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.

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.

Along with most of my friends, I'm at the stage of life where signs of incipient mortality, the frayed threads on the carpet as it were, are starting to nip at our heels. Those outliers of decay: uncomfortable blood pressure, bunions, aches and wounds that take longer and longer to heal; there are things to endure, conditions, worries, anxieties.

I'm feeling all of them today, apart from the bunions. At least that's a solace.

Ah....the England question...at some point I have to answer that. And today might as well be the day.

Let me start with this first: I am reluctantly proud to say that I have n't watched a single kick of England's inglorious passage through the World Cup except for the slew of unavoidable re-runs of the goal against tiny Slovenia

Supporting England is being the unwilling partner in a dysfunctional relationship, with you the bewildered, unhappy supporter endures season after season of betrayal, mind-games, infidelities, narcissism, and pure rudeness. And every time, you excuse them, welcome them home and try to start over again. The one last chance.

Well, I said no to that years ago; enough is enough. England, we're finished. No more taking you back. No more simply putting up with inevitable disappointment. There's nothing else the marriage guidance people can do. Our soccer affair is over. Which is how it's been for nearly twenty years.

Sad, because I would like them to perform, properly and successfully, but until they flush out the narcissists., illiterates, egomaniacs, and general self-absorbed navel gazers, I'm not going back to them.

Furthermore, there's something else that needs to be excised, which is this: England must purge itself of this 1966 fetish. A huge psychological burden and they've been labouring under it for 44 years already. What a Calvary. When do we look forward? We're intimidated by our global football history, not inspired by it.

Baked like a Brie today. Hot weather, skirting the upper twenties which is passing for tropical here in London; hot temper, through missing a train to Doncaster by a single minute for the second month running.

Missing the first was not an accident, nor should the second be seen as a spreading pattern of my incompetence; nope, it's the unseen web of weekend engineering works with the ever-present inability of Central Line trains to stick to a timetable.

Thursday 24 June was the fifth anniversary of my blogging career. I've surprised myself.

I'm not alone...there's someone else who's found out they're wearing a Harry Potter style invisibility cloak . Companionship, finally.

Blogging always takes a back seat during the summer. It's my need to wring as much as I can out of the fine, balmy air, enjoy the leafy cool of Holland Park, and simply relax.

Today in particular, I wanted to capitalise and extend the sense of contentment I've revelled in this weekend: three glorious days in Shrewsbury, with two delicious side trips into magical Mid-Wales. Viva Aberstywth !

The Under Offer board that's stuck outside the block of flats next to mine has been there for so long, it's fused into the surroundings so completely that unless I decide I want to see it, I do n't. It's the visual equivalent of background noise.

But I did just a few minutes ago, and it's fortitude - look it's out there in all weathers, sun-bleached and wind battered like an old Pub sign - struck me hard.

I need, I really, really do, a strong dose of the same patience and simple sang-froid that board's displaying when I pull the covers back on what passes as my pay rise. Small enough that it's questionable if it's visible to the naked eye. And I don't feel happy, no not one jot.

Yanks 1, Planks 1. The usual defeat snatched from the jaws of victory routine that England excels at.

The world is turned on it's head.

Things that should n't be happening are. Not talking 2012 Maya predictions or making a millennial doomsday reference, no birds falling from the skies and ruptures appearing in the time space continuum.

No, what's prompted me to open this way was finding out to my amazement that someone I knew has high blood pressure, and he's not even thirty.

Then, to compound that, I find out that someone else I'm friendly with, who's a scant few years older than him is also on blood pressure medication.

The rhetorician in me is fighting the urge to say something on the "surely this is out of kilter with what normally occurs in human chronology"; after all high blood pressure is something I've really only associated with people in my age range - late forties and onwards - not in people who are still comparatively wet behind the ears and nappy fresh.

This must be the effects of lifestyle. The coincidence is too much to argue otherwise

It's like the evidence for climate change; it's there, it's evident, and it's inescapable. But why? Don't people want to feel healthy for as long as they can?

I can add another item in the Summer's here list that already includes spiralling barbecue smoke, occasional and almost uncontrollable bouts of hay fever, sandals and maxi dresses. The new one? Combat trousers, semi and full length. There were so many men wearing them, including me, that West London looked as if it had been taken over by paramilitaries.

And how could I omit the stalwart of any such list. Volcanic downpours. Just about to hear one kick off where I'm writing these words. First gust of driving rain against the windows already.

Reading Paul Auster always leaves me feeling curiously disengaged from life. Why is that ?

It's been one of those days when I've wanted to be at the controls of a wrecking ball and not a laptop. Lots of irritations all day long. Temper up; patience down... way down

Take that problem. Imagine it's a mirror. Smash it with something large and heavy -I know the folk taboo about broken mirrors, but stay with me here, it's a metaphor after all. Pick up the pieces, reassemble, then see how that problem looks.

Getting old is knowing...what exactly? That you're greyer ? That your hearing is shot? That Policemen and even Prime Ministers are looking so young these days ?

Or is it the sickly shock of seeing a record you remember coming out for the first time now appearing as a featured exhibit in the newly reopened Twentieth Century section of the Museum of London.

