Whether you are one of my regular readers ( and I know there's some), or you've simply wandered on to my blog accidentally en route to somewhere else, it's time for me to take a bow and wish you all a Happy New Year. Thanks for reading.

Best wishes for 2008 !

Archimedes

I got a payment reminder from the Tax Office yesterday: only a month left before the deadline runs out and we thought we just let you know. Thanks, I had n't forgotten. I've set aside roughly what I think I'll have to pay, and God willing, it'll more or less meet what it is I have to pay once my friendly bookkeeper has worked out what that actually is.

Despite it only being a reminder, an in-case-you-forget aide memoire, there's always a sense of ju-ju with any brown paper envelope from the Tax Office. I always leave these letters unopened until the next morning when I can crash to the ground in a swoon (they want how much !); let the condemned man enjoy a decent night's sleep is what I say.

Still, some unfortunate magic weaves it's way out of even an unopened letter from the Tax Office to infect your sleep, to make you sweat, to make those dreams alarming and uncomfortable. I woke up at the worst time this morning - the wee small hours - consumed with the fear that I'll never pay my mortgage off. Where could that have come from but that brown paper envelope...?

In the early years of this decade I worked for the now defunct Internet arm of the major telecoms company I still work for. Heady, glorious days. I worked amongst crackpots. Edgy, zany, talented people from all over the world, overflowing with with all sorts of notions and ideas to drive home the Internet revolution.

Even the kindest, most well-meaning of my friends would n't say I'm edgy, or zany, or especially talented; all I really did there was the high tech equivalent of push a broom and mop bucket around, but I do have a magpie like tendency to pick things up, throwaway sayings, conversational offcuts, clippings that have fallen from the mouths of others, and at that time of my life, they were falling around my feet like leaves during a storm in a forest.

I'm thinking of one right now, it's this: " What's been designed won't work...". I've forgotten the original context now, but the words live on, the sentiment certainly does.

My December 26 post bears that maxim out. What I had in mind there was a touch of comic irony, to lead people astray at first that Xmas had been an altogether wretched affair, when all it was I was describing was the faux anxiety of playing charades. It did n't work; several people saw that post as being I loathed the whole day. I did n't; it was fantastic fun, not laughed as much as that in years...but when an idea is as poorly expressed as mine, or put it another way: "....what's been designed etc..." the message gets lost. Shoot me, I was the piano player... I was playing the wrong tune.

What does it mean in regards to me now? Basically this, think what it is I'm going to write, followed by how I want to express it, then make sure these two meet and not grind over each other like two tectonic plates going in different directions.

One of my favourite cafes has changed owners. This kind of thing always makes me itchy. I get the heebie-jeebies as well: will they change coffee supplier, or no longer honour the loyalty card; or open longer, or the flip side, close earlier ? Those buttery croissants, they'll keep those, won't they? And the chocolate brownies - the work of the Devil no less, since no mortal could fashion something as wickedly indulgent - they'll still be there ? I have a vice to keep up...

God, it was stressful yesterday. I don't know how I did it...I don't know how we did it...eleven of us crammed around the dining table amidst the wreckage of a huge meal, staring at each other. If they'd been sphinx like and enigmatic it might have been something, but no, this was a gallery of faces etched with the: "I'm just not following you...what does that mean" look and the "... just what are you on about..." puzzled frown.

And the interminable cross-examination. Everyone one of us up in front of the dining room jury at one point or another. We all got a grilling. We had to stand up to take it as well. I felt like a lobster writhing in the pot when it was my turn. Question after bloody question: "what did that mean.... do it again...can't work that out...again..." It was so tense.

Nor does a heavy meal and rich wine help either; that all blurs the message you're trying to put over. Your message confused...? Your response a little ragged around the edges...? A swarm of piranhas could n't have beaten us for speed when it came to rolling and mauling into these lapses. Get a hint of what it might be that someone is miming...bingo, it's in with the enhanced questioning techniques.

Miming ? Yeah... Charades...you know the guessing game. The one where you flail arms and legs like a techno raver and contort your face like you've swallowed a bucketful of raw chilis in the vain hope people will guess who or what it is you're miserably trying impersonate. That's what we were doing yesterday for nearly five hours. I'm burnt out. We were doing films. My family's pretty cosmopolitan too, so it was n't just Hollywood, it was Indie, European, Horror, Musical, Bollywood, short films no one's ever heard....and the nuclear option...the charade to wipe out all charades: Porn. It was talked about a lot all evening, but no one pressed that button. Thank God. My Debbie does Dallas impersonation will never be seen in public. Ever.

I'm coming in early with the resolutions for next year. I'm alarmed at the amount of money leaking out of my bank account, so there's one straight away: only buy what I need. And what I do buy has to last, whether it's clothing or foodstuffs - no more one time, one wear buys or food that goes unopened after it's sell by date. Use now or not all. The New Frugalism.

There's no season like Xmas for over consumption and waste. For me in particular, these words have an extra charge: single man living on his own. Waste and unthinking extravagance are like our call signs. I pride my self on trying to live reasonably abstemious, but I'm red-faced as I write these words when I think of how much I simply throw away. It's not good.

The New Frugalism. I was sent this by a friend in the US. Could this be what we'll be having to do this time next year after we've all been raked over by the hooded claw of sub-prime ?

"Are you prepared to survive tough times and prosper in times that aren't so tough?

I've written several times about living on the edge, economically speaking, and I know that's not the primary focus of frugal living. It is, however, well within the scope of being frugal to prepare for tough times and make the most of times that are not so tough. Learning to be as self sufficient as possible will only make us more secure and less apt to be hurt financially no matter what.

There isn't nearly enough room to tackle all the ways there are of being self sufficient. Some of you have more opportunity than others and some of you have a lot more interest than others. I realize that some of you live in apartments in large cities and feel as if some things are not possible. You can still provide at least some of your own food needs.

I wish I could convince everyone reading this to begin to take more personal responsibility for providing as much food as you can for yourselves. You don't have to live on an old fashioned
farm with an apple orchard, a flock of chickens and a two acre garden to make a big difference in your budget. You can be more self-sufficient, food-wise almost anywhere you are.

It may be too much to grow your own wheat, but it's not too much to buy wheat, along with a hand grinder that will turnout the freshest and cheapest whole wheat flour to make the
best frugal bread ever.

It's also not too hard to plant a few cloves of garlic in a pot to put on the windowsill for very frugal seasoning. It's only a little more trouble to plant vegetables, either in garden plots or in large containers, even on the balcony or front step, and that means more frugal food.

A grow light is not as expensive as buying fresh vegetables throughout the year. Even if you're in an apartment or don't have access to a garden area, you can grow things like lettuce, radishes, onions, peppers, or even tomatoes if you have the room. You'll have to pollinate tomatoes and peppers by hand. (Beans don't do well indoors. Although they grow into interesting plants, most of the time they won't bloom without direct sunshine.)

If produce from your own garden, a neighbor's garden, a farmer's market or gleaning is available, canning, dehydrating or otherwise preserving the food will stock your pantry nicely. If you've never done that before, be ready to experience a wonderfully elated feeling of satisfaction when you see the rows of dehydrated or canned foods waiting for your winter enjoyment.

"Putting by" food can include wild foods, too. Learn what's available in your area and go looking for them. They can make a good dent in your food budget and they can be canned, dehydrated or frozen. Use methods and recipes that are close to their domesticated counterparts. "Greens" like dandelion leaves, lambsquarter and dock can be treated like spinach. Roots like daylilies can be treated like potatoes. Wild fruit should be treated the same as cultivated fruit.

Nothing beats the quality of fresh food, home grown, harvestedand preserved by hand, and being self sufficient food-wise can be the beginning of a very satisfying lifestyle that's more
frugal than you ever thought possible".
_____________________

Pat Veretto is a work at home grandmother who has homesteaded,
homeschooled and happily lived frugally most of her life. She
currently freelances and is the moderator of The Dollar
Stretcher Community at
http://community.stretcher.com/forums/.

Many years ago, I frivolously told someone that I would only date people who read Saul Bellow. Why I ever said that is forgotten to me, I would have to be Shirley McClain and channel back to that moment to find out what led me to come out with something as shallow and as half-brained as that. All I know is that I did and for some reason, I can still remember the words.

