Look, I don’t want to tell anyone how Twitter should be used - each to their own; it’s a big web and there’s room for lots of different experiences, so please yourself and all that.

However, that being said, it’s my web experience as well, so as a point of reference, it may be worth mentioning that there are a few things/habits/behaviours on Twitter which are pretty much guaranteed to make me unfollow you - temporarily or permanently - and that’s my right, too.

UPDATE, because people keep reading and linking to this as RULES FOR HOW TO USE TWITTER: These are not rules for how to use Twitter. Use it however you want. This is simply a list of habits that bother me - in varying amounts and at various times - when other people do them a lot. This is a list of things that might make me switch off from following someone, just as certain formats or personalities on the television bother me and make me more likely to switch off from watching.

You may not agree. You don’t have to agree. You don’t even have to stop doing them. If you like doing any of the below, or think they’re completely fine to do, then great; please carry on. No-one’s judging you, and most of all, no-one’s telling you what you should or shouldn’t do. Use Twitter however you want.

(For the record, I don’t much like celery, either. If you do like it, then great. I’m not judging you on your celery consumption, I don’t think you’re a horrible, person, or an idiot, and I certainly wouldn’t dream of stopping you eating crunchy vegetables, because that would be weird and inappropriate. But if you invite me over for dinner, and tell me you’re going to be serving celery stew followed by celery pate with a celery gravy, you’ll understand if I don’t eat much, or choose not to come, or maybe just meet you for drinks later, yes?)

1. Endless retweeting without adding any value or original thought in between. Or at all. If you retweet more than once a day, especially from the same source(s), I’ll likely dump you and follow them instead. NB, this is even more irritating when I already follow the person you’re retweeting.
2. Posting link after link after link even if they’re to really interesting articles and sites and things you’ve spotted on the web. I appreciate that this is a retro thing to say these days, but: Get a blog.
3. Saying good morning, hello, good night to your followers. This is not your personal radio show. This is not an AOL chatroom from 1995. We’ll know when you’ve woken up, because you’ll start twittering. We’ll know when you’ve gone up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire because you’ll have gone quiet, or possibly will have indicated something circumstantially relevant before you went (e.g. “Bugger this, there’s nothing on television: I’m going to bed”). Even though your mother brought you up well and it’s good manners generally, there really is no need to say “good night”. Except if you’re @JohnBoyWalton.
4. Going to an event and liveblogging it via Twitter. Does what you’re communicating need to be communicated to this group of people, immediately? If not, then you could probably use a blog, and twitter once to say you’re covering it over there. NB This behaviour marks an interesting shift in people using Twitter as communication medium with known group to people using it as a microblog, so I see why it’s increasingly happening - but it’s infernally spammy if you’re not interested.
5. Using it to organise an event or rendezvous with other people who happen to be in your twitter list. Use email. Use direct messages. Use the telephone. Or invite everyone. But using a public medium for a private conversation is most vexatious and supererogatory.
6. Flooding the screen by updating 84 times in rapid succession. This matters, when you’re abroad and paying for every bit of data downloaded. A stream-hog is like a roadhog: inconsiderate and difficult to ignore.
7. Referring to people as “tweeple” or “tweeps”, questions as “twestions” or “twask”, adding someone to your list as a “twadd”, use of “tweet” or any other kind of meaningless derivative which is wholly unnecessary and infantile. People are still people, even if they’re on twitter. Questions are still questions. I realise that language evolves and new words are constantly being coined, but this stuff just makes me want to tweam and tweam and tweam until I’m twick.

Also, there are four things (features?) I’d dearly love to see implemented somewhere, which would help to manage some of the above and some additional twirratations (gah! I’m doing it now!):

1. When someone (public) replies to my (private) Twitter stream, please don’t show it in the search, dearest darling Twitter.
2. Let me put people on pause, occasionally - or rate limit them. Sometimes you need a holiday from your friends.
3. If I’m private, let me shout (public message) as well as talk to people I know. Or if I’m public, let me whisper (to an identified group of followers). Call it semi public/semi private.
4. Let me ignore (or opt into) following particular hashtags. If someone twitters something including “#guardiancommunity”, I want to know about it, even if I’m not following them - let it break through into my consciousness. On the other hand, even if my closest friends twitter using a hashtag like “#spurs” don’t show it to me. I love them dearly, and value their friendship, but I’m just not interested in the topic.