"Pretty Vacant", who'd thought in the pressing factory in 1977 that this would be eventually nestling in a display cabinet radiating uncomfortable electricity without even being played.

Hard to decide which hurts most: the dark clouds appearing on the horizon, or the toothache I've had all day. Results of instant one man poll: toothache.

From morn till noon, then from noon till dusk, I've done just one thing: sat outside in this mesmerising spell of hot weather.

Already restored, refreshed, and relaxed from five stupendous days of wandering Scottish sea cliffs, wallowing in balmy, salty, tangy sea air, stunned by ice-blue (but not cold), cloudless skies, and now two days of this lush, semi-tropical marinade we're having in London.

It's difficult to find something as elementally restorative as a fine day, and I've been blessed with seven.

Five revelatory, warm weather days in Scotland. Why revelatory ? Simple. The Far North is dauntingly beautiful, hard to reach, but worth every step, pulsing with great bird-life. You could turn off my hearing, blindfold me, but I'd still be able to sense where the guillemots and fulmars roost: the stink.

Now for the dentist to sort out this throbbing tooth.

"I live like a plant, filling myself with the sun and light, with colours, and fresh air" said Flaubert in one of his letters from Egypt. Good enough rubric for a lot of people to follow.

As much as I'd like a Labour Government, I'd rather they were in opposition, watching the Tories run themselves aground.

The notion of a Lib / Lab pact buoyed up by a variety of smaller parties is too shaky for me, and it's open to the most egregious whinging from the Right wing media. Nor does it taste...well... particularly democratic either; the party that gets 2 million votes fewer than the party who won, remain in power with an as yet to be decided new leader, who in turn is elected by party members, rather than the general populace. Too strange, too dangerous. Very Stalinist in that respect with a twist of the Florida 2000 debacle. This could create an unbridgeable social \ regional schism. Don't like it at all

Two things are on my mind this evening. Who will be the first senior Tory to resign - once they've eventually they've ground out how they'll run the country, either in a coalition, or as a go it alone minority that is - will it be Hague, Osborne, Boris, or someone completely unknown to us? Because as eggs are surely eggs, scandal follows the Tories like a bad smell.

That's the first thing. Next up is this: what will be the first conspiracy theory the Daily Mail will batten on to to excuse the Tories less than stellar electoral performance?

Think I've already spotted a possible candidate; the Sunday Times quoted a piece of instant research stating that a mere 16,000 votes in those hotly contested marginal seats stood between Davy boy's hoped for sweeping ascendancy into No 10 and the muddle he's actually in.

Now, remembering that hundreds of people could n't get in to some polling stations because the lines were so long, and knowing that the Daily Mail never lets reality step between them and breast beating scandal, and they certainly never let that inconvenience them when it comes to cooking up a conspiracy, then I see this happening: the Mail's frothing columnists will start insinuating that it was actually local government blundering that robbed Davy.

The fact that many of those rightly aggrieved blocked voters may well have been there to mark a big X for another party, or in constituencies that were n't wafer thin battlegrounds will matter not one whit to the Mailsters.

Fascinating to think what might come out of the talks "Rupert" Cameron is having with Nick Clegg. It could augur very badly for the Tories in the long term.

It's the collision of two opposing forces: Tories loath the very idea of Europe, similarly the notion of PR sticks in their mouth with the same fear as someone about to be water-boarded. These two being the very bedrock of Liberalism.

But Cameron is as desperate as his coven of supporters are to feel the keys to No 10 jangling in his trouser pocket.

If I were Nick Clegg, then with the cards I've got in my hand, and don't forget, he's probably being quietly courted by Labour, then I'd play like this: Cameron can be PM, but Vince Cable gets the Chancellor's job and give me (Nick) the role of Foreign Secretary. A two man dream team.

Just the thought of someone who can actually speak a language other than English as Foreign Secretary, in place of the hideous character from Yorkshire who's in it and delights in ridiculous alliances with shadowy Eastern European crypto-fascists. Imagine.

I can also see a Cons / Lib Dem coalition being the first toll of the tocsin for the Tory party as it exists now; the Thatcherite hard-right will depart in a huff for the weirder right-wing fringes - UKIP basically, leaving a (I'm hoping I know, but sometimes you have to float the optimist ship in the shallowest water) a softer, gentler Tory residual who may just start to see the sense of liberal democratic ideals and principles.

Civic duty completed. I've voted. A mixed choice: for my Parliamentary Vote, I went for the Liberal Democrat candidate, as an optimist and as a confessed idealist; I welcome with open arms, a party armed with the ideas of fairness, and who are progressive and innovative.

This was an against the grain selection; historically, I've nearly always been a Labour supporter, although I did side step that in 1992, bizarrely voting for John Major (maybe it was the Brit fascination for the under-dog that lulled me in to doing that.

However, I remained true (ish) to form and went for the Labour local council candidates.

I would n't say it was a festival atmosphere at the polling booth, but it was markedly busier than I've seen at previous election times. Again, the idealist in me was delighted to see that the turnout reflected the mixed race, cosmopolitan Mosaic of my part of Notting Hill; I saw a family of four virtually in their Sunday Best animatedly chatting in Spanish, the man in front of me in the queue to be given ballot papers had a soft Irish accent; I heard French elsewhere, and there were headscarfs and veils everywhere. Perfect.