Sometimes when the mood is on me and these words float back, I wonder if I dangled something out here a little too far and fate was n't just tempted, it took a good, long tug, and nearly upended me. Most of my relationships match the lifespan of a Mayfly: skittering madness, near vertical ascent of excitement, then abrupt disappointment heading in the other direction.

But dating is n't what I've got in mind for this post, it's shorter, sharper, sweeter. Does the choice of book indicate what kind of person you are? If Andy McNab's what you read on the commute to the office, then does that imply you're wannabe soldier of fortune and nothing else? You've got Bridget Jones's diary tucked on your knees, you're in search of Mr (Mrs) Right? Does Tolkien on the other hand, say beard, real ale and a degree in Earth Sciences? Only insufferable literary snobs read Saul Bellow? Do men and women stand in different corners of the room when it comes to choosing between Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre? On this last particular point, I'm a fully-trained man and I know where I stand: there's only one solitary neighbour I'll be troubled with. Call him Heathcliffe.

As it's probable you can infer someone's personality from their choice of reading material, it's equally likely that other people comfortably defy this expectation simply reading whatever comes their way. As long as there are words in a coherent sequence, it could be a car manual or the Bhagavad Gita, it's the words that matter. I'm in this camp. I need to have some words in front of me otherwise a day simply is n't a day.

One of my friends is adamant that education i.e school got between him and work. Wild horses, in the shape of his parents, did drag him up to the school door, over the threshold and then straight to the classroom. But if it had n't been for them, he would have downed his pen, slung the exercise book over his shoulder, thrown on the overalls and beelined it for the workshop.

Press him and he will admit that some education is useful; practical, utilitarian things, like reading, a little elementary science, a nugget or two of basic engineering know-how. That far and no more, though, that's all he's prepared to 'fess up to.

I hold a dissenting opinion, the reverse of his, light to his dark, chalk to his cheese as it were. For me, you see, work gets between me and education.

If I could spend more time in the coffee shop each morning and not have to keep glancing at the wall clock above the Barrista's head, fretting have I got enough time to finish the piece I'm reading, digest it, understand it and perhaps jot a few notes down in my notebook to mull over later, and can I do all of this before having to creep like the snail to the office for that first conference call...

No, I have to collapse all of this, the way you might do if you were running for the bus and trying to pack a suitcase at the same time. That great article in the paper, that salient thought, enlightening commentary....all of them, part digested, jumbled up and never, ever properly understood. Yet, there's a chink of hope called Blackberry. With that credit card sized techno chip burping emails, I can work anywhere....and is n't the coffee shop somewhere...and is n't that where I'm self-educating...

Saw it...saw it with mine own eyes...a man in a tee shirt...a sleeveless tee shirt, outside on probably the coldest day of the year, walking home. He ambled past me, not even hands in his pocket, or even shoulders scrunched up, and these are the recognised signs of "Brother, it's cold outside". No, not a thing, not a concern. Just the regular pattern of one foot in front of the other. And me wrapped up like a pig in a blanket, swaddled against the cold and still feeling it worm through all the layers. I'm just not tough enough

London is so restless. I can't walk anywhere in the City without hearing the unfinished symphony of jackhammers and drills. Day in, day out. The noise is intense.

Buildings wrapped in death shrouds slowly being taken down brick by brick; new buildings going up on the footprints of former. Nip 'n' tuck work on others. There's a rolling cloud of dust and debris unfurling every day in the City.

Even the pavements are being unzipped; there's scarcely a street I walk on in the City that has n't been opened up by a pneumatic drill, it's innards dripping over the side of the trench.

What happened to the Bowler and the Pinstripe? Stuff of myth really; cheap shorthand, a lazy cliche, and, anyway, all of us who earn our coin in the City, aside from the Investment Bankers and Corporate lawyers, have done it for years sans ties and in chinos.

But it's men in hard hats and safety vests, mini diggers past the Bank of England, and cranes hoisting mysterious loads these days; they're forcing the pace. That's the spirit of the times now. I love it. We're getting the skyline we deserve - there's some clever, idiosyncratically designed skyscrapers slowly wending their way up. As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing as aspirational, nothing as replete with energy and hope, nothing to out-symbolise a modern 21st century city than a clutch of tall buildings. This city needs a signature skyline that's more than just the London Eye and St Paul's.

Are n't holidays the best ? Really they are, admit it. Everything is different; it's novel, it's unusual, it's exotic. Sights, sounds, tastes, the whole mogambo, nothing is the same. We've parked our quotidian life on the side of the road for a quick bite of something else rare and wonderful.

Let's not forget our hosts either, they're out to impress too, you know flatter, endear themselves, pay attention, make us -the tourist - oh so happy. And on this last point I speak with gratitude, boundless and undimmed at that, 'cos even if what someone said to me in Vietnam was simply part of their standard sales pitch, they could n't have made me a happier man if they'd tried.

It happened like this. I was in a car driving through the Hai Van Pass, a coastal mountain road which swoops and dips, loops and curves through central Vietnam. Thin, persistent rain pattering the road surface and lack-lustre grey clouds blowing in from the sea. From time to time we slowed down to sidestep mounds of earth that had been pushed down the sides of the pass by mudslides. Only a few days before the tongue, but not the body, of a typhoon had lashed this area of the country indiscriminately; the mudslides were it's visible wounds.

We stopped at a small trading post for something to eat. It was damp, it was muddy, it was forsaken, and as the sole tourist I was the star attraction. The lightening conductor. It all came my way: chairs pulled out, the cup of tea produced from nowhere. Beautiful. Then the sales pitch and believe me I'll buy anything as I proved when somewhere in the spiel is "....you very handsome man" I don't care if that contravenes the trade descriptions or bears no reality whatsoever to my er...unconventional charm....Baby, I've waited all my life, all forty plus years to hear that !

Did I say it was a grey, featureless day ? The moment those words rang out, my sun shone, the clouds rolled back, the birds sang and the grass got greener.

I've been called a lot of things but these four words have never come up in any sentence flung my way. Never. Are there any other words that can lubricate a wallet faster than these four horseman ?

This is how to make a sale. Whatever it is I'm buying it. That's right I do need three identical maps, fifteen postcards I'll, in all likelihood, never send, jewellery for my wife even though I'm not married. You take Visa ? What else have you got ? I don't need it, but I'll take it anyway. I'll take it in small. You only have XXL ? I'll grow...don't worry. What colours have you got? Fluorescent purple...how did you know that's my favourite colour...you read my aura ! You can arrange shipping....I'll take the lot.

This is why I say holidays are good. You hear things you never hear at home....so it was to get me to buy something, yeah as if....She saw my inner beauty, no really she did...

I noodle around with writing. Bits pop up on here, other bits elsewhere. Nothing sustained, it's really on an if and when basis; still I like to lay a course of words down everyday. A day simply does n't feel like a day until I've put one word in front of another and hoped that from a distance this train of words looks like it's linked up, heading in one direction, strong enough to be able to hold together for the duration of the journey, and importantly, makes sense. And I'm more excited than a brace of paparazzi photo-hounds chasing celebs leaving sleazy nightclubs when I know someone has visited this site.

Nevertheless this is all low-level writing, noodling, for pleasure really; sure, there's an inner compulsion, a stimulus at work that I can't properly describe, and without this fuse firing, I would n't even be getting this far.

Any mortification I face is only ever going to be online - the tin ear phrase, a burst of ricocheting punctuation, confused sentences, teetering words; that's as far it goes. It will never be the public death by a thousand walkbys that I was sadly privy to earlier this afternoon in a local Waterstones. An author, surrounded by copies of their latest book, ignored by the crowds, who worked around her table the way ants walk around an obstacle in the sand, absolutely indifferent to the poor author's hollow-eyed, desperate look, the: "I've killed myself to write this, gone through the torture of, will it, won't it sell, and now this...and in public...why ? "

They could have been living in a shadow world, another dimension for all it mattered to the customers swarming through the store. An invisible author; there, but not there, corporeal, yet incorporeal at the same time. Uncanny and uncomfortable.

I bowed my head here, and coward that I am, the fairweather noodler of words, I slipped away myself, down the stairs and then to merge in the crowd, but not before I saw a miserable author leave their chair and begin to roam the store button-holing customers: "Do you like historical fiction ? This is my latest book, it's about....". No one tugged on that float, apart from one person, who innocently asked if the author wrote sci-fi because that's what they really liked.