I’ve touched on some of this stuff before, as Twitter has evolved over the last three years or so:

• Breaking the news: Dear Twitter friend
• Twitter ye not: further thoughts on an evolving medium
• Twit by name
• Musings on Twitter
• The seven deadly sins of Twitter

Interesting (to me at least) to note how the “sins” in the latter link there have mostly been resolved by people adapting to the tool, but that new behaviours and rather annoying tics have taken their place (see above).

Incidentally, you can find my public twitter stream at twitter.com/megpickard. I have a private one, too - but that’s mostly for people I know in person, have ranted with in pubs, and for whom the conversation is off-the-record. It’s never that juicy, though. (Sorry).

The Guardian is running a series in print and online at the moment detailing 1000 songs everyone should hear - it runs until next weekend, and provides thematic lists of songs (e.g. love, breakups, places) selected by critics, along with the stories behind the tracks in many cases. Online, there are links to hear individual tracks on Spotify, too.

But we’ve also added in a little HTML generation widget which means you can go through each list and check a box to say whether you’ve heard (or own) a particular track. You can then click a little button at the end and a tasty chunk of HTML will be produced, ready for copying into your blog CMS of choice, should you so desire. Each link goes to the entry in the data table on the Guardian site.

I’ve been through the first few days’ lists already, and I’ll add the rest as the series progresses.

NB, I’ve done these lists as being about songs I actually own in my music collection, not whether I’ve heard them at all. In cases where I own a version of the song but by a different artist, I’ve said I own it because it’s the track that matters most, I think.

Interestingly, my music collection appears to overlap about a third with what the critics think everyone should hear….

1000 songs everyone must hear

Sex: part four of 1000 songs everyone must hear

I own 46 from the Guardian.co.uk list of 131

• You Shook Me All Night Long (AC/DC, 1980)
• Love in an Elevator (Aerosmith, 1989)
• Smile (Lily Allen, 2006)
• When The Sun Goes Down (Arctic Monkeys, 2006)
• Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) (The Beatles, 1965)
• Je T’Aime … Moi Non Plus (Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg, 1969)
• Girls and Boys (Blur, 1994)
• Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine (James Brown, 1970)
• I Want You (Elvis Costello and the Attractions, 1986)
• Come On Eileen (Dexys Midnight Runners, 1982)
• I Touch Myself (Divinyls, 1991)
• I Want You (Bob Dylan, 1966)
• Lay Lady Lay (Bob Dylan, 1969)
• Stutter (Elastica, 1993)
• Who’s That Girl? (Eurythmics, 1983)
• Stay With Me (The Faces, 1971)
• Relax (Frankie Goes to Hollywood, 1983)
• Sledgehammer (Peter Gabriel, 1986)
• Let’s Get It On (Marvin Gaye, 1973)
• Sexual Healing (Marvin Gaye, 1982)
• I Just Want to Make Love to You (Etta James, 1961)
• Pull Up to the Bumper (Grace Jones, 1981)
• Milkshake (Kelis, 2003)
• Whole Lotta Love (Led Zeppelin, 1969)
• Don’t Come the Cowboy With Me, Sonny Jim! (Kirsty MacColl, 1989)
• Justify My Love (Madonna, 1990)
• Fastlove (George Michael, 1996)
• One Minute Man (Missy Elliott, 2001)
• A Case of You (Joni Mitchell, 1971)
• If That’s Your Boyfriend (He Wasn’t Last Night) (Me’Shell Ndegeocello, 1993)
• You Can Leave Your Hat On (Randy Newman, 1972)
• Me and Mrs Jones (Billy Paul, 1972)
• Fuck the Pain Away (Peaches, 2000)
• Roxanne (The Police, 1978)
• Do You Remember the First Time? (Pulp, 1994)
• (Love Is Like a) Heat Wave (Martha and the Vandellas, 1963)
• Let’s Talk About Sex (Salt-n-Pepa, 1990)
• Hold On, I’m Comin’ (Sam and Dave, 1966)
• Reel Around the Fountain (The Smiths, 1984)
• I Wanna Be Your Dog (The Stooges, 1969)
• Animal Nitrate (Suede, 1993)
• Love to Love You Baby (Donna Summer, 1975)
• Wild Thing (Tone Loc, 1989)
• Wild Thing (The Troggs, 1966)
• Desire (U2, 1988)
• Venus in Furs (The Velvet Underground, 1967)

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I have to walk past this bookshop to get to The Guardian’s new offices in Kings Cross, and every day I find myself wondering whether they stock special books for and about the scourges of the seas. As well as yer actual books like Red Rackham’s Treasure (from the Tintin series) and The Pirate’s Daughter, my suggested stocklist would include:

1. Where the Wild Things Arrrrrrr
2. Blackbeard Beauty
3. A Yarrrrr in Provence

Any more suggestions?

