I got that e-mail today. The circular from friend X which goes: "... and Y is finally making an honest woman of his fiancee...". Good on you guy, about time, right thing to do.

Then, further down, buried in the text is this bloodcurdler, the words to dread: " ...and he's asked me to organise a stag weekend for him ". What...but...but...but... how did this get through my spam filter! Y is a great guy, utter respect, but this....and being organised by X as well ! Might as well be triple XXX - he's a notorious beer hound. Getting the chest pains.

Calm down, draw breath, check it's meant for me, never know, might be a rogue mail meant for someone else...no... no... no...it is...they want me !

Believe me, no man, apart from maybe a few recidivist hardcore party or die types, stands with open arms and a warm smile, waiting for this particular e-mail to drop in to the in-box. It's the moment when the heart sinks, the shoulders slump, the stomach churns, and the self-recriminations flare up like measles: "But I told myself after the last, never, ever again...! Don't you remember the constant low level bitching, don't you ever learn? Well, don't you!"

This is the modern day draft paper, it really is, in fact I'd rather be conscripted. A stag weekend in Germany. Imagine ten Brits abroad in the land of Beer, nine drinkers, and then me. Already having the sleepless nights just thinking about it. It's not like being British is a passport to being popular overseas either.

I've walked the long road that a stag weekend really is many, many times; invariably uphill, long, drawn out, painful and bone weary. Arguments, bickering, squabbling, enforced bonhomie. Calvary. And this if it goes well too...

Only ever enjoyed a handful: one, a relative's, the others, those of two close friends.

Don't doubt, that today's Margaret Mead White, or any anthropologist come to that with penchant for group dynamics, would rub their hands with glee at the prospect of charting this fetish, because that's what it is, fetishistic, ritualised behaviour. But actually being in one....now, different experience. Really. Even from far away I hear the tumbrils...

What do I do if X the organiser hands out team T-shirts before we board the plane? I've seen that. Groups of pasty faced Brits skulking in low corners with shirts printed with the groom's name, some half-baked slogan and the date. What do I do if that happens? Tell him, I'm allergic to all fibres, manmade and organic? Or a club, they might decide to go to a club, a club...Oh God...

Should I stay or should I go?

Another day, another literary figure...well, lookalike. Yesterday, I was pondering just why someone would have their front wall covered with the head and neck of Samuel Beckett. This evening, I've seen someone with a not exactly, but pretty near resemblance to George Bernard Shaw. Deep in the blizzard of people around Shepherd's Bush Green, but entirely oblivious to it was an elderly man whose look, beard, even his raincoat made him a dead ringer for GB. Literary London, eh.

Why on earth would someone paint the face and neck of Samuel Beckett in varying hues of grey on the front wall of their house? I kept staring at it from a cafe on the other side of Blenheim Crescent. It's just like a one dimensional representation of an Easter Island statue; rugged, open to the elements, and effortlessly noble even in the depressing rain of early evening. Being scratched and paint flaked adds a certain timelessness to it in a way. And I'm not going to bother second guessing why it's there, because there's no need. Art ought to make you think; this does the trick perfectly.

Sitting outside in the thin rain, sipping espressos, pulling on Marlboro lites, fashionably weary and an ironic eye to everything - where else would you see this in such profusion but Portobello Road?

I don't carry that many regrets around. There's no black book. I have my what-if days from time to time, the odd sleepless night. All in all, not too bad; of course, regret is acutely personal, infinitely variable, and can drop out of a clear sky without warning. There's untold millions labouring under the yoke of "why did n't I do this / that / it ? ". It's like so many things in life, it's how you respond; even the hardiest of people have their times.

To the question of where is this meandering towards, what are my regrets then? Here's a handful of I should haves (to be worthy of the description, regret in it's fullest glory has to be something you had the opportunity of attaining, but never did and will never do; it's that which gives regret it's deepest pang). I wish I had seen the Jam, the Grateful Dead, and most definitely why did I never see the Clash. Out of this trio, it's the latter I most regret. That's the one I really should have seen through. The further the years stretch between when I could have seen them makes that one a real ache. There's no hope of any of them happening now, untimely death or estrangement has closed the book on all of that.