I scarcely get any body reading what I write, but there can be compensations in that, I'll never face an ordeal like this. But, a few more readers would be nice...there's no door control policy here. Love all, serve all, that's my motto. Now just waiting for you to turn up..

Closing the sale the Cambodian way. This happened to me last week wandering through some souvenir stalls close to Angkor Wat. A young boy, who was somewhere between six and ten, walked up, looked me in the eye, held out several multi-packs of postcards, and then kicked off into his sales spiel.

"What do you want to buy?"

"I'm o.k, I'm fine. Don't need anything. Just having a look around"

"Where you from?"

"England"

"England. Capital city, London. Population of London 7 million. Population of England 55 million. UK is England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales..."

"That's good ! I'm impressed. I'll take a card. How much for one?"

"No one. Can only sell pack. One dollar"

"O.k I'll take a pack then..."

"How about two dollars then ? Extra dollar for me to go to school..."

Chutzpah, charm, intelligence, reasonable command of a foreign language, drive. Granted it's a case of different environment, different circumstances, but I'll place all of my hard-earned folding on the table that there'll be no British child of a similar age able to pull all of these off. Unimaginable.

After a pitch like that there's only one thing: hand over two dollars for ten cards I really did n't need (and now can't find) and tell him it's probably business school he needs to be going to.

A change is gonna come or how unbroken sunshine, great people and novel experiences can turn a man's head. I started my tour of SE Asia writing this to a friend:-

"I think ... the long distance travelling bug to places where there is an elevated risk of malaria is waning; I'm a middle aged wannabe man of letters who wants fresh coffee in his milk and guaranteed provenance where his food came from (good homes, organically reared, fed on clotted cream, then humanely dispatched), not the choice of fresh or smoked squirrel, or a dozen bear paws marinating in a gallon tank of homemade rice wine I saw in Laos a couple of weeks ago. You know I'll defend to the death the rights of local artisans and their local delicacies, there are some points, however, that I feel I have reached.

Three weeks later I sent this to another friend:-

"It is stupendous. SE Asia is dreamlike. The quality of light and the intensity of the colours - yellows sharper than any yellow I've ever seen, greens deeper than any green, silky blackness, blues to make your eyes water - is simply blowing my mind. I'm stunned by it all".

For those people who make up my modest group of readers: I'm going to be away travelling for a few weeks, normal service therefore resumes Monday 3 December.

Should my boat ever roll in and I'm in a position to indulge then the first thing on the to do list is commission research in to why a single man with no pets, very rarely at home, no one staying over either, piles dust up the way it probably did in Thirties Kansas. It's all around, everywhere, even in the places in my flat I rarely use. I live in a dust bowl. How come ? I was told that a major cause of dust was shedding skin and hair. The former I'm prepared to accept, but the latter ? I don't have any ! Like many men of my age, it's a doughnut landscape up there: nothing in the centre, but a ragged ring around it. So where is it coming from ?

They're not exactly sweated labour, nor is it bonded servitude, but I can see why US screenwriters have folded and closed their laptops, said a fond farewell to the rigours of the desk and picked up the placards: "Will work for better residuals ! Fight for the right to write ! Fair day's pay" Makes sense to me.

This is something a writer friend popped over in an e-mail. See what the Writer's Guild have to say. No clearer way to state a case than doing it simply and visually.

That old staple of the movies happened to me at lunchtime. Turned round a corner and ran straight into a woman, who burst into tears. Not good for her, nor for me either, self-esteem and all that. But I think she had been in tears long before I hurtled round the corner and she was very apologetic. No need, Honey, crying is good, it's the best way to let go.

What difference a suit makes. I don't actually have one, but I can put something together that will pass muster. And how about this: when I wear it things magically change in some places ! I get served. Decently. Shop assistants spot me, waiting staff come over, they find me a seat, the blind does n't drop when it's my turn to go the next available counter at the bank. How strange. I wonder what it could be?

On the other hand when I'm dressed the way I am habitually, down at heel academic crossed with off duty tugboat captain, then nothing. I'm invisible. And when there's no one left in the shop and they simply have to serve me, it's usually an asymmetric relationship: me talking, and a terse, no words, silent transaction coming the other way. It happened today. I was only buying a lucky dip ticket for the lottery, but from the way it went, you would have thought I was a plague victim. How strange. I wonder what it could be?

Staring me in the face all this time and only today does the light bulb go on: the bigger the house, the fewer the books the owner actually has; the larger the number of books, on the other hand, the smaller the owner's house. Culture does n't pay.

I need to find another desk to sit at in the office, otherwise I'll end up some low rent peeping tom. Ok, let's tone it down a little, not peeping tom in that sense of the term. I'm not loitering or rooting through someone's bin. It's not that sleazy. But I need to move away from the desk I'm sitting at so I can stop gazing out of the window at the office block over the road. What started off as boredom, something to while away the endless drudgery of conference calls has become near compulsion. Note the "near", very important, means I've not fallen over the edge. I'm fascinated by what they do in there: it's barely anything, walk around, chat, peck away at a PC for a few minutes, scribble something on a chart, get something out of a rollerdrawer, that's it.

I'm spending more time watching them do their occasional stretch working than I'm doing myself, and by no means, is my name a synonym for stakhanovite efforts either.

Then if I can see them, surely they can...? Well they just have to, we're facing each other ! And if they are, and humans being human, then they're probably wondering just exactly what is it that middle-aged guy opposite does other than stare blankly out of the window from dawn till dusk. This could be Hitchcock's Rear Window City of London style, with the suspense and claustrophobia edited out and replaced with good old, idle curiosity.

How long have we known each other... two years now ? I've told you everything: what makes me tick, what makes me tock, about the good times, the bad times. Opened up to you. Shared.

But I've not been straight with you; no, I've held something back. It's not a sin, though it is to some, I'm not exactly shame-faced about it, ok, sheepish maybe, it's just I did n't want to tell you. The time did n't feel right for one thing, and I wanted you to have a particular picture of me. Listen, don't be judgemental. Understand me that's all I ask, I have a flaw, a guilty secret, a hidden pleasure....I support a football team...I even own shares in them.

There, it's done, I can breath out, loosen up, you know everything. It's out. It's been like conducting an illicit affair. Who could I tell ? I've skulked in corners, glancing surreptitiously at the football scores on the TV; lurked in the newsagents furtively reaching for a sports magazines, and worse, oh far worse: I've dissembled. Told people, workmates, anyone who asked that I loathed the game, professed ignorance deliberately, jeered at players, derided managers, scorned referees...and yet all along, a covert fan. I have wronged you.

I am not a yob, no, not at all merely a simple man bearing a dark burden day after day. Flawed, that's what I am. Are n't we all?

What forced me to the confessional was this lampoon, my team ridiculed, their downfall mocked. You follow your team to the gates of hell and beyond if necessary. Through thick and thin, and with Sheffield United, it's only ever been thin, gruel in fact...but this, oh no, how could they. Surely only the hand of a Sheffield Wednesday fan can be behind such terrible mischief...

First rule of business: if it can't be measured, then it can't be managed. Going by what I've pulled up from a deep dive through innumerable blogs yesterday and again today, there's a version of this mantra to cover male dating history. Goes like this: however many women we've claimed to have dated and for many of us, simply sitting next to someone on the tube "counts". (Not me though, oh no, not me...c'mon the idea, please...), then a woman should divide that figure by three to get anywhere near the real answer. Not good in my case, not good at all; it's left me with fractions...I'm down to a third literally...I had a whole number once....

There's a beautiful, gently ascending ramp linking the platforms at Paddington mainline station with those of the Hammersmith and City line. It's been a long time coming.

It's so well made that it would n't surprise me at all if a colony of skateboarders did n't move in...except they won't. The British Transport Police (wisely in my eyes) would soon put paid to any ambitions on that scale. Pity, that. I'd quite like watching salvo after salvo of skateboarders launching themselves over the three steps at the top of this ramp, then cut shapes and pirouette in mid-air, before clattering back to earth and weaving through the battalions of commuters.

It's those three concrete steps at the top of the ramp that'll test their ingenuity, test anyone's; but then why build a ramp with steps at the top anyway. Are n't ramps in public spaces there to help wheelchair bound people, or people with prams, so why the steps at the top ? Exactly how is someone with a double buggy going up the ramp, or someone in a wheelchair wanting to come down, going to be able to overcome a three step hurdle? Great gesture, just no help to those who need it most. It's up there with having a mailbox to handle no reply e-mails. Why ? What am I missing here?