1. The crushing inevitability that the irritating/drunk/loud bloke on the train will get off at your stop and may well turn out to be a neighbour
2. The memory of a scent you once loved
3. The experience of gorging yourself on a TV show via some time-shifted electronic medium
4. The place where someone is when they’re on their mobile phone on a train
5. The surefire knowledge that the cat is only sitting on you because there’s nothing warmer in the area, but as soon as there is, s/he will defect
6. The warm spot on the sofa/bed/your lap after the cat has gone
7. The realisation that your friends are at a party to which you haven’t been invited, which you didn’t expect to be anyway because you don’t know the host/ess
8. The thronging of wankers on mobile phones on public transport directly around your seat
9. The ability to understand a language but not speak it
10. The person who thinks the signs prohibiting smoking, feet on seats, parking, making noise or throwing litter don’t actually apply to them
11. The dream you have in between pushes of the snooze button
12. A pair of glasses which has an entirely redundant pane of plain glass in front of one eye
13. The realisation as the door swings closed that your keys are inside
14. The moment or place you reach having left the house when you realise that you have come out without your phone/earrings/book/purse/travelcard but it’s slightly too far to go back to collect it/them
15. The film of watery stuff that rests on top of the ketchup when the bottle has been unused for a bit and which can spurt out and soil your food if you don’t shake first
16. The disappointment of spending a large-ish amount of money on a game console or particular game and, after the first flurry of play, realising that you can’t be arsed anymore

Actually, there’s a word for the last one already: in my house we call it Playstationnui or Wiiui. I don’t think there’s an Xbox equivalent, or if there is, I haven’t thought of it yet.
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There is a theory that there is a certain kind of music soundtrack which is perfectly suited for being in an aeroplane. I concur - when you’re at 40,000ft, you need something to keep you relatively soothed and yet also stimulated, to stop you going out of your mind from boredom. Plus whatever you listen to needs to have a particular kind of tonality to compensate for the low bass rumble of the engines.

So on planes, I have an playlist which includes some Philip Glass, Faure’s Requiem, DJ Shadow, The Postal Service, The Necks and a bit of Brian Eno (and/or Gavin Bryars) for good measure. There are a few other tracks which I’ve found work particularly well in the dreamlike lucid exhaustion state of the redeye.

On a train, however, a different kind of music is needed. See, train travel is rhythmic, even in these days when engines don’t go psssscht-uh-cfff psssscht-uh-cfff. Something about the tangible speed, of things whizzing past the window, requires a sort of music which is much more driven, urgent, even.

I’ve spent a lot of time on trains recently. Yes, there’s the twice daily commute route, which whizzes (well, crawls) me through some of south west London’s most desireable(?) areas, but what I’m talking about here are trains. Real trains, not buses on rails, which go long distances, and allow you to stare out of the window while the landscape slips by and get a bit lost in your own head. That’s what I’m talking about.

In the last few months, I’ve visited family, friends or attended events in the western isles (9-10 hours by train), the Welsh marches (3-4 hours), the Cotswolds (2 hours) Swindon and Oxfordshire (about the same), the Northeast (3 hours), Yorkshire (2.5 hours), Leicester (2 hours), and Brighton (1.5 hours). Some of these journeys, I’ve done a number of times.
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Because every pivotal scientific moment needs a soundtrack.

1. Black Hole Sun - Soundgarden
2. Ray of Light - Madonna
3. Supermassive Black Hole - Muse
4. It’s the end of the world as we know it (I feel fine) - R.E.M
5. You spin me round (like a record) - Dead or Alive (et al)
6. Songs from the black hole EP - Weezer
7. The tunnel song - trad
8. Intergalactic Proton Song - Family Guy
9. Lazer Beam - Super Furry Animals
10. Quark, Strangeness & Charm - Hawkwind
11. Dark Matter - Johnny Berliner
12. Supercollider - Fountains of Wayne
13. Until the End of the World - U2
14. 2 Atoms in a Molecule - Noah and the Whale

(in progress - add your suggestions in the comments)

… which are probably best avoided but for which there should definitely be some sort of “get out of jail free” card which you could just wave at people and then walk away.*

