I've loosely refuted a home made theory of mine that it's difficult to revisit a novel and expect to be flushed once more with the satisfaction of that first ever read; Crime and Punishment proved that.

I remember the pleasure, and sometimes the sense of perplexity, (it is that type of book in places), when I first read it, which seemed mostly to be on northbound Piccadilly line trains by the way taking me between Manor House and Leicester Square.

A state of mind recaptured this time round. I have been unable to put it down. It's unlikely therefore that I'll leave it decades before I re-read it.

There's no noise but the sound of the clock near my sofa and the endless swell of the traffic on the nearby Westway. Ripe time for writing, yet I can't; my imagination will not tick over. I hate times like this.

But I have been laughing my head off at a Facebook thread that's free-wheeling around a friend's on / off jury duty in LA. Umpteen theories on how to get yourself released from jury duty (not sure I would in my case; it's a public duty, there are rights, there are obligations too); nevertheless, this is my favourite so far: tell the authorities you can recognise the guilty by the distance between their eyes, then take a ruler and measure it on the judge.

Something really quite special. Another exceptional American photographer. Unknown and only discovered by chance - Vivian Maier

Shot after shot of simple beauty and immeasurable clarity; black and white photos, each one with limitless depth. No mediation between the lens and the subject either. There's nothing trespassing, no artifice, no overt signature, it's completely unadorned.

These are unwritten stories open to endless interpretations, which for me should always be the hallmark of any artwork, be it film, literature, drama, photography. It is at that point where I feel that the work has begun to inhabit me; it's not a promiscuous, fly by night relationship, it's far deeper, we grow together, I want to go back to learn more, experience more.

There's a Walker Evans echo here - a transcedence and a similar boldness, but whether that's due to coincidence or loose homage, we'll never know. But frankly, we should n't care. Maier's work stand up perfectly, with an integrity of it's own, that's probably more profound for such an, until latterly, unrecognised and uncelebrated artist.

An intensely private person, with a blessed eye for photographs, I'm awed by her. She should be a rush candidate for the pantheon of great American photographers. It will be a crime against photography if she's not ranked alongside Evans, Wee-gee, Ansel Adams, and Annie Leibovitz as an artist of especial vision and dedication.

I'm re-reading novels that I last looked at decades ago. For no especial reason other than I've found them on my bookshelves when I've been looking for something else. So it's serendipity at play instead of deliberate choice.

And that has it's benefits; deflation is n't just reserved for economics, I've had that happen to me with books - intentionally sought out something expecting it be good, or to recapture the potentency it seemed to have the first time I read it - and nothing, the bubbles have gone flat, it's curdled.

Happenstance, accidental discovery in other words, is absolutely free from any expectations. You pick whatever it is that's caught your eye off the shelves and you read. That's it. No echoes from the past, no predictions what it might be like. No, the book stands on it's own two feet. You and it, nothing else.

At the moment, I'm steadily trotting through Crime and Punishment. It's an old copy that must have sat on my bookshelves for decades. It's obvious I've read it before, there are occasional margin scribbles and underlined sentences, but I can't remember a thing about the work itself, except for the name of the protagonist, Raskolnikov, who is accepted literary shorthand for a certain character type, and it's the latter that's the reason I remember even that fragment.

So, it's effectively a novel I'm reading for the first time, which as every reader knows, carries the same trepidation as a first date. All that "What are they going to be like? Am I coming on too quickly? Are we going to make something out of this?

It's that utter sense of nervousness that's too foggy to properly pin down, let alone explain, the words simply slide around too much to form proper sentences, but whatever it is, it drives you forward. That's where I am now, turning each page with ever growing curiousity and more than a pinch of excitement.

Will it be a made in heaven thing? Let's see.

I was thinking this afternoon what musical genre my style of work might be. Looking at all the evidence - my work day modus operandi in effect -and then weighing it fairly, I settled on Jazz.

My M.O. has all the recognisable jazz signs. It's free-form. Reliant on improvisation. Full of random tootlings, then sudden pauses. Lots of shrieking horns. Odd drum patterns. A moody double bass somewhere in the background.

It's often atonal. Plenty of blue notes. A different relationship to time. Loosely structured. Sometimes the chord progressions don't follow in an exact sequence. It's all in there.

Still I could have had a heavy metal style, thrashing through work, amp up to 11, or maybe it might have been pure country, kicking back on the rocking chair and drinking the afternoon away

Two days ago, I mourned; today I praise. This is one of the best interviews I've ever read on what it is to be a writer. The joys, the perils, the excitement, the struggles, they're are all here.

Then after you've read the interview, explore the blog itself, it's perfect. An utter love affair with writing and words that I know will never end because I've carried the same fever for over thirty years.

I'm a friend of the author who's the subject of the interview. I personally attest to his commitment and discipline; he walks it, he talks it, and of course, he writes it

The Writing Nut interview.

Kensington Central Library has less and less books every time I go. It's like the ruins of Pompeii; evidence of civilisation, you can see the walls, the layout of the rooms, the street patterns but the people, the artifacts, they're gone.