I have a few other regrets, how unusual if I was n't to say that they were n't around relationships. Unsurprisingly, it's these that sometimes knock me cold. They appear from nowhere and sometimes leave only with effort. Most of the handful, that's all they amount to now, I can rationalise away and as the distance deepens, they shed their potency little by little. There's only one I feel will never leave, I'll take wherever I go, it'll be with me the day I'm discussing access arrangements with St Peter. It's somebody I wish I had met years ago, and sometimes wish I'd never met at all. It's that kind of yearning ache.

"Baby, it's cold outside...". I don't know whether I should slip a pair of gloves and jam a hat on, my extremities are numbing up (numbing up, numbing down; I don't know, there's either a pair of brave new terms been carved out there, or two solecisms to break the heart).

Last week, it was like living in St Tropez. Now, it's so cold, I would n't miss a heart beat if I heard on the radio that polar bears had been spotted near Regents Park, or packs of wolves were skittering over the snow chasing express trains. And with that wind out there, racing around the chimney pots, you never know what could happen.

It's become so cold I can feel my stubble breaking out - I only shaved a few hours ago - maybe it's evolutionary, an emergency beard to fight the cold.

I'm in a house as well where I don't know how to turn the heating on. Not my house - I'm house sitting, but firing up the central heating when it's nearly June. Please.

I should have never seen the Joe Strummer film yesterday. Never.

Straight home, straight on the net, pop his name in Google, break for a few hours sleep, then back again.

Seldom does a film drive me to this behaviour. Usually I walk out, vaguely aware I've been sat in semi darkness watching moving images. But it has. And you know the more I find out about Joe, the more of his music I listen to, the more video clips I grab off the 'net, takes me ever nearer to standing on street corners and proclaiming.

Worrying when it gets like this. Only a small series of steps until it's hours standing in the rain by Shepherds Bush roundabout howling into the wind to all and sundry: "Buy London Calling, I tell you, buy London Calling,it's all you need to know about life...!"

Aujourdhui est le sixieme jour since I turned my back on chocolate. I'm good. Plain sailing so far. I've not been pestered by cravings, dogged by mood swings, or pounded by withdrawal headaches. Not a thing, not even a substitute addiction. Sixty days, eh.

About ten years ago, I went to a Nicotine Anonymous meeting; a little out of curiousity, with a touch of voyeurism too, but mostly as the non-smoking support for a friend intent on nailing his smoking habit once and for all. I loved the whole thing: the camaderie, the support, the sense of a shared struggle.

What got me the most was the applause; every time someone rose out of their chair to tell everyone else how long they had been clean, there'd be cheers, bursts of handclapping, exhortations. It was almost religious. Some sobbed, a few sniffled, not everyone had the indulgence of a single addiction either. This was in California, and the meeting was an edgy, arty, driven, desperate crew to boot; there was a rainbow, an A-Z of addictions. Should have shoe horned chocolate in there.

My eyes. Striding past the local coffee shop on my way home this evening, I was convinced I'd seen a sign promoting their new "Prawn Mocha" .

When I went back to re-read, bewildered by the notion of a shellfish based coffee (would you like chocolate sprinkles or crab flakes on your cappuccino?), it actually said "Pure Mocha". Tomorrow the optician.

A typical office IM conversation

"Seen your scorecard?"

"Yeah."

"So, what do you think?"

"Well, just about impossible"

"Same targets as me then."

"Probably"

" Cure for the common cold?"

"Yep, got that one"

"Something about global warming?"

"That's in there"

"This is ridicolous, we'll end up paying them money back! "

Yes, yes, a thousand time yes ! It's starting to hurt...enough...please....no more. I've told you already I give in, you know I can't go on. It has to stop. Now. You've broken me. Christ, I'm a rag doll, can't you see you're bending me? It's a thin line, remember....

I give in. I'm yours. Look at me pinned to the floor, held down by the shoulders, am I struggling? No. So why torment me still? France, you have to give up...I'm yours. Beaten senseless by the wonder of the place. Don't you understand? You've got me. I capitulate. Completely.

