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...

I've seen my future, well, one of them, after all, it's in the lap of Gods as to exactly what happens, but this one did say: " nice to see you... I think we might be getting acquainted later on.."

This is the vision: fading summer afternoons in Holland Park, playing chess against another elderly grey-haired man, worked in with occasional conversations on what exactly we made of life's great feast. We'll be wearing dun-coloured coats and homburgs, stirring our coffees reflectively. Day after day, chess, coffee and rumination. A vision almost begging for monchrome and a moody soundtrack: I'll be a latter day version of all those Central European exiles I used to see in my early years in London. I actually quite envied them then, time to philosophise, grapple with eternal verities; things I actually like. Still do if I'm honest.

Time to salute those who influence me. I have a mixed bag of friends, roughly equal across the genders, but it's the women I know that have done the most to change their lives and circumstances when things simply don't feel right anymore, when the shoe no longer fits, that kind of thing. By and large (there are a few exceptions) they've all made what I term a hard right turn and done something else, which usually, if not always, sees an ambition realised. Ambitions that, I have to confess, are above and beyond one or two that my male friends carry, the search for the perfect pint for instance. Never going to grab me that one. Don't mind pubs, but limits please...

This entry is for my women friends who have said enough is enough, sat down, reflected, made hard decisions on occasions, and followed other callings instead. So stand up and take some applause, those of you seeing your inner objectives through, whether its: counselling, coaching, running your own business, risking it all to produce a film, spending three months in the US learning a new skill, working on that organic garden, volunteer work for a medical charity, developing your spiritual / physical side . You know who you are, why some of you even dip in to this blog.

You're the force who drives the green fuse as far as I'm concerned. I'm a fed-up with work guy wanting a change. I take my inspiration from you.

The way I walked up to the counter must have told the bookseller, yep, it's Monday, and here's yet another guy who's decided to change his life over the weekend. Probably happens every Monday morning, someone purposefully walking into the Waterstones by Blackfriars Bridge and looking for a book on career breaks. I'm a sucker for tradition and I can't let myself not follow this one; I've also been bedevilled by nameless, low-level gloom for weeks, the other reason, the reason, behind me buying "Gap years for grown-ups". My nameless low-level gloom now has a name - work. I hate it. And I reckon a break is what I need.

Every Saturday morning I go to a Yoga class. Been doing it for several years now and I love it. My body unknots itself from the rigours of the working week, I get a great stretch, and I leave glowing. It's become a weekly highlight, and in some ways, become more important in my fitness regime than the bi-weekly trips to the gym. I've even wondered (and still am) about knocking the gym on the head and turn everything towards Yoga.

I like everything about it; from the warm-up through the exercises, the twisting, bending, suppleness of it all, to the transendence of the wind-down session, where we lay prone, at rest, and no external awareness, other than the rhythm of our breath, sometimes accompanied, I have to say, by the occasional throb of a tube train passing deep underground. In a way that gives it an accidental frisson, almost like a distant massage.

85% of all blog entries are a mixture of admonitions, cautions, prohibitions and downright injunctions*. Pardon the double negative, but I cannot not add to that figure. So here's mine, a hearty, from the gut injunction: there's too much damn choice and it's slowing everything down, no one can make a decision any longer.

Too many options, too many combinations, too many possibilities, there's no such thing now as the quick decision, gone, dead, vanished, it might as well stand between the Tyrannosaurus Rex and the Woolly Mammoth in the Natural History Museum, it's extinct as a concept. All there is, all we can expect, is paralysis. Do I do this, or should I do that, but what about that, maybe I could do all of them? But I'm too busy bloody thinking to do anything ! And too much of anything stimulates confusion.

The apple dropped when I was in a local chain coffee shop, stuck in a small line of people shuffling like penitent monks towards the serving counter. Me, I like an early morning coffee; a simple from the motherland cappuccino, that's all, nothing complicated. A little foam, throw in an espresso as the base, mix and serve piping hot. Easy. Less five minutes to put together. Yet this coffee chain (and for those of you who have read Moby Dick, it's got the same name as one of the characters in Melville's novel), advertises a Rubik's cube worth of coffee: hot or iced, flavoured or gourmet, teas by the bucket load, with umpteen different types of milk, where Tall is bizarrely the smallest size. I feel like I'm looking at a strobe light whenever I glance at their menu, it's dazzling, blinding to the eye. And these babies take a long time to create. That's without the clutching chest pain of hearing someone place a multiple order, which always has to be repeated and there's always something missing, or made wrong, or the order placer remembers at the last moment that they really wanted it to take away and would the Barrista mind....