And so it looks like it's finally coming to pass. A weak man, hoisted into power by a desperate, frantic right wing media smear campaign, bank-rolled by a controversial offshore billionaire, the beneficiary of the dark arts of Rupert Murdoch. How can Cameron fail?

I picture this happening in one of the quieter moments of Cameron's first day, someone silently handing him the bill of accounts for getting him so far. A Prime Minister beholden already.

My name, something quite simple, and as plain as you can imagine, seems to attract attention, often for reasons I don't fully understand - it puts authorities teeth on edge in some countries, which are only unset when they actually see me in the living, breathing flesh - and occasionally, as at the moment, it generates amusement.

I could do without either distinction.

So the grass really is greener on the other side?

It seems to look that way in the eyes of my married or co-habiting friends. As they persist in saying to me, a life-long singleton, that living together, being coupled up is n't always what it seems. But then they do not to have to deal with the Singleton's Paradox, which I think ought to be added to the ranks of all those other philosophical quasi-laws, like Morton's Fork or Occam's Razor.

So what is the Singleton's Paradox? It's the dilemma of being offered so many alternatives because you are free of the standard domestic arrangements (or constraints as some of my bonded together friends describe their state), there's so many, in fact, you become paralysed with indecision and don't follow any.

Richard Mabey, that fine, almost poetic nature writer, described it as"...that dithering between equally desirable alternatives... (that is)...quite paralysing, a sure route into... (a)...state of immobilising anxiety"

Not easy being single believe me.

The contrails are back. An odd thing to notice because it's so every day an occurrence it's the aerial equivalent of white notice.

Not seen, paradoxically, until they're not there, which has been the case for the past six days or so with the continent wide embargo placed on all air traffic.

There's been none of the periodic sonic shudders that rumble over my part of West London as the planes begin their approach into Heathrow. Nor have I been able to drift into that idle habit of mine when I'm stood at the bus stop counting the planes queuing up to land.

I wonder what positive things will come out of this six day plane free pause. After all, every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction, so we know what we've missed - simply getting home for many - but there has to be something positive out of this. Perhaps, as a friend said to me last night, it might encourage Kenyan farmers to stop growing roses and being dependant the whims of an entirely foreign market and instead grow crops that actually benefit them.

If, of course, life was only that easy and not bashed around by other realities - poverty, economics. Still, I wonder what positives will spin out of this six day pause.

Blame the stationary and ever expanding volcanic ash cloud over Europe for this week's dearth in posts.

Stuck longer than I expected in Scotland -not that I'm complaining about that, when the weather's right as it is now, Scotland takes some beating - but it did mean me twiddling my thumbs with no access to do personal things on the Internet.

The notion that I'm living life like a ghost might is something I'm having difficulty shaking off. I've had this sense for weeks, that I'm letting life drift by and doing nothing more animated than just watching, marooned in some sort of spectral half-life.

"Don't live life like a ghost" is the only thing I remember from a recent dream. My unconscious talking to me? Surely.

The passage from youthful idealism - it is black, or it is white, there's no blurring - to the steady state where I find myself now, someone whose formerly stark, unambiguous ideals have been rewoven into a blur of shades and tones, has be one of the most common and talked about personal transformations .

Still, there are some things I'm beginning to question now, even if it's only around the edges, that I really did think were foundation beliefs, and thus unshakable. And that's this: I'm not so certain Britain needs a written constitution. I did for years, still do, but I've started to question that insistence more and more recently.

A constitution codifies and guarantee rights and obligations, yet, and how often in life is there a yet, it seals those frequently hard won gains into the permafrost. What any constitution does at the moment of completion is to become a time capsule; it represents what was regarded as imperative at the time. It's future proofing in that it prevents whatever egregious behaviours were happening pre constitution from happening ever again

How hard is it then to adapt and modify it to successfully respond to inevitably changing socio-economic, cultural circumstances. This is the paradox of any constitution: they fix in stone what was right and proper to fix in stone, but that very act then ensures future arguments and probably rancorous disputes on not just how to, but actually whether to change.

A document fit for an eighteenth century society cannot be fit in every single respect for the demands of the twenty-first century. It just can't. But many countries, and certainly many citizens of those countries believe it can, going to all sorts of lengths to try to prove it. That for me is wrong: there's only so much elasticity in any document; take it to far, and the argument moves into dangerous sophistry. Quibbling over single words, the position of a word, it's meaning then compared to now.

Perhaps, Britain does actually benefit from not having a written constitution, I'm now starting to think. The jumble of charters, individual laws, customs, conventions, the apparent opacity of how we govern ourselves is actually our strength, and it's that elasticity ensures flexibility and resilience.

Don't think though, that I am ignoring the unique symbolism of a constitution. I know what they mean to so many countries, lives risked, lives lost, hopes dashed, hopes finally made into flesh. My point is two-fold: firstly, Britain has been lucky, somehow we've muddled by; my second point is push the notion that a constitution must move with the times. It must.

This is it, another milestone. My 600th posting, and as with any landmark, a time for reflection; but in this case, not one that looks back over each step of the journey, no, my thoughts right now are technological. Will this laptop I'm using now see me through the 700 or even 650 level? It's ominously slow to load, too many cursor and page freezes, then there's that persistent asthmatic wheeze, when every ten seconds or so, my old laptop seems to struggle for breath.

