Cinderella, you will go to the ball ! I know, hyperbole and Archimedes go hand in glove. We're like Siamese twins. The pudding can never be under-egged where I'm concerned. But, I do feel pretty good.

Today, I was expecting a long night at home, listening to New Year sounds off-stage; the traditional barrage of fireworks, singing, shouting, exuberance (mostly irrational), and occasional fighting.

That's all changed. Been invited to a party. How moods can change on the spin of a text message.

To the small, hardy band of people who visit my blog, here's wishing you a great 2011.

Archimedes.

A busy thread running amongst my Facebook virtual friends this evening on the topic of " Why can't you order a normal coffee in Starbucks". I can answer that simply (and have already on Facebook).

It's a badly run boutique coffee shop; too much on the shelves, too much to choose from, too gimmicky. Result: everyone confused.

Costa, on the other hand, remains the true home of sensible coffee. Comfortably the best chain for good old fashioned coffee. And their loyalty card ain't too bad either. Am I sounding like a corporate shill now?

The days between Boxing Day and New Year's Eve always have a muffled, wrapped in cotton wool feel about them. The world is at half speed, dank, and grey, but there are atoms of excitement around. Like right now. Radio 2 is broadcasting a two hour special hosted by Slash on his guitar heroes.

Slash. Radio 2. Fifteen years ago, these two words would never have fitted, not even with the deftest of shoe horns into the same sentence, but today, there's literally no hipper station.

Once the indomitable dowager duchess of easy listening, wall-paper music; today, if there's a musical boundary they've either broken through it, or pushing at the edges.

Me genetically decoded; first, there's this, which I definitely have - the travelling gene. Then, and this is where Science has finally become interesting, there's this - the chocolate gene unravelled. I'm heavily over-represented in both. No deficiency.

Wonder if I'm going to be the first recorded case of feline flu jumping species. The cat, who's wandering over the keyboard, sneezed at the same time as I did.

To avoid coronary hardening after patiently scoffing a slab of Brie and an oozing Roquefort, I took to the still iron hard footpaths of Chiswick House, skin puckering from the sinking temperature, slipping and sliding, back to the place where I saw yesterday's conclave of very hungry birds, competing for bread balls, or in the case of the Heron, dominating the cocktail sausage field.

A much less cosmopolitan scene this afternoon; mostly, Coots gingerly stepping or occasionally skating across the frozen lake, with a solitrary Mallard at anchor.

In the midst of all this was a Coot wrestling with a loaf of bread at least one and half times it's size. Be like me trying to tuck into a life size bar of chocolate.

This is the quietest day I've had all year, possibly for a number of years; other than responding to a hurried "good morning" from an old man as I was taking a short cut through the Chiswick Old Cemetery (he was alive by the way, not a resident), I've not said a word to a soul.

As I've said to numerous people over the years, and continue to, solitude holds no particular terrors for me. I can dwell on my own resources without discomfit. Being an only child, it's an instinct.

My great excitement - albeit a silent one in a still frozen world, (so cold even at lunchtime, can't have been higher than zero) - was for the first time ever seeing a Heron catch and eat something. Just by the Lilliputian hump backed bridge spanning the Chiswick House lake, which has the iron hard tenor of the Bering Sea in Winter, inch thick ice, were two Chinese women throwing bread and unbelievably, cocktail sausages, to a mewling motley of gulls, mallards, mandarin ducks, scrabbling pigeons, and an aristocratic looking Heron.

The smaller birds harried each other for the small balls of bread; Senor Heron concentrated solely on spearing every cocktail sausage with that gimlet of a beak, then dipping it in the margins of the lake that were n't icebound.

Thanks to the very excitable little boy stood next to me, shouting to his father, I know why they do this: lubricating a catch makes it easier to swallow.

Christmas on your own, uneventful, dull ? No, not at all.

Another great satellite photo from the University of Dundee of the British Isles covered in snow. That huge, frothing cloud of white over the southern half of the country, the eastern tail is slap bang over where I live.

Marmite Chocolate. Can't believe it. The fusion of my two favourite foods.

Chocolate I view as virtually medicine - all life's healing resides in cocoa; and Marmite occupies the same place as nectar does for the Gods.

This is what Christmas is all about: pushing back culinary frontiers.

Tastes nice too, and on sale in off all places, Robert Dyas Hardware shops.

Christmas Angel, you have come early.

Uncovered by a compliment. I found a copy of an out of print book for a relative last week, and the bouquets were thrown about my "Sherlockian Sleuthing Skills".

Yes, it's one my Superhero powers. I am BookMan. Defender of the lowly paperback, protector of the humble hardback. Pledged to the rescue of bookshops everywhere

I keep very quiet about it. My alter ego is as a mild mannered middle manager.

Now you know my secret...

I'm adapting something I heard David Sedaris say during the question period of his appearance at Piccadilly Waterstones this evening. It was actually a joke he made about his home country, but it suits the UK to a tee. Unfortunately.

Here we go: one in three English people weighs the same as the other two. It's true too; we are the fattest nation in Europe, according to the results of a survey released this morning. What an awful accolade.

The toaster still has n't ejected a thought, so I've gone for a ready meal for this post: someone else's thoughts.

This morning I jotted Susan Hill's delightful description of the power of a book - not an e-book, but a true book, covers, font, pages, margin scribbles, dog-eared pages, the earthiness of a book, it's essence - as I burrowed into her book about her year long adventure to read only the books she had on her shelves, and not buy any new.

Think giving up smoking is hard? Try not buying a book when you're a confirmed bibliophile. A hard road to walk. Calvary

For her " A book which is left on the shelf is a dead thing, but it is also a chrysalis, an inanimate object packed with the potential to burst into life"

How perfect an image. My shelves laden with chrysalises waiting for that moment when they'll flex and fly again.

Occasionally I have blank periods when I can't think of anything to write. Like now. Nothing in the tank. Toaster's pressed down and won't pop up. Even the student demo in the centre of town can't get me thinking.

Sleep on it. See if tomorrow will get my neurons cycling.

Just three weeks ago, I was sat in a a small hotel room, with the window thrown open, listening to the mixed noises of evening time Melacca: there was the rush of mynah birds to reach their roost, the kerfuffle and agitation of thousands of wings; the gorgeous, unearthly call of the muezzin calling people to prayer, mixed in with the sturdy chimes of the local Anglican church tolling the hourly bell, and further away the drums and cymbals of a Hindu temple, and nearer than all of these was the hubbub of the Chinatown night market.

Tonight, I'm at home listening to the occasional Christmas song curl out of the radio and braced against the prospect of an intensely cold night.

This is so moving. An orphan with HIV. The strength of character of this young woman is amazing; she's courageous and utterly inspiring.

In less than a week, I've experienced profound weather extremes. Put a glass under the hot tap and then straight after under the cold, it's odds on, it'll crack. Maybe this is why I'm feeling so physically shattered. Anyway back to the original topic.

Every day in Malaysia was scorching, but what could you expect from a country that's slap bang up against the Equator, and where most afternoons, there's a thunderous rainstorm on a monumental, majestic scale. Clouds detonating, blazing fangs of lightening ripping the skies open wide, heavy, warm rain, fat drops of it smashing against buildings and drumming on the road surface.

Whereas now, I'm at the other end of the thermometer; temperature is barely scratching zero with any regularity, and it ain't rain, it's the thin squishy gruel of sleet and rain that masquerades as snow in London.

Gimme back that warm, perfumed rain, and those close but not quite apocalyptic tropical weather patterns any time.

One of my friends told me in bold terms that I'm "...hellbent and determined to get robbed on every continent" after I'd told him that e-mail access was hard to find in the part of Malaysia I'd been travelling in and this was why his mails had gone unanswered.

Robbed? Nope. More determined to have an encounter with the immigration authority of as many countries as possible. That's what it seems to be.

I noticed after I'd entered Malaysia that no one had stamped my passport. Thus making me technically an illegal immigrant. A condition, a state, understandably, which I'm always anxious to avoid.

So the following day I spent nearly six hours in the head office of the Malaysian Immigration Authority getting myself legitimised. One of the handful of westerners amongst the thousands of hard-working Bangladeshi, Cambodian and Indonesian house-maids and labourers all trying to get their work papers in order

I did get a visa stamped in to my passport eventually. Burden lifted, shoulders unbent; me a properly documented individual. Pity it was the wrong type of visa. I did n't find this out until I handed over my passport when I was leaving the country.

Had yet another lengthy conversation with another immigration officer this time at Kuala Lumpur airport, getting everything unravelled.