"Fellini, the film was by Fellini", she whispered and then lay back on her mat like the rest of us, ready for the class to begin.

If you want to get my attention, you know, press my buttons as it were then talk intellectual. That's all it needs. Money won't do it, food won't do it, not even that will do it. It needs to be down home straight-talking cerebral. Make it polysyllabic, heavy with cultural identifiers, no fuss use of foreign words, and I'm yours. No money down.

"It's impossible to get good group sex in this town now ! " There are some things I'd like to grumble about, in that "have n't things gone to the dogs, back in the good old days" tone, but on this, absolutely no amount of persuasion would convince any of my friends that I'm talking from a position of knowledge here. I'm not. Not in the past, not now, not ever.

But someone is , if today's Observer is to be trusted, they're even annoyed (oh, to share that mood on this very topic); please step forward, Frederika Fenollabbate, an up and coming Parisian novelist, whose literary beat is the slow death of the City of Light's red light areas. It's her pout that I've used to open this entry; it's got that real standards have gone downhill smack about a pretty taboo subject, thus excellent shock value. Like a stun grenade in a way: there's noise, smoke, and everyone is reeling. There's also a consumerist subtext, the irritation of a gourmet, no longer able to source that exquisite meal or that rare truffle.

I think it's the edginess of people tasting forbidden fruits that she's pushing us to look at: I walk the wild side, I am not one of you. Be that as it may, it's just that I think she is protesting too much, over-asserting how transgressive she wants us to believe she is. In my experience, those who proclaim how bad they are at virtually every opportunity, just how other they can be, and that normal rules don't apply, are talking a great story, but not walking it at all. All mouth, no trousers. The gulf between self avowed intention and action is too deep to be bridged and as likely as me waking up tomorrow morning with a head full of hair. It's that implausible.

So experience has led me to this point of view, however, every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction, and that leads me to state this, and how obvious when you think about it, still waters run deep and so on, but those who are busily upturning the moral handcart and challenging boundaries, are those quiet people we sit next to most mornings on the bus or tube, anonymous, suburbanites, drably dressed. It's them, not her, they're the outlaws.

Me? No Outlaw. Blander than butter. Gimme a group hug...I'll settle for that.

I cannot, simply cannot read a word of anything Martin Amis puts on paper; it's so syntactically dense and cratered with the oddest, inverted metaphors, that it's unreadable. However, I'll never take my eye away from the keyhole when there's a good literary spat kicking off, and when it's Amis with the gloves off, you know it's going to be good, zesty, and some choice cut vitriol thrown in.

A US friend sent me this link from the very cool online magazine - Spiked - which I think very elegantly summarises the latest feud / bout (delete as appropriate)

As a good Guardian reader, which is where a lot of the Amis / Eagleton flaming has happened, I've followed every twist and turn of this, that is I've followed the commentary, not the actual words for the reason just stated. And if that's to be believed, then what's he's saying has the ring of reason: not the individual, it's the ideology that hurts. I'm signed, sealed and delivered on that; I've always asserted that the three Abrahambic faiths have echoes of good sense until someone gets hold of them, codifies it all, and starts a discipline up, that's when it all gets way too messy.

So, Marty, you and I are singing from the same hymn book. but don't expect me to do so all the time, and as for buying one of your books...think again my London friend !

Weddings leave me cold, but I could n't stand up and say why. I can't answer that. I can struggle towards a sense of irritation, even vexation about the whole business and that's about it. Yet, and is n't there always an "and yet", they are compelling, and in a particular way, magical; not the fairytale notion, the top hat and tails, bride and groom galloping away on fine Arab chargers thing, far from it.

The context of magic I've got firmly in mind is what the randomness of a wedding reception seating plan can throw up. The meal begins as a tableau of mysterious people sat next to each other, little words spoken, but clear signs of the titanic struggle to break the social ice etched across all faces.

Let's call it the wedding reception equivalent of global warming, but compare the scene a few hours later: intimate conversations about odd little medical afflictions, whilst someone else melts into a neighbouring shoulder, surreptitiously arranging a date, (it's happened. I know. I've done it. Difficult for those who know me to believe, but I have. Send me an e-mail and I'll say who).

All of them are possible, if not actually probable. Still, let's not forget the third leg of the stool: the intellectual conversation, I spent a very pleasant afternoon yesterday chatting about local Suffolk geology, the correct use of a chainsaw, rare water beetles, the pain of having tattoos done on the shin, and the benefits of working a four day week. All that from a wedding reception dinner. Marvellous.

There's only one thing you can do when the man who sorts out your tax return tells you he's getting married. Go to his wedding. There's no other option. Even thinking about it, well, not only is it unfriendly, it's downright dangerous, he knows my financial make up better than me, all the angles as well, and on top of that, I can't, I just can't face the the deadening misery of filling it in myself, it's also very complicated. I don't sit comfortably next to anything complicated; I wriggle, I squirm, I lose my patience.

Decision made, now what to wear. I have no suit. In my line of work, most people would n't take me seriously if I barrelled in wearing a shirt and tie. Out of necessity, therefore, I've had to assemble a 'look'. Piece together bits and pieces, try to put over a sensibility. Not that straightforward, as I said earlier, no suit, not even a tie to be that foundation piece on which everything follows. I'd like to picture myself going places as if at that very moment I'd just stepped off a yacht at Cannes; the reality is more I've jumped ashore on to Canvey Island from a tugboat.

I work on this principle: throw it together and see what happens. I've done that and out popped a look; so tomorrow, it will not be untidy jester's motley, it'll be this: part Central European pre 1989 dissident intellectual, part crumpled, moody, rive gauche philosopher, and a healthy dose of upper west side gallery owner / editor. All this for a wedding

O my open plan office...I miss it so... for the flirting, for the solace, for the consolation, for the opportunity to grandstand to an audience, for the joy of the shared idea, for the eureka moment, for the casual conversation, for the sheer camaraderie of it all, for the communal we've made it made through the week mood, for the sly joke, for the gossip, for the absolute nonsense that makes working tolerable. No more. All gone. And I miss it all, marooned as I am in a small three man office.

A little tip on how to get over a bad day: have a nap. Short and sweet. A no fuss siesta, does n't matter if you're working from home and can slope away to a bedroom, or like me tonight, slack-mouthed and asleep on the train coming home from Bristol.

A nap cleans away the aches and pains, in fact, it obliterates the part of the day up till the point I drift off, and when I wake up it's as a new man. Like tonight. I've no memory, none at all, of whatever indignities have been thrown my way, or what I've thrown others. Slate clean. It's fantastic. I feel reborn.

Turn down the thermostat; the world's sweating, it's running a temperature.

We've force fed it too many stimulants; bent it out of shape; pumped it full of additives; leached the nutrients, and what have we ended up with ? A planet with the shakes, our common home has the blue meanies. If this was a bodybuilder under discussion, we'd all be whispering steroids: they've got 'roid rage...'

It's a home that breaks out in convulsions, that throws fits, and one that gets nauseous too uncomfortably often. Think about it, what else are the floods, never-ending rain, ceaseless drought, arid winds, bizarre seasons, if not symptoms of a convulsing, sick planet.

Let's restore the balance, ease back into equilibrium, sooth not stress. Unless I'm mistaken this is the only world we have around at the moment. No spare waiting quietly in the wings.

Timely. I was telling someone, no that's not right, I was insisting, that they beg, borrow or steal a copy of Budding Prospects by T.C.Boyle.

For anyone who wants to know how to combine being broke, in love, and with what the untrained exotic herb farmer should expect, and that from his fellow man as much as inscrutable nature, then this is the book. It's also one of the funniest books I've ever read; for years, I'd hung that garland around Confederacy of Dunces, but I've handed it on to it's true, rightful owner, Budding Prospects. Don't think I'm abandoning the former, I'm not, still a pungently funny, bittersweet book, and no one can challenge the power of the writing either, whilst it would be churlish in the extreme to forget the literal sacrifice of the author, and the perseverance of his mother after his death to get it published. Just there's a new kid on the block in a sense now.

I re-read Budding Prospects over a short period of time last week, not for the first time either, I'd enjoyed it years ago, so much so that I'd thrust it in to the hands of a relative, and gone eyeball to eyeball: "You just gotta read this...you have, don't talk to me until you have !" That was years ago and a red-hot appeal, a collar grabber, fizzled away until only the embers of the memory remained. Until last week when I re-read it; I laughed so much I actually strained my vocal chords and for a time was a temporary baritone. Got my English squeak back now though.

