The road flows like a river

Which at the moment, in the UK, is not a metaphor. On the way home today we passed two canoeists and a frigate. Still, I am now warmly ensconced in the jolly old bosom of the family home, replete with Christmas tree that is, quite frankly, ridiculous.

I shall try to give some idea of its magnitude. In Little Shop of Horrors, Audrey II starts tiny and grows until he takes up an entire corner of the room.

The Christmas tree from which I am cowering would eat Audrey II and still have room for Audrey III. I'm stunned there are still presents under the tree. Perhaps the tree is only carnivorous. Perhaps it is cannibalistic. I fear discovering it making its insidious, arboreal way into my room in the dead of night, departing silently and leaving only a pile of needles that are incredibly hard to pick up.

So: yesterday I finished off the last of the food in my fridge, and knocked together a carbonara. The recipe is quite simple; 25g parmesan, 25g pecorino, 2 eggs and 1 egg yolk all combined with a very decent helping of pepper. Like seriously decent, it's called carbonara, so let's see plenty of black pepper in there. You can use the egg white to make almost any cocktail better, binding the ingredients and giving a thicker, creamer finish and a lovely foam. Start cooking some pasta, up to you how much and what kind. While that's happening, fry off about 75g of bacon - I use lardons, because they have some nice fatty bits that render down really well - with a glove of garlic. Get rid of the garlic with a slotted spoon. Mix the egg-cheese-pepper mixture together gently. Drain the pasta, chuck it over the bacon, get it coated in grease, and then throw on mixture. Stir it around, coating the pasta in that tasty goodness. Chuck it all in a dish. Eat it. Crush your enemies. Don't forget to wash up.

Now, I had no garlic. Most people would ask their neighbours for some garlic, or possibly just miss it out.

I doused my lardons in Zubrowka, a Polish bison-grass vodka, and then set it on fire.

It was awesome.

If you flambé in wine, you get a reddy-orange flame, which is awesome. Vodka, by comparison, burns blue - bright blue - with a yellow edge. It gives one a massive rush, especially if one realises far too late that one has left the damnable spoon in the ban and consequently set fire to that as well. Puffs out very easily, though, so no problems. It also gives the bacon a lovely, light, almost woody, almost citrussy taste and goes incredibly well with everything else in the mix. Highly recommend what I discovered by accident.

This morning, however, did not go so well. Having left all of my presents at the flat, I found myself queueing for the Eurostar behind the most nightmarish, upper-class twit-of-the-year couple in the world. Oh, how they nattered in nasal towns about if he knew "Biffy" Jones who's a Westminster man, and if she knows Sheikh Al-Banier because he played cricket with him at Eton, don't you know, and before very long the temptation to unhinge my jaw and attempt to swallow them like a snake.

Bizarrely, it got worse, when they started talking about their internships. He is at the Assemblée Générale, because "Uncle David at the Ministry had a little word, you know" and she's at Vogue, because "Mummy knows the editor or something." Both agreed, however, that absolutely nobody gets a job through the normal methods.

To every entitled twatting toff who's ever got an internship or a job through family ties, not because they're qualified, but because Uncle David is at the Ministry or Mummy knows the editor or because your grandmother is the Queen - don't trumpet it. Especially not in France, because there is a long history of revolutions here against upper-class twits.

Still; it's easy to take a step back and laugh at them. Their lives sounded utterly dull, and their chatter as inane as its contents. I've learnt this year, in just three months, that it's really an excellent idea to take a step back when one's instinct is to explode. Or swallow people with your dislocated jaw.

On the other hand, when it comes to the NRA, just feel free to get absolutely furious.

I cannot, I can not believe that there are still people who think that making more guns available is a suitable strategy, that armed guards in schools is not madness, and that a press conference in which you announce such a bizarre position but refuse to take questions is going to do any good at all.

It's the start of a new era, people. The Mayans were right. We just read it wrong.

So far so good.