This makes the fifth country (Argentina, Italy, Slovenia and the US of A) where I've had to explain who I am, why I am there etc, etc...All of this, well to a sensible person at least, would say time to jack it in, but these boots are made for walking.

Break in service. I'm going travelling for a few weeks. If I can then I'll pop a post in whenever I can otherwise normal service resumes Monday, November 29.

Now in that interview did I come over as professional and steady, the rock around which the wild waves break; or did I sound more like a Faith healer " Believe in me, trust the vision, it will surely come to pass"; or did I put on the routine of a double glazing salesman working on a commission only basis, and if I did n't nail that sale the kids go another day without supper ?

Should n't really rake through the embers of a cold interview, but the further I am from the event I do wonder exactly what impression I made. Hey ho.

Something odd is happening over in Shepherd's Bush. Nothing unusual there: odd and Shepherd's Bush are two words that fit snugly in the same sentence, it's that kind of place. But this is something else.

All evening there's been this strange sound of groaning metal, like the noise a sinking ship makes as the seams start to pop and the rivets fly out as it turns turtle; or for anyone who watches sci-fi horror flicks where some mammoth Alien thing is eating Manhattan then it's the unearthly moaning they always generate in superabundance.

Yet Shepherd's Bush is neither a drowning ship nor Manhattan, so what's going on, and why does it seem to be getting progressively closer to where I live?

There's a looming need for me to look presentable coming up. Meaning I have to sacrifice my normal thrown together jeans and whatever shirt is n't too wrinkled look for something different. This time I have to be Mr Business.

So I disinterred my suit out of my wardrobe, checked for any moth damage, and had it properly cleaned.

Now I have to say this: do I scrub up well in a suit, or what. I look completely different. Like professional.

Sayonara to the tugboat captain chic, adieu to the man about to visit his probation office look. That's gone. All change. Time for the man about the City sartorial buzz.

Whether I'll be so charged when I come back from the assessment centre - the compulsion to be suited and properly booted - or when I return from holiday, is moot. My suit could have a sibling, or it remains an orphan at the back of the wardrobe. Watch this space.

Personality tests are pure catnip for me. Even the scent of one has me panting.

And when it's one that might just affirm something I've tantalised myself thinking I could actually have, then everything gets dropped, all extraneous events filtered out and I plunge right in.

Picture my excitement then as I idly scrolled through the firm's intranet this lunchtime and saw a link to an "How creative are you" pop quiz.

Really no truly creative person bothers doing these. I know I've met them and some are friends.

Either they're driving away at something, pushing boundaries back, borne along by the flow; or they're adrift in quiet melancholy - "my mind has one idea, my hands another" as a very gifted painter friend of mine put it to me last week.

Nevertheless wannabes, the ambitious but sans the spark people, well, we crowd round these tests like flies around roadkill. Can't get enough of them.

So I pushed back my sleeves, settled back and let the pop test do the talking. I'm 84% creative. Now to turn that stat into action.

Feel the force.

The wind is licking against the windows this evening. There are strong slaps of air and there's that chirring sound of leaves rustling on trees. Sounds of a perfect autumn evening. For me that is.

I know too well that autumn warms the hearts of less people than it's cheerier cousins, spring or summer.

Winter save for deep-dyed Capricorn goats like me and ski-nuts is less loved than reviled: the orphan season, billy no mates, the lonely kid walking home to an empty cold house.

But I love it, I relish winter; inhaling sharp, flinty air on long walks; the strong, clear outlines of leafless trees against menthol blue skies; snow, crisp layers of snow dropped over night. Can't beat any of it. Why resist.

I was shocked to hear that a sizeable minority of London school kids firmly believe the battle of Waterloo actually took place at Waterloo station.

If they think that, then what does Trafalgar Square mean for them? Site where a famous one-eyed British admiral lost his life and was then paved over a few years later and turned into a public square?

The rain scuds in, the thermometer slips into single figures, and my teeth, especially those on the right hand side ache. They're like the three musketeers, where one goes, all go. This happens every year. Without fail.

So this afternoon I've been at the dentist, where after the check-up, I sneaked a look at my dental card. I've been going to the same dentist for twenty years.

C'mon guys reward that loyalty. Maybe a free check-up or a discount on an electric toothbrush. I must have paid for the revolving, up and down dental chair several times over. What about it.

Grind away, grind away. That's what they all say. Stick one word in front of the next and keep going. It's a marathon, not a sprint.

In that Real Men don't Eat Quiche vein, don't ponder, don't dawdle, don't dither, just write is more or less what the driving force behind the The 90 day Novel is saying. So that's what we do. Every day, another grain of sand thrown on the writing pile

I've seen something I've never seen before in London, and for that matter only a handful of times elsewhere: a swarm of starlings, whirling and reforming over a sunset Wandsworth Bridge.

Amazing to watch. Like watching a cloud of iron filings pulled this way and that by unseen magnets.

One of my abiding memories of France is seeing huge swarms every evening ripping and bending in great vortices over Vichy. To see the same thing in the very heart of London was heart-stopping.

With the peregrine falcons nesting and dive-bombing by Tate Modern and now this, it's obvious that London still is red in tooth and claw.

Any art exhibition featuring New York always ends with me being in a strange blended mood of wistfulness for all the wonderful times I've had there; a frantic earnestness to go back; envy, and I have to admit this, for anyone who lives there, and yes I know it can be an unforgiving maw, but what a maw to be consumed by is my retort; and the sense that even London, this dear, sweet, mad, packed city state, is still just the little brother.

NYC is still the only place that really matters. Where else can you reach down, touch the paving stones and feel the energy of all the ages, past, present and future surge through your fingertips ?

I must be in a minority here: those who revel in Autumn. There's something enchanting about darkening nights. People. street lights, shop windows. Magical for reasons I struggle to articulate.

All around me I hear the sound of dust being blown off CVs.

Whereas years ago I was like one of these Norfolk coast villages miles from the cliff-face, today I'm running in mid-air like a cartoon figure, competing with myriad others for a job.

We were told, all 110, that our team was being root and branch restructured, with 95% of us having to pass an assessment to get a job. When the music stops, you all sit down....

Words are not enough. The affirmations anyway are exhausted. It's a day of sensations, exquisite, undiluted euphoria, utter rapture. With the rest of the world, I have been privy to a miracle, an actual miracle. The miners are coming up.

This is a demonstration of collectivism, of hope, faith, planning, humanity, endeavour. All the things that the cynics bleat don't exist. Amazing. Extraordinary. The power, the raw naked, power of the Human Spirit.

I saw a comment on the BBC news feed that I've been streaming all day which so aptly summed up how we global citizens are reacting, and that is "...with an inexplicable sense of relief every time one reaches the surface..."

I am on tenterhooks this evening for several reasons.

Tonight they begin the rescue of the thirty three Chilean miners. I have been completely enthralled by this, from the moment that grimy, bearded figure waved at the camera through the drilling and the final slow, steady breakthrough into the trapped men's chamber, the testing of the Phoenix Rescue capsule, to now.

I am awed by the meticulous planning and superb organisation of the Chileans. Magnificent.

I remain on tenterhooks as I have for almost three weeks now, wondering whether I'll get more than four or five broken hours of sleep tonight.

Not everyone takes to street dance, but I do, even if I am well outside the demographic. Something about the verve and the energy really appeals to me.

Someone in the US sent me this clip of four young men dancing in the rain on a street corner in Oakland, California. It's blown me away. Simply electric.

A Sunday for me can often be a combination of aimlessness and solitude; the former cam, in it's own way, be peculiarly attractive, the chance of an odd find, a strange discovery, serendipity, whereas the latter state although I am a lone wolf by nature too often leads to the inner pathway of regret and ruefulness. Too many of the if only, but, and what if statements fill my head in those instances just as they did today.

Still, that's only one side to my Sunday, there is aimlessness to describe. Where did that take me? To the maelstrom of the recently opened Gauguin exhibition at the Tate Modern. Hideously busy with enough room to glimpse fragments of canvasses through a thicket of heads and bodies. Probably too many works to absorb sensibly in one go, I did feel weary towards the end.

Nevertheless it is full of gems, and not just the works either; amongst the contextual material was this statement written by Gauguin "I love Brittany. I find the wild and the primitive here. When my clogs resonate on the granite ground I hear the muffled, powerful thud that I'm looking for in painting"

I've heard that thud myself in many places where instinctively I've felt alive, at home, energised, and at peace: New York City every time I've been there, Barcelona the moment I stepped off the plane; Paris, Buenos Aires in spite of being held up at knife point on my first visit, the madhouse that is Tokyo, and last, but never least, this dear old city I call home.