Pressing the flesh and spreading the word when it comes to a good, punchy, unforgettable piece of writing, comes to me very easily. I do have something of an inner zealot. I've been on the trail pounding the message about this all week. So I was delighted when someone I know told me that she read it, and in fact, had digested a lot more of what he had written than I have. I realised then that I'd missed some of his later books, for the past day or so, I've been trawling bookstores looking for those I've missed. I found one: Talk, Talk. I bought it and it's been uncomfortable reading; it's all about identity theft, and since I had my bag stolen, this is one topic that I've not been quite able to stop thinking about. Timely? Coincidence?

Take down the yellow ribbons. I've not gone anywhere. Been busy that's all.

The longest hour is supposed to before dawn. Don't dispute that, can't do, I've had my share of staring straight at the ceiling, wide-eyed, dejected, worrying, bitten with remorse, even fearful.

Just happens in the morning, right? Oh, no, I've identified another period of the day, in fact it's a period of a particular day, where all of the tension that the longest hour perversely churns up, slithers upwards once again: the last hour before leaving the office on Friday.

I dread this time; yes, the week is done, the day coming to a close, a 48 hour stretch of joy ahead, but there's the monkey on my back of will something go wrong? Something that I've carefully, painfully in many cases, certainly laboriously put together a fix for whatever problem it is, will it nevertheless thwart me, bust it's buttons and all the stuffing pop out, and there'll be no time to restitch it, but plenty of harassing e-mails and calls from all and sundry that it needs to be, and why exactly did n't it hold in the first place...

On the other hand it could be that in the final thirty minutes of the working week, I'm asked to cobble together an e-mail that at one and the same time has to be: demanding (fix it !); yet courteous (please); show senior managers just what lengths I've gone, what hurdles crossed (look at me ! look at me !); nuanced enough not to rattle any feathers, but sharp enough to make a point (Impossible not to welcome the support of.....nevertheless it's always worthwhile to bring to everyone's attention...); then end on a rousing note (I am absolutely convinced we can crack this problem / overcome this barrier...). Thirty minutes to put togther something that has the mixed sensibility of the sweetest love letter and a no holds barred final demand for seven years backdated tax.

Too often it's the disaster: XYZ system's gone down, what are we going to do ? One stalwart feature of this passion play is that whoever it is who can breath life back into whatever wheezing, ill system it is, they'll have gone home and are n't contactable. As regular as the Sun rising in the east and setting in the west.

So, that last half hour of the final working day of the week has me as relaxed as a cat on a hot tin roof.

"God save the Queen" on the radio, just heard it. Oh, the pride, the joy...The Sex Pistols by the way. Thirty years old. Forever electrifying. Plug it in, turn me on. I'm told there's another version, but I'm not sure how that goes, this is my favourite. I'll cock an ear to this anytime. Day or night.

At an Iggy Pop concert earlier in the summer, to heat the crowd up and get our ears pre-buzzing, the venue played punk classics through the PA. The old songs: Buzzcocks, Damned, Clash, The Ruts, Sham 69...then the first half dozen or so chords of "God save..." charged out of the kennel, and that's all it took for a bout of dewy eyed nostalgia and stiffening of backs like veteran soldiers watching a parade go by. Great days...

Archimedes the Astrologer: career horoscopes
Pisces 19 Feb - 20 March

Engage your intuitive mind. Even though indecision may tug at you, don't let it. Visualise. You stand on the cusp of self discovery, a voyage straight into your dreams. Don't hold back.

Fears and uncertainty are only to be expected with any change. Don't be afraid, welcome them instead. Remember you are the Fish who can swim in any waters

Versatile, creative, adaptable, sympathetic. What's stopping you?

Go with your instincts....

Even in the friendliest light I've got a face like a pummelled potato.

There's not a day goes by without I wake up feeling like I've been yanked straight out of the cold, hard earth, with a fizzog that shows the results: blemished, bruised, pulled up by the roots.

It was never my intention to pass as a walking, talking tuberous lookalike, but then you have to deal with what you're given. I try to. So that's a regime of regular exercise; eating basically only foods that nurture the skin and cherish the epidermis (Guys, I'm still waiting); and deluging my innards with water. If I drink any more water than I already do, then I'm amphibious. Nevertheless it all pats down a few rough edges and smooths some of the hard surfaces; a daily bout with Body Shop's moisturiser for men does what it valiantly can as well.

But I don't help myself with my affinity for accidental self-harm. No Sir, whatever the good works of Nutrition and Fitness might do, I am busily undoing: I scar myself shaving (always a favourite. If you ever see someone on the central line with contusions and cuts on his face and neck, looking like he's had a night with a polecat, then it's me); or as this afternoon, I blindly walk into the corner of a concrete buttress, conveniently placed at exactly my head height (how did the architect know?); so for the past few hours, I've been sporting a cartoon sized bruise on my forehead that looks like a half open, blackened third eye. There is no head height wall or ceiling left in central London that I have not had intimate cranial contact with. None.

Then I get bitten. How or when, I've no idea, just that I do. And, of course, it always has to be somewhere high profile. Plenty of space to choose, but invariably they stick to the old favourites: my nose, ear, something visible. Why if I'm going to get bitten by some carnivorous invertebrate with wings cannot it not be somewhere so conspicuous. Days ago, for whatever bloodsucking reason it had, something took a chunk out of my cheek. I've been walking the streets of London since then with a blood red weal that looks like the aftermath of a nail gun attack, that only now is starting to lose it's lurid colour. Less vermilion, more glistening pink ham.

I want to have a normal face, not be part of Mount Rushmore come to life, Mr Potatohead comes to town. What's a boy to do?

I moved to a new office a couple of weeks ago. One where I'm facing a window; usually I'm marooned in the middle of a giant open plan office, where people circulate around and I've had to look engaged and commited to a task. Basically appear industrious. Not now, this new home means I can indulge myself more in something I really like and that's watching other people work.

Is there anything finer, indeed more uplifting than watching and wondering exactly what it is other people are doing, then pondering why? Thought so. Nothing. Unbeatable.

It's actually relaxing and strangely comforting to know I'm not the only office worker then who's bored, or who walks around the office aimlessly, or spends most of the day chatting, or in a desultory series of conversations about nothing, but which are nevertheless still more important than the whatever it is the employer is paying us to do.

This afternoon, I watched people in an anonymous office block opposite where I work, roam across the office floor, congregate for a time around a water cooler like wildebeest by a savannah watering hole, sit down then moments later get up, yawn, even play football for a time. They did this all afternoon. It's been heartening. I no longer feel alone. Kindred spirits

I collected my briefcase yesterday from the man who found it abandoned and partially ransacked last Monday evening.

When we spoke, he was n't certain which day he'd found it (I did n't ask why he could n't remember, how churlish would that have been, I'm just grateful he did what he did), as far as he could recall it was either Monday or Tuesday. Based on what he told me everything points towards Monday more or less unequivocally. Walking home, he saw two cyclists tear along in front of him, then a moment or two later, came across my briefcase, spewing it's contents on to the pavement of a scruffy little square behind Shepherds Bush central line station. Too close in time and context to simply be two disassociated events

I gave him and his missus a box of chocolates. Good deeds should always be acknowledged. Piece by infinitely small piece, it's people like him who are slowly civilising and improving this complex, difficult, frequently amoral world, one grain of sand at a time.

Great that he got to it before the rain spoiled it, or hands, other than those of the original bag snatcher, had rummaged through it. Most of the contents that I've lugged around in it were still there: notebook, library book, umbrella, even a pen; no sign of my Blackberry or my Filofax, they had gone. However, the great wedge of personal papers that I'd been cramming into my filofax were still in my bag. I imagine they must have fallen out when these two kids were rifling through it.

Defiance for one thing, I can't have these people thinking they've won, no, not at all; and then the more mundane issue of me not wanting to fork out for a new briefcase for another, means the two of us will be going to and from the office next week just as we have for years.

The economic topic de nos jours is the imploding US property market, and by extension ours too, since our economies move in some sort of tandem working, like two planets orbiting, except they go round each other and not the Sun. Sub-prime has entered the lexicon.

