This is Mattias, a single-serving friend I met in New Orleans. We spent five days eating cake, going to museums, taking heavily-posed photographs, and sipping rum and pineapple sodas by the pool together like billionaires might do.

I never got a chance to say goodbye to him because I left Louisiana very early one morning on a whim. But then a week later we bumped into each other again 600 miles away in Texas. Sometimes life is funny like that, hey.

London isn't nothin like Dolwyddelan

I've been back in rural north Wales for over a month now and, predictably, it's been one crazy rollercoaster ride so far. Highlights have included a) taking the dog for a walk and b) going down to the village to buy eggs for my mum. Yes, Dolwyddelan is pretty much exactly the same as it was in my youth, except so far I've managed not to throw up outside the pub or snog the coalman by mistake.

When we were teenagers my rebellious friend Sally said aren't you bored of throwing up and snogging and let's run away to London at the weekend to see the Chemical Brothers' gig instead. No way, I said, my mum will never let me. And anyway, we don't have enough money.

It's okay, said Sally, who'd thought of everything. We won't tell our mums, we'll dodge the train fare, and we can sleep under a van in a carpark in Brixton for the night for free.

Alright then, I said.

Pretending to be asleep for an entire train journey between Llandudno Junction and London Euston is more difficult than you'd think. We had to sit there with our eyes shut and our mouths open for four whole hours, just in case the guard walked by and wanted to see the tickets that we didn't have.

The gig was good fun — if you call watching two men playing records with somebody's elbow in your face for four whole hours 'good fun' — but trying to sleep under a van in a carpark in Brixton is more difficult than you'd think. What if the van driver comes back in the middle of the night and runs us over by mistake? I asked Sally. When I say she'd 'thought of everything' well, I don't think she'd thought of that. So we lay awake under that van for four whole hours listening to the crazy people walking up and down Coldharbour Lane, until eventually it was light enough to get up again.

On the train on the way home we were so tired we didn't have to pretend to be asleep: eyes shut, mouths open, all the way back to Llandudno Junction.

Public Display of Affection

Cowabunga

Didn't Obama just get even more loveable — as if that were even possible — when he kept fluffing his lines as he was sworn in? You can see Michelle lean into him afterwards, all like: You did good baby, you did good. No baby, really, you did alright!

All he has to do for me tomorrow is reprimand Israel, rebuild Palestine, close down Gitmo, and save the polar bears.

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UPDATE: He didn't fluff his lines at all, the Chief Justice dude was just reading the wrong oath and Barack stopped mid-sentence when he suddenly found himself saying wedding vows on his inauguration day.