1. Bumping into your boss when sweaty at the gym
2. Getting into the same revolving door cubicle as someone else because you didn’t realise it was too small for two people, and having to do that awful, intimate shuffle around
3. Bumping into an ex while out with your current paramour
4. Sitting next to a talkative person on the plane when you really, really don’t want to engage
5. Spotting a colleague hasn’t done up his flies
6. Realising that the unearthly stench assaulting your nostrils comes from your friend/colleague/parent’s breath/BO/arse
7. Calling someone confidently by the wrong name when you don’t have the excuse of having just met them (e.g. friend, colleague, lover)
8. Being very underdressed at a smart function because you didn’t read the invitation carefully enough
9. Realising you’ve just bitched about someone who is related to/very dear to/married to the person you’re talking with
10. Being aurally assaulted by a racist cab driver
11. Sitting at a table at a wedding where you don’t know anyone and running out of small talk
12. Making what you thought was a funny comment, but which was actually massively inappropriate - a complete clanger - which leaves everyone staring at their fingernails

There must be more. Are there more?

* In fact, here you are: print, cut out and carry this about your person - use when you really need it.

• About Sketch Swap
  In Sketch Swap, you draw something on the screen, and when you’re finished, you hit “Submit drawing”… to receive a random drawing from someone else.
  (tags: web2.0 weird social share)
• Vyew. Share your view.
  Another one.
  (tags: collaboration web2.0 flash tools social web share)
• Sanscons
  Clearbits Sanscons is a small spinoff of the Bitcons icon set that allows for CSS-based coloring and framing. The icon design is exactly the same, the only thing missing is a background - allowing you to set it to any color you so desire.
  (tags: free webdesign icons)
• http://www.seamful.com/
  Seamful Game is a GPS and WiFi based game exploring the concept of seamfulness, in which we harness negative aspects of infrastructure technologies, which are normally concealed and unexplained, and present them as game features allowing users to explore
  (tags: GPS Mobile Game pda Games WiFi geek interesting)

I was going to further this musical meme, spotted over at Mike’s gaff, but I haven’t got the attention span at the moment to interpret the lyrics and try to manipulate them to fit the teenage-psych-test questions.

So instead, here’s my version of a meme: Musical Musings, in which I note down the first twenty songs which appear when I put my itunes player on mad shuffle, and what they make me think of, in real time.

This list, whatever it ends up being, may well be more revealing about my personality than any amount of pop-psychological internet questioning.

Or, indeed, not.

1. Station Approach - Elbow
   (first heard this a couple of weeks ago on an HMV listening post late one night after a night out in the middle of London. Went home and immediately got the album this comes from - Leaders of the Free World, which is quintessential Elbow, and quite fine with it. This is a highlight - I especially like the way it builds. It reminds me of being on a train, going somewhere you really really want to be.)
2. Perfect - Sam Shaber
   (I can honestly say I can’t remember hearing this ever before, and indeed itunes confirms that the play count is a resolute 0. I got the CD after a recommendation from a friend, and I don’t think I ever listened to it, but it got transferred to the computer when I recently went through the laborious process of digitising ALL my music - even the random albums I’d never actually listened to all the way through. It’s not bad…very mid-nineties-angry-folk-punk-vaguely-ambi-sexual-girl with guitar. This doesn’t really remind me of anything apart from being a mid-nineties-angry-folk-punk-vaguely-ambi-sexual-girl with guitar myself.)

3. Misalliance - Flanders and Swann
   (Not especially cool, but I make no apologies. I love the cheesiness of Flanders and Swann, clever smug lyrics and all. I think this is related to many long car journeys as a kid with my dad, listening to F&S At the Drop of a Hat and At the Drop of Another Hat while winding across Belgium or Germany in search of the right road. Happy days.)

4. Blue Valentines - Tom Waits
   (When I first heard Small Change, back in 1991, I was convinced Tom Waits was a decrepid old chunky black guy, especially when he sang “I’ve got a bad liver/and a broken heart”…inspection of the album cover several weeks after I first heard the album revealed that he was, in fact, a weedy-looking haggered white guy. He can write some absolutely cracking tunes, mind, and this is just one.)

5. Afrika Shox - Leftfield
   (God, this reminds me of being a student in mid-nineties Liverpool, though the album this comes from wasn’t actually released until 1999. “The millennium is coming!” Er, yeah, right. OK, then, this reminds me of working for a dot com when the millennium came and nothing whatsoever happened.)

