The spammers who have been trying in vain over the years to entice me into enhancing my manhood have changed tack. Their spies have been out and realised that I am an ageing gentleman and may well be suffering from droopy manboobs. Hence their latest offering:

"BareLifts - The Invisible Solution For A Naturally Perky Look

BareLifts are completely strapless and will help lift your breasts while ensuring a naturally perky look in virtually ANY outfit. With BareLifts, you can lift your breast and realign your nipple to a higher position...."

I'm tempted.

What the world in general, and my little bit of the world in particular, does not need is another branch of Tesco. But I have learnt that some of their three billion profit is being spent on buying up the Co-op at the bottom of Easter Road.

Shame on them and more shame on the sell-out by Scot Mid. This is a blow to consumer choice and a wound in the side of the co-operative movement, imbued as it is with camaraderie and solidarity, not to mention its superior selection of wine.

To paraphrase a famous king whose name I have forgotten - "Who will rid me of this troublesome supermarket?"

Volcanic ash didn't keep me away from St Andrews this morning. The prospect of an hour and a half on a rainy beach did. So I have missed out on seeing what sounded like an interesting production of The Tempest.

But I may be affected by the ash all the same. My saxophone teacher is in Amsterdam and may still be there when it's time for my lesson on Tuesday. Siobhan's dinner chez moi will get cold if she's still in Portugal on Wednesday. And in the slightly longer term what about my flight to Barcelona in ten days time?

The great British public have decided that, last night at least and for the time being, the fairest of them all was the man with the manifesto packed with fair phrases.

So is the wind set fair for Downing Street for Mr Clegg? I doubt it but I suppose his party's vote may increase to give him some influence over whichever of the other two parties comes out on top. He'd be wise to hammer on about voting reform to give him some chance of forming a government in his own right next time around. Brown has promised reform but I doubt that he would give it any priority. There's always the excuse of having to save us from ruin first. I mean further ruin of course.

But Clegg had an easy job. Don't scratch your bum, look human, just allow Brown and Cameron to slag each other off and appear as the relaxed voice of reason. And since you have to be a bit of a political nerd to have seen him before he was for most people the new kid on the block. How many hopefuls have appeared who were gloriously exciting or at least not an immediate turn-off on day 1 but revealed a few defects in the longer term?

So I fear it will be with Nick and his uncle Vince, but let's give them a chance to bask for a bit before we turn and bite.

Now that the main parties' manifestos are out I've been trying to pick a winner.

An animated cartoon video in black and white slightly redeems the dullness of Labour's document. Its risible cover that looks like a Chinese communist propaganda poster (before the introduction of the one child policy clearly) at least spares us another thousand words. The HTML or downloadable pdf versions that are the only options for getting at the content are densely printed, only relieved now and then by coloured text and by coloured pages that separate the sections and bear logos in a style akin to lavatory signs.

It looks like they are appealing to the low-end computer user.

The Tories are definitely going for the high-end. Their document can be read on-screen in black and white text only but the downloadable pdf is packed with propaganda posters in an agit-prop style, with diagrams and with photographs, though the text is pretty dense and black. Some photos like those telling you that Glasgow and Brighton are great places for one reason or another don't seem terribly relevant but hey. You can even download a high definition version presumably so that you can print it with the photos in their full glory. But you don't have to print your own because they offer you a means of buying a printed version for a fiver. And they have large print for the poorly sighted, braille for the blind and easy-read for those with learning difficulties. If being on-line is your thing though there is a Flash version that's very well presented and you can listen to an audio version. When you have get on your bike or take the bus the audio version can go with you on your mp3 player. If you can't be bothered with the whole thing there are various little related videos.

No reason not to get the Tory message then.

The Libdems' manifesto offering gives you more or less the same options as the Tories; without braille but with a better Flash version and with a pick and mix video iphone app. Their webpage looks better and where they score heavily is on the presentation of the document itself. Labour's pages of dense text and the Tories' strident posters are banished in favour of well laid out pages with a good balance between text and pictures and well thought out, clear highlighting.