What in the days of yore took a few minutes from ordering to you walking away with it in your hand takes an eternity now. I was in that line for nearly twenty minutes; it's only because I'm a Brit with a built in queuing gene and the determination that if I've started then I'll finish that I stayed

Simple things work, they are enjoyable. People should take a leaf from this. Don't over complicate, don't give us too much choice, if nothing else, it's a hell of a food and beverage cost to have all this stuff sitting around on the shelves. That's before the stupefying effect it has on us - the consumer. Go simple. Some years ago, a good friend who lives in LA took me to the exemplar of simple, a happy go lucky diner called the Pan Apple. The core menu revolves around burgers, with or without cheese basically, and a few other items, tuna sandwiches etc. Limited works; all food in front of you, bubbling and sizzling away on paper plates minutes after being ordered. This is it how it should be. Too much does n't work. The Pan Apple has a spot on operating model, and I'm not the only one thinking this either: http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2005/08/apple_pan_quali.html

I got my coffee in the end if you're interested. I'd waited so long I would n't have cared if it had come in a mop bucket with a piece of bacon floating in it.

*That percentage ? Made it up, but that's what it feels like some days plodding through Bloggerland

I was there when it happened. I saw it, I heard it...and I am still hearing it hours afterwards. The sound of over-revving engines, smoking tyres, squealing brakes, desperate steering, and then the elongated eerie silence that everyone notices moments before something awful. That expired, then came the grinding, clashing roar of two adjectives crashing head-first into each other. God, there was debris everywhere, mangled, broken letters crawling from the wreckage, dazed and confused. Like me, and I was just a bystander.

It was so bad, I expected nothing to survive, yet something did, but it was nothing I'd ever seen before, slowly, struggling for support, there it was a new word... stratical. Out of the grey smoke came this pig in a poke, fused from the remains of two sturdy adjectives: strategic and tactical. It's the midpoint term: when it's not part of an over-arching programme with date way into the future i.e. strategic, but more important than expedient, or needs doing now i.e. tactical. Or if it's easier, think of a timeline: tactical, tomorrow; stratical, next week; strategic next month.

I heard it this afternoon and in a serious conversation. It's not a word, it's a car-crash. Stratical, it sounds like a condition I should be suffering from, the footnote to a very lengthy piece in a medical encyclopedia: " extreme sufferers are known to experience intense and prolonged stratical episodes..." We've got to ring-fence it and keep it out of common parlance. I love an ever refreshing English language, but some candidates, you have to say thank you, but try again later. Stratical has to be one of those. I dare n't run it through Google, it may be true.

To the man on the tube this evening. If you're going to bound into the carriage, glare at everyone, and then shout out you can't bear being near ugly people, then at least do it with some elan. Show hauteur, contempt, demonstrate imperial disdain. You could have swished around in a huff, turned your back on the fifteen or so of your fellow passengers. All of us unclean to your very eyes.

Except you did n't, and this is where I feel, even as a groundling and thus unfit for view, I ought to point out a few things. Scorn is best delivered, it's more forceful, when it's clearly audible to the listener; your hacking cough, half spitting made it difficult for us to understand exactly what you were saying. We got the gist, mind you, just not the exact content.

Dressing, yes, that helps. It's been very warm recently, so I can accept you were dressing for the season, however, you need to wash what you wear regularly. The carriage was pretty pungent whilst you were lecturing us. Worth fastening your trousers too, otherwise the message is lost, the audience ends up distracted. My personal plea: try to wear something underneath your trousers as well. I don't think I was the only one who caught a glimpse of something fish belly white going by the reactions on a few faces.

I find it onerous having to shave as well, but I do anyway, everyday as well. Yes, it's impudence and inexcusable temerity, just I have to say it: you could do with getting the razor out. That's not Miami Vice stubble you're carrying. More bearded old testament prophet, but if that's the look you're going for, then who am I... ?