6. Glory Box - John Martyn
   (This is one of those rare, beautiful things - a cover version that actually brings something new to the original, without overshadowing it. I liked Portishead’s original - who didn’t? - and I am rather fond of Martyn’s shambolic cover, performed in his inimitable laid-back style. Dear me, but that man is utterly fucked, isn’t he? Anything John Martyn related reminds me of an ex-boyfriend who idolised the man, but could never quite duplicate his musical panache. Also, he had both his original legs.)

7. Mercy, Mercy Me (The Ecology - Marvin Gaye
   (Marvin Gaye - coke fiend and unlikely environmentalist. Not one of his finer efforts, but chugs along pleasantly in its own early-seventies-thumping-bass-and-piano-zing-with-angelic-chorus-and-strings-and-sax-solo kind of way. Does sound an awful lot like he wrote the backing track first in a rare moment of lucid genius, and then later, utterly drug-addled, decided to lay down some lyrics, which is presumably why we end up with some gentle lalala-ing about fish and things. And the worst ending to a seventies song ever. It just sort of peters out like he can’t be bothe….)

8. Brassneck - Wedding Present
   (Excuse me while I bounce around the study. Well, I would if I had the energy I did when I used to hear this. I do remember dancing in a club to this (The Cube somewhere in West London c.late 80s, IIRC) and thinking it was funny that all the soft southern goth-indie types sounded uncomfortable shoting “Brassneck” rather than their preferred “Braaaarsneck”. And then I had another swig of warm Newcastle Brown Ale from the bottle, and got over myself.)

9. A Kind of Loneliness - Rory McLeod
   (He’s sort of an acquired taste, is Rory, but I’ve got a soft spot for this album (Footsteps and Heartbeats), even though (or perhaps because?) it relies heavily on his accent, harmonica, lack of singing finesse and storytelling to get by. It’s like a busking album, and he’s quite similar to Manu Chao in that sense. “What is madness/but a kind of loneliness/that we all have?” <insert harmonica solo here>)

10. I Love Being Here with You - Peggy Lee
    (Sometimes, right, you just can’t beat a bit of swing-era cheese. Peggy Lee knows how to deliver, alright. This one’s from the Six Feet Under Soundtrack, and is not especially representative of the show, just in case you know the song, but not the series.)

11. Sao Demais Os Perigos Desta Vida - Vincius & Toquinho
    (I have to say that - shallow as this sounds - there’s for me there’s something so insanely sexy about someone wibbling in Brazilian-flavoured Portuguese, that I’m a sucker for songs like this which have a minute or so of random chat at the front before the generic MPB guitar etc gets going. Because I speak Spanish, my understanding of Portuguese is pretty good, especially when written or spoken by people who live on the Iberian peninsular. When spoken by Brazilians, however, I’m afraid to say it sounds to me like Spanish spoken by someone with a wine-filled sponge in their mouth - all indulgent squelching and interesting labial shapes. I go weak at the knees, I tells ya.)

12. Mike Mills - Air
    (Is this really Air? Are we sure? It’s not some film music score composer creating a soundscape for the opening (closing?) credits of a flick, or perhaps the background to a scene in the middle where the girl and the boy are apart but thinking of each other - she’s on a train and he’s at his computer, maybe in his living room, and he looks up with a wistful look in his eye while she’s scribbling urgent lines on a page - a poem? Love letter? Who knows? Ahem.)

13. If Not For You - The Flatmates
    (See, there I was up above, saying how a good cover version is a rare thing, and then not (several, can’t be bothered to count) songs later comes this one. Actually, this one is a definite improvement on the original - although the singer in The Flatmates shares Dylan’s vocal ability, the production values make it sound suspiciously like it was recorded in a tin can and it sounds very much like the band get lost about halfway through. Still, it’s joyful and uplifting, and reminds me a little bit of The Housemartins. In a good way.)

14. Honeychild - Eddi Reader
    (More folky-female-guitar-driven-early-nineties-era ephemera. Gosh, I didn’t realise I had so much. Anyway. Eddi Reader. I know, she has a reputation for having a big mouth and being the screechvoice behind Perfect (which I loathed, by the way, and if I ever hear another busker intone that it’s got to be-ye-ye-ye-ye-ye-ye-ye perfect, I shall throw up into their guitar case), but here’s two things you might not know about La Reader: One, her concerts give good value for money. They go on for litereally hours. I went to see her a few years ago, and my arse is still numb. Two, this song, taken from her first solo album, Mirmama, is actually quite good. Three, and you get this one for free because you’re nice and you’re still reading, this song (and in fact the whole album) reminds me of sitting on a train between Liverpool and Edinburgh, speeding through the dark, guiltily not doing my course reading, zooming up to see my then boyfriend (not yet a swine, though time would tell) and wearing his ugly leather jacket. The memory lives within the song, though the sentiment in the song is bittersweet - “clouds from chimneys rise/there’s something wild and free/that river always runs/away from here/and you and me”)