For me it's the winner.

But what about the content? I conducted a little experiment. Labour's document is entitled "A future fair for all" so I said to myself, as I often do, "mirror, mirror on the wall who's the fairest of them all?" and searched the documents for instances of "fair", "fairer", "fairest" and "fairness".

Here the Libdems are streets ahead with 94 occurrences. Labour come second with 61 and the Tories a poor third with only 9. Draw your own conclusions.

The experts came, saw, were defeated. A superior expert arrived on April Fool's Day, made a diagnosis and retired declaring that the necessary parts should not be long in arriving.

A week may well be a long time in politics but it's even longer in a house with broken central heating. Fortunately I have some alternatives to fall back on but I am still boiling kettles to provide hot water for cleaning pots and pans, dishwashers being notoriously ineffective in that respect.

But the weather is brightening up and life in the stair will also brighten up if the underpants tastelessly draped on a flat's door handle last week constitute the lift lunatic's dying flourish. Not that he's any closer to death than the rest of us as far as I know but I spotted a note on the dashboard of a parked car declaring the driver to be a new resident of the flat that I suspect to be the litter lunatic's lair. The note begged indulgence for not yet having a parking permit but failed to melt the heart of officialdom (what does?) for a ticket had been clapped onto the windscreen. Normally I would be sympathetic but it seems that having lost a lift lunatic (I fervently hope) we have gained a car park lunatic for he was straddled across three spaces at a little less than 90 degrees to the normal direction of parking.

But people do the strangest things. How to explain for example why a man in black tights and a wig standing facing a group of people should declare "Sunbeds Regulations Act 2010" to be followed by a similarly clad chap who had his back to the audience spinning round to face them with the words "La reine le veult".

Easy you say; all part of the prorogation ceremony that took place in the Lords the other day. Now I've seen the state opening of Parliament with Black Rod having the door symbolically slammed in his face before being admitted to the Commons to summon the lower orders to the house of peers to listen to the Queen's insipid delivery of a string of miracles the government is going to achieve in the next session but I didn't realise that there was an equivalent at the end.

Black Rod did the business as before but this time no Queen. Another of those chaps in wigs, this one wearing a cloak instead of tights, read a letter from HM saying how sorry she was that she was detained by pressing business back at base and had entrusted the assenting to divers acts and the proroguing of Parliament in this the 57th year of her reign to some loyal and well beloved chaps and chapesses who she was sure would make a good job of it.

The five said chaps and chapesses sat below the woolsack dressed in red robes and comic hats and one of them read out a speech in identically insipid tones to HM listing the miracles that the government had achieved during the session. I expect a number of the audience might not have counted all these achievements as miracles, or even as achievements but there was no heckling.

This was followed by the two man GB wigtight team reading out the names of acts and assuring us that the Queen veulted them. There was a speciality turn from the veulter at the start when in a long stream of Norman French the Queen remercied her loyaux and ben aimed sujets for having provided her with enough pocket money.

The whole thing was awfully polite and at various points the two red-robed chaps did some synchronised doffing. The ladies did not participate. Their funny hats were a different shape not well adapted to doffing but I expect that in time feminist pressure will succeed in opening up synchronised funny hat doffing to female competitors.

The final event in the Lords was the naming of the day that they should all meet again. Now we all know that there is going to be an election on May 6th and that the new parliament will assemble on May 18th but because this ceremony is taking place a couple of days before parliament is officially dissolved HM, in the person of her red-robed well beloveds chose April 20th as their next date. Let's hope they all understood this mad fiction.

After that the commoners trooped back to their little chamber and the Speaker read out the whole list of bills to which we had heard the Queen's proxy graciously assenting not fifteen minutes earlier. This presumably for the benefit of those members who had not been able to squeeze into a space within hearing distance in the Lords since they don't actually get to sit down on the red benches or even get very far into the chamber. Emails no doubt will go out to the several hundred MPs who, like the PM, weren't there at all.

How reassuring to see democracy in action. Had Sadaam seen it he would no doubt have declared this to be the mother of all parliaments.