I noticed Mike was ranting on about the letter N for seemingly no apparent reason, other than it’s one of those bloggy meme things, so I thought I’d join in. Anyway, leaving a comment on his site qualifies me to be given a letter, and as I’d spend half of the comment declaring how round letters are rubbish and angular letters are just, like, the bee’s knees, he’s given me T to play with. So here we go.

1. Tracey. What can I say? She’s my wife, the mother of my two boys and we’ve been together about five years, and I love her to bits. Will that do?
2. A nice cup of Tea. As a restorative, pick me up, goodness me I’ve had a hard day and need to put my feet up for a few minutes, you cannot whack it.
3. The Tardis. Simply the finest pan-dimensional transport ever created, bar none. Although I did like the Master’s one…
4. Truffle Oil. I’m not entirely sure what this is to be honest, but I’ve been out for a meal at Rooftop Restaurant at the Baltic and for starters I had beef tortellini (singular) on a bed of mushroom risotto with truffle oil. I never did identify where the truffle oil was to be found. The food was very nice and not too ridiculously overpriced – if you order off the price fixee menu, although personally when I order a main course, I don’t expect to have to buy the vegetables separately. And that’s not because I’m some oaf who doesn’t appreciate fine cuisine – although that may also be true – but more because I’m paying enough money for the damn meal, how hard is it for you to chuck on a few veg? I mean, three quid for six baby potatoes. I ask you…
5. The Time Tunnel. It’s one of the exhibitions at the Baltic at the moment, and basically it’s a big rusty-looking pipe that you walk through with loads of tellies set into the walls. I’m sure it’s very arty, but as I’m a man, there was one major thing lacking from all the tellies and it was of course…
6. Teletext, or Ceefax if you’re that way inclined. Yes, the text based news and sports service for when you’re not really watching the telly, you’re only half-listening to it but you absolutely must know to the minute when Carlisle manage to score against Grimsby. For some reason this tends not to appeal to women as much.
7. The Trafalgar. It’s a pub in the centre of Gateshead, right near the metro station that doesn’t look the most salubrious from the outside. It probably falls very much into the spit-and-sawdust category. Nevertheless, it’s pleasantly cheap and myself and a couple of colleagues visit it a couple of times a week on a lunchtime to drink cokes – yes, I’m afraid so, it’s the growing old and getting responsible thing – and play on the quiz machine.
8. Transfer Speculation. Yes, it’s the end of season and all us football addicts are gasping for a fix, and I’m sorry but the World Cup isn’t on for ages yet and even when it is, it’s not like I care about England as much as I do about Newcastle so all I’ve got to keep me going through the long barren summer is the transfer speculation. So far, we’ve been linked according to different media sources with Sol Campbell, Robert Huth, Pascal Chimbonda, Arjen Robben, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Dirk Kuyt, Marcus Bent. I’ll just be interested to see if by the time the transfer window closes I could name an XI (playing 4-4-2) of people we were linked with and didn’t sign. And of course Michael Owen has been linked with Liverpool, James Milner to Aston Villa etc.
9. Toes (broken). Or at least that’s what they used to be called. Now of course it’s a metatarsal, isn’t it? Or does it make you sound like an itsy-bitsy snooky-wookums with a tummyache if it’s a broken toe? Frankly I’m beginning to wish Sven would just drop Wayne Rooney without waiting for the scan result as the constant drip, drip of metatarsal this and Wayne Rooney that is really starting to get on my bloody nerves. Okay?
10. Temujin. Also known as Ghengis Khan. I was going to write about Turkmenistan because although I know next to nothing about it and have no connections with it, I thought it might be nice to have a place on this list, and for some bizarre reason this was the first that popped into my head. However, when I looked it up, I discovered that it had been conquered by Ghengis Khan, whom I represented in a balloon debate, at the age of about 15. Basically, you have to argue why the other people should be thrown out of the balloon and you should be allowed to live. I was working on the principle that hey, I was just a misunderstood guy who was just having a bad day when I gave the order for entire cities to be slaughtered – but we all have bad days, don’t we? Oh, and my descendant Kublai built a pleasure dome long before Frankie Goes To Hollywood were around, which was kinda cool doncha think? And I won, beating Superman, Spock from Star Trek, Emily Pankhurst and about three others. So I’ve kind of got a bit of a soft spot for the old bloodthirsty warlord.

So there you go, that’s my ten. As per Mike’s rules – if you want a letter post a comment and I’ll give you one. And a letter, fnarr fnarr.