There are about 1000000 seats in the shop. I ask for some help.

Child car safety seats are the things that most make me want to walk up to the gates of parliament and set myself on fire. (Apart from light bulbs). You are not allowed to put a child in a car without one of these, even if you are just going to the Village Shop, driving really slowly due to snow and ice etc.

Whereas when I was a little boy I was used to being happily driven down the motorway whilst standing up between the front seats, my head poking out of the sun roof. It is how I gained the knowledge of road conditions etc. that has served me so well as a driver. Plus, when I used to play football for the cubs, the manager would stuff the whole team into the back of his Hillman Imp estate. With the car seats law, there is only room for two children, meaning that 5.5 more car journeys are required; it thus logically follows that car seats actually cause 5.5 times more deaths on the road than before.

It is an example of our crazed lawmakers completely failing to think things through.

All the car seats seem very expensive. I ask the lady for advice.

“I am a bit unclear as to the law,” I say. “Is it the case that I could just sit her on some form of booster seat, or box, or whatever – or do I still have to buy one of the big padded things.”

She shakes her head sadly before her reply. “There has been some recent research that shows that children who do not sit in an expensive padded seat are 183475 times more likely to die or have a major disfiguring injury that will make you ashamed, should you have an accident. There are so-called ‘booster’ seats, but they are mainly made in Eastern Europe or by Toyota and they are likely to make the seat-belt garrotte the child. I believe that was the sort of seat used by dimwitted fake child-abductee mother Mrs Karen Matthews before her arrest,” she says. (I paraphrase).

“Oh,” I reply.

I study the features of the expensive chairs a bit more, before buying a black one, as it matches the paintwork. The Toddler seems happy with my choice. The lady seems happy with my choice. I drive home at excessive speed, because she is safe.

The pink wobbles and falls into the pocket’s hungry clutch.

My opponent, who is very good and who plays off scratch, looks agape. Then his shoulders slump, as if he has just been passed a note revealing that his wife is having an affair with eccentric weather forecaster Rob McElwee.

“Look – you’re going to have to write about this now,” says John Twonil. “You can’t put it off any longer.”

I brush him aside temporarily, to modestly run round the table doing high fives with Mick, Big A and the Chipper Barman, and to accept the kind offer of a pint from my defeated opponent, which he wanders off to order before assembling his noose.

But John Twonil is right. I have been avoiding talking about my snooker success as I do not wish to jinx it and make it go away. We are proudly the worst snooker club in Norfolk – probably the whole country – and I am the worst player in it. I have the bare minimum of technique, I regularly miss the object ball completely, and I have to sort of squint to see where I am hitting things because my eyes don’t seem to work properly.

At the end of last season, the rankings for the league were distributed. The very bottom of the table went something like this:

• Twonil, J
• Tony, S
• A, B
• Barman, C
• Continuedonaseparatesheetof, P

It took me ages to work out that I was featured on an attached sheet, as an also-played. It was humiliating for one with my sense of dignity.

Yet here I am, having now won three singles games in a row. Undefeated in the league since December. The man the top players fear.

John Twonil and Mick win their frames also. We have won the match. The opposition tonight are an excellent team, and are known as a good bunch of people. I hope they do not give up snooker because of this. But it will certainly take them a while to recover from the humiliation.

We speed off from the Conservative Club in Mick’s car. “David Camm-eronn!” I shout. “Margaret Thatcher! Francis Pym!!! John Selwyn GUMMER!!! JOHHHN SELL-WYNNN GUMMMMERRRR!!!!!! Your boys took one hell of a beating!!!!”

“Right – I’m off home to fuck the wife,” I add.

“Do you want me to text her, to let her know you’re on your way?” asks Big A.

“Better not,” I reply.

It is my own fault.

“I am so sorry, it is such a shame, I was really looking forwards to it as well,” I say, amongst other platitudes to that effect. “I will bring the Santa suit back next week, as I didn’t get to use it.”

“I am gutted,” I add, looking gutted.

The Playgroup Lady stands, hands-on-hips. It crosses my mind that I perhaps do not look gutted enough. I stretch my face, so that I imagine it looks ‘extremely gutted.’ I resolve to practise gutted faces in the mirror when I get home, so that if this situation should arise again, I will have a natural and plausible gutted face to adopt. It will be second nature, which is how all the best actors work.

“Well…” says the Playgroup Lady.

I am ordered to bring my banjo to the school the following week, to entertain the children.

My face immediately adopts the expression of one who is naturally and plausibly gutted.

“I do not know what to play to them,” I complain to the LTLP, when she has finished laughing, again. “Children now want to play video games and watch television, sniff glue etc. rather than listen to banjo playing.”

I work out ‘Ring a Ring o Roses’ and ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ and ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ before launching into a smoking version of ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown’ (my own version, which is less difficult than the original, and contains gaps where you can work out what notes to play next).

I do not know how I get into these situations. But I wish I would stop it.

Day one:

The meeting has gone reasonably well. Being a nice sort of person, I try to wrap it up with a big old positive.

“And of course if there’s anything I can help you out with – anything at all – then please do feel free to ask,” I conclude.

“Anything at all. Whatsoever,” I add.

