After the dullness of double taxation treaties and the horrors of certain environmental doom, I am determined to be upbeat and, er bubbly. Just don't say G8 to me. Don't say it... don't...

Quick, think positive! OK. Firstly I have had a very enjoyable evening at the Savile Club, where women are still a thing to be - feared? rejected? avoided? something or other, because women are still not allowed to be members. Whatever: the Savile Club was just the venue for a really lovely evening. Hmm, that went from positive to not-so-positive very quickly. Try again...

Ah! I have very positive things to say about a very specific set of books. Those books are my open university course books. Oh, how I love them.

Firstly, they arrive every eight weeks or so in a thrillingly chunky brown package. Brown packages! Don't get more exciting than that, no siree. Each year(ish)-long course has its own set of specially-written books. They form a set. The covers go and look good on the shelves. Lovely. They are a good size for reading in the bath (sorry, Mark) and have decent margins for writing in.

Overall, they are a million miles away from the turgid, badly written nonsense I had to struggle through as a younger student. Finally, finally now I realise that it's the writers that had the problem, not me. I thought I was the stupid one for not being able to follow tortured, incoherent, jargon-stuffed sentences. If only I'd skipped GCSEs and A levels, and my regular degree, and gone straight from the 11plus to the OU. I could have fitted 3 degrees in by the time I was 21, and it would have been so much more enjoyable!

I would recommend OU course books even if you're not doing a degree. You can buy them from bookstores. This one is particularly good.

I am doing an OU degree because I have this mental image of myself at 45, wearing silk gloves and having excellent posture and skin tone, and being utterly knowledgeable about everything. I have to admit that there is what one might call a chasm between that future me and the person I am at the moment. Hence the learning. And hell, if I can fit it in, whilst running a business full time, socialising at men-only clubs and fist-fighting the rest of the time, then you can too.