My age has me plumb in the middle of the"squashed generation"; those of us around our forties and fifties sandwiched between anxieties of ailing parents and the boisterous, sometimes surly demands of young adults creeping up behind. Pressure here, pressure there. It's a much remarked cultural observation. And most will segue through the three stages.

It's being in it, the filling in the generational sandwich, that I think, and I say this purely from observation (I'll clarify exactly why later), is potentially the most poignant because people are leaving. Kids become autonomous. they become people in other words; angry, passionate, excitable, effervescent, hopeful, invincible, moody, everything that goes with the great state of being human.

We also start to lose those who brought us here: our parents. Someone I know, a fine, happy spirited, deeply amiable person who carries an aura with her wherever she goes, a woman of great and sincere sensitivity, and a "squashed generation" member too, quite unexpectedly, lost her mother a few weeks ago.

Her heart aches. In an e-mail she wrote the simplest, tenderest sentences on how she felt. Her mum died on the final day of her holiday in a country several thousand miles away. Her words are few, unadorned and of the heart,  plain yet so pure, and they express unequivocally the depth of love she had for her mother: "...she died, away from me.."

I know exactly what weight these words carry, just what they symbolise: that she wanted to hold her mum, see her, laugh with her, chatter with her, see her again. And she can't. These five words have n't left me since I read them this morning. They echo with inexplicable feeling.

Bereavement is a room you never want to enter. I know: both of my parents passed away and to this day I still feel their absence.

When I don't have a book or something to read on public transport then it's whatever is going around me that's going to get my attention.

Bouncing back from Richmond on the 391, I could n't escape the conversation going on in the seat in front. It was two people, clearly somewhere in the warm glow of romance: a tall South African man, quite elegantly dressed in a well made brown three quarter length coat with a lighter brown polo neck underneath; his partner had her hair pinned back ( the seats are so close on the 391, I could see how many pins there were: three.) and was as comfortably dressed as the man.

There was a little, at times, coy, question and answer session going on between them. She wondered what type of clothes he looked, the styles, short sleeves, V necks, long sleeve t shirts, what colours did he like. Like me he was an earth toned creature: browns, chocolates, greens, some shades of blue, and no, he did n't mind if she from time to time pointed something out in store when they were shopping, or even bought the odd item.

Love. What a beautiful thing.

I saw these two a few days ago in Rome.If it is an illusion then it's one of the best I've ever come across.

Personally, I'm suspending all rationality and assuming it's something entirely other -not inexplicable - simply a testament instead to the power of mind over matter. And this was some effort, barely a movement from either during the twenty minutes or so I was watching, they'd clearly been in the same stance before I arrived and were still when I turned to leave.

They were n't the only pair I spotted in Rome, I ran across another on the Via Del Corso on my way back t my hotel. Perhaps, just perhaps, there is a little something going on. But for me, belief remains suspended; both are exhibiting a strength, endurance and spirit that I can only marvel at. Somethings are better left.

Interestingly, the hyper concentrating duo in this photo had approached their site with acumen and foresight, they were on the bridge just before the Castel San Angelo, which guards one of the main thoroughfares to that seat of spiritual power - the Vatican.

Those five days I've just spent in Rome were among five of the most enchanting days I've ever had. Rome rendered me mute. Speechless. Everyday was discovering a new joy, something utterly unexpected. I am in love with the eternal city. Inamorata. Why? Who knows. Who cares. It's a sensory thing, inchoate, fugitive; it could be a vapour, or a perfume, something too strong, yet paradoxically too fragile, to break down into actual parts. It's so stealthy, like a magical kiss in some fairy tale, utterly transformative.

I felt for the whole time that I was there that I was in the original City, the foundation City, the place where it all began. It's the only city I've been to which makes two thousand year old London or Paris feel young. Mesopotamia is acknowledged as holding the the seeds of the oldest recognised urban settlements; but Rome surely trumps that. Where else can you see millenia old frescoes in the catacombs or the basement of the Basilica di San Clemente and then see almost the same faces you've just seen walking past you on the street or stood at the bar drinking coffee

I'll leave the final word to Goethe, who in his Italian Journey, wrote: "Now at last I have arrived in the First city of the world"

Another turn of the wheel for me this week: my birthday, so I'm having a short break. I'll post if I can. I'm still not decided whether I'm taking my i-Pad with me. If not then I'll be depending on the bounty of whatever internet cafe I can flush out in Rome.

It's happened again: yet another near St Francis of Assis moment as Terry and I trudged through a bitterly cold Hyde Park trying to work out just exactly where in the this 350 acres of park, the resident Tawny Owls call home.

A quest in vain as it ultimately turned out; wherever they were, we were n't.

Still if one door closes, another really does open, and opens wide. We were given what might as well have been the avian equivalent of a cavalry escort. Birds popped up and out of everywhere; like miniature dust storms, whirling through the undergrowth.

Birds of every stripe and colour filled the bushes as we strode through the park. Close enough for them to have eaten out of our hands. They were fearless. It was something almost out of a Disney cartoon where humans and animals chat away; that surreal. 

Even the normally raucous parakeets put a sock in it as they drew nearer to us. So near in fact that either one of us could have made for a very passable Long John Silver with a parrot on his shoulder had we thrown an arm out.