Well, Rupert Murdoch's going to have a new toy on May 7 - a bendy, squeaky, David Cameron toy. I fear the BBC is going to be disembowelled by Rupert working through his proxy. It'll end up being like Fox News.

"Step outside, Posh Boy" I know it was an April Fool, but would n't it, just would n't it be great, if Gordon Brown did take the gloves off.

A quiet, whispered "bravo" would have done, or a subtle nod of the head, but I did neither. Pity, and no doubt a testament to my Anglo-Saxon shyness.

Even at the time, I felt I should have done something, and I certainly do now; it virtually demanded recognition, after all it was an act of bravura that I've never seen before, or even heard about.

Two mornings ago, I was stood, back against one of the glass dividers, on a bouncing, rolling District Line train, reading the paper on my way to work. At every stop, more people got on, until it was the classic cheek by jowl London commuting experience.

A very handsome, wiry haired, well suited and booted man, jumped on the train at South Kensington. I'm guessing he was French, he had a soigne, elegance that no Brit could pull off for one thing, and for another, South Kensington is the 21st arrondissement; the quartier of choice for the expat French city high flyer

We were stood at roughly right angles to each other; he flicked through the FT, I concentrated on the Guardian. That's how we were for a few more stops, until he folded away the FT, and leaned over towards me, but not at me, looking at something that I could n't make out. He moved away for a second or so, then swayed back over again, gazing with hunter's intensity at something hidden behind a scrum of passengers by the other set of doors.

This happened two or three times, and always with the same focus. An absolute firmness of purpose. Until, the carriage started to empty, when there was enough space - and by this time I'm sure his mind was already made up -he turned around, steadied himself against the glass of the door, drew out a fountain pen and a business card, and wrote a short message on the back of it.

I caught a stray fragment of what he had written, when he turned back to face whoever it was he had in his sights, the first numbers of a mobile number and a half line about a woman in white boots. Remember I was too close not to see something and by now, my curiosity was razor sharp.

He had a nervous anticipation that I've really only ever seen when I've watched documentaries about beasts of prey eyeing an opportunity at the watering hole. Utter focus.

Eventually the tube thinned out and there was space between the remaining passengers. Very smartly, he stepped forward, tapped the shoulder of a young woman, with the deepest and thickest black hair I've seen in years, and passed his card over.

I could live forever if someone was to turn to me the way she did to him; a flashing look of amazement, then surprise, with the tiniest flush of embarrassment, then a smile strong enough to melt the Polar caps. This was her reaction to this act of beaumanship.

I should have applauded, done something to acknowledge this act of daring, passion, and romance. It was fabulous. A temerity that I would never dare, and yet one that I utterly admire.

Other than Le Chevalier and his Marianne, there was only her friend, who had just as a radiant a smile, and me, the silent witness, who were privy to any of this. What London missed that day.

The last I saw was the gallant knight leave the train at Mansion house a second or so in front of the black haired woman in white boots, and as the doors closed and the tube began to pull away, I saw them talking in what I hope was the breathless language of excitement.

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.

What have I learned this month? Two things. Many of my women friends go for younger men, much younger in a couple of cases. I've been busily conjecturing why and what it means for a middle-aged grey haired dome head like me.

Conjecture first: is it that there's a certain status in having a younger fella ? The "I've not lost my looks and can still pull a youngster full of sap"? Is it something maternal ?

Or is it this, there's still a wet behind the ears innocence, these young men have which in the eyes of my friends means, at least, they have n't been corrupted and succumbed to what every man becomes in the end - human, conflicted and flawed?

What this trend means for me is that looking at the average age difference between my women friends and their erstwhile beaux, which is about ten years, then for me to become some one's toyboy, I'm going to have to be the target of women in their late fifties. I have no problem with that, but I want to be seeing a woman of that age when I'm that age. Not earlier.

The other thing I picked up this week, appeared one morning, out of that liminal, threshold state between sleep and wakefulness, and it was these three perplexing words - odd socks again.

I know, a strange phrase to begin the day with, any day in fact, but it did, and my deeply symbolic mind has been churning through all manner of possible meanings. The lead possibilities are that I really do have a hitherto unrecognised collection of orphan odd socks, and it needed a poke to my subconscious to let me know, or it's a less than elegant metaphor for my partner less state.

It looks like the excuse for England's inevitable, and no doubt woeful exit from the 2010 World Cup has already been written: John Terry could n't keep his trousers on.

I read today of an enterprising company who are busily manufacturing Anyone but England World Cup tee-shirts. I'm almost tempted to buy one.

I know I'm getting older: it's so evident, my hair, what's left that it is, is more grey than the black it once was; there are crease lines begin to wind across my forehead, and some seem to be deepening. Moreover, there's the well known optical ageing paradox: squint to see anything look distance clearly, but glasses off to view anything at short range. These then are just a few of the recognisable, indeed folkloric, indices of ageing.

I was quite unexpectedly reminded again this afternoon, unexpectedly, because it came from my Bank. I was in my local branch arranging to transfer an account that I had with another provider to them. Straightforward, and when it's all complete, one that I hope I can say was painless.

