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.