A face pokes in through the doorway to the Staff Room. “We have a problem,” says the face to the Headmistress. “We’re going to need somebody to help out.”

Day two:

“You do not appear,” I mutter grimly to the LTLP, “to be being particularly supportive.”

The LTLP rolls around on the floor, laughing helpfully. I stand with hands on hips, attempting to regain control of the situation. But my beard slips slightly, and I have to try to fit it into position once more.

“I don’t see how I can keep this straight whilst I talk,” I complain.

“Try practising the ‘ho ho ho’s again,” she suggests.

“No.”

I stride back to the mirror. There has been no miraculous transformation since I adjusted my beard. I do not look like Father Christmas. I look like me, in a Father Christmas costume.

“I think it might be the hat that’s the problem,” she ventures.

The LTLP is possibly right. Santa Claus has a big red hood that sort of obscures everything about him but his eyes and the beard. This costume does not come with a hood, but with a red hat that I strongly suspect was meant for elves. I pull it down as far as it will go, but my own non-Santa-type hair is still very visible at the sides.

“It won’t matter,” she says, a small pool of wee forming on the floor beneath.

“It will matter,” I insist. “The only reason that they want me to do this is because the children were starting to suspect that the previous Santa was not Santa after all. So they needed somebody new so that they would really believe it was Santa.”

“No pressure then,” she replies.

My beard has now fallen at a forty-five degree angle. I wrestle it back into place, and try a few more variations on the ‘ho ho ho’ theme. There is nothing I want more than for the local kids to have a brilliant Christmas party with loads of presents and Father Christmas, except for that Father Christmas not to be me.

Day three:

The worst blizzards in living memory blanket Norfolk, causing massive disruption to local services. All the schools suffer emergency closures. The children have to stay at home, and miss their long-awaited Christmas party with loads of presents and Father Christmas. Finally, I am involved in a story with a happy ending.

I am officially disappointed about the future.

I know people made a big deal about the year 2000 and all that, but as far as I am concerned, 2010 is much more ‘the future’ than 2000 ever was, and still there are no flying cars, robots that clean your house or domestic appliances that you can have a chat with.

It is depressing. As somebody who spent two years of his childhood genuinely thinking that I would be a starship commander when I grew up, frankly not having LP’s and being able to write ‘and your point is?’ at the bottom of Guardian articles is not the sort of progress that I envisaged.

I will be annoyed if there ARE flying cars, but they just haven’t reached Norfolk yet. It would be typical, and would make the proposed dualling of the A11 a complete white elephant. I have not been out of the county for some weeks now. For all I know, you could all be wearing lycra catsuits and spending your excess leisure time in the orgasmachamber.

The LTLP purses her lips in a ’so you have finally got out of bed’ sort of way. I do consider forcing her into a lycra catsuit and whisking her off to the orgasmachamber, but she wants me to unload the dishwasher.

I unload the dishwasher, which does not comment.

2009 was an all right year for me. I know that it was pretty rubbish for some people. 2010 is shaping up to be interesting (despite lack of proper ‘future’ things (see above)) and I hope to keep you informed about this in the usual way. Firstly there will be details of the new job I got before Christmas, which sort of troughed and peaked, but is exactly the sort of high-powered role my talents have deserved.

Happy New Year everybody, and thanks for sticking around.

From the management of Private Secret Diary, a very

MERRY CHRISTMAS

and a HAPPY NEW YEAR

We will return in January, with further dispatches from Norfolk, the original home of sex and bowls and rock and roll.

At this time of year, I’ve often linked back to a selection of old posts of which I’m particularly fond. This time round, if you’re missing me, this link will take you to a random post. (Although sometimes it seems not to work, but that is technology for you). Do let me know in the comments which one it was, and what you thought of it.

Happy Christmas.

Across Tennessee. By Kia.

“Your mother will explain,” I tell the Toddler, as I leap down from the Kia.

“Googoogoogoogoothemdukesthemdooookes,” I add.

‘Cooters’ – the official Dukes of Hazzard museum is probably the best tourist attraction in all America. It has a full-size General Lee, and a full-size Daisy Duke jeep, and a full-size Cooter pick-up, and a full-size Hazzard County police car. You can sit in them all for ten dollars, in order to have your picture taken, or just stand beside them for free, which is what I do.

“GoogoogooooFlash!googoohotpursuithotpursuit!” I say, as I am standing beside the police car.

There are all sorts of original scripts, and publicity posters, and life-size cut-outs of the cast. It really is a most educational resource. I am a bit disturbed, however, that there is no mention at all of Coy and Vance, who were the cousins of the original Duke boys who took over for a couple of series, suspiciously looking and acting exactly like the two original actors. Coy and Vance weren’t very good, but they do not deserve to be treated this way. They have been completely written out of history, like stunt-driving, moonshine-running Iain Duncan Smiths.

I stand for ages, viewing the historical artifacts and doing good impressions of Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane (played by James Best).

“Can we go now?” asks the LTLP.

She is still a bit cross about me accidentally buying a bottle of wine for $70, because I am not much good at working out money even when it is English. But she has a point. We still have the Gibson guitar factory to visit, and time is getting on.

The famous ‘01′ car with the welded-shut doors is parked outside. I allow one last longing look before climbing into the Kia.

It’s time to go.