I am getting my nails done. I am a big man with shaggy hair and a beard and I am getting my nails done and drinking glass after glass of red wine because Nintendo wants to sell more games and they figure this is the best way to do it. This is my job. Technically. Part of my job. Probably my favourite part. Read More >>

So it’s official -- with the news that HMV has gone into administration, very soon we’ll have no way of buying music on the high street. While I feel bad for those affected by the closures that are set to come, forgive me if I don’t shed a tear for the demise of HMV (and with it the last of the big record stores). As my fellow commenter Eadingas phrased it in a previous Spiels From "Them Below", “The high street electronics store as we know it is dying, and not a day too soon.” As a music fan and musician, I feel the same way about high street music retail. Read More >>

Like most journalists everywhere, I am hungover. I am sat in the basement of a hotel on the outskirts of Munich; the sort of hotel that must have sprung up fully-formed overnight, a massive swelling of glittering commerce emerging from the abandoned building sites and car parks and motorways that ring the city. I am here for the launch of a new tablet. Panasonic are launching a new tablet computer for the business market. I am not a tech journalist. I have never done this before. I don’t know what’s going on. Read More >>

I've only ever been on the other side of an administration; I'm normally the one getting up early to try and get 20 per cent off a TV or a few Xbox games for cheap. This year, for 2013, I'm the one in the firing line. Approximately one hour before I was meant to close my store, I was informed of the news not by my manager, not even by my area manager, but by Sky News. My employer, Jessops incase you hadn't already guessed, was in administration with PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. Read More >>

You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than a UK electronics store. We've all been there. The stench of mouldy '80s carpet. The constantly-whining theft alarms. The cheap plastic pedestals which seem to bio-degrade in your hands. The display phones and tablets without Wi-Fi connection; cameras with depleted batteries; everything thrown around on the shelves seemingly at random, like cars being sold by some deranged salesman who decided to take out the wheels and engines and scatter them all around the showroom in the least convenient way possible. Read More >>

Sorry for the long stretch between columns; it's been tough work recalling some of the going-ons from my stint behind bars. Our cell had been fine apart from the smelly kid who for all intents and purposes had lost the plot; he was taken out of the cell and this in turn led to a new cellmate, an older lag who seemed comfortable in his new surroundings instantly, crashing onto his new bunk and shifting things about to make space for himself. Read More >>

"Hey Matt", I heard a familiar voice behind me. It was Pete, rudely interrupting a veritable feast, served on the finest flatware money can buy. Okay, so it was a slightly floppy BLT sandwich on a paper plate, but nonetheless. Read More >>

Most weeks in the comments here, there are comparisons made between cannabis and alcohol, and admittedly, it is a simple comparison to make: They both have effects on behaviour and mental state in one form or another, after all. Read More >>

As we entered the police station, I was sure I was about to get a warning -- most likely a night in the holding cell, I figured. To be honest, after the hours of arguing, and the two days' drinking, sniffing and smoking, I was looking forward to some relaxation. Read More >>

Starving, I was, after a horrendously long morning where every attempt at getting some food down my gullet was scuppered by chance. The timing was so bad, that I decided to do an experiment. Read More >>

If you're out with a friend and he advises you on what pair of trainers to buy, does he then have a right to those trainers? Can he borrow them? No of course he can’t; being in the shop with a mate does not mean you are buying them together. So why is it that if you buy something big (a sofa and arm chair, let's say) with a woman you are sleeping with, does she think her advice constitutes a percentage share of the purchase? Read More >>

It's godawfully early in the morning, and I've been up for several hours already. The one good think about ridiculous shift patterns, I suppose, isn't necessarily that you get any better at waking up at all silly hours of the day, but that you do get better at having at least some of your faculties when you're operating in a sleepy daze. Read More >>

"You've got to be... I mean... On my way," I blurt into my radio, as we're called to a silent alarm at a warehouse for the third time in a shift. Read More >>

Before I get on with the main body of the column I would like to comment on Drugs Live: The Ecstasy Trial, which we saw last week on channel 4. Was Chris Morris creating havoc with a new Brass Eye series; I'm still none too sure. Read More >>

If you thought 'having a case of the Mondays' was bad, you should try dragging yourself out of bed at 4am to make it to work and into uniform for 6am after four days off. Our shift patterns have always been a bit nutty, but the pattern we are on at the moment is actually pretty decent -- in theory, we're six days on, four days off. In practice, we're often six days on, one day on secondment or similar, and three days off. The upside is that we do, indeed, occasionally get four delicious days off on the trot. Read More >>