bare feet probably couldn’t tell the difference.

The grey concrete that looks so friendly and beaming in summer scowls up. “I am cold” it says, radiating its coldness to emphasise the point. “And you are standing on me,” it tells his toes.

The concrete makes pains to turn a brief romantic thought into a mighty escapade. The boy hops about on the tips of toes in the middle of the carpark. Neighbours peer out of warm windows and wonder why the person in pyjamas is stretching about on the balls of their feet and tugging at a rosebush. The fight is over. The pyjamas totter inside. The neighbours return to their television.

I recently read a blog about MS, which was of course the appropriate mix of “laugh-out-loud funny and achingly sad.” Blogs about illness are not something I positively go looking for in my day-to-day reading, and was probably the first I have read. It was odd, and got me thinking about life and my family.

When I was a kid I really struggled with being an only child. I was a bit of an Adrian Mole about it all but minus the terrible poetry (oh wait.. maybe not). With limited inclination to talk to my parents (thanks, puberty) I suspected it would be wonderful to have a sibling and there would be endless days spent hiding in tree-houses in a life riddled with Famous Five-style capers. For started though, we didn’t have a treehouse and the names Julian or Dick aren’t street these days. The logic was a bit flawed.

Instead it’s most likely any sort of small ginger sibling would have stunted my sharing skills I and likely I would have become a grand master at slamming doors in ungoverned fury. Perhaps. My parents would have had less time to help me paint my room in purple and lime green splurges after I demanded it on a garish notion. (For now, we’re going to treat that last point as a questionable positive aspect though my room is now off-white and I’ve never been happier.)

We would go on family holidays and I would struggle against the idea of a nuclear family. Somehow over time – probably, like most things, media related – the idea became incredibly pressed into my mind that that’s how families are complete. I’m an only child because shortly before my Mother got broody and wanted a nine month holiday she lost the sight in one eye.

“Oh ho,” the doctors said when she asked where it had gone. “That’s MS.”

No one was massively impressed. Cheese and fatty foods were banned, as was fun. “No Cheese and no fun” said the paraphrased doctors. Luckily the eye got speedily better and fun was had by all. Thus, I appeared.

These days the symptoms are good dose of fatigue, and could be much worse and I feel really fucking lucky about this. I am kind of proud of my parents, that they are slightly older than some of my friends’ and the reason behind this, and that there is one of me. Perhaps you appreciate your parents more when you’re older but the level of respect I have for them has suddenly gone up ten fold. They are ace in their own magical way. You can tell this because blog posts about home have started sneaking in (this, and my ability to write personal blogs is on the up).

So whilst Adrian Mole made an angsty but enjoyable 80s child, the Cappuccino Years in which we meet him as an un-evolved grown-up was a terribly dull book. I’m glad we don’t share too many ideas about the world now, because he is terribly pessimistic and there’s already too much bad poetry about being middle-class in the world.

I do not think about the future stuff too much, but it was an odd blog post to read. I wonder what I would do if I had all the time in the world and only my senses. I don’t think he is far off, and I think the nasally soothing voice of Carl Sagan is not the worst choice.

Creative Review held a tweetup. I am kind of apathetic about tweetups sometimes and like it when they are filled with good things and interesting bits: something unusual to savour. They held it at the London Design Museum where we were thrown a moleskin with ‘CR’ emblazoned on the front. Too susceptible to stereotypes, I was pleased with its quality of no-cost and have been filling it with awesome new words I am learning as some sort of happy little dictionary. Best so far:

Dilettante. “1. A person who claims an area of interest, such as the arts, without real commitment or knowledge.”

They hunted out an epic roll of paper spread out to draw on, gave us a giant bag of lego and a mission to build dream houses, and had a bring-some-art exhibition. It was totally my sort of thing, albeit surprisingly different. (Neil Ayres, the chap who organised it, writes a good write-up of the night.)

With the lego I got distracted building not my dream house as the theme ‘dream house’ unsurprisingly proposed, but, on discovering my lego man had a strange head piece that looked like a giant blonde wig, launched into creating a Rapunzal style castle. Off task, but fun. The exhibition was nice, and some awards were given out. Some for the best twitpics of the night, which were displayed in live feed monitors around the room. Again, we got distracted from the general purpose of it all..

Ben Stockley

The goody bag was awesome, for those interested in a year of top artsy media campaigns. The Creative Review book – the type agencies buy – is filled with good pictures from campaigns of the last year. I like owning my own copy – they’re normally the sort of thing I’ll see in the design stores and marvel at but never buy because I don’t yet have a coffee table to fill with nonsense that I’ll barely read. Possessing such things is lovely though. You can easily tell it’s something I’d like because the cover has brightly coloured burst balloons over it in an artsy fashion, and I am always a sucker for colourful nonsense like that. A little pointless perhaps, but a fantastic little flip through of campaigns and other creative bits from the year.

