Proud of you, cuz... Noble step to have a Vote Ken poster stuck on you front window. I'm with you all the way there. Courageous thing to do in some ways; your street's collective sensibility has always struck as being predominantly blue. Wonder what they're thinking...? Boris is n't going to cure scrofula, pox and pestilence in spite of whatever the Evening Standard proclaims. He's human and therefore flawed. Feet of clay. There'll be mud.

As wines mature and oak in the barrel, and take on tones and subtleties and shades over the years, so it is the same in the slow evolution of a friendship. Neither are static. Gradual, imperceptible change is taking place in the depths pushed on quietly by almost submarine like waves.

I notice now that it's less frantic, passionate intimacy (when you're in daily contact) to more understanding and accommodation as the years sweep by in recognition of something else, that great, but welcome, intruder - life.

I've been thinking about this since last weekend when I met an old friend whilst I was in New York. We've known each other for over twenty years. Initially we were a couple, although if I'm realistic, it was more a light romance, a summer romance in many ways; distance did for us ultimately - we were an early NYLON couple and a young one at that, scarcely in our twenties. It fluttered to an end softly and I hope painlessly; but it did n't exhale a final breath and expire, no, it reformed into another state of closeness - friendship.

We've kept this afloat for two decades through letters, faxes, phone-calls, endless e-mails,visits to London where I live and New York where she is.

I am very fond of her; she is, and this is something I once alluded to in a blog entry years ago, one of those people who have touched my life and transformed it.

But do I really know her? Does anyone really know their long-term friends once life has stepped in between you and led each of you in different directions and into separate adventures? Evolutions occur that in no way can you be privy to or even aware of. Take my friend, I've only ever known her as a woman, that was how she was to me, and remains like that if I'm honest; but today that's only one aspect, there's more that life has added: she is a wife and a mother now. I still remember her as a woman. That sense is crystallised almost but now she is more, something richer, deeper, more vital, much more complex.

I've been fascinated by this realisation for days. It has only added to my gratitude for knowing her. There's more to find out. Just like prisms turned in the light - always something new and unexpected appearing.

To America, my new found land. Whoever hates you hates life" This is what Brendan Behan wrote in reaction to the euphoria of America, to it's heart-stopping wonder, it's limitless ambition and zest for living. The passion of it. The possibility of adventure greater than on offer anywhere else. These words are inscribed on a plaque fixed to the front of the Chelsea Hotel in New York commemorating this wonderful engineer of words and his stay there. They're my thoughts too; to fail to respond to America is to fail to respond to life. It is as plain as that. I adore the place

The sign-off line de nos jours on every e-mail I seem to get where I work is your initial. I don't understand. One person doing it is marginally acceptable for me, now it's everyone, it's gone viral. Why? Is it fashion, is it these signatories want to impart some meaning, which I can't work out. Again why?

An adept writer can make words stand on their head and spin. Consider this line from Jay McInerney, the subject is wine:"...it is the lubricant that stimulates our conversation, but it's a polygamous relationship that encourages and enhances our other passions. It leads us to other subjects..." The topic is irrelevant, though I do like wine, it's the brio of that adverb, polygamous, that I like. He's prised it off it's habitual setting, where it's blanketed under a veil, spun it around and used it to illuminate something else. I love that facility, I wish I had it, the skill of taking one word then using it to such enterprise somewhere where it would never normally be seen.

Yesterday I pondered the publication cycle of the London Review of Breakfasts; not it's existence, if it's partnering the Guardian (and it's not April 1), it's real and that's all that needs to be said. My musing was just how often does it appear.

Today I was delighted to get an e-mail from the LR of Breakfasts and it's not a weekly, monthly, annual or occasional one-off, it's flying hot off the griddle three times a week.

To properly unlock the day, to face up to what may be a day of quiet joy, or endless indignities, or both, or something far from either and utterly different, there's only one key to turn: Breakfast.

Good food, a suitable ambiance, and a few lashings of ingredient X - that old elusive, seldom seen, but never forgotten when experienced. Is there anything else that can make the difference between an average breakfast and an epiphany in early morning eating than these?

Breakfast epiphanies are as rare as hen's teeth, well, for me anyway, so I'll never turn a recommendation down, especially when it's as heartfelt, as crisply expressed, and more often than not wittily addressed, as it is in the LR of Breakfasts, which is why I'm proud to add their link on to my blog.

I love the inventiveness of some people, their sheer daftness really. Today's Guardian had a section devoted to the 50 best places to have a fried breakfast in Britain. They'd done it in conjunction with the London Review of Breakfasts. No, I did n't know that existed either, and I definitely don't know whether it's weekly, monthly, annual, one-off...no idea. Suggest you ask them.

Many of the top 50 entries were reviews submitted pseudonymously and it's their pen-names. more than the reviews in some cases, that have stuck with me. Could you resist reading a review of the Great British Breakfast written by Muffin Gaye or Egon Toast or HP Seuss ? How about the latest in the grilled sausage world from Herby Banger ? On the perfect breakfast egg by Orva Easy, or more authoritatively, from the office of Dr Sigmund Fried? There were nods to the step-child of breakfasts - the continental, with a paean from Pam au Chocolat and a heartfelt note from Armand Croissant.

I've been laughing all day at these names. Wonderfully bad punning.