Hope you don't mind me saying so. This takes me to something else: do you drink? You were pretty red-faced...unless of course it was brought on by the exasperation, OK, the horror then, of having to be in the same carriage as us. Maybe it was, I don't know. You smoke, don't you...now we all know that's not healthy, and I twigged that the reason you tried to on the tube was your natural defiance as well as showing how much more maverick you are compared to those meek wallflowers sat near you....but it's not healthy, you're harming yourself, which is why we all asked you to stop. We were n't worried about us, no, far from it, it's you we were thinking of. Yes, you...

Accept this in the spirit of constructive criticism; if you want to succeed in this field, and bluntly, you've got a clear run, I've never been on a tube where this has happened before and I've been strap hanging for nearly twenty-five years, then these things might help sharpen your act. But I end on a note of caution: choose your audience, you were fortunate we were all knackered and burnt out and frankly could n't care, do this on a train packed with football fans - different story.

"Heels that don't hurt". This, by the way, is a strap line in an advert for Gaymers cider, not me pleading to find a pair that don't turn my feet into steak tartare. But it keeps reminding me every time I see it of the numerous stories I've been told by women involving heels, or more properly, shoes. It has the arc of a narrative: the hunt, the quest, the decision, the mental wardrobe matching, then the purchase. And if there's anyone reading who has flipped through Robert Mckee's self-help scriptwriting book "Story", it's got conflict situations and dilemmas: it's the last pair...to buy or not to buy...there's someone else and they're picking them up...!"

There is, I think, more emotional capital invested in a pair of shoes by women than men in general. Broadly, and this is culled from my own experiences, a man gets a new pair of shoes usually because the only pair he's got are riddled with more holes than in a termite mound, and there's no way he can wander into the office wearing shirt, tie and football boots. It's necessity, therefore the purchasing act is utilitarian - I need, I buy; it's as functional as that. Let me say this: I don't wait until the sole and uppers of my shoes are flapping like dolphin flippers. I do buy as and when, and have probably got a larger footwear collection than the average male*

On the other side of the house, there's much more going on, something intimate, about identity, role-playing. Different shoes, different mood, but much more subtly based than for a man. I've spent long-time in shoe shops watching girlfriends appraise a pair of shoes, trying them on is just a part of it, maybe even a smaller part than might be imagined.

And from what I've seen I also think there's a emotional attachment which simply is n't for men. Almost as if it's possible to mark out different stages of their personal history. One friend said to me, and only semi-humorously, that she was close to the age where wearing pointy shoes was going to become difficult. I only imagine this is somehow connected to the notion I alluded to earlier about identity, being someone different if only momentarily. I don't have that. I can't pin a mood or event to what I had on my feet.

Nevertheless, I'm not immune to memory / item association. Mine's books. I can tell you exactly where I was and how I felt when I read particular books.

* 16 pairs. The full monty: Brogues, boots, trainers, desert boots.

The school holidays do make a difference. Oh yes, they do. I can get a seat on the bus, go on the upper deck if I want, and not have to worry about being jeered at by school kids or getting a salvo of moody looks or both.

Same goes for the tube, I can get a seat on just about any carriage most times of the day. No queues either at the gym, if there's a piece of equipment I want to use, I can. Lines at the supermarket are n't too large, nor are they at any of the numerous coffee shops I drop in to.

Not having kids does have some advantages.

There was a middle aged man strumming a Harp at the foot of the escalators at St Paul's station during this evening's rush-hour.

He could n't have found a better place; there's something about the acoustics of this particular station that seems to hold music in, it seems to be able to shave off any ragged edges and leave a finished article which is smooth and fully rounded. No buzz, no distortion, no clipping. Sure this was n't what the original architects had in mind when they planned this station decades ago, nevertheless, what a gift horse.

An inspired time to play too: evening, platforms bursting with tired, work stained commuters. We need something to wash and rinse us, this did it for me.

The whole thing charmed me. In a way it echoed the mood music that's always a feature of Hollywood Xmas feel-good movies. Where eyes are always twinkling, magic's a-foot, and everyone is wearing a happy conspiratorial smile. My guilty pleasures, those kind of films. I get a glow from them and I don't really know why, then again not every mood requires an exacting dissection.

Keep going, Mr Harp Player. St Paul's needs you !

