Got a few more guests wanting to move in to my pocket handkerchief sized flat. Mice. I saw one dart past my washing machine late last night.

Today, I await the Pest Controllers who are called, reassuringly, Agent Orange. Do what you have to guys.

Infestation of flies, then mice appear; are these signs, omens ?

"Tap on the right side, tap on the left for me...how does that feel ? No sharp edges, anything like that? Great...we're done then"

It is n't often I need a filling -years go by before that has to happen - still this afternoon I did. The corner of an old filling had sheared off whilst I was gorging on handfuls of nuts and seeds (see healthy eating can have a downside to it).

Probably this is his mantra; the train of words that pulls out the moment the drilling, the swabbing, and the setting of the new filling are done. Said solicitously, but in the tone of a professional who knows his stuff. Almost the way I might imagine a master craftsman would hold up a finished article, confident in it's integrity and substance. Nothing haughty or overweening, just pride in a job well done.

For the short time it took him to complete everything, it felt ,oddly, like something was actually being sculpted inside my mouth: he drilled, then scraped away the ruins of the old filling, then kneaded the new malleable filling into place, smoothed it's edges, stepped back to view then returned for a finishing touch or two, before asking how it all felt.

I don't intend as you can probably imagine my mouth to become a sculpture park; one filling is enough.

I am watching a re-run of the first Presidential debate as I write this, which is the equivalent of someone trying to type a review of a film whilst the action has scarcely moved beyond the opening scene and the outcome of the plot is still unknown even to the director.

Open to the accusation of presumption ? Of course, it's undeniable. I realise that I've put myself up for an easy fall here; there's hubris sniffing round my ankles here, I know.

Still, I cannot ignore what my eyes see and my ears hear: John McCain is an old ham. He's virtually recycling the gestures and idioms that Ronald Reagan used nearly thirty years ago. Effective then; today needs something else.

I need to see politics of substance, where ideas are weighed and their suitability assessed; positions defined and explained - I simply don't get that from McCain. It's theatrics and grandstanding instead.

The US deserves more than breathy recitations of stories and anecdotes, it needs - desperately - prudence, wisdom, a coherent strategy, a steady hand and not knee jerking, a fresh voice to articulate it's fears, worries, and equally, it's hopes and aspirations. That's Obama.

John McCain's statement that he will temporarily withdraw from the Presidential election in order to focus on pushing through the urgently needed financial package to stabilise the US, and by extension, the Global economy, is something I still can't get my head round.

It's like a cut diamond held to the light; turn it around and the beam it casts changes.

What he's done, smacks of honour and does obviously underline his"country first" message. It is an act of selflessness, and from what I know of him, in line with many of his previous actions.

Yet, he is a politician, who as a breed are different to us in so many ways; the lure of a quick, showy victory is like catnip. Irresistible. I remember William Hague once saying that he would only ever talk on the topics of the day, which I've always understood as a less than intelligent excuse to exploit something without properly thinking the consequences through, in other words, opportunism.

It's opportunism that I think could be driving John McCain - be see to be doing something, act and look Presidential, even if the anointing has n't even happened, and may not - the electorate has n't cast a single vote yet.

When I rotate my cut diamond through the light I sometimes see something else: desperation. Turning the spotlight back on to his campaign not through the hard work of selling proposals and policies, traditional, austere, unflashy campaigning; it's sturm und drang gesture instead. Take Sarah Palin as his VP nominee for example.

I do like McCain - it's an extraordinary personal story. As much, though, as I admire him, there's this sense I get that he's really an impulse purchaser, tacking to every different breath of wind, and not setting a defined course and holding to it. That worries me.

It's his impulsiveness that I find unsettling. This is a serious world we live in: issues are subtle in detail, complex and nuanced, not black, not white, but grey, and difficult to unpick; there's a need for detailed scrutiny and thinking through, and not imprudent, hasty, on the hoof decision making.

How strange that of the two candidates, it is the younger Obama, who looks to possess the gravitas necessary to fulfilling the most demanding of all Chief Executive posts. For me at least he does. It's up to the US electorate to ultimately decide.

I don't know whether it's true or not, but let's say it is, that the darker an artist's palette becomes then the grimmer the eventual painting. Late period Goya being a good example, whilst some of the works coming from a similar point in the careers of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko are n't particularly comfortable either. I mean, you probably would n't want to decorate a newborn's bedroom with them.

So there's a possible grain of fact there; I admit it could n't support a thesis, but there's enough to lead me to this: the harder my day gets, the greater my need for chocolate.

I don't smoke, scarcely drink, take no under the counter, or online purchased medications, but comfort in hard times has to come from somewhere, and when there are no friendly arms to fall into, it's only going to come from one source - chocolate.

