NEW START
New year. New job. New life?

Work has been a huge shock to my sedentary system. After three months off, my body and I were becoming accustomed to neverending days of nothingness. Now I'm up at the crack and don't get home till it's closed again.

And as I dither over whether I ought to watch the end of Newsnight or start reading the biography of Marco Pantani, now is probably as good a time as any to take stock.

So what have I learned about turning 30 and surviving it?

1) Don't fall in love with your best friend. If you must, don't tell her. And if you do, don't bother blubbing like a Norwegian whaler who's forgotten his Neutrogena.

2) Don't stay in a dead-end job longer than is necessary. And if you do, try not to play a pivotal role in getting an unknown Congolese IT man on the News, and then watch in horror as his career as a novelty celebrity takes off and his appearances on TV multiply while yours become a distant memory.

3) Don't follow up a five-year old fantasy and expect the reality to match. And if you do, do it properly. Don't be lulled into thinking that, despite the distance, the time, the boyfriend of three years, and the 48 hour time limit, you're going to make her fall in love with you.

4) Don't look at years gone by with rose-tinted glasses. They weren't that great. They were just years you'd lived in a particular time, in a particular place, and perhaps with a particular person.

5) Don't write a blog that no-one reads, and even less people bother posting on. If it's for catharsis, then write a diary. Some things are best kept between you and your cluttered mind.

MAN Vs BEAST
It's 5am in Tel Aviv airport. A middle seat, no doubt sandwiched between an blubbery-arsed mother and her three whining children - beckons.

Memories of the previous few days are blurry. But that's more to do with having gotten up at a ludicrous hour in order to sit in the waiting area for two hours before my flight actually takes off.

The highlight of my trip could have been the Yank I accosted on New Year's Eve. Sartorial disasters aside (she wore a backless top with an Atlas-sized purple bra to support her planet-sized bosom), she wasn't too bad. Though I only went for her because she and her friends had a corner table in the bar, and my friend and I could no longer be bothered to stand.

That said, the best bit of my trip was my first encounter with what must be television's winner in the race to the bottom: Man vs Beast. I was amazed at how a black, Alaskan bear trounced world (human) hot-dog champ Kobayashi; mesmerised at the sprinter who thought he could outrun a zebra (in fairness, I thought he'd lose to the giraffe too); and frankly disgusted by the score of dwarfs who tried to outpul an elephant tugging a aeroplane.

If I may be so bold, I'd like to see Beast vs Beast grace our screens. This would include fights to the death between an Orca and a rhino; a swimming race between a sea-horse and Lonesome George; and mud-wrestling between a blue-arsed baboon and a poodle. If it must be Man Vs Beast, however, then a who's-the-strongest face-off between an Anaconda and the Producer of Man Vs Beast would be my hope.