I keep uncovering the hidden laws that govern modern life. Want to get somewhere quick? The tube never turns up. Need to get cash from the machine at White City station? Watch it meltdown and swallow your card. Decide to listen to that unknown voicemail? It's from a director of the company you work for wanting something on the double by tomorrow.

There's enough strength in me for a one liner, a sub-Montaigne, below par Pascal pensee: I'm tired beyond belief. Beyond my endurance. Work not guilty. Living arrangements most definitely. Something has to changed. I want my bite of the inalienable right to sleep, and I want it now.

My star sign is n't the Goat. It can't be. Simply not possible. The evidence is n't there. Does n't stack up. I'm a Cappy by name only, astrologically, I'm something else, I'm the hamster on the wheel. That's my sign. Frantic pedalling and yet never getting anywhere.

Effort, effort, effort, but the work, the paper across the desk, the salvos of e-mails never go away. Nail one and another fills it's place. I worry that I can't put my finger on one particular achievement; where I am putting my finger, all ten of them is in holes popping in the dyke holding back even more work.

Nearly an hour gone and the new Adobe download has only just broken the two-thirds mark. Feels like I'm having it hand-delivered. Still, the question you also have to ask yourself, aside from re-affirming patience, patience, patience, is what would this have been like via old school PSTN.

This is for one of my dearest friends, who lost her best friend on Saturday, and faces one of the hardest days of her life tomorrow.

I know how much your friend meant to you; I've heard it in your voice, glimpsed it in your eyes, and seen it so clearly in your smile whenever you mentioned her. Love, affection, friendship, it's all there.

I can't imagine how you must be feeling. What I can say is how much I'm thinking of you now.

I was in Dijon for most of last week, alternating between strolling purposelessly, (boulevarding, I think is the exact Gallic term) and trying to impersonate the impassivity of the French coffee drinker to the vie exterieure. The when in Rome thing, really

No passes on either score. Just not in my itchy nature to do...well...nothing. I need some focus, a book usually, a paper often, a friend when the occasion permits, but I can't just have nothing. How do they do it? And alternatively, is there anything in the Anglo-Saxon way of live they actually regard the same way we seem to do all of theirs?

I did n't think I was the only reader with this prejudice and I'm not. Philip Pullman has the same thought and the capability to articulate it better than I ever could

Autumn, and how do I know ? Throbbing toothache. Every Autumn, the moment the weather changes, clouds get heavier and moister, my wisdom teeth twang. How did I become a human barometer?

I've just been looking at a slide pack of photos of old Notting Hill.

Amazing does n't begin to catch it. The pocket of Notting Hill I call home is unrecognisable to what it once was. Totally. Like it's been carpet bombed, not once, or even twice, but repeatedly, and finally what remained, the dust, the broken walls, collapsed ceilings, shattered window frames, all of it stirred in some great blender and dumped back out. Not even the street patterns are the same.

So many shops too. We are vastly under-resourced today when it comes to the small shops, there's barely anything, stumps of teeth in a nearly empty mouth as it were. Then, and by the way, then is indefinable, I can't say the fifties, or the sixties, the set of photos, I've been privileged to see cover almost a century, the seams of the neighbourhood were almost popping, at breaking point, with places to shop.

Notting Hill teemed with life, oozed it, spilled on the streets and over on to the roads. It's like the Lower East Side must have been in the 1890s and early twentieth century. Not an inch of space.

I have a very good historical sense as I do an active imagination; even with those two attributes, I still find it close to impossible to picture in my mind how Notting Hill once looked, how it breathed with life. God, it must have been like Naples, people hanging out of windows, in vests, playing on the streets, loitering, walking, shopping, singing, drunk.

Darker evenings, colder evenings. We're moving into the time of year I actually enjoy. There's something ineffable about the long evenings; deep shadows, curious patterns of light, fascinating and mysterious. It's my Saturnine Capricorn side finding itself at home for once.

But there's nothing special about it when it comes to being button holed by a stranger at the bus stop.

Like tonight. A middle-aged, pot-bellied, greying man wandered into the bus stop I was stood at; asked if the model on the advert rotating one one side of the stop, was Kate Moss. She was n't.

Then, without missing a beat, he told everyone that every Brazilian who comes to London does so simply to open a shop.

I'm still trying to find the link between the two statements

This is the second night I've walked home past the restaurants that line Chiswick High Road and unthinkingly ended up studying the body language of some of the diners.

Two nights ago, I noticed one couple, and saw a fatal sign, the woman discontentedly fiddling with her necklace, twisting this way and that. No words need tell the state of that relationship; they will not sitting opposite each other in that restaurant, or any other this time next year.

Tonight, I glimpsed a woman, caught between a pucker and a grimace, painting her lips. For some reason, it struck me as particularly horrible. I can't explain why. It just did.

There's a version of the "As one door closes another..." sentiment going mini viral on the facebook sites of some of my friends.

The statement in questions reads thus: "When one door closes another opens, we often look so long and regretfully on the closed door that we don't see the one which has just opened".

Noble words. And so unlike the version a relative of mine prefers, which is "As one door closes, another slams in your face".

Evening rain on the skylight roof, and for some reason it's making me think that all over London, there'll be people like me agonising between wanting to write, or instead follow that other equisite joy: burrow into the sofa with a compelling book.

A reasonable night's sleep and enough courage to open a bank statement pretty much sums up my view of what makes up the good life. Hardly Montaigne,or Marcus Aurelius, in it's sweep, but what works for one does n't always work for another.

End of August. Push on, push on. Not been an easy month

My sense of humanitarianism and charitableness, according to my Yahoo horoscope today,are very high. It does n't feel like that today, nor have I felt that way for quite some time now. Exhausted and fed up....oh definitely.

I can moan all I want to about the assault on my senses of living where I do along where the never ending sense of uncertainty of wondering what I'll find every evening when I return home, and I do with zeal. Ask anyone who knows me.

And then I read of the thirty three Chilean miners found alive two weeks after a huge rockfall. Alive, all of them. and waiting for possibly another three months, perhaps four before a rescue tunnel can be dug to reach them. Underground for four months, and I fret about a TV droning through the ceiling...

A lesson in priorities

Right now, it feels like there's a race on between work pressures and noisy neighbours as to which will kill me first.

Work's been intolerable with hardly any respite from pressure, then, and there's always a then, is n't there, I return home to find a cacophony of noise, stamping feet and clapping hands all to the driving rhythm of devotional music.

My flat has never been anything less than a place of misery. In fact the baseline for me has always been unease, barely a fluttering of joy at any time of me living here. There's been leaks, rodents, noise, the gradual disintegration of the flat complex, and of course I remain throughout. I've got to leave before this place nails me.

Where is the strength to come from?

Strength enough...just...to note that I'm somewhere beyond the edge of tiredness. Yawning all day and weary continuously. I wonder how much this is connected to the episodic stress of work and other environments. To live noise free.

After ten years of going to work in jeans and wearing whatever's on the bedroom floor that's not creased, I'm going to buy a suit. I want to look sharp for once.

This afternoon. Dentist. More money.

All for one tooth, but I like that tooth and want to stay attached to it as I want to with all of the others.

As long as there's something left for the dentist to build on, a stump, a flake even, then I'll pay. I've drawn a line in the enamel, if you see what I mean. It stays.

This is going to be one well regarded after tooth when every thing's finally done and I've swilled my last rinse down the small white basin that's next to the dental chair. Easy on the chomping, gentle on the chewing.

But considering the amount of money I'm investing into this pre-molar, I should be able to bite through steel. Clearly, I'll not be attempting anything a la Jaws, that's the province of that jugular snapping villain in Moonraker; nevertheless I have expectations that this tooth once reconstructed will see me out.

Another friend of mine told me that her partner was younger than she is. That makes five women I know, who in some way, shape or form, are married to, live with, or have dated men younger than themselves, and in some cases the age gap has been significant.

Life is curious, which is what makes it so worthwhile, at least for those minds like mine that puzzle over things like this. There's a personal element here as well; all these women are around my age, so what does this mean for single men like me. But one thing at a time. Why are women going for younger models?

There's the easy lob answer: unfulfilled maternal instincts. Possibly.

Or what about this: are these are all women who carry the mental scars from vastly unsatisfying relationships with men of a roughly equivalent age, where the echo of he's a" typical man, can't commit" still roars around, so they go for someone younger, who has still to acquire these unpleasant masculine traits, therefore innocent and potentially pliable. It's a guess, not answer, by the way.

