I’m back from Havana and New York. It’s freezing in my part of the world. I’ve been keeping the fire going and splitting logs – with a SPLITTER – which is fun.

I used to think a splitter was a little device made of metal and black plastic, a thing you use to separate an electronic signal into two more or less equal streams. It still is, though they’re not used much any more: there are better technological fixes for that.

Oh my. That IS a nice axe. Hello?

But no-one’s ever going to improve on the splitter you use on wooden logs. Essentially it’s an absurdly blunt – and very heavy – axe. When you hit a log, and you get the splitter into the wood grain, and the splitter goes through the log, and the two parts of the log each fly off in different directions…

Well, it’s better than using the other kind of splitter to wire both the lounge and your bedroom for sound, but it’s not remotely as good as sex. That should help you to triangulate the splitter-using buzz.

It’s not ecstasy but it’s pretty good, wielding a big heavy splitter till the wood starts yielding. (As it will without shielding.) And the moment when the big log turns into two smaller logs, each one flying through the air, well, that’s not as good as an orgasm. But maybe it’s up there with a sneeze.

I smashed my cellphone the other day, too. It fell out of my new Jeep – portrait of the dom as a consumer, this post is – and that turns out to be further to fall than from a normal car. So it died. I’ve got a new phone, but I’ve lost a few numbers.

Maybe that’s a good thing. I keep acting on obligations I feel to people for historical reasons, when I don’t really enjoy their company, or anything else about them. (Having posted this, I’m going to have to make contact with all the people I do care about, cause I don’t mean you.)