I am amazed at the greed ,and really, there's no other term for it, the moral turpitude of those predatory finance companies who inveigled people on next to nothing incomes to sacrifice everything (ultimately their roofs) and take monumental mortgages on board, on payment rates, as the alleged financial adviser knows full well, can never be met. It is criminal.

A healthy and more importantly stable, bubble free property market moves any economy on; and generates a tremendous amount of equally as important collateral activity - furniture, durable goods (fridges, freezers, etc - the big ticket items). Slowdown there eventually hurts everyone.

I also surmise this is going affect the US welfare system: what happens to the thousands of foreclosed sub prime victims with no where to go, no homes, no jobs probably, unable to meet the health insurance payments. Where do they go? How are they going to survive. This has dire consequences socially.

The chutzpah...no, let me frame in starker terms, since chutzpah implies a certain charming roguishness, which certainly does not apply here; arrogance is what it is, of these manipulative, cunning, racketeering finance companies to think they have come up with a fool-proof way of generating ever expanding profits through the sleight of hand tricks of chopping up debt and selling it on like a deli counter cuts up a block of parmesan...well, it's breathtaking. Surely any commercial outfit worth it's salt would carry out risk analysis, try to 'suss out what the consequences are of launching products like this in to the wild. After all, every action carries a consequence or multiples thereon; they need to be understand. It's not happened here. How can people be so ignorant of that and the same time, so apparently contemptuous of the people they were allegedly trying to help.

Ok, I understand the notion of freedom in the capitalist world. I'm a capitalist, unashamed on that: made money on stocks (lost too), keep steadily investing, homeowner, and another property to boot and so on. I want people to be able to move on in life, better themselves through their own efforts. Owning property implies responsibility, civic and public. However, I draw a big breath when it comes to people being gulled and misled into something that will ruin them whilst a mortgage adviser disappears into the sunset with a hefty commission. Unfair, unethical; flat, plain, simple, it's wrong.

The UK immune to this? Puleeze....! The City of London is the safe haven, the bear pit, for all these messy impenetrable, smoke and mirrors financial products: derivatives, option, CDOs and so on. As enthusiastic as Wall Street....doubtless some these financial incubi were created and hatched here.

I've no cross to bear against capitalism; it's how it's delivered that makes me so indignant.

Ok, time for me to step off the bully pulpit. The keyboard has taken some pounding these past ten minutes. Nearly smoking.

The US is such a great country, easily my favourite, intellectually, creatively, I always feel recharged whenever I've been, especially NYC, which is the only place I could effectively survive in after London. But the US could be, can be even better if there's some thought and consideration given to the economy, a wider view as well that looks beyond the needs and wishes of Wall Street, and into the hard-working core of the country.

I was going to put something down on the explosion in people wearing high visibility vests. That's parked. For another day. I had a voicemail waiting for me when I turned my mobile on this morning: someone found my briefcase. I'm amazed.

I'm not haunted by what happened on Monday. Still using the same bus stop and walking along the same streets. What does linger, oddly, is that I'm still awed and that's about the only way I can phrase it, with the audacity of the snatch. The elan of it all: the daring, the way he swooped and lifted it off the floor, almost balletic. He's a close cousin to some TV footage I once saw of horsemen in Central Asia competing to lift a sheep's carcase and clutch it until they have escaped a melee of pursuing riders. Almost identical in the movement, the boldness, the singleness of purpose, and without a doubt the utter desperation.

Kid, I have to say I was impressed. No repeat occurrence, please, and if there is, then I'm carrying a lasso, or I, at least, have the pleasure of seeing you pedal straight into fast-moving oncoming traffic.

The incident was unwelcome; the aftermath has actually been heartening. It's vindicated a belief I've had that fundamentally people are decent, want to and will help, and are public spirited. One person called the cops whilst I was running after these two kids (man in his mid-forties chasing two teenagers...on bikes. Imagine), and then looked around the immediate area with me as did another guy.

Finally, a very civic minded man spotted my bag somewhere near Shepherd's Bush central line station, realised that it was probably stolen, salvaged it, found out it belonged to me, called me, and tomorrow I collect it (or what remains in it, or even of it). He did n't have to do that, yet he did.

Three different people, oblivious of each other, displayed tremendous goodwill and consideration. How then is it possible on this evidence to claim that we live wholly in an amoral, careless world of indifference. We don't. There's nothing extraordinary about me, I'm not special, I'm not somehow sanctified or deserving of attention: I'm average, I'm anyone, I'm the man in the street, and look who people helped. We're not beasts. No, we're not at all.

Mat, Nigel, Dan, the three of you have my eternal thanks.

And the other problem I alluded to ?

Had my briefcase snatched at the bus stop last night. Just reached the stop (behind Holland Park Rd), bent down, put my case on the ground along with a bag of shopping. I'd not even finished straightening myself up, when a kid on a bike swooped low and hard and took my case the way a sea eagle might take a fish.

In a strange way, I was actually impressed at the kid's cycling acrobatics: pedal furiously, drop one hand off the handlebars, and pluck my bag off the street. Not easy to do. However, one demonstration is enough thank you.

I ran after them, pretty futile, but everyone does it. The last thing I saw of the pair of them (there was another) was them going hell for leather through a subway and off into the wilderness of Shepherds Bush

I'm a realist; I'll not see my bag again. Not much in there: library book, couple of notebooks, Filofax, and my Blackberry. Miss that Filofax though.

Going to buy myself a hoodie and blend in. Go native.

Been some problems this week. First out of the trap is that I've lost use of Internet Explorer. It's vanished. Every time I click the icon, nothing fires up. Inconvenient is hardly the term I'd use, but I'm trying to run a pre 9pm watershed here.

Only managed to post this after a little messing around and I'll add in hope, with Realplayer. So far so good...but I need a real life, 100% browser. Work arounds are only good for a while.

I get stopped a lot when I'm travelling, particularly abroad. Once or twice it's been by the police, random ID checks, problem with a passport, that sort of thing.

Mostly I'm button-holed by people wanting me to give them money; a hand always seems to shoot out the moment I pass any door way. Quite a problem in Bordeaux, I must have some variant on the pied piper gene, this happened all the time, yet in Toulouse yesterday, not a thing, not a hand, nada.

And when it's not that kind of importuning, then it's something on these lines:
"Sir...Sir.., stop, you look tired, you want to relax ? You need sex?"
True, I am tired. Yes, I would like to relax. The other thing? I do. Just not with you. Absolutely not.

At what age does a man think maybe its time to wear a cap? At what age does a woman consider a shorter haircut? At what stage does a metro or public transport system lose its novelty status and become an engrained feature in public and personal life? When does that particular tipping point occur? When do people start to refer to encounters and experiences they have had and those around them nod in acknowledgment and chip in with their own? When do certain stops or lines start to garner a reputation, or perhaps become shorthand for something else, like the Northern Line for instance in London? When does a private exasperation become a common one ?

I am in Bordeaux right now, where there s still a relatively brand spanking new tram system, and I m wondering when, even if this has happened. When will someone say guess what happened at the place de la bourse, and theres a collective yes from those around, we know, it happpened to us as well?

Challenging to write this, the keyboard is set up, understandably, for french users; some of the letters are in places my fingers dont instinctively wander to, and where I think they are, they not. And theres no better way to find the difference between english and french possesives. If you re attentive, you ll have picked it up already, theres no possessive apostrophe on the french keyboard.

I've been giving some thought to how the programme for the 2012 Olympics might appear if the Daily Mail had a hand in running it. Been harder than I imagined, but I've got a rudimentary track and field agenda, plus one or two other events covered.

One thing to mention: since the Daily Mail abhors metrication (foreign, Brussels, EU iniquities etc), all lengths, distances, weights have to be in imperial. Sturdy, manly British measurements, redoubtable emblems of a millenia of freedom in their eyes at least, liberty and Independence, hearts of oak....pretty interesting when you think most of we true Brits were unable to cast a vote until the late (very late 19th Century), and it took time for the franchise to widen from just one sex to both sexes. But, that's for another day, back to business

Track and Field, not enough for a decathlon yet, but pretty strong nevertheless, and it is only early days as well, so I expect others to come along.

Track events

100 yards dash - it's in imperial measurements, sounds very Corinthian, and absolutely for the gentleman amateur because they're the only ones who can participate as the Mail's feudal world vision has most men either in prison or working till they drop. There will, of course be no women's race equivalent. How can they train, the thought even; Mailworld has them firmly in one or more of these categories: barefoot, pregnant and by the kitchen sink, or consumed by nameless womanly vapours.