End of the world, blah blah blah.

The most boring of boring non-stories is the apocalypse-themed ones that the media keep foisting on us. For reasons utterly unknowable to me, several hundred people have gathered in a small village in the south of France because that region is going to be safe. Bugarach, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, has (or rather, had) 176 residents, no pollution, and lovely orchids. It is now ground zero for crazy people and journalists.

I don't understand.

All the same, it gives a little credence to my theory that stories are far, far more appealing than science. That just means that those in science need to find interesting stories to express their scientific truths, because scientific truths are generally quite boring. This is a great shame - I love science, but it doesn't make for good stories. There are very rarely resolutions, which is why one should be very suspicious of any story in a certain newspaper that says "so-and-so can cure cancer, says Science."

Not that I'm thinking of any Daily Mail particular newspaper. 

Anyway, I should be talking about my year abroad. Today has been a very slow day; I looked over an application for sponsorship that some students had put together and was blown away by the level of English (good) and the level of informality (bad). I've noticed that students here have taken to informal conversation like a cliché to water; and although that means that conversation flows beautifully it also means that they write to banks and companies saying "sponsorship is now up for grabs!"

Perhaps I'm being a bit strict, but one doesn't write to a bank manager talking about things being up for grabs. Or perhaps one does; perhaps the end of the world has come and all that's changed is the death of English. I hope not. Zombies I can deal with, meteors, explosions, viral elephantitis, but please let's keep speaking good English. In any case, I've been added to the committee that's trying to organise sponsorship, and that will be an exciting project to start next year.

I packed everything last night; I will be wearing only suits or joggers at home. Joggers for dog jogging - I cannot wait to see my dog again, though I'm sure he's gotten awfully chubby - and suits for literally everything else. Packing was made a mite difficult by the way half of the available space was filled with champagne. I'm in France, as if I wasn't going to bring back a lot of champagne. Three bottles of rosé champagne and three bottles of brut. Over 9 days. This will be exciting. 

In any case, this time tomorrow I shall be back in England with a bag packed with dress shirts and champagne, blinking owlishly in the British sunshine. I can't wait.

Instagram

By now everyone in the Western hemisphere is probably sick of two stories: first, the supposed end of the world which, despite being quashed by everyone who's had even the most fleeting of contacts with scientific though, still has hundreds of proponents.

I'm not going to go into why the world isn't going to end - it's been done before by people with a greater handle on science than me - but I will say that if it does, it's been an absolute pleasure knowing each and every one of you. And I'm gutted that I turned down that credit card I was offered.

The other story is Instagram, and their stupidity in trying to grab away their users' content in such a brazen fashion. On a social network, where everyone shares images, to imagine that your ToS would stay subtly hidden for any more than five minutes is laughably naive. The fact that it was done in a fairly underhand way has simply worsened the effect.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. It's as true now as it has ever been, and the fact remains that if you are using a free service then somewhere along the line you're going to pay for it. Google, Facebook, LinkedIn - they all sell your information to advertisers. If you're being given something for free, consider that perhaps you are the product.

The problem Instagram also faces is that there are an awful lot of competitors snapping at its heels. A social network which is mostly mobile and based around taking pictures is fairly easy to replicate, more so now than ever. Facebook, which has had a long time to entrench itself in the market, is almost unassailable - even if Google+'s claims that it has 400 million users is true, it simply doesn't measure up to the 1 billion that Facebook passed in late September this year.

However, Instagram have at least responded smartly. They wrote a blog explaining what was going on and have stated that they will revert to the old ToS on January 19. The response is strong, well set out and clear - with a lovely little compliment at the end to soften the anger of these online campaigners. It's a beautiful piece of writing, and should hopefully smooth the feathers of certain users.

Looking ahead, though, it would still have been better to have not done it in the first place. Your users need to trust you, and things like this - no matter how quickly and how well they are managed - chip away at that trust. Winning it back is going to be an uphill struggle.