Perhaps it's the allure, the excitement, even competitive flaunting, which I'm pretty certain some women engage in, "...of look what I've pulled..I've still got it...". My competitive female theory comes, bizarrely, from seeing women try to over-reach each other in, of all places, a yoga class.

Then again, it could be this bald, simple, unvarnished fact: men of the same age, early to late forties in my case, remind them inelegantly of their own inevitable ageing.

As the Summer pushes on through August, and I listen to nocturnal London play it's unfinished, never-ending symphony of sirens, cars, shouts, hubbub, and screaming motorbikes, I think of what I read this morning that one of my favourite writers died a few nights ago in New York. Tony Judt, a writer who bathed in words, made them sing and a difficult argument luminous.

"I think what we need is a return to a belief not in liberty, because that is easily converted into something else… but in equality. Equality, which is not the same as sameness. Equality of access to information, equality of access to knowledge, equality of access to education, equality of access to power and to politics. We should be more concerned than we are about inequalities of opportunity, whether between young and old or between those with different skills or from different regions of a country. It is another way of talking about injustice. "

Perfectly written, a joy to read, and a statement to live by.

David Cameron, I read this morning, is starting to go grey, and this is a bare three months into his premiership, whilst that well-coiffed thatch is plainly starting to thin out.

Welcome to the club, David. Once you're in the hair loss club, it's for life. I ought to know. I'm at the point where I could probably count the number of hairs on my head. Perhaps, I should give them all names and then ask people to adopt one.

A thick, glossy rainbow over Shepherd's Bush this evening made my bus journey home oddly enjoyable this evening.

I've always liked the crazy charm of this part of London; it's blessed with the face of a boxer and the quivering soul of a madcap poet. Not many areas can carry that off with the swagger the Bush can.

Chance and an adventurous heart, now that's some combination, and Brian, you played that hand perfectly.

The chance: finding a $100 bill outside a Kensington High Street patisserie. The adventurous heart: your spontaneous decision to go to New York based on that chance find. Perfect.

If there's ever a story of a life well lived, then it was yours. Asma, your oldest, dearest friend told me what happened this afternoon. I only met you a few times, Brian, and it was obvious even from those handful of occasions, that you were one of the Good people in life; articulate, witty, artistic, non-judgemental; compassionate, and a good friend to one of my good friends.

RIP Brian.

One of my Facebook friends kicked off a conversation around the difference between two Americans passing each other on a staircase, step to the right or to the left, or collide, and what two Brits might do in the same situation.

The consensus seemed to be that as Brits with an imperial mentality legacy we'd smash straight into each other; I doubt that entirely, it would be more an exercise in apologies and profuse excuse me's

Nevertheless that got me thinking about another aspect of staircase etiquette, which should be always followed using the Tube escalators: tourists and civilians, stand on the right, don't move, leave the left hand side free for people in a hurry. Simple. Keep right or get crushed in the stampede.

Bid for a partial set of Winston Churchill's false teeth as I've just heard is happening tomorrow according to one of the final items on the 9 pm Radio 2 news slot? Perhaps not. Leave that auction joy to the hard core collectors

But I'm happy to celebrate running into an old friend. A real "where you've been all these years...how's it going... you've not changed at all !" encounter.

No lines around the eyes, not a wrinkle, or grey hair in sight, liver spotted hands ? Of course not. You're in great shape, sparky, buzzy, so why had I forgotten all about you?

Even when I heard you mentioned in the office, I still could n't quite place you. Took a good few minutes before the bulb finally popped on again and I recognised you.

All came back. Yep, flooding back. Those heady University essay days, when I'd season virtually everything I could with your good name in order to burnish my credentials as a tyro lit critic.

Leitmotif, how could I have forgotten you for so long?

Please explain, concisely and without evasion, Archimedes, what you are going to do about your flat? No quibbling. To the point. Exactly what ?

If only I knew.

All I have is this vague notion that one day I will move somewhere deeper into leafy, cool, West London.

I am pinched for space. There is nothing that is n't occupied by something, but it's not merely a spatial question, there's a brooding, emotional, anxiety inducing set of questions buzzing around the edges of my concentration: the neighbourhood, down at heel, characterful...but the kind of characters I no longer find entertaining or bohemian; a palpable air of menace everywhere; a shimmering state of tension.

The stimulus obviously is only going to come from me. Nothing truer than the statement that we are the architects of our own fortune. But when?

Somewhere warm, somewhere quiet, somewhere cheap, somewhere that's available more or less now, and somewhere that's not the UK. Heard that cry for rest before ? Guessed you had. My turn. Tough, tough week and I'm feeling pulverised. Time for time off, otherwise something is going to snap.

I'm in a house with no internet which these days is like saying you're in a pub with no beer, so much do we take for granted our digital rights. They have the internet where I'm staying, but I'm stumped if I know how to fire it up.

So how I'm managing to post this then? I'm momentarily chez moi, so grabbing an opportunity.

There's no joy like that of a temporary filling. Comfort after the storm. That dull, throbbing ache in the upper jaw? All gone, put to bed. Able to eat? Yes, with relish, elan, vim, vigour. Get the picture I'm sketching here?

What I've noticed about this episode, other than the cost - grin and bear it. In a good cause - is how close the relationship is between dentition and digestion. I've had to chew everything on my left side, which, oddly affects the way you swallow and breath. End result: a pitching, rolling stomach, buffeted by unruly pockets of air and semi-digested food.

There are two things that Martin Amis and I have in common: both of us revere Saul Bellow - he's written about his affection for the Chicago grandmaster, and I've bored countless with my fervour for anything Bellovian. If it was just a literary quirk, I'd be content, except it's not, it goes further, we are both doomed to expensive dentistry.

By the close of this week, I will have handed over £850 for the rebuild and restoration of one tooth. I love that tooth, as I love them all with the same unbridled passion; still the amount of money invested in my wounded pre-molar would nearly qualify it as an heirloom if I had kids.

Revisit. I stumble over this word nearly every day. Revisit the data, that piece of work, the report, the conclusion, and so on. Strange, but then not unusual for a humble, non-exotic, verb to find itself press-ganged into serving the world of business jargon. But, it's there, it's happened, so live with it.

And in my case, use it. Perhaps I should revisit Dickens, get a couple of his novels, and become acquainted with a world that never grabbed me by the lapels on those odd occasions when I did read him in the past.

The notion of revisiting Dickens came to life as I wandered the rooms and floors of the Doughty Street Dickens Museum, one of a number of houses that Dickens lived in.

How did he do it, day after day, a lava flow of words and plots in a house where the staircase must have drummed with children running hither and thither, with noise seeping through walls, and those claustrophobic rooms that make up the house. Surely none of it conducive to imagination. So again how?

Moreover, did the flow ever abate in those summer days when the heat is as sense dulling and torpid as it is right now.

Walking to my preferred spot on the eastbound platform at Wood Lane, the place where the driver's cab stops if you're interested, I spotted another late evening commuter who set off my deja vu alarm (silent, of course).

Where, exactly have I seen this person before? Part of me thinks she's famous, or close enough to pass for someone who actually is, whilst the other angel billing and cooing into my ear, says no, you've met her, but where?

London, the city where a chance encounter of less duration than a raindrop hitting the ground, becomes a puzzle to last through the night.

This afternoon I spent cocooned in warm summer air, alternately reading, day-dreaming, or just idling. Days are like this are priceless.

Along with most of my friends, I'm at the stage of life where signs of incipient mortality, the frayed threads on the carpet as it were, are starting to nip at our heels. Those outliers of decay: uncomfortable blood pressure, bunions, aches and wounds that take longer and longer to heal; there are things to endure, conditions, worries, anxieties.

I'm feeling all of them today, apart from the bunions. At least that's a solace.

Ah....the England question...at some point I have to answer that. And today might as well be the day.

Let me start with this first: I am reluctantly proud to say that I have n't watched a single kick of England's inglorious passage through the World Cup except for the slew of unavoidable re-runs of the goal against tiny Slovenia

Supporting England is being the unwilling partner in a dysfunctional relationship, with you the bewildered, unhappy supporter endures season after season of betrayal, mind-games, infidelities, narcissism, and pure rudeness. And every time, you excuse them, welcome them home and try to start over again. The one last chance.

Well, I said no to that years ago; enough is enough. England, we're finished. No more taking you back. No more simply putting up with inevitable disappointment. There's nothing else the marriage guidance people can do. Our soccer affair is over. Which is how it's been for nearly twenty years.