Metric martyrs mile - To celebrate the victory of a handful of doughty market traders against the impositions of Brussels or how common sense saw down irrational Europe. The fact that it condemns millions of us to be stuck using a system we don't really understand (how many fluid ounces to a pint again? 1760 yards to a mile?) and might actually be an inconvenience, well, that can be left to a two line column on page 50 of the Mail.

Knee-jerking - no need to explain

Jumping to conclusions - again, no need for me to explain what this is. The Mail's business model is founded on the relentless exploitation of both of them.

Swimming

Queen Mother crawl - only one I could think of

Speciality events

Morris dancing - robust echoes of english country life which can never be lauded enough....and as it involves men dressed up and waving sticks at each other, it's martial enough to appeal to the brigadier set.

Saluting (team and individual) - nothing they like more than a photo of a Life Guard saluting some member of the Royal Family...but never a politician and certainly not a Labour one, far too lese-majeste.

This is where I've got to. Run out of ideas. That's got to be more that on the 2012 Daily Mail Olympics programme. Help me out someone

A day just is n't a day until I've written something...but I'm not going to beat around the bush: today's not happening. The pilot light simply will not ignite. Maybe tomorrow, let's see.

I'm reading Sun Tzu right now, a very precise writer; could be I'm all aphoristic and chock a block with epigrams tomorrow. Old Archimedes Almanac...you never know...

Archimedes, hello there. Not seen you for a while. Take a seat. You know why you're here? Good. Like I say, nothing to worry about, just going to go through a few questions, see how you are.Ok, let's get cracking:

Stated the obvious?

All the time.

Written about the mundane and tried to make it sound half-way interesting ?

Check

Complained about a retailer?

Yup

Written about work, but not revealed enough to make it obvious who you actually work for, so you can get away with whining and bitching more or less anonymously?

Absolutely... can't help myself sometimes

Yearned for someone...long held regret...that sort of thing?

Uh-huh

Used rhetorical questions?

Please, when have n't I...

And your trite statements, how have they been?...tried to pass any off as deeply held profoundities that might enlighten mankind?

Pretty often..but trying to cut down.

Been testy and peevish...?

Middle-aged man....what do you expect.

Well, Archimedes, pretty much as I expected. You're still showing the true hardcore Blogger's vital signs. I'm more than happy to certify you as an archetypal Blogger. Great example of the breed. The only thing I will say is try from time to time to come up with an original idea. See if you can surprise yourself.

Instead of being kept awake for most of the night by nearby house parties as I was into the small hours of this morning, I've decided to do this the next time: going to get dressed, grab a couple of my favourite CDs, wander over, and invite myself in.

I'm up to here with House, Ibiza party tunes, and trashy euro-disco; time for real music, music I like for a change. So when I come in, hand over the earphones to me, DJ, because my tunes are going on the CD player. I want my kinda music humming across the garden fences, pulsating through walls. I tell you people, you'd better enjoy old time music, and there's just going to have be someone who likes Leonard Cohen...

Camden, Camden, Camden...A Soul Superstar on your doorstep, and you're oblivious to her. Come on, a little respect. Open your eyes. In front of you. That was Martha Reeves outside the Jazz Cafe last night. MARTHA REEVES !

You'd have to be encased in permafrost to not tap your feet or at least click a finger or two, when the opening bars of : "Dancing in the Streets", "Heatwave", "Nowhere to Run", "Jimmy Mack" swing out. Classic soul tunes.

Call me excitable, but a living Soul Goddess walked amongst you, and only two people copped her: Terry and me. Incredible. Guess it'd mean different if it had been Beyonce or Kylie, the street would have been cordoned off...but Martha is special. A true soulster, part of the DNA. The building blocks, without which, you could argue Soul would have withered on the vine.

Then again, we only twigged her when someone went up to her with a pile of albums (so there was someone else who picked her out of the crowds), which she cheerfully signed and mugged for a couple of camera phone shots a moment later. Enviable the ease of the people who went up to her, almost diffident, controlled, calm, nothing breathless. That kind of manner must sooth all parties, it's relaxed, everybody is comfortable; questions come, words flow.

Oh to have that courage, that confidence. You see, the two of us were as from that as you could get. Think of shy, star-struck, wittering teenyboppers and then add on thirty years, less hair, you get us.

We paid our respects and some later on, when Martha and her two Vandellas, sashayed on the Jazz cafe stage. The instant Dancing in the Streets cracked open was like an adult sized drop of catnip hitting the dance floor, everyone moving, hand clapping, grooving, even us doing our Uncle at the wedding reception dance.

I don't, I just don't, want to see what shapes I was contorting and twitching to on Youtube, though, ever; that's all I ask. In my mind I was throwing moves down that would have made James Brown eat his heart out. It probably looked like I was having a middle aged seizure. Let me enjoy the dream.

Put ten years on someone. What a difference. I've got a friend who, bluntly, has lived it large, more than large in fact: adventures with men, escapades with booze and other stimulants, brushes with the law. Pioneeering ladette behaviour before the term had left the first journalist's pen.

Not a Courtney Love kinda gal. Could have been breathing down her neck, though; thank God for the mundane, down to earth demands of mortgage, employment, car insurance, etc, etc. That tethered her a little more tightly to the ground than La Courtney. Whatever, my friend still has a heck of rousing track record. I call her Carousela

I'm meeting her on Sunday. These days, she's all so different. And Sunday, she's bringing over some of her home made jam before we spend the rest of the afternoon yomping through Wholefoods on Kensington High Street. Could never have envisaged this a decade ago. Tempus fugit. Yet for me, I feel like I've not changed at all. Still plodding on like one of those giant Galapagos turtles. But then again, do men ever change?

So a couple of days ago, someone asks me if I fancy a yoga holiday. Naturally. I'm thinking of somewhere in Kerala or the South of France perhaps; a few hours stretching in the morning, the rest of the day floating in a hammock. My kind of break. Then they say to me: "Ibiza"

Ibiza !

But I'm Forty something....and...and...Ibiza, it's excess, madness...they all fit in the same sentence, snug as bugs in a rug. It'll kill me. I need beatitude, not bacchanalia

She can't mean doing Yoga being blasted by a wildly gyrating foam cannon; or a sun salutation waving a light stick; downward dog with 3,000 others on a pulsing, heaving dance floor; ricocheting around Space or whatever the hippest club is on a yoga mat; over adrenalised sessions that finally draw to a close around 7am; sirens wailing before the next beat breaks; I can't do the Heron pose at the best of times, but in front of a crowd all dressed in dayglo...surely, she can't...She's got it wrong, has to.

She has n't. I have. Yes, there is Yoga in Ibiza...and it's way, way from the club scene, so I won't have to fear being blinded by a strobe. This place is high in the hills. A retreat. Quiet, surrounded by lushness and calm according to the web blurb....now this is more like it.

I don't need a thermometer to realise that December and January are cold months. I don't need to watch the weather forecast either. No one has to tell me. I know full well it is. All day today, I've been bumping into people, who by their stature alone, have said this is what we did to stay warm, keep it toasty, in deep, bleak mid-winter. Yes, that's right all day today, September 1 !

Body heat. That's what I've been seeing; every second step along Kensington High Street, round the aisles of Waitrose, deep in the heart of Tesco, in Waterstones, everywhere. Body heat: it's fruits, it's blessed bounty, it's late summer harvest, in front, to the rear, to the sides, all over.

"So...this body heat, then... exactly what is it...how do I know it's there...does it have a shape ?

"Please...it's so easy...how can't you see it...incredible ! "

"Ease off the exhortation and just tell me...."

It's pregnant women...fruitful, blooming women all on the cusp of giving birth..."

Yeah...so....?

So....I have to tell you...? Wake up, think! When it's too cold for the guardsman to come out of the sentry box and even the mercury in the thermometer bulb's shivering...people are fighting the cold the only way they can, going back to nature, getting up close and then...well... do I have to spell it out...?

Yes.

What ! I do? How clueless are you ...They're getting loved up. Getting in close. Snuggling up, what more do I have to say. Think of it like global warming.

I like America very much: it's a place I've spent a lot of time travelling around, experiencing and in a looser way, studying, I'm fortunate, furthermore, in having family there; so in a sense, it's a place I've been familiar with before I could even conceive where it was on the Atlas. It took time for me to geographically understand where it was, when I was very young I thought it was somewhere just to the north of Scotland and easy to drive to.