There are now so few books on the shelves, I almost imagine them huddling together for warmth when the lights have been switched off and the last librarian has left for the day.

This is desertification of the library - it's not restricted to Central Library either, the other branches are withering on the vine too - and it's happening because of budgetary pressures.

I do worry that this might lead to branches actually being closed. Losing a library does n't generate the emotional ripples of a hospital being closed, but they are therapies in their own right, valuable and inspiring, places of education, of hope, of simple enjoyment, and we need to protect them for that.

This is where I broke soil and dug myself firmly into the world of work. My first place of salaried employment - Wendy's Restaurant, Cambridge Circus - in what seems now to be the dim, distant past of 1984.

The building has n't changed, other than the lurid fascia has gone, and the chief business is now Pizza Hut; Wendy's limped on for a few more years after I took this photo, until the US owners could stand it no longer and closed the UK arm down completely.

I saw the West End peering through those large plate glass windows; zonked clubbers and daintily dressed theatre goers, brawling football fans, call-girls being picked up, pickpockets rugby tackled by plain clothes police, people falling out of buses, the homeless trudging past.

And if I was n't peering, then I was without doubt panicking. Always something to over-rev my heart. No staff and we have to open in an hour! Where's the front door key? In the trash ! How come and why? The evening the back door was on fire and all the extinguishers empty.

Completely running out of all carbonated drinks on the hottest day of the summer: "...coffee? That's all you've got?... 'fraid so". A half eaten burger given to one customer and a stale bun to a visiting director, and both sold by me.

How did I survive? Somehow I did but I'll never understand why.

This was where I learnt how to think on my feet. My apprenticeship in expediency. Gruelling, but when I look back, oddly worthwhile.

Even though it was only 1984; the period of Boy George, the Joboxers, the Miners strike, the Limelight Club, slogan tee-shirts on the Frankie says theme. It still seems of a time before time.

I feel I took these photos when I lived in some remote antiquity.

I've been hoarding every page of Saul Bellow's Collected Letters the same way a great chef might with a cupboard full of the finest ingredients available: relishing each pleasurable drop, wringing out every joy, and milking every single dollop of goodness, until this afternoon when I read his final letter and sadly had to close the book.

Bellow reaches places in me no other author has ever come close to. A light bulb turned on in my head almost thirty years ago when I first began to read him and it's never gone off.

Why my enthusiasm has lost none of it's fierceness is something I can't adequately answer; perhaps I should n't try either, after all we can kill the thing we love with over analysis.

Press me, and I'll say something about the strength of the writing; every sentence of Bellow reminds me of one those Inca walls, huge blocks fitted together without a gap between them them, not a word out of place, everything fits; his imagery is delicious, in one of his letters, Bellow tells the recipient that he is like an Anaconda slowly digesting an idea. I love that, the notion of intellectual enzymes slowly breaking down a stodgy concept into something eventually nutritious.

His opening lines always sizzle and sing. The Victim begins "On some nights New York is as hot as Bangkok"; I was in New York on such a night almost thirty years ago reading that book for the first time, when the night time air was steamy, dank, tropical, every street a throbbing sauna.

Bellow's characters are extraordinary in their philosophical and intellectual reach, and at the same time as conflicted and complicated as anyone else. Herzog, the metaphysically wounded scholar cum frenzied letter writer of the eponymous novel is as confused about ordinary life as anyone else, maybe even more so at times, but someone who begets empathy.

I have had so many warm nights of the soul reading Bellow, heartened and encouraged by his words, the ardour of his writing, the passion for life and of life that his characters radiate like mini-furnaces, their dilemmas, which are private to them but nevertheless universal to us all. I should have written him a letter to thank him. I have now.

The dancing in this video - Wonderful Life- is utterly mesmerising. So atmospheric, so moody, so simple.

I'm fascinated by the impassivity of the dancer. No emotion on her face. Almost like she has a mask on. Kabuki like in a way. She's so loose limbed and enviably supple. Flexing and bowing the way a tree does in a breeze, from side to side but never losing equilibrium. Always in command of her pose; never it's prisoner.

There are strong echoes of Spain too, where the dancers typically dance authoritatively and without any obvious facial emotion, indeed without any expression. Her eyebrows furthermore have an Iberian flavour, dark, thick, and arched.

Be fascinating to find out exactly where she hails from.

Met one of my oldest friends for coffee yesterday. His New Year's resolution ? Stop sighing. Worthy. Different. Better than the usual fare of cutting back on booze, going back to the gym and so on.

Wonder what became of that man in a suit wandering through Bond Street station at two in the morning on New's Year Eve with a papier mache Rubik's Cube on his head? All the colours were lined up properly, so no one was going to play with his head, but did someone anyway?

Was that eager, frisky Big Issue salesman lucky enough to sell a couple of copies to those sozzled black tied and evening dressed haute bourgeoisie slithering out of a restaurant near Grosvenor Square at round about the same time? Or did they mock him as I miserably suspected they probably did.

Did Shepherd's Bush become in the end as Romanesque as it was threatening to be when a friend and I walked past the Green thirty minutes later? Romanesque as in the last days of.

And how come I felt so perky after less than five hours sleep?