Sad, because I would like them to perform, properly and successfully, but until they flush out the narcissists., illiterates, egomaniacs, and general self-absorbed navel gazers, I'm not going back to them.

Furthermore, there's something else that needs to be excised, which is this: England must purge itself of this 1966 fetish. A huge psychological burden and they've been labouring under it for 44 years already. What a Calvary. When do we look forward? We're intimidated by our global football history, not inspired by it.

Baked like a Brie today. Hot weather, skirting the upper twenties which is passing for tropical here in London; hot temper, through missing a train to Doncaster by a single minute for the second month running.

Missing the first was not an accident, nor should the second be seen as a spreading pattern of my incompetence; nope, it's the unseen web of weekend engineering works with the ever-present inability of Central Line trains to stick to a timetable.

Thursday 24 June was the fifth anniversary of my blogging career. I've surprised myself.

I'm not alone...there's someone else who's found out they're wearing a Harry Potter style invisibility cloak . Companionship, finally.

Blogging always takes a back seat during the summer. It's my need to wring as much as I can out of the fine, balmy air, enjoy the leafy cool of Holland Park, and simply relax.

Today in particular, I wanted to capitalise and extend the sense of contentment I've revelled in this weekend: three glorious days in Shrewsbury, with two delicious side trips into magical Mid-Wales. Viva Aberstywth !

The Under Offer board that's stuck outside the block of flats next to mine has been there for so long, it's fused into the surroundings so completely that unless I decide I want to see it, I do n't. It's the visual equivalent of background noise.

But I did just a few minutes ago, and it's fortitude - look it's out there in all weathers, sun-bleached and wind battered like an old Pub sign - struck me hard.

I need, I really, really do, a strong dose of the same patience and simple sang-froid that board's displaying when I pull the covers back on what passes as my pay rise. Small enough that it's questionable if it's visible to the naked eye. And I don't feel happy, no not one jot.

Yanks 1, Planks 1. The usual defeat snatched from the jaws of victory routine that England excels at.

The world is turned on it's head.

Things that should n't be happening are. Not talking 2012 Maya predictions or making a millennial doomsday reference, no birds falling from the skies and ruptures appearing in the time space continuum.

No, what's prompted me to open this way was finding out to my amazement that someone I knew has high blood pressure, and he's not even thirty.

Then, to compound that, I find out that someone else I'm friendly with, who's a scant few years older than him is also on blood pressure medication.

The rhetorician in me is fighting the urge to say something on the "surely this is out of kilter with what normally occurs in human chronology"; after all high blood pressure is something I've really only associated with people in my age range - late forties and onwards - not in people who are still comparatively wet behind the ears and nappy fresh.

This must be the effects of lifestyle. The coincidence is too much to argue otherwise

It's like the evidence for climate change; it's there, it's evident, and it's inescapable. But why? Don't people want to feel healthy for as long as they can?

I can add another item in the Summer's here list that already includes spiralling barbecue smoke, occasional and almost uncontrollable bouts of hay fever, sandals and maxi dresses. The new one? Combat trousers, semi and full length. There were so many men wearing them, including me, that West London looked as if it had been taken over by paramilitaries.

And how could I omit the stalwart of any such list. Volcanic downpours. Just about to hear one kick off where I'm writing these words. First gust of driving rain against the windows already.

Reading Paul Auster always leaves me feeling curiously disengaged from life. Why is that ?

It's been one of those days when I've wanted to be at the controls of a wrecking ball and not a laptop. Lots of irritations all day long. Temper up; patience down... way down

Take that problem. Imagine it's a mirror. Smash it with something large and heavy -I know the folk taboo about broken mirrors, but stay with me here, it's a metaphor after all. Pick up the pieces, reassemble, then see how that problem looks.

Getting old is knowing...what exactly? That you're greyer ? That your hearing is shot? That Policemen and even Prime Ministers are looking so young these days ?

Or is it the sickly shock of seeing a record you remember coming out for the first time now appearing as a featured exhibit in the newly reopened Twentieth Century section of the Museum of London.

"Pretty Vacant", who'd thought in the pressing factory in 1977 that this would be eventually nestling in a display cabinet radiating uncomfortable electricity without even being played.

Hard to decide which hurts most: the dark clouds appearing on the horizon, or the toothache I've had all day. Results of instant one man poll: toothache.

From morn till noon, then from noon till dusk, I've done just one thing: sat outside in this mesmerising spell of hot weather.

Already restored, refreshed, and relaxed from five stupendous days of wandering Scottish sea cliffs, wallowing in balmy, salty, tangy sea air, stunned by ice-blue (but not cold), cloudless skies, and now two days of this lush, semi-tropical marinade we're having in London.

It's difficult to find something as elementally restorative as a fine day, and I've been blessed with seven.

Five revelatory, warm weather days in Scotland. Why revelatory ? Simple. The Far North is dauntingly beautiful, hard to reach, but worth every step, pulsing with great bird-life. You could turn off my hearing, blindfold me, but I'd still be able to sense where the guillemots and fulmars roost: the stink.

Now for the dentist to sort out this throbbing tooth.

"I live like a plant, filling myself with the sun and light, with colours, and fresh air" said Flaubert in one of his letters from Egypt. Good enough rubric for a lot of people to follow.

As much as I'd like a Labour Government, I'd rather they were in opposition, watching the Tories run themselves aground.

The notion of a Lib / Lab pact buoyed up by a variety of smaller parties is too shaky for me, and it's open to the most egregious whinging from the Right wing media. Nor does it taste...well... particularly democratic either; the party that gets 2 million votes fewer than the party who won, remain in power with an as yet to be decided new leader, who in turn is elected by party members, rather than the general populace. Too strange, too dangerous. Very Stalinist in that respect with a twist of the Florida 2000 debacle. This could create an unbridgeable social \ regional schism. Don't like it at all

Two things are on my mind this evening. Who will be the first senior Tory to resign - once they've eventually they've ground out how they'll run the country, either in a coalition, or as a go it alone minority that is - will it be Hague, Osborne, Boris, or someone completely unknown to us? Because as eggs are surely eggs, scandal follows the Tories like a bad smell.

That's the first thing. Next up is this: what will be the first conspiracy theory the Daily Mail will batten on to to excuse the Tories less than stellar electoral performance?

Think I've already spotted a possible candidate; the Sunday Times quoted a piece of instant research stating that a mere 16,000 votes in those hotly contested marginal seats stood between Davy boy's hoped for sweeping ascendancy into No 10 and the muddle he's actually in.

Now, remembering that hundreds of people could n't get in to some polling stations because the lines were so long, and knowing that the Daily Mail never lets reality step between them and breast beating scandal, and they certainly never let that inconvenience them when it comes to cooking up a conspiracy, then I see this happening: the Mail's frothing columnists will start insinuating that it was actually local government blundering that robbed Davy.

The fact that many of those rightly aggrieved blocked voters may well have been there to mark a big X for another party, or in constituencies that were n't wafer thin battlegrounds will matter not one whit to the Mailsters.

Fascinating to think what might come out of the talks "Rupert" Cameron is having with Nick Clegg. It could augur very badly for the Tories in the long term.

It's the collision of two opposing forces: Tories loath the very idea of Europe, similarly the notion of PR sticks in their mouth with the same fear as someone about to be water-boarded. These two being the very bedrock of Liberalism.

But Cameron is as desperate as his coven of supporters are to feel the keys to No 10 jangling in his trouser pocket.

If I were Nick Clegg, then with the cards I've got in my hand, and don't forget, he's probably being quietly courted by Labour, then I'd play like this: Cameron can be PM, but Vince Cable gets the Chancellor's job and give me (Nick) the role of Foreign Secretary. A two man dream team.

Just the thought of someone who can actually speak a language other than English as Foreign Secretary, in place of the hideous character from Yorkshire who's in it and delights in ridiculous alliances with shadowy Eastern European crypto-fascists. Imagine.

I can also see a Cons / Lib Dem coalition being the first toll of the tocsin for the Tory party as it exists now; the Thatcherite hard-right will depart in a huff for the weirder right-wing fringes - UKIP basically, leaving a (I'm hoping I know, but sometimes you have to float the optimist ship in the shallowest water) a softer, gentler Tory residual who may just start to see the sense of liberal democratic ideals and principles.

Civic duty completed. I've voted. A mixed choice: for my Parliamentary Vote, I went for the Liberal Democrat candidate, as an optimist and as a confessed idealist; I welcome with open arms, a party armed with the ideas of fairness, and who are progressive and innovative.