The relationship I have with chocolate is on the same lines as that between me and my fridge; long periods of benign ignorance, "oh, you're there then...forgotten all about you...", punctuated by short salvos of intense emotion when something has to happen. Like the fridge getting the old heave-ho (explained yesterday); or as tonight, it's me roaming through Liverpool St station, trying to find a shop that sells organic dark chocolate to take away the grime, muck, and misery of a hard day.

My forbidden fruit is n't even going to get me into the index of the Posh and Beck's book of hard living and I can forget all about Keith Richard's. I need something though. Clean living I may be 99% of the time, for that 1% when I'm not, there has to be an outlet. God bless Green and Blacks.

There comes a point in many relationships where the strain between partners is too much, the gulf is unbridgeable; better to be apart than remain unhappily together, wrestling with silent resentment.

I have, I'm sorry, to say reached that point. The elastic has snapped. Enough. Done. Finished. Me or it. As I pay the mortgage and all the bills, it's obvious who's going to be packing bags. The fridge has to go.

I wanted a fridge that stuck to the rules: kept things cool and fresh, with it's dainty little motor humming away contentedly. How straightforward can it get: I open the door, I put things in, take things out, close the door. Pretty reasonable, don't you think. Where's the challenge there? It can't get any more basic.

But it seems all too evident that I bought one of those very rare beasts - something from the Stephen King refrigerator catalogue. Not a full-blown piece of disturbia; I don't open the door to hear a chorus of shrieking souls or see it scuttle across the kitchen floor, and it's certainly not menaced me with the plastic ice cube mould.

In fact, the Stephen King allusion is probably a little unfair; let's refocus and say it's something one of the more mischievous, snarky Hogwarts pupils might own. They'd be made for each other: plenty of attitude, smarmy back chat, and an uneviable talent for low level torment.

And they could serenade each with endless whining, just as my fridge does to me the moment I step through the door. That's the bit that's driving me mad. The noise the damn thing makes.

We have to part company. Middle aged man seeks kindly fridge for long-term (quiet) relationship.

If it's only over the moment the Fat Lady sings, (and, how often is the 'it', a stand-in for full-blown crisis), then does it hold water that it's not really started -in earnest that is - until someone makes a light bulb joke out if it. You see, I've not heard - yet - a "how many investment bankers does it take to change a light bulb" wisecrack, and I work in the City.

Hank, Alistair, maybe it's not as bad as you think. Trust Archimedes here: no light bulb joke turning point reached...well, yet, anyway.

The only way to get to grips with London is to stand there and wonder: wonder why most nights when I leave the tube station I see a solitary unicyclist weaving through traffic with a street hockey stick balanced on one shoulder; why a sturdy looking middle aged woman in pearls and wearing a gilet would be walking a lamb on a lead through some of Kensington's most chi-chi streets; why every time I go to Shepherds Bush, I see a man who looks like GB Shaw; or why Chiswick has a disco-dancing street cleaner.

Tube pass, gritted teeth, sense of wonder, that's really it, everything you need to get to grips with London. Toolkit for London I suppose.

Still, not every question remains unanswered. Closure does happen. There's a solution to the puzzle of the keys on the bus shelter roof for example. May not be the answer, I admit; but it's plausible, and I like it.

Those keys were the fall-out from a stag-night. Groom de-bagged, ball and chain locked round an ankle, then house keys, car keys, and the keys to the leg-irons flung on top of the bus shelter. One hand cupped round his groin, the other vainly clutching a ball and chain, tottering along the High Street. I can see this. I actually can.

I have to thank an anonymous poster for this solution. It's perfect.

I wondered when it would happen: those bunches of keys I noticed on the top of the bus shelter outside St Charles House Tax Office have gone.

I don't doubt they're residing quietly on a shelf in the council lost property office before they go gently into that rusting goodnight all of us end up going to sooner or later.

That's the prosaic way of looking at it; keys swept off the top of the shelter by a long-handled council broom, some puzzlement as to why three bunches, then on to the next job, before heading back to the depot and logging them as lost property. That's the prosaic way of looking at it. Tame, and probably true.

If, of course, that's how it actually went.

What if, and we're allowed imagination, these orphaned keys were part of something else: for instance, a plot device in a piece of page-turning anxiety by Stephen King - 'possessed keys' - opening on to something dark and disturbing; then again, what if they had an Alice in Wonderland like role, unlocking a portal to a fantasy world of articulate top-hatted animals; or maybe they're the hinge in a wise cracking piece of Elmore Leonard criminalia, somewhere in the small fry demimonde, there's an incredulous conversation going on: "...what the fuck, Leo, ya did what....ya put the keys where...? Jesus H. You gotta get 'em down !"

