Yep, another cold day. Bitterly so, and will be for the next couple of days, maybe even some snow to boot.

I like cold, it's under-rated, makes you focus, keep an eye peeled for black ice, sidestep the slush, that kind of thing; then there's nothing like a warming, heart-pumping, brisk fifteen minute walk to the Tube in the morning. From synapse to synapse, everything is awake, nerve receptors, the whole kit and caboodle, right down to the cellular level.

But, my secret joys are n't exclusively meteorological; there's still the perennial pleasure of coming across a nugget of fine prose, which happened today.

Turning the pages of Harvey Swado's short story, Nights in the Garden of Brooklyn, on a half empty Hammersmith and City line tube this evening, I fell over these lines of his about New York: "...an indelible part of my young manhood. And like everything else I endured in those passionate years, it will remain until the end of my days embedded in the very core of my being, an internal capital, aflame with romance..."

I understand exactly; this is the effect this great city I live in, London has over me. Like a moth dazzled by a flame. Impossible to ignore, inconceivable to forget.