Greetings from Planet Avalon. I come in peace. Mostly. I detest trying to write these things, but I am working on updating this beast so it sounds a bit less like I'm enjoying the sound of my own voice too much.

Most people find me to be somewhere between deeply irritating and an adorable smartarse. I'm pretty sure I'm both. I get frightened in large crowds. I fidget when I sleep, and I'm told I snore. I'm not a morning person. I'm rarely even a lunchtime person. I wear my heart on my sleeve and I hold grudges.

I have multiple piercings and tattoos, and usually have the sort of hair colour you'd normally find in a box of crayons at a primary school. My wardrobe choices range from "Do they have that in black?" to "It keeps me warm at 3am and doesn't ride up in the wrong place, I couldn't give two shits what it actually looks like." I'm verging on being what most people would call fat, I call it comfortable (having a big bum means never having to ask for a cushion). I have stretchmarks, scars, a smoker's cough and calloused feet from a life well, and widely, lived.

I'm addicted to words. I am a sponge for information, and spend as much time as possible reading books and playing Wikpedia tag. I like to write, and I like to pretend other people like to read it. I talk a lot. I get on well with people who don't mind being told to shut up, but who still have the bollocks to interrupt me.

My ambitions in life don't stretch terribly far. I'm mostly happy to just be, and enjoy what happens while I'm doing that.

I wasn't born in England, but I love cricket, complaining about the weather, and crumpets, and I know how to queue properly.

I don't like labels, so don't give me one.

Not a whole lot, all things considered. Nearly a year ago, after a fair whack of time beating my GP about the head with a large stick, I was diagnosed with CFS (M.E.), known to most as "yuppie flu", "chronic laziness" or "hyperchondria". I know it as a big shiny pain in my ass, and various other places. But basically, it means I spend a lot of time sleeping. I hope to have my own business up and running within a few years, when I have a healthy client base, and am well enough to function for more than an hour a day. My trade is hair, although I have a floundering sideline in DJing 80's music.

Other than sleeping, I watch TV, play video games, and very occasionally travel to the other side of London to be sociable with my chums. I'm part of three large social groups, which means that there's always someone to talk to, get drunk with, yell obscenities at, etc.

I share my house with a crazy Irishman, an even crazier 10 year-old boy, a very fat and stupid cat, and probably a half-dozen silverfish in the bathroom.

Empty rhetoric. Blowjobs. Baking cakes. Telling jokes at innappropriate moments. Spending money I don't have. Talking when I have nothing interesting to say. Complaining. Backgammon.

I'm a total narcissist, so I can only tell you what I notice, since nobody else gets a word in edgeways, but that would be the hair (currently purple), the eyes, the lips, and the booty.

A. Thomas Hardy, Neal Stephenson, Iain Banks and Iain M. Banks, Shakespeare, Bill Bryson, Nick Hornby, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, John Grisham, Richard Dawkins, Neil Gaiman, etc - although saying that, I will read almost anything.

B. 80's romcoms and chickflicks. Particularly stuff like Pretty In Pink (God rest you, John Hughes), LA Story, What Dreams May Come, Dirty Dancing and other things like that (I sobbed like a child at the Sex And The City movie - I am not ashamed). I also like big-assed action/disaster films, like Die Hard, The Day After Tomorrow and The Long Kiss Goodnight, for my sins. Oh, and I've got a major hard-on for comic book adaptations, see Watchmen, Ironman or X2 for details.

C. I should stop updating this section so often and just admit that I'll listen to more or less anything. I do listen to a lot of trance, EBM, electropop and indie though, if that helps.

D. Oriental, French and Italian. The best type of food is food cooked by other people, and served on plates washed up by other people.

My cat, my computer, my iPod, my phone (I am a shameless Android geek), my friends and um... food.

Breasts, theoretical physics, sleeping, food, what bit of my body I should cover in ink or metal, what life will be like once I'm on the wrong side of 30, what life might be like if I had my own colony on the moon, snogging, whether there's a way to spend my life with my cat's belly firmly planted on my face without suffocating.

Typical Friday nights are usually a combination of sleep, TV and junk food, but occasional or special Fridays include clubbing, gigs, or lolling about in my friend's living rooms making a nuisance of myself.

If I'm willing to admit it here, then it's not even vaguely classifiable as private. I don't keep many secrets, they're bad for your cholesterol levels.

Oh hell, I don't know. If you want to? Preferably in more than 8 words, correctly spelled and punctuated, but the subject matter is at your own disposal. Surprise me.

Nota bene: I am, ultimately, looking for a monogamous life partner. But I am picky, stubborn, and like taking my time with these things, so an opener in which anyone claims to want to date me after having only seen the few pictures and words I chose to represent myself here is likely to put me off. Sure, I may look interesting now, but wait 'til you've seen me either first thing in the morning, or at the end of a bad day before you decide you want to date me. Just common courtesy, people. We all have a gameface, and I wouldn't want to date anyone who wasn't comfortable knowing there are times I don't wear mine.