I'm wildly speculating here...but how did those three bunches of keys get there and what do they mean? Answers anyone?

Capitalism is indestructible. It's like an eternal virus, hardier and far more resilient than we can ever imagine. It'll re-route itself around the roadkill of this week's endless fiscal car crashes. No doubt about that.

But why can't I be indestructible! What a week. I'm exhausted; it feels like the short sellers have done a number on my sleep. I've hardly had any since Monday.

I don't work in Finance; the office is in the City, just it's nothing to do with money. I've been through the wringer this week, all sorts of madness: bollockings, frantic travelling, anxious conference calls.

Tonight it must be: bed, pillow, sleep in that sequence, and uninterrupted for a bare minimum of eight hours. Body needs to repair.

Ten second nonsense conspiracy theory: large Hadron Collider turned on last week; this week, hurricanes sweep through the financial world. Coincidence...?

"Not sure I agree with your statement about an Aldi or Netto bag being fashionable though..." was the reply of a friend to something I wrote. But I think I'm might be proved right.

How long is it going to be before shopping at a value store becomes a 'fun thing' ? Be slumming for some; for others it'll be a middle class expression of discipline and frugality; but the hidden driver for many of the moody middle class is them simply struggling to keep a roof over their heads, and these stores sell cheap, value food.

Think about it. Not even a wounded Tiger is as desperate as someone clutching to their moody middle class lifestyle. They'll do anything to hide distress.

I'll put money on it - that is whatever there is left in my account after the shenanigans of the investment bankers have finished - that it'll be uber chic to be spotted on the high street with an Aldi or Netto carrier bag.

D Day plus two. No flies visible. Could it be that they've gone ? Can I stop walking the perimeter of my flat with a can of RAID in one hand and a rolled up newspaper in the other ?

I really don't want to go to sleep again in a cloud of RAID. Still carrying a punishing headache from Saturday when I went on the offensive, though that could be the result of an unpleasant day at work.

Humans 1, Flies 0. Hope this does n't become my 'Mission Accomplished' burden ....but it's been an awful lot quieter today after my blitzkrieg through my flat yesterday. Scarcely any flies around. Flat's reeking of chemicals - I used RAID in the manner you would defoliate a forest - and there's a film of bleach on virtually every uncovered surface. Noxious to them, and to be honest not that comfortable for me...but as long as these fuckers take the hint and drag their dead mates off to whatever Fly Valhalla is called and never come back, then that's all I want. And of course, when I do go away for extended periods I'll ensure no foodstuffs stay behind gently mouldering.

Not a great day. Returned home after a week's house-sitting to find my flat semi infested with minute flies. I must have left some food waste in the bin, and they've sniffed the rot and invaded. Been a day of swatting, spraying, and cleaning. It's been a killing ground. These fuckers have got everywhere.

If there's anyone with advice on the best preventive action I can take - I've been thinking a couple of spiders or a bevy of pitcher plants as the best organic way (I'm reeling with a chemically induced migraine; I've sprayed RAID liberally everywhere), get in touch.

AP has a PQ - Panic Quotient. This is my contribution to the confused world of emotional and productivity indices.

Calibrated on a 1 - 10 scale: 1 being unresponsive to external stimuli aka stone; 10 equalling burnt out, stressed out, freaked out. Fried basically, little more than able to whimper at the end of the day.

The higher the PQ value, the harder you're believed to be working. PQ of six and above being a conference call multiplier; the greater the panic, the more the calls. A PQ of six or more confirms a tidal wave of e-mails will barrel through the internal network, nearly bringing it down. All of them out of synch, and, obviously, contradictory.

Note that a very high PQ of 8.5 and above, can lead to someone out there in corporateland wanting to make a ju-ju doll in your shape so they can jab it with needles and tear it's limbs off. Drop gears quickly if you find yourself bumping up to 8.5. You've been warned.

I've been averaging a 6.5 PQ for most of the day, peaking around 8 in the early part of the morning. Anyone out there want to say what's their's is?

The culture wars and the acrimony that fundamentalist beliefs can bring have clearly boosted McCain's Presidential campaign; mark that down to one thing - the 'Palin effect'.

How long before that slips into the general political lexicon alongside the '....gate' suffix that usually gets fastened on to the end of whatever scandal or humiliation some politico either side of the pond finds themselves in.

I am worried that this election, which looked Obama's to lose for months - he was (and still is to my European eyes) streets ahead of any other rival, Democrat or Republican - could actually be lost.

Shrewd in his thinking, magnificent in his diction, clear in his outlook, focused on what needs to be done, and alert to the pressing issues of the day: an obviously ailing economy; the looming threat of foreclosure or job loss, or both, that so many Americans wake up with and go sleep to; wars that no longer seem winnable, or certainly popular (if, of course, any war could ever be popular); widening inequalities of wealth and opportunity. Things that matter; they matter to me, remember the adage: "when America sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold".