America then, or my sense of it, has been an integral part of my consciousness since I can remember, almost a foundation memory beyond which there is only haze and mist.

My first real encounter, the moment it moved from subjective to concrete, and was no longer mediated through the TV, but became up close and personal instead, happened in the late Sixties. I was very young, six, maybe seven, watching with my speechless mother as a US serviceman in full Navy rig walked purposefully towards our house. One of my cousins, who on a whim and with some leave to spare had flown in to the UK from God knows where (maybe the Mediterranean. I've still not asked and I've seen him many times subsequently. Nor have I asked him how he felt. England in the late sixties must have been quite an experience.) had decided to travel deep into the heart of South Yorkshire to see us.

I was mesmerised, we all were, my father, my mother, perhaps her more than either of us since it was her nephew, her sister's eldest. Her sister, someone she loved deeply and corresponded with regularly in spite of the geographical vastness between them; he was a touchstone for memories and experiences that were unknown to either me or my father. It was a very moving meeting.

I felt exotic, especially as my US cousin gave me his campaign ribbons and (don't laugh), an empty pack of Kool cigarettes. This had taken me in an instant from being just another Yorkshire lad into someone who was glamorous, someone who had deep and visible connections with other worlds far more more alluring and extraordinary than anything offered by the hard-grafting, hard-living village life I knew.

I certainly did not have the precociousness at that age to see it as a defining moment in my life; now I do. Ever so quietly, invisibly, it pushed me to recognise there really were other worlds, with other consciousnesses to understand and other cultures to explore, and all as valid as that which then formed my horizon. A South Yorkshire village was all I knew until then, from that point the road forked and forked again, and has never stopped doing so. It told me there was a wealth of a world to explore. I've not stopped since. I don't intend to. Ever. I owe this to America.

What would happen, I wonder, if I simply stopped showing up for work? Leaving aside the economics of it, the need to pay bills and the mortgage, principally, what would I do? Nature abhors a vacuum, so I'm sure I'd find something to fill that work-sized gap. It's what that might be that intrigues me.

I alluded to Memphis, and Beale Street in particular, in an earlier posting. I was using it to support an evocation I was drawing about the Notting Hill Carnival. It's passion, it's swagger, rumbustiousness, and so on. Tenacious place, Beale Street, as a locale and as a memory. I went there once in the early nineties, during a month long sweep through the US. Not a Sherman's march through the South, much more sedate than that all done using what I regard as the unsung hero of American transport - Amtrak. The semi private, semi public (least I think that's the set-up) railway network. I can't think of a more romantic way to see the US unfold than this. Almost like being a pioneer. The only other long-distance trip I've taken in the US that's topped this was an epic drive from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in a Jaguar. That's an aside, but one I will return to at some point because that in it's self is a potent, happy memory, aching to be celebrated. Today it's Beale Street though.

I saw Beale Street through the same lens as I guess many others have, or certainly seem to in the songs, stories and tales: sweaty, frustrated, weary, and frightened. I'd arrived there with no place booked and no chance of finding anything since every available room in a twenty to thirty mile radius had been long ago taken by delegates to the annual Christ in God convention. One front desk obviously thinking I had a set of wheels suggested moving south into Mississippi and trying to find something there. No car. It was the visitor's centre on Beale Street that pulled the rabbit out of the hat. They found me a room at the Long / Lowenstein hostel.

The cab there passed an enormous citadel of a police precinct; ambled down poorly lit roads, fringed with breeze blocked liquor stores, with metal grills and probably blast proof doors; past pawn brokers, bail bond shops, and a steady procession of gun stores; on through corridors of abandoned, gutted buildings, all just waiting for the arsonist, until we pulled to a halt outside something I thought only lived on the pages of Anne Rice, a Gothic, cone-topped, wooden mansion. More for the Manson family than a whimpering Brit.

It could have been excised none too cleanly, with the roots and tendrils still showing, straight from the pages of Poe's House of Usher, and messily re-potted in the midst of chronic deprivation. I have an overwrought literary sensibility at the best of times, so not being kept awake by the agitated pacing of the madwoman / madman in the attic was the only consolation of a very tense and miserable day there. That part of Memphis, and I'm trusting in the fifteen years since I was there, that things have improved perceptibly for the people who spend their lives there, was not pleasant at all. It had a background hum, a pervading sense that bad things were only ever a short distance away, things could happen that you really would not want to see nor become involved with however marginal you were to the event.

An area of forbiddingly dark side streets, with just the odd thin glare of a street light. I'm certain that crime rates fall when streets are properly lit, certainly more people have the cojones to walk along them when they are. I'm talking about London here as much as anywhere else. If anything did ease out of the murk of these streets it was always a low-slung bass rich car carrying unknown numbers of people. No pedestrians anywhere even at the nearby mini-mall which I ran through opposing streams of traffic to reach expecting to find something like a Pizza Hut. Not a one, not a fast-food or quick service eatery in sight. I starved that night; the hostel only served breakfast. Sleepless too, since the door to my room would n't lock (well, how can they if they don't actually have a lock).

I fled early the following day, paid up and simply left. I got out of that area by walking again into the middle of the highway, traffic pounding in each direction, and waving down the first cab I saw.

I was lucky, I am lucky. I was there for a day and a night, thousands of others, decent, generous, hard-working people spend their lives in this environment. And it's an atmosphere of menace, of intimidation, of dilapidation, of people being forgotten and ignored. It's shameful and it's not unique to the US. It's as deep-seated in Europe as it is the US. What do we need to do to enable people to live in decent surroundings free from fear and rid them of this sense they've been swept away under the carpet?

So what exactly did I do for the first day of the Carnival? Shake it up perhaps? Conga behind a float? Get drunk on Red Stripe? Hug someone I'd never seen before ? No, did none of them. Something just as well recognised, I followed a similar migratory path that a lot of other long-term residents take: I went somewhere else. Got out of the noise zone.

My first years in Notting Hill, I loved the Carnival, always spent a day wandering around, absorbing noise, sound, smells, aroma, the headiness that a million people can infect an area with, but eventually, incredibly, I got old, and heat, dust, dull thudding music are too much for me, and that's before adding in the vast numbers of people. So these days I opt out and go somewhere else. Let me say this though: it's only age that's diminished my wish to participate, I'm still a believer in it.

I can feel the drumming barrage creeping nearer and nearer; there it is, deep in Shepherd's Bush by the Green, now sweeping around Shepherd's Bush roundabout, past the Kensington Hilton, stray booms and shrieks edging along St Ann's Villas, getting closer...not be long before it's level with my flat. Still in the near distance, but pushing along relentlessly... won't be long before the full-throated roar of one of the main feeder routes into the Notting Hill Carnival will finally sweep past my flat. The floats, the steel bands, the DJs invoking the crowds to dance, dance, dance. And an army of marching, dancing people behind these pied pipers. Terrific pulses of sound that'll shake the house to it's frame like a tuning fork, salvo upon ragged salvo of whistles and horns.

In N'awlins down on Bourbon Street, or on Beale Street in Memphis, the joint jumps, or so I've been told; at this time of the year, the whole neighbourhood jumps where I live. Two days of music, barbecue smoke, street food, straw hats and Rum. For those of you not in the know, Notting Hill Carnival is Europe's biggest street festivals. Originally a home grown event started by Trinidadians living in London, then it took in the other Caribbean communities, it's outgrown all of that completely. Exuberantly so; today and tomorrow, there'll be upwards of two million folks inching their way through the streets in this part of London. If I pop the door open I'll see a river, maybe even be caught up by it's force, of Steel bands, Samba dancers, flamboyantly costumed people, all types of drumming bands, gospel singers on the flatbeds of lorries welcoming everyone to Jesus, bagpipe bands, ensembles of dancers weaving their way, itinerant sound systems, Soca, High-life. A cosmopolitan madhouse. Needs to be seen, needs to be experienced, needs to be savoured.

It's here ! Barrage ain't creeping no longer, it's finally level with the house; we're shaking... we're vibrating...we're rocking... Earthquake ! Soundquake ! Amy Winehouse, Peter Tosh, Gangsta Rap, House buffeting my flat. Windows rattling in their frame. Was that "Hot, Hot, Hot!" from the Mighty Arrow? My ears are throbbing...