Modern telly output - I'm a Celebrity, X Factor, and the preposterously camp and narcissistic 'Strictly' - are so superficial, so infantile. If those confections represent mainstream culture now - then the berks who run TV can shove it up their backsides, frankly.

What does give me a buzz, however, is running performance poetry clubs in Liverpool and Wirral. You get such a mix of oratorical talent and poetic moods at these events, plus some good singers too. Now THAT'S entertainment!

Last night (21 November) I enjoyed MC-ing at the LIVER BARDS - the Liverpool poetry open-mic I run with the award-winning poet Dave Costello in the elegant and spacious concert room of Liverpool's best pub, the Ship & Mitre.

It's been Mood Swing City on Planet Regan in recent days.

Don't know why - possibly a side-effect of some medication I'm taking for watery eyes.

It's not that my life is particularly stressful or anything - and socially things are quite lively.

But I am a Celt, after all, so I do have a Celt's natural disposition towards melancholy - and being so immersed in the local poetry scene isn't exactly a mood-lightener either.

A decadent Tuesday night, it was, as I went off to see The Inbetweeners movie - the first time I'd been to the flicks in years.

First I had to drive to Seacombe to pick up my date for the evening - the lovely Blondie.

I was running late as I rushed to my car only to be stopped in my tracks by a young Scottish guy who'd seen how tatty the long pathway to my front door was looking and wanted me to hire him to "tarmac" it.

"Ta, MacLad", I said, "but this is not a good time! I'm a rushing to pick up the girl and take her to the pictures."

It bitterly disappoints me that the response to the riots by the law enforcement and justice arms of our country has been one of posturing, simplistic overreaction.

The jailing of two young men from Cheshire for four years for inciting disorder through Facebook is excessive and profoundly unjust.

I don't pretend to know anything substantial about the backgrounds of the men concerned, who are aged 21 and 22, but let's be clear they've been jailed for inciting a riot that never actually took place.

Could it be that they were simply silly young men, caught up in the dark excitement of the riots and in thrall to the unthinking, facile nature of digital communications networks? I think that probably is the case. I think that's the case for thousands, probably millions, of young people these days. It doesn't mean that two young men should be sentenced to jail with such unseemly haste.

While commuting I see far too many lorries for the giant "bread factories" which are such an unwelcome feature of British industry - "Kingsmill" etc.

I use "bread factories" because they can't really be called bakeries. Bakers should be local, offering fresh bread to their communities without dragging loaves hundreds of miles across the country by lorry then letting the ruthless brigands of the supermarket industry offload them to daft shoppers.

I hardly ever buy bread in supermarkets - because it is invariably squashed, underbaked and tasteless.

Honestly, the way we sell, shop and consume in this country is wrong on so many levels - environmentally, in terms of social justice, and by failing to encourage independent local enterprise.

The past ten months or so have been rather difficult for me. I've had to cope with two events which have battered my heart and caused me to question, rather seriously, my attitude to and trust in ... everything.

The events to which I refer are too personal to give details about here, but I guess they are no different to the things that most people have to endure at various points in their lives. You simply pick yourself up and get on with your personal adventures on this ball of rock and lava that whizzes though space.

Anyway, last night as 10 o'clock approached I was walking, alone with my thoughts and my camera, on New Brighton beach, bathed in the calm of what Bruce Springsteen once memorably called "God's falling light"...

Are people becoming a little 'Facebook facile' in their real-life, face-to-face communications?

It's just a thought, but increasingly people are losing the art of conversation. They can't chat; can't interact.

All some folk want to do is empty their thoughts into your face. They do not allow for interjection; they are not, it seems, interested in you - or what you might think of anything.

Some blonde fluffhead of a showbiz "reporter" on Sky News last night told the viewers (all 30 of them!) that the latest Pirates of the Caribbean film was the "fourth in the trilogy" . Doh!

I've never really understood why female telly "journalists" think it appropriate to act all gooey and thick when they meet film actors. Though maybe the Sky girlie last night wasn't just pretending ...

All those red carpet premiere events really ought to be treated by journalists with cool disdain for what they are - cynical marketing ploys which the actors find a bore to do.

I'm feeling thoroughly jaded by all the dizzy, ditzy digital communication flashing around the world - then along comes an event that is unchanging, dignified and profound ...

Yes, voting in elections in this country is so VERY LOW TECH - and all the better for it. Just you, a booth, a bit of paper and a pen. Seemples! I indicated with an X who I want elected to the Death Star that is the Wirral Council (well, everything it touches crumbles and dies) .

And then I put an X on the other question, some nonsense about changing the voting system which I, like most of the country, chose to interpret as this question: Do you approve / not approve of the irritating berk Nick Clegg? Now that's what I call a no-brainer!

But I really do need to get with the beat digitally speaking, because I need to set up my own personal website. Why? Well read on ...

I wish Coronation Street would get back to what it does best - great character-driven philosophical comedy-drama, rather than the mad storylines of recent months.

The tension between Sally and Kevin is probably the only bit of action anchored in any sort of reality just now.

And Sally, in dissing Kevin so acidly recently, paid a sort of tribute to the marvellous town where I live, New Brighton - once the leading seaside resort in Northern England.

Sally suggested that Kevin move far, far away from her: "Australia, New Zealand - New Brighton would be good!"