As the bank employee finished the paperwork she needed to complete, she flicked through my records on her PC, and surprised us both, when she spotted that I'd first opened an account (I had n't done it myself, it was my parents who had) with her bank in 1971.

"You've had an account with us for 39 years". Probably longer than she had been alive.

How often have I seen in the smaller columns of the newspaper, a story about someone who's had the same phone number for fifty years, or driven the same car for forty years. That's who I've become now.

Age, how shall we recognise thee?

Elmore Leonard says adverbs are a mortal sin. That's it then, my writing career snuffed out, kebabed, over. Adverbs are all I know. I anxiously await the next writing edict.

For the first time in years, I was n't picked out for a random bag check at the airport. Random in my case is always.

Until about an hour ago, I would have said it was easier to find a group sex encounter in London than it was to find a shirt I like and that was in my size.

Then, when all hope seemed lost, there was Marks and Sparks in Westfield.

Shirt in my size, a design I like, and more, and end of line remnant, which when I get to pay for it is n't the £25 I expected, the sales manager reduces after a little bout of faux bartering - how much do you want to pay ? - to just £2.

No need for a calendar to work out what the date is today. I can feel it in the air. Pearl like grit. It is palpable. London is a festival of love.

It's like a cloud of endorphins blew in on the West Wind, and like a sandstorm as fine and delicate as a bridal veil, covered every couple in a mush of bliss.

For civilians like me, it's been amazing (and for many, either unpalatable or depressing) to see countless couples of all ages, wrapped tightly in champagne bubbles of contentment, cooing and billing like lovestruck doves; visibly quivering hearts; eyeball to eyeball deep stares' the occasional flash of shallowly concealed passion; oestrogen and testosterone hand in hand on the High Street.

Nine months hence, a mini maternity boom

London's been as much a living image of schmalz as it has been a brew of lip-smacking euphoria. At Angel station this evening, there was a harpist plucking away. Could even Richard Curtis dream up an association like that. Then when I changed at Bank Station, the platforms oozed and throbbed with the the sound of a busking Spanish guitarist.

Some days, I'm living on the Frontline, other days, it's Disneyland. London - the chameleon city.

Heading over the Millennium Bridge towards St Paul's is one of my favourite London walks. It's that mixture of full sky, the Canaletto effect of St Paul's itself - truly Venetian, and at the same time seeing a city in constant building flux.

The amount of construction happening, even now in when the country is still to fully appear out of the recession swap, is amazing.

I particularly like to look at the City; all those offices lit at night looking like the cross section of overly animated beehives, the winking cranes where skyscrapers are taking root, the din of jack hammers, and the sheer chaos of building styles: Gothic, corporate, eccentric, large, small, playful, austere.

Finally, I'm starting to really believe we are getting a skyline a city such as London merits.

A few days ago I met a friend of mine who works for an investment bank - a very famous investment bank -so much in fact, that it's odds on their name will probably morph into a synonym for investment banks, as in the way hoover represents vacuum cleaners, and Google, Internet search engines.

Though for many people, it's a the thinnest of thin line between saying this particular employer is famous or indeed infamous. Such is the temper of the times.

My friend works very long hours. It's a City thing. Bank the hours up. Dawn past dusk, five days a week, and on the weekend, log on at the kitchen table or scroll the Blackberry waiting in the Sainsbury's checkout.

I've never understood the cult of long hours. It must be the most in your face example of the law of diminishing returns; after a certain point, there's nothing left to give. The freshness has all gone. It's simply not an efficient use of resources or intellectual capital. What happened to the notion of "sleep on it"? Where are those wonderful, unexpected eureka moments going to come from?

Long hours is the sworn enemy of creativity. There's a tipping point when the juice of enthusiasm just pours away and there's nothing left but weariness and dejection at the thought of more fruitless hours to come, and that other silent assassin of thoughtful, stimulating work - frustration - making it's baleful appearance. Frustration almost guarantees recklessness - we're so tired, so stale, let's try anything.

Cult worship has other idols than simply long hours. There's the act of appearing busy. Not the actuality of doing something, this is instead, the dust-storm of seemingly being busy, with nothing happening.

I am reminded of the antonym of mere busyness, which is a combination of peace, reflection, and observation, and how that serves us far better than whirling around frantically, by these words of Viscount Grey of "The lights are going out all over Europe" fame: If we sit down in some secluded spot, unobtrusive and still, we shall presently understand how much there is that as passers by we never see".

Right now, all I can manage are sub twitter style postings: either I'm getting late onset ADHD, or I'm simply too tired to think, but there's not a thought strong enough in my head to limp out and found some life on the page.

It's 1967 in the Archimedes household right now: Smoky Robinson's and the Miracles steaming through Tears of a Clown. Viva Motown.

Fame abounds with ironies. I suppose that at least in the short term, we'll hear more about J.D. Salinger now than we ever did when he was alive.

I'd never thought about what the newscasters were actually saying. Probably decades of conditioning anaesthetised me and everyone else to it. How depressing.

Still, could be worse, could be the Daily Mail's version of reality, where there is no good,no hope, not even the tiniest glimmer of light, only misery, self loathing, and fear of anything from outside the Home Counties.