Ben Stockley has taken some lovely photos of London Fashion Week, nominated Best in Book in the Creative Review Photography Annual for his Surfrider and British Fashion Council commissions. Honestly, I may only like them because they aren’t the repetitive and uninvolved photos that London Fashion week normally throws up across blogs, and seem to focus on a calmer more thoughtful side of the atmosphere, with one of my favourite shots a gorgeous brown-hued church interior.

My words are all suspiciously close to what he says in interview: “I wanted to convey the energy and atmosphere but also a more contemplative side to the shows and the industry in general [..] I wanted to catch the anticipation of the subject – the backstage of split seconds before a show, and the anticipation of the waiting crowd, the moments that get missed in the noise.”

His behind the scenes shots from a Coca-Cola filming are pretty special too. Maybe I’m just drawn to orangey hues. I always seem to delve into an obsession with lightweight, rich and faded hues, and out of focus gleams. My past history of photographer-spotting would suggest so.

There’s something very pleasant about it all though.

I love the zoo. Or rather, I like animals and how they look and leap around, but I am not sure what I think about animals in boxes and cages. I suspect most people feel this way, but it is good they are alive and completely wondrous to see them – endangered or otherwise – which I suppose overrides any feeling that zoos are evil places.

Paignton zoo near Exeter is lovely. It tries hard to make it like walking through natural habitats in points and does pretty well considering it’s small. The pink flamingos sat far away, with visitor paths unobtrusively close. Instead of looking into enclosures, it was more like looking into the wild. Big chunks of the zoo were like this, and I think – even if it is a giant illusion – that this must be a nicer way to live if you are an animal. (Or I’m just slapping human traits all over them.) That said, I suppose that’s close to saying that there’s a vast difference between the Truman Show and Big Brother.

Behind the camel enclosure, for example, is the back of someone’s house. It made me smile. I wonder what it is like to have a snorting camel creature just over your back fence. The camel mostly sat on the floor pouting. (I would get a trampoline and spend my time bouncing up and down to stare at it.)

I met lots of animals that seemed quite happy leaping around up and down trees, and the flamingos that flocked together, standing on one foot. They were lovely and will always remind me of a nature reserve I visited as a kid during which it rained and I took shelter under a rhubarb leaf that my memory exaggerates in size every time I remember it.

The monkeys looked wise and Lion King-like. The giraffes were tall and silently clever-looking. The Peacock looked shiny and proud.

I followed the peacock around for a bit as it roamed up and down a path. I liked how it strutted about the place – probably one of the only unenclosed animal in the place. It’s strange to think that they’re just allowed to walk about with the general public. It was lovely. Perhaps cruel people are not allowed in the zoo.

It dropped a feather and I ran about with it for a bit. I love peacocks, though only really realise it when I see them. They’re so majestic. An unoriginal word, but the way their backs shine is insanely beautiful. and the tail’s insanely impressive, and they’re so incredibly long. Having said that, I really just fall in love with the nearest animal at the zoo. They’re all so rare.

I liked all the animals that seemed content – be it the goats standing proudly on giant rocks, or the small wart-hog thing that seemed to be having lots of fun of nosing a big blue bucket about. The elephant was of course lovely but spent its time head-butting a metal bar which was a bit distressing. I wished they’d had some chap on hand loudly explaining that they were in-fact incredibly content and whilst David Attenborough hadn’t been reported as such, a large elephant past-time is walking face first into heavy objects is a true sign of animal joy.

The rhinos seemed a bit sad, but this is likely because it was their nap time and they look like they’re made of old leather rather than any innate ability to frown.

There was also a robin (or something orange which makes a fine substitute) that sat on a branch. When I was born a Robin used to hang out outside my bedroom window and my Mother made good friends with it. I have liked Robins ever since. Also they have good red tummies and look happy (as birds do) all the time, so you can’t really go wrong. I would never have birds though. A child-minder once had some in a tiny cage and they squawked when there wasn’t a blanket on the cage. It was all a bit sad.

There was a brilliant building to walk about in the zoo which was humid and filled with lots of green plants and seed trays, and colourful birds swooped down from seed plates to branches, and then back across the path to other trees. And whilst there was a tiny part of me hoping not to get shat on, it was all really really wonderful. They seemed a lot happier than any birds in cages I have met.