And there was me thinking I was going to have a quiet, relaxing Saturday

And who could blame me because with my dad promising to be out of the house all day if I woke up late enough I could have for once woken up without first having to fight the urge to kill.

Sadly though I woke up too early and was soon thrust into the latest edition of the Keith suicide saga. While I may not have mentioned Keith by name before you will all known him because Keith is that acquaintance of mine who looked a bit like David Abraham of the Labour party funding scandal and dared to offer a friend of mine a job in his company. Obviously this grave challenge of authority could not go unpunished and shortly afterwards local government filed a bankruptcy petition against Keith for the princely sum of £17,000.

Normally under these circumstances there is a period of negotiation before a bankruptcy petition is filed. As Keith could quite easily have settled such a small debt by selling of his Rolls Royce or one of the other parts of his car collection the government obviously couldn't take the risk of this happening and instead decided to go for the jugular.

As is standard practice in these matters as soon as one petition for bankruptcy is filed all other creditors also make petitions so in the space of four months Keith has gone from having a property portfolio worth about £3 -4 million, a collection of cars and a spice girl for a neighbour to being penniless, homeless and jobless.

Needless to say that on Thursday Keith decided to kill himself by slitting his wrists and doing a bit of a David Kelly - named after the now infamous weapons inspector who died at the hands of the British security services favourite weapon of choice. The hands off assassination whereby rather then directly killing the target they merely create the conditions in which the target kills themselves. It was something I experienced for myself over the weekend of the Beslen massacre and is worth noting if you're in the business and it suddenly feels as though everything is crashing down around you.

So since Friday me and my mate have been playing a fun game of "Is he going to die?" followed by a swift round of "Is he going to get sectioned?". Yesterday we found out that no he's not going to die and yes he most certainly is going to get sectioned. This meant I spent most of the day trying to bring my mate up to speed on the entire mental health system while providing a sympathetic ear and trying to makes jokes out of the pure comedy that is the pain and misery of someone trying to take their own life. These tasks were obviously made much easier by a phone service which kept fading and cutting out.

Now I know it sounds callous but I'm more then a little bit pissed off at having to pick up the pieces on this one not least because politically and ideologically Keith and I are polar opposites but pick up the pieces we must because lord knows the health services are able too. Not that should be considered in anyway a criticism of the ground level staff because I actually know many of those who will be involved and Keith couldn't be in better hands but they now as well as I do that they are woefully underfunded and led by civil servants who seem to think the best way to solve the problem of different departments not communicating is to slash everyone's budget by 5% and use the money to set up a "bridging agency". Presumably so those working for what now must be known as a "Bridgend agency" can run around pretending they work in the media.

Then I had to deal with the new claim pack I'd been sent by the DWP which appears to have been sent in error because I contacted them on March 25th about renewing my claim. However they failed to dispatch the renewal pack so time was wasted ans my claim ended on April 10th which is one hell of a coincidence because that is exactly the date on which I phoned them to complain. If I was a suspicious person I would think that someone had hacked into their computer system and changed the date but that couldn't possibly happen because that would be a criminal offence and as we all know the British Government couldn't possibly act unlawfully.

Filling out the massive form itself wasn't much of a problem because I just copied out exactly what I wrote the last time because apparently if you don't treat medical conditions they don't just magically get better on their own. In looking over my records though I did discover a letter which clearly stated that my existing claim which allegedly ended on April 10th in fact doesn't end until May 31st 2008 which is all very odd when you consider that payments on the claim ended in early March.

After that tedium I caught up in my reading before the thunder storm came down and my brain went in to neutral. It was at this point my dad returned from his tough afternoon watching football and asked me one simple question;

"Have you been to see your grandmother yet?"

To which I replied "No, I've been a bit busy".

He then went over to see my grandmother and came back announcing that she had an errand that needed doing so I better go and do it. Obviously he couldn't possibly do it himself because he had to go out drinking with his friends and why should he delay that after all his mother losing her door keys and getting locked out wasn't a good enough reason for him to delay his jollies.

So I went over to see her and the first thing she said to me was;

"Why did you tell dad you'd been to see me?"

So I said;

"I didn't"

So she said;

"But he says you did"

So I replied;

"Well then he's lying" while the internal monologue continued "Of course he lied, he's pissed off at the discovery that in fact no I'm not here to act as a skivvy to help him shirk his responsibilities to his mother."

After a bit more less hostile conversation I discovered that the reason she was so wound up was because some girl had gone missing in South Wales and was believed to be in Croydon. So some random had phoned her up to ask her what she knew about as if the people of Croydon were somehow meant to mobilise to look for her when as with Shannon Matthews the state could find her any second they wanted too.

After running the errand, having a bit of dinner and another couple of phone calls about the finer points of the mental health act I caught a bit of the news about what is going on in Zimbabwe. That news is not good because it appears that rather then being men and accepting that their attempt at regime change not only failed but failed miserably the British and American "intelligence" agencies appear to be pulling every lever, shaking down every witness and intimidating every player in what can only be considered and attempt to provoke a violent confrontation between MDC and Zanu PF supporters. This is obviously a very good idea because confrontations between disorganised, malnourished civilians and government backed militias worked so well for the civilians in Darfur and as Iraq has proved to us nothing helps nation building like the warm glue of sectarian hatred.

The only highlight of it all was Gordon Brown in grave and threatening tones that the eyes of the world were watching Zimbabwe and patience was wearing thin while demanding that the violence and intimidation stopped immediately.

Personally I thought the only response to this was to take Brown to one side and explain to him that it was his own staff that seem so keen on violence and intimidation and if he wants it to end all he needs to do is call them into his office and read them the riot, or perhaps the treason, act.

Mr Mugabe however, on being told of Mr Brown's "orders" simply responded;

"Brown is the world? Sure the world is losing patience but I now Brown is just a little tiny dot on this world."

So I have to admit I am warming to the man by the minute.