So far, 2010 has been eaten away by ‘An Education’, but after the Oscars, it’s back to work. I’m going to concentrate on two or three film and TV projects this year, all of which are at very early stages. I have, however, returned to my ‘Stuff I’ve Been Reading’ column in The Believer, I’m happy to say, after eighteen months away. I’m racing through David Kynaston’s brilliant Austerity Britain, almost certainly to the bemusement of the young American readers of the magazine. Serves them right. Meanwhile, Ben Folds is mixing ‘our’ album, which should be out in the spring. And Juliet, Naked is out now in paperback.

There is, it turns out, a lot of paperwork associated with an Oscar nomination. Yesterday we had to sign a form promising that we wouldn’t sell our statuettes; we also had to fill out a questionnaire which asked us, among other things, which of our fellow nominees we would like to meet. My wife, after thinking about it for a good three seconds, replied “George Clooney.” She stuck an exclamation mark after his name. Somewhere in Los Angeles, an official of the Academy of Arts and Motion Pictures is putting all the requests to meet George Clooney in one mountainous pile.

“Sky must just be grateful they were not showing this turn-off in 3D. That would have trebled the torture,”  said the Daily Mirror’s John Cross yesteday, about Wednesday’’s terrible Arsenal v Liverpool game. I’m not sure whether it’s his maths that’s bad, or his science.

I wish that every single one of the Arsenal fans who were in the stadium to see their team’s pathetic surrender to Man Utd, could be nominated for an Oscar, as I was yesterday. I have to say, Oscar nominations really help to assuage football-related disappointment. My wife, who doesn’t get to the games very often now that one of the children has commandeered her season ticket, was sitting next to me on Sunday; she got a nomination too. And so did Colin Firth, who was right behind the goal where Rooney scored. That may be it, as far as recently Oscar-nominated Arsenal fans go (unless Meryl Streep is a Gooner). In terms of the collective London N5 feelgood factor, it’s nowhere near enough.

It was hard to feel particularly sad about the passing of JD Salinger: most of us had become accustomed to the idea that we wouldn’t be hearing from him again. I am glad that January 2010 is over, though, because in the last four weeks, a lot of people who meant a great deal to me at one time or another passed away. Apart from Salinger, we lost Willie Mitchell, the man responsible for the sound of Al Green and Ann Peebles and OV Wright; Bobby Charles, the Cajun white soul singer, whose ‘I Must Be In A Good Place Now’ is one of my wife’s desert island discs; Kate McGarrigle, mother of Rufus Wainwright and one half of the McGarrigle Sisters, whose first album is one of my favourite-ever; Mick Green of the Pirates, whose guitar style influenced both Wilko Johnson and Pete Townshend; and Teddy Prendergrass. If the year continues in this way, then we will be left with Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift by its end.

‘It’s over before you know it
It all goes by so fast.
The bad nights take forever
And the good ones don’t ever seem to last.’

- ‘The Best Of Everything’, Tom Petty. And that, I’m afraid, is the only rhyming couplet you’ll ever need; all the rest are superfluous.