I used to spend a blissful hour, or so, one evening a month relaxing in a floatation chamber. There is something deeply soothing, strange as it may seem, about gently floating in a warm solution of Epsom salts. You know that old truism about just letting go ? That was the shape of things for me every time I floated; all senses rested and the stress clock, if not discarded for good, then certainly reset back to zero. Someone once wrote in the floatation centre comments book that they slunk in as a frump and left as a Goddess. I knew all about that. Happened every time, a slow, invisible transformation back from London stress-head to a more engaged sense of being human, mentally, physically, and most definitely emotionally.

Another testimonial from a fellow floater said that: "...in our busy world it is good to have a place to come, turn the light off and tap into the side of your brain that wants to play and have fun..." So true. Work and daily life is very left hemisphere (that part of the neo-cortex where all the processing happens, the analytical centre). It's noisy, chattering away, busily reacting to external stimuli. Put it this way: it's the bossy, over-bearing sibling. Well-intentioned, but just...well, loud. Unlike the quieter right hemisphere, the wall-flower of the pair. But wall-flowers are n't timid, no, I think of them as reflective, deep, intuitive, sensory, capable of synthesising vast amounts of ideas and notions, which is the way I visualise the right hemisphere. It's the brain's creative crucible. A spell of floating invariably got me thinking in some very lateral, non linear ways, an awful lot of creative breakthroughs happened during or just afterwards.

End of an era. After notching up two year's worth of floats, I decided to stop last year, and I still truthfully don't know why, money maybe, the fact of having to travel there possibly, I don't really know, just that I did. It never dropped of the radar, it was always on the "I'm going back to do again" list; and I did spread the floating word to a few friends who went themselves, so clearly not an irrevocable decision. I would have returned. Except I can't; I found out yesterday they're closing.

Is it a first indicator of the sub-prime induced storm coming on-shore, people reining in discretionary spending. Argue amongst yourselves, I don't know, although the stated reason for closing is, and I admire the owner for his absolute candour in saying this, is a critical shortage of cash. It's more common, or at least it seems to me it is, for someone to use the smokescreen of a planned refurbishment, and simply close the doors and never come back. There's an organic cafe in Chiswick that's had the refurbishment starting next week sign glued on it's windows for months.

What does matter is that West London has lost not just one of things that gives it a quirky, bohemian charm, it's that there a precious few places remaining now where you can bask in utter solitude, and return to a hectic, mad-cap world, rested, relaxed and recharged.

Outsmarted. This past week I've been exchanging views with someone on the best way to approach buying a copy of the Daily Mail (US readers - I know you're out there - the Daily Mail is Fox News but put to print, Banshee headlines, flaming, boiling prose, gleefully stoking the fears and insecurities of Middle Britain. Not to my liberal taste, but hey there you go). I'd written that I could only pick it up with tongs and disposal rubber gloves. Featherweight compared to what they said they had ended up doing, it was for research purposes in mitigation, but: "...I had recently bought a copy of the Daily Mail and taken it from the shop concealed between the pages of Hustler magazine". Wow, cannot be beaten, simply cannot.

If I plug myself as an artist wannabe, and pledge myself, hand on heart, fully to the aesthetic cause, then quietly ear-wigging conversations on the tube is n't that at all, it's actually a creative act: I'm constructing a collage of public speech fragments. How did I get here? The usual manner, bored on a slow tube rumbling under London, random excerpts of other commuters conversations swirling around me; some stick, and then it leads me to this. Boredom eh...

Every technology is intermediate: whatever it is we're using right now has replaced whatever it was before and itself faces eventual obsolescence from an upstart technology. This is the chugging rhythm of life; hardly anything is steady state, there's always something nipping at the heels of the current flavour of the month.

Granted there are abiding technologies - the wheel or screw threads for instance, which you could argue are timeless, but have n't we made them slowly more efficient over time, wheels that adhere better to surfaces comes to mind, and is n't that in itself a change ?

I overheard someone on the trip home from Birmingham this evening telling someone that "...the best ideas come after a couple of pints..." Maybe. Mine invariably surface stealthily during the long hours of a meeting. Weary, bored, distracted. Give me no better ingredients for tangential thinking than these. They never fail; time after time, these three stride out of nowhere, a sly introduction ("Hi, we're here"), and that's it: I'm thinking of something else, daydreaming.

So this is the crucible for my ideas really: these three moods, a warm meeting room, powerpoint slide after powerpoint slide flashing across a screen, the drone of voices. I can ideas without recourse to beer.

It all fused perfectly this afternoon and I ended up musing over the changes in office technology or more precisely what people use in meetings. Years ago, notebook and pen, primitive but efficient, and of course very reliable, no upgrades, no software conflicts, no batteries to run out; then, came laptops, a few to begin with, then with a roar and a rush, everywhere. Laptops popped open like mini individual lecterns on every meeting room or conference room table.

Today I think I spotted a technology shift, fewer laptops, more blackberries and their ilk strewn across the meeting room table. A turning point? Are laptops now intermediate?

I like a moment or two's quietness, stilling the distractions, putting them into perspective, which is why I will always advocate a little meditation; as much in the good times as in the bad, everyone should have a little inner place to steal away to. How else are you going to be able to greet pressure gracefully?

What is gratifying is that there's burgeoning scientific evidence - the anecdotal has been around for probably millenia - that meditation really helps. Here's the story - take it easy

This makes sense to me...it works for me....