My highlight of the blogging year is back.

As I’ve plugged in previous years, Mike at Troubled Diva has been conducting an annual assessment of the last fifty years of pop music. Which Decade Is Top For Pops? reaches its sixth year this week with the first daily instalment, today featuring the single at Number Ten in the charts this week (Goldfrapp’s A&E) and its precessors from 1968, 1978, 1988 and 1998.

Head on over to Mike’s to hear today’s five tracks and to cast your votes.

In honour of the weekly Gossip on the Underground:

“I’m rubbish at geography. I thought Asia was a small country, but it’s the massivest, massivest continent in the world.”

One of the problems with living in London is the sheer number of times in a week that you find yourself invited to the pub – or, indeed, to go out more generally. Not that I’m complaining, you understand; just making an observation, and one which may explain why, despite a week off work, I still feel like I need a holiday.

On Friday (although, having been off work all week I kept mistaking it for Saturday), I went to The Ship and Shovell near Charing Cross to meet Gordon, stalwart organiser of Scottish blogmeets and webmaster of the temporarily out of action Scottish Blogs.

Gordon being as well-connected as he is, there were rather a lot of bloggers in attendance which put me to shame for neglecting this place, and prompted me to get around to writing some of the posts I’ve had in the back of my mind for weeks (if not months).

I did my best to memorise who everyone was and which blogs they wrote, so I apologise to those I’ve inevitably missed. There was Tom Reynolds from Random Acts of Reality (and here’s his book, Blood, Sweat and Tea: Real Life Adventures in an Inner-city Ambulance); the eponymous Diamond Geezer; Gert from Mad Musings of Me; Adrian from sevitzdotcom (I read his latest blog posts on his lovely iPhone); Graybo from grayblog; Ann from pixeldiva; and Anna from little.red.boat. I’m at least two short from that list but hopefully Gordon will provide some links himself.

(Update: Thanks to Gordon I can make my apologies to Hydragenic, bob’s yer uncle, and the girl with a one-track mind, another one of those clever people with a book.)

Several new blogs there I didn’t know before and will be adding to my feed reader.

And while resolving to write more on here, I’ll also be resolving to log in to that more often too.

Today is Brian’s Facebook Friday, during which supporters of Brian Paddick, the Liberal Democrats’ candidate for Mayor of London, are being asked to sign up as fans on his Facebook page, and to encourage other Londoners on Facebook to do the same.

Signing up as a supporter is a good way of keeping in touch with Brian’s campaign and of publicly showing your support – it also gives you a tasteful little Brian Paddick icon on your Facebook profile. If you want to see Brian elected Mayor of London in May and you haven’t done so already, please register as a fan on Facebook now.

And, if you haven’t yet signed up for Facebook, it’s a great opportunity to do so!