Something changed me, something happened during these past few days in Nice, I dropped through the rabbit hole and fell for you, France. You've got me spellbound

Letter to a friend

I grew up earlier than either of my parents would have hoped. Circumstances intervened. My Father had his first heart attack, which I saw him have, as we were sat in his car in a carpark in a northern town. Had it not been for my mother being able to get someone to drive us to a nearby hospital and for that person's utter kindness in doing so, I would have been the single child of a single parent. I was seven.

The event is very hazy, it's more of a sense now than anything else, after all it's nearly forty years ago for one thing. How was I ? Bewildered without doubt, certainly frightened, and likely as not I pushed the memory of it all as far away as I possibly could. Denial, if it's not there then did it really happen? No, can't have. Let the spiders weave their cobwebs over it until it disappears from sight completely

It's being young and not knowing what to do or how to feel your way around a world that has changed irreversibly - up is no longer up, it's now down; all the points of safety and reassurance have shifted. Your landmarks have gone and as a kid, it takes time to grab hold of them again.

My story just like all of our stories is unique and it's personal, but it's how I dealt with preternatural growing up. It might provide clues as it could answers in some ways. I have your son in mind here.

Almost straightaway I became extraordinarily superstitious. If certain things happened, it'd spell doom, no half-way house, it would only ever be bad in my mind. I loathed, hated, feared going to the town where he had been taken so ill, the place had such dire significance; even the thought of going there would terrify me - something would go wrong. It became overpowering

It does n't need a skilled eye to see two behaviourial patterns at work: superstition is essentially trying to control events - if I do this, then this will not happen, or alternatively it might, if I don't; wrapped in and around this was the further idea of me as an agent of disaster, because of something I did, bad things happened, I'm to blame, it's my fault. It does n't take too many steps to walk from these two behaviours and then pick up another pair - anxiety and very poor self esteem. Natural bedfellows.

Anxiety is gross worry, a perfect accomplice to superstition and control freakery; someone over reacts to something that in for all intents and purposes is n't going to happen: for me it was always if I had n't done this, or heard that song playing on the radio, however I've now done it or heard it, then....(that's what it became eventually - I associated certain songs with my dad being unwell, to such a degree that if I heard them I'd panic. You will not have known that. I deeply internalised a lot of things. I was a kid with a lot buried).

I've been dogged with anxiety all my life. I never knew, utterly ignorant. Blank to it. Me ? Anxious, oh please...It was only after my mother died and I went through a slow, subtle self appraisal, one that for some time I was utterly unaware of, before I realised how engrained it had become. It manipulated me. Now, it's a non-issue. I know it's there, except now I manage it, I have the whip-hand for once and I'm not letting go.

When it came to self esteem, I'd blame myself for everything, apologise almost in advance,before something had happened, remember how often I'd say sorry when I was kid ? (not my innate good manners, more the damaged part of me talking, the rest of me blissfully unaware). For a long time, many years in truth, I firmly believed I was no good at anything.

Today, I know it's nonsense. We are who we are: complex, complicated individuals, fragile, strong, demanding, dull, funny, effervescent, lively, sad, and so many other things at the same time. I know too that in life things just happen, there is no intelligent design pulling the strings to delight or thwart us. It happens pure and simple; what does matter. though, is how one responds. Taken me a long time to reach this level of understanding.

What I experienced and then my subsequent series of emotional responses are n't a model. Everyone reacts differently irrespective of age, all paths are unique. Your son is going to react in his own way. Maybe he'll ask questions, seek solace, I don't know. It'll happen. But spend time with him. I can't underline that enough.

