Hells bells, the 13 year old son of a dear friend has 582 Facebook friends. I can't even break the 20 ceiling. Low achievement at work is something I put up with, but on Facebook as well....no..no..no... Is there a support group?

I don't know which shocks me more: the fact there are no clothes in my wardrobe fit enough even for a scarecrow, or that I'm older than the father of someone I work with.

My afternoon has been grey and ashen since I found that out. I feel like the Venerable Bede now.

"Top hat, new shoes, everybody's crazy about a sharp-dressed man..."

But no one's feeling that way about a crazily dressed man. I need a new set of threads to go out in. Jeans no longer maketh the man. Boot heels are worn to nubs; jeans more frayed then a thousand year old Arabian carpet, and shirts scorched and burnt by careless ironing.

Going to be shelling out for something decent post pay-day

Shoes to be shined.. but don't cross your feet so high that the worn soles show, though. Find the best pair of half way decent jeans, and squeeze those stubborn creases and wrinkles out before the iron whimpers and says enough.

Shirt or sweater ? And are any of them clean ?

Shave, yes, can't forget that I get five o'clock shadow, but at nine in the morning. Fingernails...bitten to the quick so no worries there. Stray hairs, no, not on my head where they ought to be, but to the dark places they've all fled to - nose, ears.... prune back, be merciless.

Have I got a coat...no...sorry...have I got anything that could actually pass as a coat...

What can I pull together from the floor and chairs that do for the wardrobe I should have - and do, just that it's packed top to toe with books - that'll make me appear even semi well dressed ?

Still in a French state of mind and enjoying the after glow, but more pressing is that I've not spoken to anyone today...well not a conversation more than twenty words, shop and cafe talk, that's all it's been. I need to call someone. Fingers start walking through that address book.

Three perfect days in Paris: sun, light winds, blisteringly blue skies.

There's barely a corner, nook, cranny, or hidden pocket of this terrific city that I did n't wander into. My feet are steaming, and my shoes fit for the dump, the soles worn paper thin and more like two upturned colanders than the sturdy two boots they started life out as.

They had to throw me back on the return Eurostar this afternoon.

Bloody hell, it's cold tonight. I was frozen walking over Hungerford Bridge tonight, especially my poor hairless head. The neurons and synapses still have n't thawed out.

If only the film I'd just seen could have a left a memory to match that of simply feeling cold on a March evening in London. In the City of Sylvie is truly awful; an art-house stalker movie with beautiful people, just staring at each other. Fetishistic, creepy, and unpleasant to boot.

Sylvie, why did n't you turn around, give your fey-faced, Chatterton lookalike either a ringing crack around the ears or scream your lungs out and tell him to shove it.

Christ, where were the gendarmarie? Put the cuffs on the poor boy and yoke him off to clink.

Every Thursday I see a trio of unicyclists with street hockey sticks slung over their shoulders pedalling along my street. Where do they go to play? I'd follow them if I could run as fast they can cycle.

There's a skyscraper - the Heron Tower - slowly appearing on the City's skyline. Two floors are added every fortnight; it's like watching a flower gradually break through the soil, sniff the new air, then begin to flex and push upwards.

I love walking past and seeing the cranes swing the beams over, then watch them guided into place and swiftly riveted into position. A giant urban meccano set.

You can't make 'em high enough in my book. I've been entranced by them from the very first time I glimpsed the Manhattan Skyline sat on the Carey Bus heading in from JFK in the summer of 1982.

Manhattan, then and now, was a jungle riot of tall, sleek, pinnacles. Mysterious, alluring and enchanting. Almost like a fairy tale city of spires and turrets. It would take the hardest heart and one stripped of any romance not to be inspired by this. Never fails to lift me or make me feel somehow special, that I'm a participant in something electric and magical. These are cloud factories.

London's skyline is crinkly, a ragged, torn strip of roofs, mid rise towers, gloriously stumpy buildings, and now, a brood of skyscrapers beginning to dominate. Seeing the Heron Tower unfurl is a visual intoxicant. I feel like a proud gardener, even parental, whenever I walk past: "look how tall you've grown...".

Hurry up and finish building. Don't slack, either, on the Pinnacle, and get the Leadenhall Tower started. Make the London Skyline magical.

In Liverpool St station this evening, hurrying to the underground...glance at the TV screen in the concourse...Sky News on...see the Pound / Dollar exchange rate and then the Pound / Euro...fall straight to the ground...near comatose.

This is it: we're a European banana republic.

Everything is intermediate; whatever it is, is coming from somewhere and heading on to somewhere new. Nothing is static.

Blogs are n't an exception, they don't buck this rule. I think a lot of people are moving over to to Twitter, and it's haiku like, 140 character restricted brevity, and leaving Blogland behind.

Tweets are like slow parades of ants: gradually, incrementally, impression by impression, the picture starts to form.

Meanwhile, Blogs are for the heavy lifters; great paving slabs of texts that have to be dragged into place the way we envisage they built Stonehenge.

Baby, I'm done, all in, I'm beat. No strength left even to whine about the bitch of a day it's been. And it all started so well.

"...There is no way to improve the form and function of the egg..." So true. Not my words by the way, they're those of the celebrated Cookery writer, Marcella Hazan.

Why so true ? Because some things just cannot be improved even with both shoulders to wheel and everyone pushing. The weekly report I crank out is a perfect example; I can't improve it, there's nothing to polish...because...because... there's nothing there.

It's a windy hollow. Tumbleweed blowing through the pages, yesterday's papers scudding along barren lines.

Improve upon a void...how ?

The only thing I could think of writing this afternoon was that I was probably at my happiest when I was five or six...but that ain't going to cut it.

The temptation to bleat about the eye-watering amount of money AIG lost in a mere three months - $61 billion (and they still want more help) - is nearly more than I can bear...but I'm going to leave open-mouthed incredulity to the salaried pundits, I'm a blogger in the trenches with his own tales to tell.

Even though, I do n't know more than a handful of my neighbours, and in fact, I've never seen some of them, I do know that most of them are facing the same struggle as I am - mice.

There is something strangely reassuring that we are brought together in the only unity of purpose we'll ever have because of the occasional incursions of mice rattling through false ceilings or slipping behind fridges and washing machines.

Like I said earlier I could n't even recognise some of my neighbours, yet we all, bizarrely, share an intimate secret. So far apart and yet so close too.

Gone into hiding, the half-baked semi-profundities, the witterings, the inanities that I depend on to put a post together. Where are you ? Come back...don't scoot on to another blog...I need you...