"Events, dear boy, events" was how Harold Macmillan pictured his greatest worry, things happening that he simply had n't planned for and so could n't control. But I think it's one of these phrases you can export and use in other places. I like it because it catches the randomness of life, things happen without any warning, turn away they're not there, turn back, and what do you see. Exactly

Yet, it's a double-headed turn of phrase; there's the sudden appearance side, arbitrary and often accidental, and then there's the stones in the road side, where this time it's event prefiguring event. And that's just how I'm interpreting Macmillan's four words now.

I've gone back to reading Thomas Hardy almost thirty years on from when I read him last. All down to a series of events: first a friend told me that Tess of the D'Urbervilles was her favourite novel, the one she enjoyed writing about more than any other; then I donated a heap of books to a charity shop in Sheffield, in which there was seam of Thomas Hardy novels, and I remember flicking through them, looking at all of the underlinings and annotations I'd put in; whilst last week I took a train through Hardy Country, where it all came together, the landscape, the green rolling Fields, broad heaths, the sense of lush magic and intense passion.

Events, dear boy, events

Four of us went to Brighton today. A fabulous day: piercing blue sky and a blistering overhead Sun. So different to my last time there when everything seemed monochrome and flat; now it's lush and vibrant, paint fresh off the easel. Glowing

What happened on that hour long train? We boarded at Victoria, drummed through Sussex, and arrived in Nice, or that's how it seemed. The seafront could have been the Promenade des anglais: the strolling, the preening, the roller bladers, the cyclists, and the Sun, the Sun...

But it was n't Nice, it was triumphantly, riotously Brighton. Ten steps across the beach is ten steps across Copacabana beach, ten more steps Muscle Beach, another ten, it's Bondi, then Benidorm, further on Cannes. Brighton is our fusion beach city: from string bikini to burqa, from knotted handkerchief to turbans, from panama hat primness to funkily tattooed muscle men - all there. I loved it. I am an optimist, I firmly believe that we can all live together: London proves it, Brighton Beach proves it.

It felt European, the sensibility was European, it's moved on from the kiss me quick, deckchair angle, it's relaxed, fresh, open; almost like a bazaar with a twist of Marrakesh's colour and Rio's, well,...brio. Ethnic boutiques: Colombian, African, European. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

I fell asleep on the beach: the rhythm of the waves, the soft heat, the tang of the sea, like an anaesthetic. Surrounded by thousands, I love this feeling of community.

The town was full to the rafters, not just with beachhappy, carefree lazybones like us, there was a Gay Pride march in full swing. Felt like the Castro...and those two elderly leather clad biker clones we saw - they must have slow baked in the wilting Sun.

When that Sun starts to drop in Brighton, the Hen and Stag parties appear; I've never seen so many groups of women desperately trying to look unselfconscious in white leggings and fairy wings or bunny ears. First a handful flutter by, then a few more, growing and growing until there's almost a roost, twittering with their male opposites - the stag partiers, drunk, leering and wearing t-shirts with a photo of the bridegroom when he was six.

I've loved my day in Brighton.

I thought had minted a new expression a couple of days ago. Hubris. Soon found out someone had beaten me to the clock. There's nothing new under the Sun so why I thought I had is a mystery, but anyway I had.

Interesting image Under the Sun, implying all that is known, as been thought of, created, constructed...but shouldn't it be under Google now? If not found there, ergo not likely to exist. In Google, we all seem to be trusting.

The name itself has additional meaning above and beyond the simple brand: verb - I'm googling; statement of fact, if it's in there then it's a hard, full-faced fact- yes, in Google, just checked; question implying something needs substantiation - have you googled it?

And the handcrafted piece I'd thought I'd carved out of virgin territory? What was it and what did I do to it? Iceberg Statement, that's what it was. You know the thing about Icebergs being 10% above the surface and the rest below the waterline. I've often noticed these appear in a conversation, especially those travelling across rocky emotions; someone hints at something greater, more burdensome, a secret regret perhaps, or a wistful, yet time expired hope that can't be shrugged off. And I thought my freshly stamped remark, new to the world and in my eyes still connected to me umbilically, would carry. Lofty eh, pretentious...oh I'd say so.

Google for reassurance that it really is my baby...and it's already there....zillions of pages. It was a bit far-fetched looking back to think I really had come up with a new expression based on something so widely known and metaphorically rich as an iceberg. Good feeling though