This was an against the grain selection; historically, I've nearly always been a Labour supporter, although I did side step that in 1992, bizarrely voting for John Major (maybe it was the Brit fascination for the under-dog that lulled me in to doing that.

However, I remained true (ish) to form and went for the Labour local council candidates.

I would n't say it was a festival atmosphere at the polling booth, but it was markedly busier than I've seen at previous election times. Again, the idealist in me was delighted to see that the turnout reflected the mixed race, cosmopolitan Mosaic of my part of Notting Hill; I saw a family of four virtually in their Sunday Best animatedly chatting in Spanish, the man in front of me in the queue to be given ballot papers had a soft Irish accent; I heard French elsewhere, and there were headscarfs and veils everywhere. Perfect.

And so it looks like it's finally coming to pass. A weak man, hoisted into power by a desperate, frantic right wing media smear campaign, bank-rolled by a controversial offshore billionaire, the beneficiary of the dark arts of Rupert Murdoch. How can Cameron fail?

I picture this happening in one of the quieter moments of Cameron's first day, someone silently handing him the bill of accounts for getting him so far. A Prime Minister beholden already.

My name, something quite simple, and as plain as you can imagine, seems to attract attention, often for reasons I don't fully understand - it puts authorities teeth on edge in some countries, which are only unset when they actually see me in the living, breathing flesh - and occasionally, as at the moment, it generates amusement.

I could do without either distinction.

So the grass really is greener on the other side?

It seems to look that way in the eyes of my married or co-habiting friends. As they persist in saying to me, a life-long singleton, that living together, being coupled up is n't always what it seems. But then they do not to have to deal with the Singleton's Paradox, which I think ought to be added to the ranks of all those other philosophical quasi-laws, like Morton's Fork or Occam's Razor.

So what is the Singleton's Paradox? It's the dilemma of being offered so many alternatives because you are free of the standard domestic arrangements (or constraints as some of my bonded together friends describe their state), there's so many, in fact, you become paralysed with indecision and don't follow any.

Richard Mabey, that fine, almost poetic nature writer, described it as"...that dithering between equally desirable alternatives... (that is)...quite paralysing, a sure route into... (a)...state of immobilising anxiety"

Not easy being single believe me.

The contrails are back. An odd thing to notice because it's so every day an occurrence it's the aerial equivalent of white notice.

Not seen, paradoxically, until they're not there, which has been the case for the past six days or so with the continent wide embargo placed on all air traffic.

There's been none of the periodic sonic shudders that rumble over my part of West London as the planes begin their approach into Heathrow. Nor have I been able to drift into that idle habit of mine when I'm stood at the bus stop counting the planes queuing up to land.

I wonder what positive things will come out of this six day plane free pause. After all, every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction, so we know what we've missed - simply getting home for many - but there has to be something positive out of this. Perhaps, as a friend said to me last night, it might encourage Kenyan farmers to stop growing roses and being dependant the whims of an entirely foreign market and instead grow crops that actually benefit them.

If, of course, life was only that easy and not bashed around by other realities - poverty, economics. Still, I wonder what positives will spin out of this six day pause.

Blame the stationary and ever expanding volcanic ash cloud over Europe for this week's dearth in posts.

Stuck longer than I expected in Scotland -not that I'm complaining about that, when the weather's right as it is now, Scotland takes some beating - but it did mean me twiddling my thumbs with no access to do personal things on the Internet.

The notion that I'm living life like a ghost might is something I'm having difficulty shaking off. I've had this sense for weeks, that I'm letting life drift by and doing nothing more animated than just watching, marooned in some sort of spectral half-life.

"Don't live life like a ghost" is the only thing I remember from a recent dream. My unconscious talking to me? Surely.

The passage from youthful idealism - it is black, or it is white, there's no blurring - to the steady state where I find myself now, someone whose formerly stark, unambiguous ideals have been rewoven into a blur of shades and tones, has be one of the most common and talked about personal transformations .

Still, there are some things I'm beginning to question now, even if it's only around the edges, that I really did think were foundation beliefs, and thus unshakable. And that's this: I'm not so certain Britain needs a written constitution. I did for years, still do, but I've started to question that insistence more and more recently.

A constitution codifies and guarantee rights and obligations, yet, and how often in life is there a yet, it seals those frequently hard won gains into the permafrost. What any constitution does at the moment of completion is to become a time capsule; it represents what was regarded as imperative at the time. It's future proofing in that it prevents whatever egregious behaviours were happening pre constitution from happening ever again

How hard is it then to adapt and modify it to successfully respond to inevitably changing socio-economic, cultural circumstances. This is the paradox of any constitution: they fix in stone what was right and proper to fix in stone, but that very act then ensures future arguments and probably rancorous disputes on not just how to, but actually whether to change.

A document fit for an eighteenth century society cannot be fit in every single respect for the demands of the twenty-first century. It just can't. But many countries, and certainly many citizens of those countries believe it can, going to all sorts of lengths to try to prove it. That for me is wrong: there's only so much elasticity in any document; take it to far, and the argument moves into dangerous sophistry. Quibbling over single words, the position of a word, it's meaning then compared to now.

Perhaps, Britain does actually benefit from not having a written constitution, I'm now starting to think. The jumble of charters, individual laws, customs, conventions, the apparent opacity of how we govern ourselves is actually our strength, and it's that elasticity ensures flexibility and resilience.

Don't think though, that I am ignoring the unique symbolism of a constitution. I know what they mean to so many countries, lives risked, lives lost, hopes dashed, hopes finally made into flesh. My point is two-fold: firstly, Britain has been lucky, somehow we've muddled by; my second point is push the notion that a constitution must move with the times. It must.

This is it, another milestone. My 600th posting, and as with any landmark, a time for reflection; but in this case, not one that looks back over each step of the journey, no, my thoughts right now are technological. Will this laptop I'm using now see me through the 700 or even 650 level? It's ominously slow to load, too many cursor and page freezes, then there's that persistent asthmatic wheeze, when every ten seconds or so, my old laptop seems to struggle for breath.

Well, Rupert Murdoch's going to have a new toy on May 7 - a bendy, squeaky, David Cameron toy. I fear the BBC is going to be disembowelled by Rupert working through his proxy. It'll end up being like Fox News.

"Step outside, Posh Boy" I know it was an April Fool, but would n't it, just would n't it be great, if Gordon Brown did take the gloves off.

A quiet, whispered "bravo" would have done, or a subtle nod of the head, but I did neither. Pity, and no doubt a testament to my Anglo-Saxon shyness.

Even at the time, I felt I should have done something, and I certainly do now; it virtually demanded recognition, after all it was an act of bravura that I've never seen before, or even heard about.

Two mornings ago, I was stood, back against one of the glass dividers, on a bouncing, rolling District Line train, reading the paper on my way to work. At every stop, more people got on, until it was the classic cheek by jowl London commuting experience.

A very handsome, wiry haired, well suited and booted man, jumped on the train at South Kensington. I'm guessing he was French, he had a soigne, elegance that no Brit could pull off for one thing, and for another, South Kensington is the 21st arrondissement; the quartier of choice for the expat French city high flyer

We were stood at roughly right angles to each other; he flicked through the FT, I concentrated on the Guardian. That's how we were for a few more stops, until he folded away the FT, and leaned over towards me, but not at me, looking at something that I could n't make out. He moved away for a second or so, then swayed back over again, gazing with hunter's intensity at something hidden behind a scrum of passengers by the other set of doors.

This happened two or three times, and always with the same focus. An absolute firmness of purpose. Until, the carriage started to empty, when there was enough space - and by this time I'm sure his mind was already made up -he turned around, steadied himself against the glass of the door, drew out a fountain pen and a business card, and wrote a short message on the back of it.

I caught a stray fragment of what he had written, when he turned back to face whoever it was he had in his sights, the first numbers of a mobile number and a half line about a woman in white boots. Remember I was too close not to see something and by now, my curiosity was razor sharp.

He had a nervous anticipation that I've really only ever seen when I've watched documentaries about beasts of prey eyeing an opportunity at the watering hole. Utter focus.

Eventually the tube thinned out and there was space between the remaining passengers. Very smartly, he stepped forward, tapped the shoulder of a young woman, with the deepest and thickest black hair I've seen in years, and passed his card over.

I could live forever if someone was to turn to me the way she did to him; a flashing look of amazement, then surprise, with the tiniest flush of embarrassment, then a smile strong enough to melt the Polar caps. This was her reaction to this act of beaumanship.

I should have applauded, done something to acknowledge this act of daring, passion, and romance. It was fabulous. A temerity that I would never dare, and yet one that I utterly admire.

