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.