Hello. I'm Mr Eugenides. I'm 9 months old and live on top of a hill in northern Greece.

At the minute, I'm working in a restaurant with a bunch of lovely, funny people; writing a blog; writing bits for Skins; spending any sort of money I earn on nappies and puréed food, and drinking my way to a financially blighted two-month trip to the Peloponnese. Clichéd I know, but clichés are there for a reason.

I'm kinda shitting myself about doing this blog. Well not so much the blogging part. It's the Guardian commenters that scare me. The sarky ones, the nutcases, the stalkers, the Zionists. Don't get me wrong, I'm excited. But shitting myself. And I just know that when I finally hit "publish" - well, actually, I don't know how I'll react.


If you don't have any idea what that heavy-handed spoof opening is aimed at, you've clearly been in a cave these past few days. Some backstory, then.

The Guardian published a truly life-affirming travel blog on Thursday from "Max, 19", who was off to India for a gap-year trip. Max was, in some people's view - let us choose our words with care - a bit of a twat. And so, 500 breathtakingly negative comments later, Max is a much chastened young man and the Internet has a new, and entirely unwilling, star.

The original blog is here, the travel editor's post the next day defending Max from another 500 slavering commenters is here, and the pompous article in today's Observer titled "Hate mail hell of a gap-year blogger" and complete with ludicrously over-the-top quotes from Max's dad Paul Gogarty (an occasional travel writer for the, er, Guardian) is here:

"It's all so bitter and full of bile. The exposure is terrifying," said Gogarty Snr. "He's out in India on his own. We were all feeling upset at him going away anyway. But this...this tsunami of hate. We just cannot believe it."

There's plenty more where that came from, Paul. But since hate is such a destructive emotion, let's start with something fluffy and uncontroversial: the War on Terror.

This week marked five years since the great anti-war protest of February 2003. Anti-war bloggers are holding a "blogswarm" to commemorate the anniversary. The Flying Rodent muses on why protests like that of five years back don't, ultimately, cause governments to alter course, and Chicken Yoghurt has a typically thoughtful post with a provocative pay-off line:

Iraq was better off under Saddam Hussein. There were other options than killing so many and then giving the country, inch by inch, to murderers and fundamentalists. If you disagree, then I only have one thing to say to you: I don’t believe you.

On a related note, Small Differences has some harsh words for a new report that suggested that our problem in this country is that, "as a fragmenting post-Christian society", we present ourselves as a target to "the Islamist terrorist enemy" because we "lack self-confidence". Perhaps spray-painting crucifixes onto our Tomahawk missiles is the solution?

Christianity is in the news all right. (It is, of course, Lent, in case you had forgotten. What are you giving up?) The Rowan Williams storm blows on, and bloggers continue to trade opinions.

Amused Cynicism had a rather neat way of defining what beliefs we should privilege, and which we should not. Sunny Hundal was unimpressed with the BBC's reporting of the story. And there were two humorous takes; a splendid account of Dr Williams' travails as reported by our man in Canterbury, Geoffrey Chaucer; and a hilarious comment (if perhaps inadvertently so) from a caller to Radio 5, as noted by Stephen Pollard.

But say what you like about Sharia law, it would certainly make Paul McCartney's life easier.

To this Scottish blogger in a Greek baby's body (metaphorically speaking), the C of E is the very quintessence of Englishness, as this vignette from Unmitigated England illustrates beautifully. That said, some time spent in leafy Surrey as a child means that the old "D Stock" trains of the District Line evoke a particular time and place in my life very powerfully. They were taken out of service this week, as it happens, and are lamented by the Diamond Geezer in a fine post.

Paul Linford was looking for something slightly different: songs that evoke England for you. This was his take, and that of Liberal England. On a slightly broader canvas, there is a splendidly downbeat consideration of this dystopian Britain of ours at Earthquake Cove.

A couple of posts from a feminist perspective: when is an Oscar-nominated female screenwriter a controversial icon for women? When she goes by the splendid name of Diablo Cody and she's a former stripper, obviously. (The film's worth seeing too, by the way.) Meanwhile, Penny Red has some thoughts on violent pornography.

Which brings me neatly on to my Valentine's Day. I thought my Thursday was crap, but at least I'm not in Saudi Arabia. Olly's Onions agrees that the whole miserable farrago should be banned. And, on a rather different tack, if you've ever plagiarised a poem to impress your sweetheart, you're not the first; it was going on in the 17th Century.

I couldn't let the Britblog Roundup pass without giving the government a sly kick. Love & Liberty considers the government's plans for high culture classes for schools: "Airstrip One done as a school play" (love it). Meanwhile, David Boyle considers the disastrous effect of Post Office closures on the local economy. And Matt Wardman has some words of solace for my sweet, Wendy Alexander, as the Scottish Labour leader faces her latest troubles.

Green issues are always prominently featured on the Britblog Roundup; Graham Harvey considers the underhand tactics to which GM companies are allegedly stooping. And there's a blog from the Greens' Spring Conference, too.

Finally, a plethora of blog posts which don't fit neatly into any one category but are, nonetheless, worth a moment or two of your day.

If you live in West Hampstead, here's a blog on local issues. Had some very good hummus in West Hampstead once. That's really the only opinion I have on the place.

A thorny topic; due to high rates of intermarriage among cousins, some sections of the Pakistani community experience far more birth defects than the national average. The Stop Honour Killings blog links this practice to that of arranged marriages and considers what can be done. Well worth reading, this one.

A diagram for stupid Eurosceptics (as if there's any such thing).

And how much stupidity is inherited? A genetics expert looks at the idea of heritability, and how far our characteristics come from our genes.

It will take 75 years, at present rates of progress, for ethnic minorities to be properly represented in Parliament. Meral's Musings has the story.

Susanne Lamido relates a truly shocking story from the US about a policewoman who dumped a quadriplegic out of a wheelchair to search him after a traffic violation:



Last, but by no means least, what would be in your ideal western literary canon? Dave Cole has some interesting suggestions. My tuppence' worth: if you're going to put Abraham Lincoln's speeches in there, I'd say you have to add Churchill, too. And the Eumenides and Euripides are all well and good, but reader, if you do nothing else this week, add Eugenides to your bookmarks. Accept no substitutes.

Until next time, then, as the man said: Toodle-Pip!