Other than Le Chevalier and his Marianne, there was only her friend, who had just as a radiant a smile, and me, the silent witness, who were privy to any of this. What London missed that day.

The last I saw was the gallant knight leave the train at Mansion house a second or so in front of the black haired woman in white boots, and as the doors closed and the tube began to pull away, I saw them talking in what I hope was the breathless language of excitement.

The theory: British Summer Time started at the weekend; the reality, dishwater skies, scudding rain, squally snow, and biting cold. Life, indeed, abounds with ironies.

Earlier this month there was a snowstorm of Tiger Wood's jokes; today, like yesterday and the day before that I'm wading through a gloop of gags and jibes about the Catholic Church.

Until this Church can get it's house in order and redeem itself, or more pointedly clean it's stables out, then complaining about the barbs and witticisms thrown at them whilst alternating between protecting their own and denying justice, and PR sophistry and obfuscation, is a luxury that will be long denied to them.

Clean your house up.

Thinking of something to write. There are times when the cupboard is bare. The mice have had everything. Nothing but a layer of dust on the shelves. Like tonight.

This is the encounter that has altered the lives of so many - the first sight of the Lorelei, the Siren's call, as rendered by Patrick Kavangh: "On Raglan Road on an autumn day, I saw her first, and knew / That her dark hair would weave a snare that I might one day rue / I saw the danger yet I walked along the enchanted way"

All there: the entrapment, bewitchery, otherworldly enticements, into the dark realm of wonder, misery, confusion, exhilaration of meeting the One. I know. Guilty as charged. I've met mine and cannot shake myself out of her web. Little does she know though that her web has me bound fast.

I've been eating dry biscuits since Monday. Mainly - and on the first day I started doing so, entirely- because I could n't down anything else.

Somehow, somewhere, some bug slipped past my defences and decided to squat in my stomach. Queasy, billowing days and nights.

Not great, and still not, but I can feel the slow advance of endorphins and general goodness unfurling across my once nauseous and still slightly tremulous stomach. Don't stop, keep going troops. On to Victory.

I feel for rather indefinable reasons that I should start following something Churchill quoted seriously: "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty".

What I remember of when Ken Livingstone was Mayor of London: 2012 Olympics award; pedestrianisation of Trafalgar Square; congestion charging; single rate bus fares anywhere in London.

What I will remember of Boris Johnson's stint: the rail replacement bus service and the near paralysis of London every weekend.

Two contrasting examples of achievement and competence.

Not even with a gun at the back of my head and a butcher's knife arcing over my groin would I ever vote Tory. Living in a Tory run London is hellish enough.

Seems like it's de rigeur to read Tiger Woods's sex texting opus at the moment. All bubbling away in the lower sections of the press where prurience and giggling voyeurism can peacefully co-exist, and I've seen allusions and references flashing across the social media heavens on that same topic.

I'll be forsaking the entire opus - I've already glimpsed a few courtesy of one of London's news lite freebie papers, so I get the drift.

What's got hold of me is something, oh, so different. I'm seeing more and more men wearing hats, proper hats, of the trilby, racing felt, fedora, even bowler genus. Does start to feel like we're slipping into some fifties's fashion revival.

London is inexhaustible; there's always somewhere that you never knew about containing something you had never heard of.

Surely that's the truest of truisms especially for those of us who live in and love the 'Smoke'. And it is forever governed by that unwritten law that stipulates that whatever it is you did n't know about is right under your feet.

A combination of circumstances led me to find the Curve Gallery which I'd passed more times than I can remember heading in and out of the Barbican, but never spotted. Eyes, where are you sometimes?

It's an apt name for the gallery, curvy, rather womb-like in a way, and with big broad walls that all galleries deserve.

The shape does n't matter, however, it's what's inside that mesmerised me: several dozen free ranging Zebra finches, flashing by at head height and squeaking like little rubber chew toys, landing on the craziest, most unorthodox perches I've ever come across - plugged in Gibson lead and Bass guitars and inverted Paiste crash cymbals.

Every birds foot that grazes a guitar string makes a glorious accidental twang, in some cases eerily close to a bar or two of something faintly recognisable. It's like being in a room full of wind chimes, and all of them ringing unexpectedly.

The whole spectacle is a joy full of whimsy, chance, a gloriously bold, madcap conceit; as a friend wrote to me, it's probably the best way in which Humans, Nature, Technology and Art can work together. She's been five times, so that's not a casual observation.

Two days of near bliss in Cornwall. Everything fell into magical place. The weather was on duty, startlingly clear blue skies, crisp winds to push away the odd rain clouds, but never brisk enough to make walking the eye-poppingly glorious coast path a battle.

Other than the owner of the Bed and Breakfast, I had no sustained conversations with anyone both days, which is what I yearned for. I talk all day, it's my job to, and a tongue and a brain need to rest eventually.

All I heard was thebusy chatter of birds flitting in and out of the hedgerows, the cluck of Blackbirds, aerial Skylarks, weeping, crying gulls, and the sound of the country I love more than any other, busy, raucous Rooks.

I saw no one either. Even at Lands End, which I had half expected to be like a Tesco's barn (it was n't), the handful of workers there, outnumbered the even smaller numbers of tourists. For maybe twenty minutes, I was the most westerly Brit on the mainland on Thursday morning.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever: it's loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness. Yes, indeed, simple words, and elegantly wrought by Keats into something quite transcedent. All uncomplicated words, mundane and everyday, but here bathed in moonlight.

I thought of this line whilst reading a quote of George Orwell's heading home on the Tube this evening. It is an altogether different sentiment, a warning in his case, and not the otherworldly charm of this line from Keats, but nevertheless, they are companion pieces, nearer together than might at first be apparent.

Orwell is talking about ungainly, sloppy writing "...the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts". The companionship is the clarity of the language. Two unadorned sentences free of fussy, pedantic, and overly complicated words. Perfect

I have not been radiating Buddha-like inner calm today, nor yesterday, or the whole working week to be frank. The older I am, the less tolerance I have for virtually anything. Either I've been angry, or very angry, and now I need to sleep it all off, let Mother Nature wave her virtual healing hands over a volatile middle-aged man.

I do not like Football, in spite of the obvious irony, that I was a very good player when I was younger. There are reasons for my detestation, and some time, I'll explain why. But even if I did still like it, there's no way I could force myself to watch England. Watching them struggle against a fast, fluid, deft Egypt, wearing the lead boots that all England sides seem to wear is more than a mortal can bear. The pain to joy ratio is too much. There is no joy.

What have I learned this month? Two things. Many of my women friends go for younger men, much younger in a couple of cases. I've been busily conjecturing why and what it means for a middle-aged grey haired dome head like me.

Conjecture first: is it that there's a certain status in having a younger fella ? The "I've not lost my looks and can still pull a youngster full of sap"? Is it something maternal ?

Or is it this, there's still a wet behind the ears innocence, these young men have which in the eyes of my friends means, at least, they have n't been corrupted and succumbed to what every man becomes in the end - human, conflicted and flawed?

What this trend means for me is that looking at the average age difference between my women friends and their erstwhile beaux, which is about ten years, then for me to become some one's toyboy, I'm going to have to be the target of women in their late fifties. I have no problem with that, but I want to be seeing a woman of that age when I'm that age. Not earlier.

The other thing I picked up this week, appeared one morning, out of that liminal, threshold state between sleep and wakefulness, and it was these three perplexing words - odd socks again.

I know, a strange phrase to begin the day with, any day in fact, but it did, and my deeply symbolic mind has been churning through all manner of possible meanings. The lead possibilities are that I really do have a hitherto unrecognised collection of orphan odd socks, and it needed a poke to my subconscious to let me know, or it's a less than elegant metaphor for my partner less state.

It looks like the excuse for England's inevitable, and no doubt woeful exit from the 2010 World Cup has already been written: John Terry could n't keep his trousers on.

I read today of an enterprising company who are busily manufacturing Anyone but England World Cup tee-shirts. I'm almost tempted to buy one.

I know I'm getting older: it's so evident, my hair, what's left that it is, is more grey than the black it once was; there are crease lines begin to wind across my forehead, and some seem to be deepening. Moreover, there's the well known optical ageing paradox: squint to see anything look distance clearly, but glasses off to view anything at short range. These then are just a few of the recognisable, indeed folkloric, indices of ageing.

I was quite unexpectedly reminded again this afternoon, unexpectedly, because it came from my Bank. I was in my local branch arranging to transfer an account that I had with another provider to them. Straightforward, and when it's all complete, one that I hope I can say was painless.