15. St. Swithin’s Day - Billy Bragg
    (Have we reached 20 yet? Damned LI tags. No clue. Anyway, this song is one of my all-time favourites. I was - I still am - moved by its simplicity and tenderness, layed out in stark contrast to Billy’s (ahem) rough delivery. “The polaroids that hold us together/will surely fade away/Like the love that we spoke of forever/on St Swithin’s Day” Bless him, the boy can write a good lyric.)

16. Sit Down You’re Rocking The Boat - Guys And Dolls cast
    (Oh dear. Musicals. That’s not really forgivable in these enlightened too-cool-for-school days, is it? Still, When I was (insert young impressionable age) I somehow won some tickets to see the National Theatre production of G&D and enjoyed it SO MUCH that I somehow managed to persuade at least one parent to take me again, and buy the soundtrack, to boot, which I would then sing along to. Frequently. Loudly. I haven’t done that for years, but apparently I still know all the words. Take my word for it. The neighbours can testify to the veracity of this statement.)

17. For Real - Tricky
    (Tricky’s a …um…tricky one. (See what I did there?) On one hand, I liked Maxinquaye, and think he’s done some interesting things over the years. On the other hand, I’m never really in the mood to listen to him. Complicated.)

18. She Cries Your Name - Beth Orton
    (Now, Beth Orton can’t sing - that much is abundantly clear. Both of her first (and for all I know, only) two albums were slightly atonal throughout. Despite having a good crack at songwriting, she still seems to bark the songs out a little bit flat. This song, however, I have a soft spot for, because it reminds me strongly of sitting in Trading Places cafe, round the back of Bold Street in Liverpool, drinking pot after pot of strong tea (and for �1.50 a pot, you couldn’t go wrong), trying to find inspiration to write an essay/read coursebooks/get over hangover with my flatmate and best mate at uni, C, while eating yummy salads which, if memory serves, always involved a lot of grated carrot for some reason. They played this song on permaloop for a few months, and it just sort of got lodged in my brain, as firmly as carrot slivers between the teeth.)

19. One Tree Hill - U2
    (When Joshua Tree came out, I nearly died of happiness. An album full of songs I a) liked and b) could play on guitar and c) had the infernally sexy Larry Mullen Jr drumming on them. Times change, as do opinions, and these days I’m not quite so keen on the JT songs, can’t strum for toffee, and find LMJ a bit craggy looking. Listening to the lyrics of OTH now, I realise that despite singing along to them all those years ago, I didn’t have a clue how very convoluted they were. So, er, there you go.)

20. Stabat Mater - VII. Eja, Mater - June Anderson, Cecilia Bartoli, Charles Dutoit, Sinfonietta De Montreal
    (I love the Pergolesi Stabat Mater. I first heard this in Canada, writing like crazy for the EE part of my IB. I taped it off a friend and listened to it round and round and round as I worked through the night on the one college computer, writing about ritual and identity in Nigeria, until I started to hear word-patterns in the music that weren’t there. Specifically, a passage about someone having “lovely trainers”. I suspect it was at about that point that I decided I needed bed.)

I fully admit that I skipped forward over several songs which came up during this assortment, but couldn’t be arsed to listen to at the time (Bon Jovi, Philip Glass, Wyclef Jean, bunch of Bill Hicks live comedy tracks which are notoriously difficult to type to). You didn’t miss much, though.

If you can think of any imperative song titles, I’d appreciate it - Anna and I were trying to form a definitive list in the pub the other night…

1. Don’t Leave Me This Way
2. Walk Like An Egyptian
3. Get Out Of My Dreams (Get Into My Car)
4. Give Me a Reason
5. Don’t Turn Around
6. Please Please Me
7. Touch Me In The Morning
8. Lady (Hear Me Tonight)
9. Stop Crying Your Heart Out
10. Shout
11. Come on Eileen (comma independent)
12. Get Here
13. Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick
14. Take On Me
15. Beat It
16. Don’t Dream It’s Over
17. Jump Around
18. Don’t Smoke In Bed
19. Sail Away
20. Dance The Night Away
21. Come Back
22. Come Get Me
23. Wake Me Up (Before You Go Go)