The moustache. That's my tip for 2009. It's a cautious tip, though, and may be premature. There have been hints for a while now, in the fashion spreads, and in places such as Hoxton. Brad Pitt and George Clooney have both been sporting them recently, and they both only looked slightly stupid. Maybe it won't be until 2010 or even 2011, but in the next few years, the younger, fashionable British gent will begin to wear the moustache in cold blood. Not as a statement and not as a bet. Just as a thing he wants on his face. It's not a look I'll be adopting myself, because I think I'd look like the coward in a war film. Still, it's on its way.

A staggering proportion of the world's furry upper lips presently reside, I'd imagine, in the formidably hirsute Indian sub-continent. But there, according to the BBC website, the trend is in the opposite direction. Young Indian men increasingly opt for a clean-shaven Western look, much to the bafflement of their elders.

In the comments underneath, 28-year-old Pranesh, now resident in the Netherlands, writes that his father forbade him to shave his moustache.

“He kept a close track of my moustache through video chatting every day,” Pranesh explains. “I shaved my moustache for the first time in my life this Christmas. This was partly due to the peer pressure because I had a feeling that Europeans, especially girls, tend not to mix with you if you have moustache. And partly it was a mini rebellion against my father's irrational demands.”

I'd love to know what happened next. What happened when Pranesh and his father next video-chatted? Did he don a fake? Was the resolution low enough that he could sketch one on with eyeliner? Or did he sit defiant in front of his webcam, as smooth as the day he was born?

Wireless in Camden

As I write, it's 10.07 on the first day of the year, and I've been at my desk for about an hour and a half. I can't be the only person in Britain who is up, surely. There was the odd pedestrian when I popped out to the garage for newspapers and to see if they had Irn-Bru, but barely any cars. This is a major red route into London, and normally hums around the clock. It's so quiet, it feels otherworldly. This is London how Ken Livingstone wanted it. Like the end of a disaster movie.

When I came back in, I triggered the wi-fi button on my laptop. Normally, three or four networks come up - us (WifiThing), the neighbours (Lee UK), and the student residence across the road (Camden Wireless). Today, there's a whole wi-fi world out there: 20 or 30 of them. I suppose the signals can travel farther because there is so little electrical interference. Empty houses, no microwaves.

Urban living is weird. Who are Eason & Eva? Will I ever know? Why would anybody call a wi-fi network NigelsNuts? Where is OrangeEE60EA? Most likely, they can see me, too. I could change my network ID to some festival local message. “Happy new year!” I could say. Or even: “Do you have any Irn-Bru?”

Speechless

They're certainly not working at the Downing Street press office, so I have no way of figuring out the answer to what is shaping up to be the big question of 2009: why nobody wanted to broadcast Gordon Brown's new year message. Lobby hacks tell me it turned up in their inboxes, with a link to an MP3. You can find it on the BBC website, but really, who is going to bother? They'll put Ma'am and Rowan Williams on the Beeb, and even Mr Ahmadinejad gets some love from Channel 4, but for eight minutes of unadulterated Gordon, there are no takers at all. Not even BBC Four. Not even More4. Not even ITV2+1. It's brutal.

Oh, what a night

Hogmanay is important to me. Genuinely. It's one of the few times I feel properly Scottish. Even last night, in a Russian restaurant in Primrose Hill, singing along to a fiddler playing Hava Nagila and Those Were the Days. It's our thing, Hogmanay, our export. I'm not sure what the rest of you have been playing at, all these years. It's not like you didn't have New Year's Eve. You just never thought what to do with it.

Come Hogmanay, wherever I am, I feel like a spirit guide. It's not just that I know the words to Auld Lang Syne, even the second verse, when to cross your arms and when to not. I know the pace, the vibe, the essentials of cold air, lukewarm whisky and the distant promise of sausages. On Burns Night, most of us are kind of faking it; on Hogmanay it's real.

Some people affect cynicism, and say it's just another night out. Scots know better. It's more than that. It's the original night out, the night out all other nights out aspire to be. This time, mine wasn't so wild that I couldn't be at my keyboard at 8.30am the next day, but it wasn't so calm that I'm not harping on about Irn-Bru. The best Tesco could manage was a Fanta. It's not the same at all.

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