Things were different with me, it was a different time, people thought differently; the notion of emotional intelligence was unknown, the power of emotions were equally as unknown, the same for emotional engagement, really asking someone how they felt. It was another age. I don't think anyone then was properly aware that distress leaks out unexpectedly and in behaviours that are n't necessarily anticipated. In my case: acute superstition (still a legacy even today. I can't leave a book if it's on page 13 or chapter 13, have to read on, usually to page 15 or chapter 15, 14 is too close. Bet you did n't know that!); troublesome self esteem; over exagerrated levels of anxiety; and I'm the reason things go wrong. All of it beyond nonsense, if you're young, however, and in challenging circumstances, with perhaps the right questions not being asked, what's to prevent them becoming literal truths.

Spend time with him, ask him how he feels, what's he thinking. He'll need confidence.

I work for a company where it's the rule that nothing will have less than one name. Nothing. There's the launch name, the project name, then the name plucked up and thrown our way by the marketeers. None of these names ever disappear. Never sloughed off like snake skins, there's nothing like passing the relay baton, where one name eases gracefully but quickly into another. Nope, these all continue to live side by side in some nomenclature half life, outside time and beyond common sense.

Last week, I earnestly told someone that the reason I was n't able to do something, (and it was n't a half-baked excuse either, I was n't staring at the floor shuffling uneasily from foot to foot, I really could n't do it) was because:

"I don't have access to system Y, only to system X and no way will that do it, need to order system Y, in fact, I better find out what it exactly does, don't want it torpedoing my work laptop, so it'll take me weeks 'fore I can even start. "

Them: "....but don't you know that system x is the same as system y, surely you know that ! Everyone does"

Me: "They do? I don't ..."

Them - deep breath, the one that's kept for chastising children: " System X was the project name, system Y is the operational name..."

Me: "When did this happen?"

This goes on all the time.

Don't dispute that things have to stay confidential, especially so in the world where I earn my corn, things change fast; every day, there's the hot breath of of one or more competitor tickling the back of your neck, or you're getting lungfuls as they hotfoot it past you. But when the wrappers comes off, and whatever the shiny new thing it is that's gleaming like a new bride has been presented to the world, let's do it the honour of sticking to one name. Otherwise, this way madness lies...or I'll capitulate and join in the multiple name game.

Travel takes you places. I had it in my mind a few years ago to visit all of the micro states in Europe; those flakes of geopolitical real estate that have always been overlooked by their more acquisitive, grabbing neighbours. So it was up hill and down dale through Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, and finally that alpine bolthole, Liechtenstein.

Singlehandedly I probably kept their economies afloat for at least another week or more; I went home laden with all types of kitsch: plates, mugs, chocolate figurines, shoulders bowing with gewgaws and fluff. Surely one of these states should at least give me honorary citizenship or a medal. Or how about they have a national day named after me.

I spent this warm, sunny afternoon outside a Portobello Road cafe drinking coffee, listening to a friend talk about a wonderful week she had recently spent in Sardinia.

Stirring our spoons into many thimble sized espressos, we oozed reminiscences over Italy. Hard not to, if not actually impossible, after all, Italy, just as France and Spain do, stirs the heart and sways the head.

What a delightful rogues gallery of experiences; as predictable a list as anyone might imagine: blissful meals and wine; La Dolce Vita; the sense of joy it inspires for no other reason that it's simply Italy. And of course, memorable stays. With an old flame, my friend had spent part of a Summer twisting and turning through Tuscany in a Porsche - now that's got to have been the way to have done it in the pre-carbon footprint days. Tempus fugit: Sardinia they cycled round

Say Italy to me and I think of Bologna. Better food hath no man had than here. I had what I earnestly regard as a landmark meal there once - pasta e fagioli. Yep, simple as it comes, pasta and beans in a light meaty broth. Barely a handful of meals, nevertheless, have ever got my heart racing the way this did. When you feel an absolute duty to fall at the feet of the chef and kiss the hem of their apron, or weep soundlessly, all five senses stunned in delight. Numb with pleasure.

Today, it might as well have been a Unicorn I spotted - the restaurant seems to vanished, that treasure island taken by the waves. I've never had a repeat dish of pasta e fagoli that's come within spitting distance of the first. It's become my great quest. Well, one of...there are a few more.

Another day of bullying, intimidation , veiled threats, and that's just from me. Am I feeling ennobled by any of this? No, not at all.