As the bank employee finished the paperwork she needed to complete, she flicked through my records on her PC, and surprised us both, when she spotted that I'd first opened an account (I had n't done it myself, it was my parents who had) with her bank in 1971.

"You've had an account with us for 39 years". Probably longer than she had been alive.

How often have I seen in the smaller columns of the newspaper, a story about someone who's had the same phone number for fifty years, or driven the same car for forty years. That's who I've become now.

Age, how shall we recognise thee?

Elmore Leonard says adverbs are a mortal sin. That's it then, my writing career snuffed out, kebabed, over. Adverbs are all I know. I anxiously await the next writing edict.

For the first time in years, I was n't picked out for a random bag check at the airport. Random in my case is always.

Until about an hour ago, I would have said it was easier to find a group sex encounter in London than it was to find a shirt I like and that was in my size.

Then, when all hope seemed lost, there was Marks and Sparks in Westfield.

Shirt in my size, a design I like, and more, and end of line remnant, which when I get to pay for it is n't the £25 I expected, the sales manager reduces after a little bout of faux bartering - how much do you want to pay ? - to just £2.

No need for a calendar to work out what the date is today. I can feel it in the air. Pearl like grit. It is palpable. London is a festival of love.

It's like a cloud of endorphins blew in on the West Wind, and like a sandstorm as fine and delicate as a bridal veil, covered every couple in a mush of bliss.

For civilians like me, it's been amazing (and for many, either unpalatable or depressing) to see countless couples of all ages, wrapped tightly in champagne bubbles of contentment, cooing and billing like lovestruck doves; visibly quivering hearts; eyeball to eyeball deep stares' the occasional flash of shallowly concealed passion; oestrogen and testosterone hand in hand on the High Street.

Nine months hence, a mini maternity boom

London's been as much a living image of schmalz as it has been a brew of lip-smacking euphoria. At Angel station this evening, there was a harpist plucking away. Could even Richard Curtis dream up an association like that. Then when I changed at Bank Station, the platforms oozed and throbbed with the the sound of a busking Spanish guitarist.

Some days, I'm living on the Frontline, other days, it's Disneyland. London - the chameleon city.

Heading over the Millennium Bridge towards St Paul's is one of my favourite London walks. It's that mixture of full sky, the Canaletto effect of St Paul's itself - truly Venetian, and at the same time seeing a city in constant building flux.

The amount of construction happening, even now in when the country is still to fully appear out of the recession swap, is amazing.

I particularly like to look at the City; all those offices lit at night looking like the cross section of overly animated beehives, the winking cranes where skyscrapers are taking root, the din of jack hammers, and the sheer chaos of building styles: Gothic, corporate, eccentric, large, small, playful, austere.

Finally, I'm starting to really believe we are getting a skyline a city such as London merits.

A few days ago I met a friend of mine who works for an investment bank - a very famous investment bank -so much in fact, that it's odds on their name will probably morph into a synonym for investment banks, as in the way hoover represents vacuum cleaners, and Google, Internet search engines.

Though for many people, it's a the thinnest of thin line between saying this particular employer is famous or indeed infamous. Such is the temper of the times.

My friend works very long hours. It's a City thing. Bank the hours up. Dawn past dusk, five days a week, and on the weekend, log on at the kitchen table or scroll the Blackberry waiting in the Sainsbury's checkout.

I've never understood the cult of long hours. It must be the most in your face example of the law of diminishing returns; after a certain point, there's nothing left to give. The freshness has all gone. It's simply not an efficient use of resources or intellectual capital. What happened to the notion of "sleep on it"? Where are those wonderful, unexpected eureka moments going to come from?

Long hours is the sworn enemy of creativity. There's a tipping point when the juice of enthusiasm just pours away and there's nothing left but weariness and dejection at the thought of more fruitless hours to come, and that other silent assassin of thoughtful, stimulating work - frustration - making it's baleful appearance. Frustration almost guarantees recklessness - we're so tired, so stale, let's try anything.

Cult worship has other idols than simply long hours. There's the act of appearing busy. Not the actuality of doing something, this is instead, the dust-storm of seemingly being busy, with nothing happening.

I am reminded of the antonym of mere busyness, which is a combination of peace, reflection, and observation, and how that serves us far better than whirling around frantically, by these words of Viscount Grey of "The lights are going out all over Europe" fame: If we sit down in some secluded spot, unobtrusive and still, we shall presently understand how much there is that as passers by we never see".

Right now, all I can manage are sub twitter style postings: either I'm getting late onset ADHD, or I'm simply too tired to think, but there's not a thought strong enough in my head to limp out and found some life on the page.

It's 1967 in the Archimedes household right now: Smoky Robinson's and the Miracles steaming through Tears of a Clown. Viva Motown.

Fame abounds with ironies. I suppose that at least in the short term, we'll hear more about J.D. Salinger now than we ever did when he was alive.

I'd never thought about what the newscasters were actually saying. Probably decades of conditioning anaesthetised me and everyone else to it. How depressing.

Still, could be worse, could be the Daily Mail's version of reality, where there is no good,no hope, not even the tiniest glimmer of light, only misery, self loathing, and fear of anything from outside the Home Counties.

Urban predicaments. The first in an occasional series.

I met a friend by chance in a local bookshop this evening, who amongst other things told me about his current 'situation' - he's sharing a sublet flat with a woman, whilst the actual tenant is overseas. So far, so good. Sub-letting is a fact of life all over London, after all.

Earlier this week, they started to smell gas in their flat, so out went a call, and in response, in came British Gas, who said they would need to do a lot of work to repair the problem, so much so in fact that they had to turn the supply off and provide emergency heating.

That's enough of a predicament on it's own; being unable to properly wash, cook, or heat, would send me spinning.

But there's a further twist: the flat he's sharing is in a Women's Co-op, and men, apparently, are n't seen as fixtures and fittings. They do things, repairs, deliveries, then go.

People living in London, probably never see their neighbours from month to month, or in some cases, ever; and as he's sub-letting anyway, the chances of him finding he was living in a Women's co-op, were never going to be high to begin with. It only came out when the residents held some sort of open meeting to discuss the lack of gas supply.

He now not only has to pretend that he and his flatmate are only looking after the flat until the actual resident returns, but that he and his female room mate are a couple which would be straightforward enough, except he's gay. After twenty or so years out of the closet, he's now temporarily back in.

There's no greater Francophile in the UK than me - I love the place - but even I cloud over with fury about this - the real history of Haiti.

This demands the widest audience. It's a miserable, wretched story. Deeply upsetting. If nothing else, then at the very least - the very least - there's moral compensation due here from France. Preferably, they do the right thing, and restore everything they've effectively strong-armed out of Haiti

Without doubt, there'll be other countries, my own especially, that have equally unquiet memories, and just as many skeletons tugging at cupboard doors.

Being a city of eleven, or even twelve million, it's reasonable enough to run into someone who will remind you of someone you already know.

I'm getting that sensation virtually daily; there's an American who goes to the vegetarian takeaway that I do, who is nearly the body double for a young Michael Caine, even down to the thickish back-rimmed Get Carter like spectacles he's always wearing.

Whether that's a studied gesture or a careless one, I'll leave to the Gods to decide, or him to 'fess up to. But it's certainly disorientating to be standing at the counter with young Alfie in front.

An enthusiasm is a joy, a love of something, for something, it's excitement, happiness, that ineffable sweetness of pure enjoyment.

An addiction, my God, is another beast, it's a monster, pure and simple. Enthusiasms add shine to life; addictions consume, corrupt, eat from within, completely unhealthy.

I'm wondering if I'm a 'net addict. Online unfailingly every evening, which is bad enough, but that's nothing to the frustration I've been undergoing this evening, and a lot of other evenings this month, struggling to connect.

So sad to hear that Bill McLaren, the legendary Rugby commentator has died.

Blessed with the vocabulary of a poet, the voice of a biblical prophet, and the enthusiasm of a youngster waiting up all night for Father Christmas.

There was a gorgeous tribute to him in today's Guardian, peppered with some of his commentary classics. Name any other sports commentator who could sketch in a few, simple words the immensity of one player, by saying he was "...a great big sheep farmer who carried the ball in his hands as though it were an orange pip"

Then there's this: "...he tackled like the crack of doom and he could sniff a scoring Chance like a forest animal". It's Byronic and evocative, utterly above the mundane tripe most Sports commentators drip with.

Someone, I hope, will be busily pulling together an anthology of McLaren's commentary. Deserves to happen.