Maybe this is where my slight fear of Saturday nights started, after I spent five years living in Cardiff City Centre and seeing sights like this most Saturday nights. And Friday nights. And Wednesday nights, for that matter. And, of course, hearing teenagers sobbing and arguing outside my bedroom window at 2am. But I did kinda like it, in the sense there was always life outside my window. So why go any further?

These pics are part of a gallery that a photography student is having exhibited in London. One of my flatmates used to also take random pics of drunk people on the streets of Cardiff. Then he graduated to video – and there’s a classic one where he’s filming two very drunk women arguing with a bouncer, and then they slowly turn to camera and shout “WHAT THE F**K DO YOU THINK YOU’RE LOOKING AT?”

Also covered in BBC News Wales

Have you got any suggestions?

While we’re on the subject, see what happens when a Chinese chef and a Welsh chef decide to make beautiful food together. Although I’m wondering what they CAN come up with…

After all, around this time last year I was in Cardiff hob-nobbing with the press corps at the press preview of Doctor Who and writing Doctor Who preview-related gags for a newspaper. And now I’m not – and besides which, the press previews were in London yesterday.

Watching Doctor Who these days tends to bring up bitter-sweet memories and feelings these days. Whether it’s spotting old colleagues lurking in David Tennant’s fantastic video diaries, or just seeing a random Cardiff location masquerading as London or a foreign planet, it just keeps reminding me of my Cardiff and BBC days. Indeed, that’s partly the reason why I avoided Torchwood – in another universe, that could have been my web project, damn it!

But then I was never entirely happy there either, and a change in my life was well overdue. I think I’d have felt a lot better about it if I’d left by choice instead of having the decision thrust upon me. For the third time. Ah well…

Some of the shots did manage to make Cardiff look glorious and cinematic, particularly the sweeping helicopter shot of Captain Jack – so good they kept using it over and over again. Apart from anything else, what on earth *would* he be doing on the roof?

The production team also managed the neat trick of making me look at certain less salubrious parts of Cardiff and go “oooh, that looks pretty” in a way I never thought when walking back at midnight. Must walk around Cardiff more often the next time I pop down there.

The plot itself was fairly formulaic and dull – as inevitably any first episoder would be – but the story actually went in a different way to the way I thought, and had me almost at the edge of my seat by the end.

But oh dear, oh dear, oh dear … spoilers ahead

Now, I’m hardly a prude but did there have to be so many references to humans driven beyond rational thinking by sex?

If an alien device did exist that drove humans horny to the point of distraction, you couldn’t use it in a bar because you’d be shagging away on the bar before you got a chance to do anything. And making your proper first episode (ie all introductions done) a remake of Species makes it more like adolescent sci-fi drama than adult sci-fi drama. Although I suppose it gets the viewers, and not even Star Trek has been immune from this particular temptation.

Also, I hate to be uber-sensitive towards Oriental stereotypes but in a progressive show which has a bisexual leading man, a bisexual assistant and a Welsh policewoman with freckles, did the sole Japanese cast member have to take home the one geeky alien device? Forget the resurrection glove or the horny spray, she’ll take home the speed-reading device. That’s original.

But kudos to the script for not having Gwen blunder into Torchwood, and for the surprising ending. It does warrant further watching…

(Spoilers live beyond here!)

I was told I was going to cry buckets, that Rose would die and there would be the mother of epic battles between Cybermen and Daleks on the streets of modern-day Earth.

What happened? Rose solidified her conversion to obsessive stalker simpering girlie status, and the epic battle was confined to flying CGI Daleks battling CGI Cybermen, while there was *one* tiny battle between Cybermen and humans on some non-descript bridge somewhere, while Cardiff extras pretended to fall to their deaths while being shot by non-existent Daleks. The anti-Doctor Torchwood turned out to be a damp squib.

Admittedly, I did watch the episodes about 3 months after the rest of the UK, and I’d known about the fanboy wet dream two months before transmission (but was sworn to secrecy etc.)

On the plus side, the only – for me – epic moment was the Doctor’s look of pure anguish when it looked like he was about to lose Rose. The rest of it was a bit of a disappointment.

Yes, I put some of my laundry out to dry on the washing line.

Ever since I left home at the tender age of 18, joys such as hanging washing out were denied me as I lived in a succession of student, then bedsit, then one-bedroom flats in city suburbs. With no garden or back space, I had to hang my damp clothes on radiators that would slowly turn dark with damp, and wait about a week before the clothes would dry out.

But when I moved into my new temporary digs, it not only came with a cool resident landlord and a huge airy room with jungle plants and wireless internet, it also came with a garden complete with washing line. So early this morning, I was taking my clothes out of the washing machine and hanging them on the washing line, juggling clothes pegs and sagging lines in the glorious sunshine. And lo it was good, working slightly in the sunshine. I stood back, and admired my handiwork as if I had personally handcrafted the Holy Grail of washing.

Fast forward four hours later, and it’s raining in Cardiff and my clothes are probably extraordinarily damp again. Sod’s bloody law.

• The fall-out from local MP/AM Peter Law’s death?
• The revelation over John Prescott’s affair?
• Coverage from Tom Cruise’s walkabout at the Mission: Impossible III UK premiere?

None of those things. The top story on the 9am bulletin from Red Dragon FM was about the rise in teenagers going to self-tanning salons. Shock, horror.

You can argue it was an “exclusive” news story, but it’s hardly earth-shattering news. Unless you are only concerned about South Wales teenagers.

Oh, and I met Tom Cruise. But more on that tomorrow.

There I was, all dressed and ready to go to the pub. So I left my front door – only to find a policewoman about to ring my doorbell. And she asked if I was me – well, of course I’m me, who else am I? – so she then told me that my car had been broken into. Again. Which makes the sixth crime to deal with my transportation – and the second car break-in in a week right outside my front door.

