Break in service. I'm off for a few weeks traveling in other parts, so posts are going to be fewer and thinner than usual. Transmission resumes at the end of November.

I like the unexpected joy of coming across a place in a novel and knowing it really exists, and in a few cases, the even deeper joy of actually having been there. It happened this evening. Browsing in Waterstones on Oxford Street this evening, I picked up a copy of Norman Collins's "London belongs to me"; a tale of ordinary, unexceptional Londoners living humdrum lives but in the trembling, nervous days before the outbreak of World War two.

Funny, how your eyes can riffle through a page of text and spot treasure. Thumbing through the novel's early pages, I saw Cannon Street mentioned, a road I've walked across or along for nearly ten years, then further on, the name of a pub appeared like a sunbeam splitting a cloudy sky in half - the Bunch of Grapes.

I walk past this small, rectangle of a pub virtually every day; glimpsing the opaque shadows of city workers through the mullioned windows; catching stray fragments of conversations from the small groups smoking outside, clustered around the beer barrels that double as tables.

I've always suspected, if only by it's age, that this pub had history, that there must be stories soaked into the floorboards and a bar aching with gossip. Now I know.

"...schmoozy e-mails full of philosophy..." What an accusation that was. Not thrown at me, though it did have me inwardly cringing; I've an over achieving portentousness gland that likes to have a run out from time to time, so I know there's a lot of my own mails out there laden to the waterline with bombast and nonsense.

Still, it was n't me that these two young women on the top deck of the 27 bus were dissecting. Someone else's erstwhile boyfriend was getting the hatchet treatment and his mail sentiments were their fodder. Brutal.

I met my namesake yesterday. We're not lookalikes, no evil twin thing going on, but in the right light, well, there's a resemblance alright. Weirder by the moment.

I don't know whether I've slipped into the pages of something gothic by Edgar Allen Poe, or dropped between the words of a Paul Auster novel, where he's celebrating the strangeness of coincidence, but I've had an uncanny couple of days.

Yesterday, I flicked over to watch the BBC news and saw myself in the backdrop of a piece to camera. Unexpected - although I do remember seeing a TV camera perched on the side of the road - so not that unexpected in hindsight, but also unsettling. Do I really look like that ? All that yoga, healthy food, walking everywhere, striding up thirteen floors to the office, to still end up looking lost and nerdy ?

Then today, I find myself leading the charge to keep the Security Guard where I work and the person I'm charging against has exactly the same name as me, and even more bizarrely, we even look like each other, according to those who've met hm. Weird.

I read once that the early Portuguese and Spanish explorers knew when they were nearing new worlds when they saw vegetation drift past their ships, or picked up the scent of mysterious places still over the horizon.

This is very much how it is for me now. The tiller on my job has been turned and I'm steering into uncharted territory, and it is n't remnants of exotic flora that's sweeping by, no it's strange terms like "folksonomy", "tag clouds", "hive minds", and "peer to peer social networks".

These words are like catnip to me. I know that the world of social media which is where these concepts live is n't flat and there's no edge to sail over, but that's it. That's all I know. An unknown world out there, be fascinating to find out what it's shape and size is

Someone on the radio proposed a moment ago that Amy Winehouse is a cipher for our times, given her rehab, chaotic lifestyle, and recent pop-up appearance on Strictly Come Dancing. Celebritas rather than gravitas seemingly being the state we all aspire to as a nation. In effect, she represents our collective state of mind.

Such a suggestive word, cipher. Slithers like a snake through the undergrowth. Not a door stopper of word like it's near cognate, emblem, cipher goes under and around. Stealthy, but...

It's a raised eyebrow of a word too; prim, arch, certainly Victorian. I'm sure many Nineteenth century novels and tracts have a fine dusting of cipher.

To matters at hand, however. It's not that I disagree with the term nor who the radio presenter has as it's object; it's that I think there's an uber-cypher walking amongst us. It's Boris Johnson. His gurning mug, that wall-eyed, mock wodehouse whimsical face leering from every newspaper page. He's the cipher of our times.

Two apologies due. The first to the two young Americans outside Holland Park station this evening. I gave you the wrong directions - completely wrong - to Beach Blanket Babylon. I got confused with another lookalike bar and thought that was it. Could n't have picked somewhere further away if I'd tried.

And it's not like I don't know the area I live in. After twenty five years, come on, you'd expect I could pick out where the local hot spots are? Hope you found your way to BBB in the end. Really embarrassed about that.

Second apology to me: spooning soup from the saucepan....hey, what's that about?

He's up there with that small band of people who deserve it to win it, but to be given the Nobel Prize so early on in his career, and for promise of future success rather than actual, in your hands achievement, is, I think, going to give Barack Obama, a lot of unwanted problems. The Republicans must be baying at the moon about this.

Where we are now, that is my friends and I, is that fifth decade of life; the season of mists, of ruefulness; uneasy about the future, but treasuring past glories; flitting in and out of quiet self accusation - why did we do this, but not that, turn right, instead of left ?

It's a slow motion slap across the face being in your fifth decade: the gradual, ultimately worrying realisation that this really is the midpoint, and that the inevitable descent looks tough, uncertain, probably treacherous.

Everyone faces this, and it's nothing new either to wrap it in the handy image of a slow journey into Autumn. It's another stage in our personal evolution.

Embrace it, or be crushed by it. It has to be the former however strange this new land seems.

And I've resurrected it. Though I'm still apprehensive about the new power pack I've bought; the connector I'm using is n't for a Toshiba, but none of those are marked as Toshiba compatible will fit. So here's to hope and a safe electricity supply.

When I'm confident, meaning the battery's brimming with charge then I'll settle down and blog something in more depth

Could be some time before I'm blogging in strength: my laptop is dying on me.

A great referendum vote. Well done to the boys and girls in green. It's pole-axed the Tories. Still disappointing to hear that Cameron - assuming he becomes PM - says he'll recommend a No vote. I support the EU and why should I feel like an endangered species ?

It's the patriotic duty of every one in Ireland to vote Yes in tomorrow's EU treaty referendum. That'll stuff the Brits.