Urban predicaments. The first in an occasional series.

I met a friend by chance in a local bookshop this evening, who amongst other things told me about his current 'situation' - he's sharing a sublet flat with a woman, whilst the actual tenant is overseas. So far, so good. Sub-letting is a fact of life all over London, after all.

Earlier this week, they started to smell gas in their flat, so out went a call, and in response, in came British Gas, who said they would need to do a lot of work to repair the problem, so much so in fact that they had to turn the supply off and provide emergency heating.

That's enough of a predicament on it's own; being unable to properly wash, cook, or heat, would send me spinning.

But there's a further twist: the flat he's sharing is in a Women's Co-op, and men, apparently, are n't seen as fixtures and fittings. They do things, repairs, deliveries, then go.

People living in London, probably never see their neighbours from month to month, or in some cases, ever; and as he's sub-letting anyway, the chances of him finding he was living in a Women's co-op, were never going to be high to begin with. It only came out when the residents held some sort of open meeting to discuss the lack of gas supply.

He now not only has to pretend that he and his flatmate are only looking after the flat until the actual resident returns, but that he and his female room mate are a couple which would be straightforward enough, except he's gay. After twenty or so years out of the closet, he's now temporarily back in.

There's no greater Francophile in the UK than me - I love the place - but even I cloud over with fury about this - the real history of Haiti.

This demands the widest audience. It's a miserable, wretched story. Deeply upsetting. If nothing else, then at the very least - the very least - there's moral compensation due here from France. Preferably, they do the right thing, and restore everything they've effectively strong-armed out of Haiti

Without doubt, there'll be other countries, my own especially, that have equally unquiet memories, and just as many skeletons tugging at cupboard doors.

Being a city of eleven, or even twelve million, it's reasonable enough to run into someone who will remind you of someone you already know.

I'm getting that sensation virtually daily; there's an American who goes to the vegetarian takeaway that I do, who is nearly the body double for a young Michael Caine, even down to the thickish back-rimmed Get Carter like spectacles he's always wearing.

Whether that's a studied gesture or a careless one, I'll leave to the Gods to decide, or him to 'fess up to. But it's certainly disorientating to be standing at the counter with young Alfie in front.

An enthusiasm is a joy, a love of something, for something, it's excitement, happiness, that ineffable sweetness of pure enjoyment.

An addiction, my God, is another beast, it's a monster, pure and simple. Enthusiasms add shine to life; addictions consume, corrupt, eat from within, completely unhealthy.

I'm wondering if I'm a 'net addict. Online unfailingly every evening, which is bad enough, but that's nothing to the frustration I've been undergoing this evening, and a lot of other evenings this month, struggling to connect.

So sad to hear that Bill McLaren, the legendary Rugby commentator has died.

Blessed with the vocabulary of a poet, the voice of a biblical prophet, and the enthusiasm of a youngster waiting up all night for Father Christmas.

There was a gorgeous tribute to him in today's Guardian, peppered with some of his commentary classics. Name any other sports commentator who could sketch in a few, simple words the immensity of one player, by saying he was "...a great big sheep farmer who carried the ball in his hands as though it were an orange pip"

Then there's this: "...he tackled like the crack of doom and he could sniff a scoring Chance like a forest animal". It's Byronic and evocative, utterly above the mundane tripe most Sports commentators drip with.

Someone, I hope, will be busily pulling together an anthology of McLaren's commentary. Deserves to happen.

I went to Cornwall for a long weekend, and the weather was just extraordinary, virtually scorching yesterday, but on Friday, there was a monumental storm, lashing waves, sea spray, thick rain, and high winds throughout the evening and long into the early hours. It was elemental. I have n't seen Nature so incensed, so powerful anywhere that I've been to. It was almost an exhibition of contempt for a very puny Mankind. I felt humbled, and minutely small, insignificant, a fly speck before it.

The pounding waves kept flicking pebbles of all sizes over the seafront, effortlessly. To have headed into the storm and risked that cannonade would have been madness. Either brained, or torn off the sea wall by very angry waves and into a boiling sea. Nightmare.

Then there was the darkness; not just darkness with the hint of light, but a utter blackness, a void, that sucked in any light and never to release it. I was too timid to walk into any of it.

The allure of fine writing is, for me at least, the fact that it is transportable, either as a self contained excerpt, good for all weathers, or that it can be used to describe something other than it's original.

Coming out as an example of the latter, is this wonderful snatch I filched from an Observer interview with Jonathan Lethem: " What the reality of New York is this....(an)...overwhelming chaos of lives that are parallel but not touching".

That's London, Berlin, Paris, Buenos Aires, Cairo, Tokyo, every megalopolis, beehive city, where we know our neighbours only by the colour of their front door, or cooking odours.

What I have noticed during this extreme cold spell is the lack of bird song, and bird life in general. It was the exception of hearing a few birds chittering this morning that struck me; normally, it's like an airport outside y flat window; constant take off, landings and plenty of bird song.

It's not only the abrupt cessation of bird-song that's marking the sharpness of the weather, there's clear evidence of inter-species conflict for food. A friend told me yesterday how he'd watched blackbirds squaring up to pigeons in his back garden.