And yet today, a scarce seven days since the Republican convention, everything has changed. It's an election now likely to be fought in the trenches, or as today's Guardian put it, 'the killing grounds', of abstract issues, of value judgements. America, as I've written earlier is an ideologically restless country - but right now it's the specifics of the moment (jobs, mortgages, the economy, war) that have to be fought over in the public domain and not lifestyle concepts.

The Republican Elephant is in the room; no longer ignored either, its very visible and busily being talked about. Democrats, remember James Carville's slogan ? "...it's the Economy..." You need to wrest attention back from the pachyderm and quickly.

I'm feeling very proprietorial about a construction site I walk past most days of the week. It's the site of where the Heron Tower will eventually stand.

There's a sense of almost impending parenthood within me whenever I walk by; when when will it happen, when will I catch myself turning the corner of Camomile Street and see the first nubs of foundation pillars poking their heads over the perimeter fence?

But today was like any other day, nothing but the steady peck-peck of diggers and the sound of pummelling drills. Surely the seed-bed must be ready by now. You've been labouring in the hole for months.

It's not that the UK is free of conviction based politics either. Here, it's the Market, or more exactly the heady drug known as Market Forces.

They're more efficient, more effective, more stringent, and clearly, more lucrative, than any other business modus operandi. Like the well-known commercial, Market Forces kills all known germs. Dead.

Or do they? What have Market Forces blessed us with ? A privatised Railway Service that is the envy of the World....oh sorry, mis-typed, meant the laughing stock of the world; price-gouging power companies; exam marking companies that can do everything except the very thing they're supposed to; and some uncomfortable tinkering with the Post Office. There are more candidates for the wall of shame, I just have n't the patience to list them all.

And when Market Forces fail as they do, (I've Metronet in mind amongst others), what happens, we seek the remedy in....more market competition.

Then there's the human angle. Market Forces inevitably scupper someone's job, or puncture their hard-earned pension. Misery bubbling away. The argument for making Market Forces a Class A drug writes itself.

The dreary steeples of divisive, passion wracked issues - Faith, Right to Life, Intelligent Design / Creationism - have, this week, punched their way in to the American Presidential campaign. How serious are the citizens of that innovative, ideologically restless, sincere Republic going to take these as meat and drink electoral issues? Surely, it's the economy that matters ? The daily affects of a see-sawing economy, the inching nearness of personal bankruptcy, job loss, involuntary mortgage default, homelessness: are n't these the things that truly matter?

I'm not an American (other side of the pond), but I am unashamedly an Amerophile; I've lived there, (briefly worked there too), visited all but six states; deep-dived repeatedly into it's compelling culture, it's history, and it's lively, never still political debates - I feel I have credentials. It's smacks of temerity, I realise, but I think I've a more developed understanding of the US that many, or even most, have. In a certain sense, I feel I have a stake, like a non-voting shareholder at the company annual general meeting.

The board needs a shake-up - it needs flatly, Barack Obama and Joe Biden as Chief Exec and Vice-Chairman of USA Inc. What matters (as it does here in UK Plc) is n't angry debates on abstractions or the promotion of ideological certainties - it's the economy, that's where everyone is feeling the pinch.

Yet, Sarah Palin's abrupt irruption into the presidential race has shifted attention away from that to, heart-felt no doubt, but bitterly contended and that's without a doubt, abstract issues. Certainty of the type she propounds fogs debate. Promoting fixed moral viewpoints and flamboyantly self-celebrating that one does are irreconcilable with the duties of Chief Executive, especially so in the heat, dust, and throbbing tension of the present economic climate.

I understand the concept of exemplar; that the president sets the tone for the nation; it's been said too that the President is more a High Priest sacredly tending the flame of American-ness, looking into the flames to divine the sentiments of the nation. The current economic and social landscape merits a moderate, deliberate, collaborative tone. Obama's methodology in a nutshell. No other way exists than that in order to harness the physical and intellectual energies of every US citizen to get to grips with the topic de nos jours - a tanking economy. The Democrats have read the runes. This is not the time for conviction based politics.

"Sarah Palin = Guns, Babies, Jesus" (Rush Limbaugh). Am I the only one who finds that an odd juxtaposition to celebrate ? Babies and Jesus works, but Guns, how they'd get in there...uh...? I'm missing something here

I'll never hear again after seeing the Sex Pistols tonight. I just know it. Ears should n't buzz and pop and the corollary to that is men in the mid-forties should give up gigging.

Only strength enough for a pithy Facebook style comment: totally zonked. Could sleep for a month.