I’ve just been watching a programme on the telly called 60 Minute Makeover or something like that (I was actually making a coffee and sandwich when it started, so I’m not 100% on the title). Anyway, the gist of the show is that some people who are fed up with the state of their houses get in this team of decorating experts and they give a number of rooms a complete makeover in 60 minutes.

It’s a misty Monday morning as I write my column this month. I just travelled up to London on the train and read the morning papers on my iPhone on the way (I know, how cool is that?). When I got into my office, there was a note on my desk waiting for me that said ‘Urgent! Don’t forget to do your PM column; it’s overdue (again!) and they’re going mental!’. So I’m writing it now with as much asap as possible.

Fortunately, I’ve got something to write about (that always helps) because I read so many interesting things in the papers this morning. To start with, I was fascinated to read in The Times about their spelling bee competition. I must admit that my first thought was along the lines of ‘How difficult can that be?’ and, ‘What will they do in the event of a draw?’ and stuff like that. I mean, bee’s not such a difficult word to spell, is it? But as it turns out, the term ‘spelling bee’ is kind of a well-known way of describing a spelling competition. I didn’t know that.

I read somewhere that we’ve all got a novel in us; so I decided to write my one out. You never know, I could be the next Dan Brown; stranger things have happened. Apparently most first-time would-be authors (these days I like to count myself among that number) end up writing thinly veiled stories about themselves. As I knew that from the outset I decided I wouldn’t be so coy about it and I deliberately set out to write about the life of a pensions expert amid the tumultuous changes being wrought on the pension system at the close of the 20th century and the dawn of the 21st. To be honest, I think it’s got everything a novel could ask for: a real human interest story set against a background of tremendous social change and political intrigue. Also, as it was going to be about me anyway, I decided that I’d be the hero.

I don’t know about you, but I’m into myths and legends. I think in the past people felt the need to invent mythological characters and events to help them explain the otherwise unexplainable world they found themselves in. You can see how dancing to invoke a rain god might seem sensible if the mother of all rainstorms in the past had happened to coincide with a big tribal dance of some kind. The human mind is pretty good at putting together two and two and coming up with five.

“Thanks for seeing me at such short notice doctor.”

Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, in May 1997 to be precise, a lady called Harriet Harman was the secretary of state for social security. That meant she was in charge of our pension system. A man called Frank Field was the minister of state for welfare reform at the same time. That meant he was in charge of pensions too (we always have two people in charge of our pensions).

Ever since I got into all this Twitter stuff on the internet, I’ve been introduced to all kinds of studies and reports on the subject. It’s quite fascinating. In the world of Twitter I’m known as PensionsGuru, by the way – something I’m sure won’t surprise you. I have to say it did surprise me, though, that the monicker was available when I applied for it. I came to Twitter relatively late and PensionsGuru is a name you’d have thought would have been snapped up ages ago, wouldn’t you? I thought I’d be PensionsGuru37985 or something like that, but no, there it was waiting for me, unclaimed.

Well, I thought I’d heard everything; so it just goes to show I guess. I was reading in the paper the other day about a chap called Henry Allingham. You may have heard of him; he’s broken some important records lately and is hopefully showing us all how to do the same.

Apparently some of the oldest words that we use in the English language have been identified by evolutionary biologists working out of Reading University and using some fairly whizzy computation and whatnot. Believe it or not, the four most ancient words still in use in everyday English are ‘I’, ‘we’, ‘two’ and ‘three’.

I’ve just been reading about a new film that’s out called The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. It’s a weird film and is apparently based on a short story by F Scott Fitzgerald. The story is about a guy, Benjamin Button, whose life sort of runs in reverse; he’s born as a wrinkled 80-year-old man with the mind of an infant and, after getting ever more physically younger throughout his life, eventually dies as an infant with a mind confused through dementia. As I said, it’s pretty weird.

I’m pretty much into all this science stuff that pops up in the media these days. You know the kind of thing; the Large Hadron Collider, the Hubble telescope and all that.