Little known fact, and one that has even less value (well, none, really), but I'm unable to resist it: London's film and TV community are in the main, dark-haired. Black, blue-black, brunette, deep chestnut, even mocha, that seemed to be as wide as the hair colour spectrum went if my scan of the audience at tonight's preview showing of The Road is anything to by. Barely a blond anywhere.

Yep, another cold day. Bitterly so, and will be for the next couple of days, maybe even some snow to boot.

I like cold, it's under-rated, makes you focus, keep an eye peeled for black ice, sidestep the slush, that kind of thing; then there's nothing like a warming, heart-pumping, brisk fifteen minute walk to the Tube in the morning. From synapse to synapse, everything is awake, nerve receptors, the whole kit and caboodle, right down to the cellular level.

But, my secret joys are n't exclusively meteorological; there's still the perennial pleasure of coming across a nugget of fine prose, which happened today.

Turning the pages of Harvey Swado's short story, Nights in the Garden of Brooklyn, on a half empty Hammersmith and City line tube this evening, I fell over these lines of his about New York: "...an indelible part of my young manhood. And like everything else I endured in those passionate years, it will remain until the end of my days embedded in the very core of my being, an internal capital, aflame with romance..."

I understand exactly; this is the effect this great city I live in, London has over me. Like a moth dazzled by a flame. Impossible to ignore, inconceivable to forget.

Another in a series of bone chilling days, and one where I was reminded via something I heard earlier on the radio of Pandora's Box, the mythological source of all the world's ills.

Pandora, apparently, could n't resist taking a peek into the sealed jar she carried with her (it became a box after a mistranslation), and out flew all the miseries and evils that plague us today: famine, pestilence, war, gloom, fear, and so on.

Except, there was one virtue mixed in with the maelstrom of vices: Hope.

I realise that at this point I could end up sounding like one of these avowed super positive thinkers It will get better. Think your way to success. All those mantras that seem to sell books by the lorry load. But the fact is I'm really not. There's a thick seam of doom and gloom running through me. Yet, bizarrely, I take comfort that Hope can survive whatever the host environment is.

New Year's Day should always be the way it was today: achingly cold, but bright, clear, and sharp. Bob cap pressed well done over my ears, I walked along the Thames to Richmond, idling the hours away, watching the buddha like herons seemingly meditate by the water side and the vapour trails of the ubiquitous parakeets sizzling through the tree tops.

Well, we're here, the final day of tumultuous decade. As a planet and as a species, we could all do with a quieter, softer, next ten years. I'm an optimist, so let's hope so.

To that small, yet perfectly formed body of readers who flit across my blog from time to time, Happy New Year!

One of my friends wrote how she just simply can't stand the UK's lemming like descent into post Xmas shopping madness. With you all the way there.

Problem with shopping is that it's almost seen as a patriotic duty if you're a Brit. Shop the UK out of recession and so on. But of course that was exactly what got us into the mess we're still trying to bail ourselves out of now. That, and the carefree, reckless, spoilt child behaviour of the investment banking community.

Can't bankers be made to sign some kind of register or wear ankle tracking devices like petty criminials do? We need to know just what these self appointed geni are up to. Leave them on their own, and they'll be dumping us with another pile of the soft, brown and smelly to shovel away.

I can live with Xmas; in fact I actually find it quite tolerable....if whoever it is I'm staying with (usually a relative) understands, and they do, that this brooding, Capricorn Goat needs time to himself, or he'll start butting heads.

Time in this context translates into space, which, in it's turn, means I like to roam and to think.

Dorchester, where I stayed this Xmas, met all of my needs and more. On the town's outskirts is the aloof, dominating, yet magnificent Maiden Castle. An enormous, prehistoric hill fort, with some of the steepest ramparts I've seen anywhere, but more remarkable given their antiquity.

I was there with several relatives late on the afternoon of Xmas day, which was certainly, the best time to experience it's moody grandeur, silhouetted as it was against a lowering, cloudy, inky black sky.

Windswept and away from Dorchester, not like a cast out orphan, but almost an occult presence instead. Simply biding it's time, waiting.

Such a ruminating landscape, mysterious, full of hidden energies, with more than something of the night about it.

I was, and remain, transfixed by it.

Be thankful that we're not prickly or sniffy about the English Language. It's untidy, it's oblivious to boundaries, can take root in even the thinnest of soils, totally adaptive to any environment, and generally seems, well, inexhaustible. Simply more fertile.

Do we realise it? Probably not, or if we did, we've forgotten and it needs something to remind us. Like me after reading a dull tract on social media, but one that was fairly well stuffed with new word plums, and they made me remember how ever evolving it is.

Here are those plums. Whether they'll all survive to a healthy old age is any one's guess. All of them inspired by the relatively new discipline of knowledge management (itself, a neologism, and an indefinable one for that), and I'd be stumped if I was asked to say what any of the actually mean. But, it's their vigour and freshness I like, so here's the roll of honour:

• Wiki gardeners
• Idea engines
• Crowdsourcing
• Prediction markets
• Answer market places
• Persistent environment
• Mind share
• Thought leadership
• Sentiment analysis, and what must be a close cousin, Intent analysis

Ten years time and they're mainstream, possibly; ten years time, and they're all but forgotten, probably. I'm simply enjoying the pleasure of witnessing a rudely healthy language generate new terms, new words, new slogans without stopping.