This has happened before at the Barnes Wetland centre where we were virtually shadowed by a roving, darting band of extraordinarily acrobatic long tailed tits for hundreds of yards.

Why is this happening? 

Had there been any more of us squinting up at a non-descript bare branched tree tucked into the corner of just as a bland an end terraced house in South Ealing then the police would have probably pulled out the crowd barriers. Eight buff coloured waxwings sat out the occasional shrieks of wind tunnelling down South Ealing Road the way I imagine surfers wait for the next big rise. Riding each pulse before skimming down to a small tree draped with reddish coloured berries which is effectively Waxwings' spinach; gives 'em strength, health and vigour.

And these are hardy birds. Driven over from Scandinavia by hunger, they've irrupted into the UK in roving bands on the look out for waxwing ambrosia - anything red and in berry form. So this means they've dropped into some of the most unexpected areas - car parks, city centre churchyards and a temporary colony of eight, perhaps a few more, outside South Ealing station.

They are glorious birds. Buff, almost pinkish breasts, splashes of Matt yellow on wing tips and tails; that Scandinavian dress sense again, as if they've all seen the same costume designer, each one kitted out in the same thick, gorgeously knitted jumper that every Danish or Swedish actor wears in some Scandinavian noir series. Topped off with a jaunty cockade; they're one of the few birds I know who actually look like they have a feather in their cap.

People of South Ealing look up. There's beauty above.

The compulsion to read is this: once you have it you never lose it. As constant as a sunrise, as abiding as a sunset. Mine's been there since I can remember, in fact the first fragments of any real memory involve reading and the last will, no doubt, have a book in there somewhere.

I was talking about this with a friend a few evenings ago in the cafe of the National Gallery, doing my best to sketch out  exactly what is so intoxicating about reading. The shape of what I was trying to say did n't come out; feelings are n't easily captured sometimes, so the sense was there, but the taut description, which is what I wanted remained out of focus.

But you're never more than a few books away from the sentence or the statement that pulls the ether down, grabs it with both hands, moulds it, bends it, and throws out the exact shape of what you were hoping for. So what has the compulsion to read done for me? This: "My mind has travelled through words and books to places where my feet will never touch the earth" This is the most heartfelt and the most accurate explanation of what words have meant for me. Taken with joy from a short story by Ishmael Beah, an exciting writer from Sierra Leone now living in New York City.

How do I know it's Epiphany even if I'm a secularist?  A stroll on the evening streets is how.

The tide went out in Notting Hill, then it came back in again and sluiced up Xmas trees. Tree after tree. They are everywhere: on side roads, main roads, down tiny alleys. Many still luxuriantly green and all pine fresh fragrant, lying at crazy angles on the pavement.

Against the steps of warm houses or propped against the London Plane trees that etch their way down Holland park avenue. Or balanced against the side of municipal waste bins. Bought, used, forgotten, dumped.

Sad, silent, forlorn sentinels who bore the baubles of the season and now waiting in the cold to be picked up and fed to the council chipper. I see this every year.  Tempus fugit

Naked without a book, indeed anything to read on the tube home tonight. So that meant staring vacantly at the adverts, or glancing at the reflected blackness of the tunnel as the tube swished between stations.

The thing not to do is accidentally, and certainly not deliberately, engage eyes with any other passenger. This is Friday night on the tube. A small gesture like this can go rogue, flare way out of control.

I think what someone was trying to accuse me of but without actually saying it this morning was that I was guessing.

Correct. I was. Undeniable.

However the way he said it on the call was so garlanded with choicest cuts of corporate speak that I can even now only (yes, wait for it) guess that's what he was imputing.

There was something in there about me being offline too much, that I needed to dialogue and engage more with the matrix team, otherwise the dials won't change and we'll not achieve glide-path. And should I have really spent so much time boiling the ocean?

I would have pleaded guilty or refuted it all with the energy of someone swinging a long drive down the fairway at St Andrews. But, guy, you left me no real clues. just a tangle of perhaps he meant this, or was it that, or even something at odds with both of those. I don't know. Never will. I did n't understand then, I don't now, so I'm really working just on sense and mood, Like braille but without the raised dots.

Still, I did throw a hot one back, and hopefully just as mystifying, when I retorted that what I'd actually done was "...de-risked the mid point.." No, me too, no idea what it means; or from which neuron it popped up from. Just call it my contribution to the gobbledygook lexicon of corporate jargon

A day where I've not spent at least an hour in some coffee shop or other would be like a London skyline without a pigeon somewhere scrabbling across it. I'm talking about an action so reflexive, so instinctive, it might as well be an adjunct to breathing. Perhaps it actually is.

I think we all leave our psychic footprints across whichever landscape it is we roam over daily. I long ago marked out my psycho-geographical terrain; it's central and west London, where the bulk of my life has been lived and where it's imprinted the deepest. Every paving stone, every brick, every wall has some of me sunk into it.

Coffee shops have for the part played, and continue to, a key role in this territory marking. Drunk coffee here, drunk it there. That's the story.

A day not spent flicking through the Guardian with a cappucino nearby is n't a day. I don't feel right. Something's missing. It's about preparing for entry into the rest of the day - the working day usually. Slow, gradual re-absorption into the world of the office. The world I left behind the previous day. It takes time. It takes coffee.