Hello! it's nice to be back after nearly 7 months of inactivity here at Mankind Sucks. 2009 was a strange year, one in which I completely lost all control of my life. And one of the things to suffer from that was this site and all its various content.

2009 was the year the recession really hit me personally and pretty much slammed the door on all personal projects, while I lived a life of near poverty. Good fun! And while the writing was on the wall for the year to come back in December of 2008, I still resolutely launched a new show, "So Sue Me", and tried to make it a regular thing. As the hideous year progressed, this became more and more difficult, as I had to scrounge harder and harder for shitty jobs that payed a fraction of what they had a year before. Such is the life of an independent contractor.

So 2009 sucked, except in one way. Socially it was a great year, perhaps the greatest in a long, long time. I made many new friends locally as we watched our tiny intimate Twitter-based social media group grow into something much bigger and more multi-faceted. And most importantly, I met a very special lady, whom I have now invited to blog here at Mankind Sucks.

So, as all of this simpering pathetic shit you have just read is nothing but a preamble for my introduction of Sonia Diamond, I should probably get to the fucking point.

Sonia and I met on Twitter last summer. She was a local Tunbridge Wells lunatic who tweeted about brushing her lips and going on holiday with her pet slugs. I adored her from moment one and so did my daughter, Hannah, whom I enthusiastically shared Sonia's tweets with. As she was an aspiring standup comedian, I thought Sonia – ridiculously, as I'd never met or even spoken to her – might be a great host for a new podcast I was planning at the time. I approached her about this via Twitter and received a resoundingly negative response. In fact, as I later learned, she was considering blocking me because of it. And although she decided against this course of action, she did attempt to avoid me on Twitter for some time, until my irresistible wit and boundless charm eventually won her over. No, her aversion to the podcast idea had nothing to do with me being an annoying pest bordering on the perverse. More likely, it had to do with the fact that she is one of the most paranoid people I have ever met. But that's another story, one which she herself might like to tell.

In any case, after a month of Direct Messaging on Twitter, Sonia and I decided to meet in person. I guess we were both a bit nervous, owing to the fact that we'd grown quite fond of each other and didn't want to be disappointed or to disappoint. Sonia dealt with this by ingesting enough alcohol to sedate a male elephant seal, before meeting with me. I dealt with it by starting smoking again after being clean for 22 months. Yes, we both behaved like a couple of twats, but that is the prerogative and probably the inevitability of those falling in love. (Of course we didn't realise this at the time.) At the end of the day we hit it off in real life that first night and Sonia had a much worse hangover than me.

We started seeing each other frequently after that. Sonia first initiated sexual contact with me a week after that first meeting (our 4th "date"), at a music festival in the Pantiles, here in T-Wells. Her advances were unsubtle and unambiguous, and executed in front of hundreds of witnesses. When I responded positively, she smacked me in the face and looked affronted and shocked. It was then that I realised that NOTHING with this woman was ever going to be normal. I vowed then that, regardless of whether things worked out for us sexually (it looked doubtful that evening), I would somehow collaborate with this brilliant, imaginative, eccentric, delightful and very funny lady on something creative and wonderful.

Two nights later we started discussing what would soon become The Nether Regions. One month later we were as intimate as two people can be without sharing the same body.

So now, six months later things have improved a bit financially and I've come crawling back to Mankind Sucks, hoping that together, Sonia and I can breathe some life back into the old horse. But before we do, let me tell you a few things about Sonia, so you can see why I think she might fit in here. And to do that I will use the trendy social media, web 2.0 method of tagging, because most people are comfortable with human beings being reduced to taxonomies and categorised accordingly. So here we go.

Sonia Diamond: queen of anality, maker of lists, organiser of cupboards, natural comedian, stone age tool user, imaginary lover of Richard Dawkins, passionate and fabulous cook, unpretentious except when automatically hating things that everyone else likes, Nordic/Teutonic skull owner (me too), linguist, fearer of the worst, champion speller, lover of Korean and Indonesian food, incessant Monopoly winner, smoker of cigarettes only when liquid is present, despiser of Fearne Cotton, neolithic revivalist, sexiest woman I have ever met, lover of the worst song of all time, inhuman fartress, vivid imagineer, brilliant conceptualist, adorable neurotic, hater of the boring and pedestrian, technophobe, champion snow walker and sexual athlete.

Although these are only a few of Sonia's characteristics, I think you can probably see why it's a good idea that she blogs here. Apart from the fact that I'm in love with her, I think she's a pretty colourful character and I hope you will too. If not, be assured that I'll ruthlessly boot her arse out of here like a shot.