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.