This morning, I’m being taunted by the blank white page, as it gawps back from my poorly performing laptop. My frustration of suffering writers block exacerbated by the latency of my computer. Its responses so slow that the ‘live’ national BBC news being streamed to my screen is last Sundays!

Sensing this doubly sourced frustration, the blank Word document appears to smugly goad me.

If this word processing application could speak, I imagine its words would be along the lines of “Struggling for inspiration, Gazza? ….. It looks like you’re not going to be able to spoil my virginal white canvas with your words from the asylum today my friend!……… Oh, and can you put some Stone Roses on Apple Music for me, instead of this crap you’re listening to now!”

I envisage it would end the above goading with continuous maniacal laughing, which I would only be able to stop by closing the lid of my netbook.

Well, blank sheet of A4, you may have won this mornings battle. Nevertheless, you haven’t yet won the war, so wipe that smug semi-colon off your face!

Incidentally, I’m ordinarily not inclined to converse with inanimate objects…… Unless you count my fridge Arnold, who has been my close confidante for years. We have very specific roles within the relationship….. I give Arnold gossip and cheese, he reciprocates with beer, chilled Sauvignon Blanc and horse racing tips.

Going off at a tangent, I learned a valuable lesson this morning when wrapping one of Karen’s birthday presents. The incident to which I allude teaching the caution required when handling sticky tape; in particular those with strong adhesive qualities.

When I wrap gifts, I normally don’t remove a strip of tape as required. I generally rip off 4-5 strips and attach them onto my chin to utilise later during the present wrapping process, an approach that ordinarily works fine.

Unfortunately, I tried it this morning while sporting a beard, which my chum hindsight found to be an ill thought out strategy. This conclusion reached on removing the first piece of tape from my chin, when I inadvertently performed an  excruciating partial beard ‘wax’.

The strong adhesive of the tape had bonded so strongly on my beard, I yelped in pain as uninvited it removed a segment of my beard.

As I stood there with a hairy piece of tape that resembled a caterpillar, along with a cavernous gap in my facial hair, I asked myself a series of important questions…… Should I shave off the rest of the beard?…… Would colouring in the segment with the missing hair render this hair loss transparent?…… Is it unfashionable to have beard comb overs?

After much deliberation and failure to get hold of a crayon that would match my beard colour, I made the decision to consign the rest of my facial hair to the barbers bin in the sky.

Right, I need to get off and finish wrapping the rest of Karen’s presents. I hope she likes the novel hairy sticky tape used to secure the paper, not to mention the additional birthday present of the beard I’ve just removed!

Oh, I nearly forgot. Before I go, I just wanted to vain gloriously chant (in football crowd style) at the formerly smug piece of blank paper:-

“You’re not singing. You’re not singing. You’re not singing anymore!…… You’re not singing anymore!” …………….. Cue maniacal laughter.