Oddly, it’d stood there unmoving, broken for three months. I’d taken it to a garage earlier in the week, who charged me £120 to install a £30 battery, I’d taken it back that night, and voila it got broken into. The silly thing is that (aside from the fact they just opened the door) they couldn’t find anything worth stealing. Indeed, they left behind some rizla papers and a sunglasses case. As yer do.

So after an hour of to’ing and fro’ing with the police, I was off to the pub. Only to find that the traditional Friday Night Gang were no longer there – to be fair, it’d been at least a year since I’d last gone, and they’ve probably all gotten engaged or something. Fortunately, after some intensive phoning and re-dialling, I find someone else who fancies going to the pub. So I head off to his local.

On the way, two cars screech past me into a dead-end junction, one guy jumps out and just legs it past me down the road, while another guy shouts at him to come back using suitably sweary language. The way the cars screeched and roared, I had to assume it was a drug deal gone wrong or something.

I finally reach the safety of the pub with my mate. We have a pint, then go up to the bar. Where the barmaid asks me if we noticed the Indian gentleman who’d popped into the pub earlier. Because apparently he’d come in with someone else, who had a GUN stuck to his back, and was being forced into the pub before his car got car-jacked or something. I’m not too sure. And neither was the barmaid. Who decided to solicit extra protection by getting her 14-year-old son (in his PJs) to come down from playing with his X-Box or whatever to scan the local streets for any sign of crime.

Three pints of Brains bitter (3.7% alcohol, fact fans) and a small sherry later, I’m back home doing a great impersonation of a very drunk person.

The next morning, I emerge with a splitting headache, all the signs of a hangover and the kitchen looks as if a very drunk person had tried to cook two packets of Ramen noodles while blindfold and tied to a chair. Unfortunately, I have to immediately jump on a train for four hours voyaging to North Wales. A cup of British Rail tea has never felt so good in my entire life.

Heaven knows how I’m going to get through 36 hours of drinking this weekend…

Fast forward 5 or so years, and Metro has come to Cardiff. As many people in the office have commented, I’m not too sure how this is going to work – hardly anyone I know in Cardiff uses public transport to get to work. They either drive or walk, but they don’t sully themselves with the outrageous prices charged by Cardiff Bus – the bus company that’s apparently owned by us. Pah!

I, of course, have no such compunction. Caught the bus to work this morning, and found a newspaper dispenser stuffed full of Metros. Given that this was about 10am – a time when in London, Metros would be rarer than a viable dotcom plan, this was quite surprising.

Perhaps the commuters just didn’t feel the need for a anodyne daily newspaper. Because Metro feels about as relevant to Cardiff as the New York Times. There are two pages of listings culled from the PA (spreading its net as far as that other bustling metropolis Newport), a couple of tiny news stories, and a couple of tiny interviews with artists who are “coming to Cardiff soon” – and that’s about as Cardiff as it got. For the launch issue. Oh, and a free voucher for a bottle of Japanese beer.

Still, at least I can finally catch up on the adventures of mainstream goth girl Nemi.

Not that I’m an expert on Cardiff, despite having lived here for four years, but for a bit of fun, let’s speculate on why that is.

There’s hardly any good stand-up comedy venues in Cardiff

Seriously. There’s either the comedy barn (seriously, it’s far too huge a space for good comedy) that is Jongleurs – mostly populated by pissed young teenage students who cant’ wait for the comedy to end so the tables can be cleared, and they can start drinking their Smirnoff Vodka Ices and start fights.

The other “posh” alternative is The Glee Club, down Cardiff Bay. Which is a tad more intimate – the right size IMHO – but is unfortunately mostly populated by accountants or secretaries on their annual yearly outing.

There is the occasional gig at The Wharf down Cardiff Bay, but it’s a real bugger to get to if you don’t have a car, which means you have to enjoy the comedy sober. Plus the comedians are literally performing in the bar where the dancefloor usually is, so it doesn’t have good seating or the right comedy atmosphere.

Last but by no means least, there’s the occasional outing of the Poncho Comedy Club in Chapter – the closest thing Cardiff has to an open mic night. But given that Chapter is mostly populated by self-obsessed artists who have no idea what sunshine is unless it’s behind their bottom, the comedy is of a similar mostly-miss nature.

One guy clambered on “stage” – ie in front of some brown chairs – and talked for 10 minutes about his divorce to not a single laugh, to the point when I thought he’d thought it was a therapy night. Indeed, the only person I laughed with was a guy called Steven Green who recreated the beginning of Duel using a toy truck and a car. And I used to work with him.

The comedy atmopshere of Poncho is not helped by the fact it’s basically in a sterile office room above the bar – I once had a dreary all-day work meeting in that room. Also, the easy access to consumer electronics means that every comedian wants to film their own performance – which means a well-lit room. And it’s very hard to laugh when you’re in a small room and know that if you do laugh, not only will everyone spot it’s you but you’ll hear the simultaneous whirr of zoom lenses closing in to see your momentary lapse of judgement. Oh and the room was mostly filled with comedians and their mates – but that’s a problem with most open-mic nights.

There’s not much to laugh about in Cardiff

Sure, there’s the political ineptness of the politics of Cardiff, but the trouble is Cardiff doesn’t really have a sense of humour about itself. On a weekend night, the streets are mostly filled with the Valley Commandoes who swarm down in their 100s, get pissed, start fights with anyone, and then go back up to the valleys in taxis that they puke in. Everyone seems too serious and unwilling to acknowledge, let alone laugh at the fact that they are not the be-all of the universe. They take themselves *way* too seriously, in other words.

Where else would you get a huge argument about where you sit in a debating chamber?