I was among the eight million or so people who stayed at home or delayed their journey into work to listen to the last ever Terry Wogan show on Friday.

"This is it then..." he said, in the moments before he played his last ever song "... the day I've been dreading".

The end of so many things: that odd, strange loyalty that certain people engender, and Terry Wogan is the exemplar here, with a devoted listenership, (including me); of a real friendship, almost physical in it's intensity, even if it was mediated through the democracy of the airwaves; and the end of listening to some one clearly in love with words. Did n't he say on Friday that his show was one of "...badinage and persiflage"?

It was the end of something particularly personal for me. His career spanned my parent's radio life and through mine. They are no longer here. Both dead. In this sense he was the continuum, the overlap. That went on Friday, and that's another reason, I'll miss him.

It's not often I go to the pub, but I was in one today. Five of us threading the conversation with different stories, curious anecdotes, odd facts, and bold rhetorical sweeps. Pub talk.

Female pub talk, I've been told, gets to heart of the matter more or less straight away: " Your boyfriend, how good ?...big ...?"

What did we five men spend thirty minutes chewing over ? Films that have us in tears. And don't expect there to be someone saying it's when it's the final Top Gear show the season cuts to the credits. No, we were listing serious handkerchief movies, like the Incredible Journey, Marley and Me, or Up, and in my case, the film that always has me sniffling, Rabbit Proof Fence.

I'm sat in Jimmy's waiting to get my hair cut. He's busy, talking, and clipping away at someone's hair. Conversation turns to marriage:

"How long you been married?"

"Five years. Together for four before that"

"Ten year's time you're wife won't notice you. My wife she's says to me 'you look nice. Had you hair cut?' 'Yes... a week ago"

This morning I read an article about James Agee, the film critic; my only experience of him, and I realise now to my somewhat shame, was as the author of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, a classic of the Depression era. I'd no idea of his life as a critic, and certainly none of just how wonderful a writer on film he was.

Visionary, insightful, a thoughtful critic, and blessed with great images. Take this one of Buster Keaton's face, so impassive and featureless, that "when he moved his eyes. it was like seeing them move in a statue"; or this one or Orson Welles in the role of Rochester in Jane Eyre "...his eyes glinting in the Rembrandt like gloom...."

I love that image, it's everything you could imagine of Rochester, dark, shadowy, furtive, hidden secrets, off stage mysteries. Great writing, certainly memorable writing depends on people like Agee and the images they mine from their creative depths.

Someone sent me a link to site that specialises in publishing 90 word stories. No more, no less, just 90 words on the button. That's it.

I like the idea: you pluck something out of the air, trap it between your hands, and ultimately mould into a recognisable shape, using the tiniest amount of material. Concision, precision, and a swift conclusion.

The person who forwarded the link on is a gifted writer, a published writer in fact, and one who is more than capable of turning his hand to any one of the numerous literary forms there are. So rustling up a light lunch of no more than 90 words was pretty straightforward for him. In this respect I'm still stuck at the beans on toast stage, whereas he's a Jamie Oliver, whatever is to hand in the fridge, slice it, dice it, whizz it around, and hey presto, filling fare.

His 90 word story is a good one; to be frank, knowing him as I do, I'd be disappointed if it was n't.

Quite unexpectedly, though, I did get a chuckle out of it, (and by the way, here are those 90 words). I saw, elsewhere, a thread of conversation develop around the electric blanket that's mentioned in the story, which could only be American.

Was anyone sued ?

Three weeks since I came back, and I can still smell those corn tortillas cooking even now sat on a sofa in my small West London flat, and see those gorgeous, overflowing heaps of plump red tomatoes and succulent green beans, the mounds of fleshy fruit, ripe, tiny yellow bananas, golden carambolas, generously sized carrots, the juiciest pineapples, carpets of coffee beans drying in the sun.

The chutzpah of the Tory party and their excitable press claque... I can't think of anything to match it in Europe...well, there's Silvio, but he's really in a league of his own, somewhere between denial and disdain. Still, il Cavaliere must be hearing them panting behind him, constantly self-referencing themselves as the Government already. Did I miss an election somewhere ? Did it happen whilst I was asleep ?

Conservative Central Office must be busier than Heathrow, every day there's a new edict or pronouncement cleared for take-off, their busy army of worker ant newspaper columnists sweat like galley slaves frothing everything up.

I understand why they do this: they want their team to win, so it's get in there early and impress the waverers, the floaters, with just how businesslike the boys and girls in blue are, tell them about the preparations they've made, how they'll hit the ground running and straight into action.

All understood, I'd do the same, but there be monsters here; the constant repetition, the never ending implication that they'll win (sad, but likely), might actually back fire: there's so much froth to step through - more than you'd find on a cappuccino - that there's all the likelihood that some people will give up trying to understand them, or actually believe they are the government, and not vote. Please let it be the latter.

Of course, there is the minor matter of the Tories winning the next election, but that does n't seem to bother their thinking.

I agree: it is almost Beckettian, if it's late, and you're still in the office, and the only other company is a fly trapped in the fluorescent light fitting. Not me, I'm sat on the sofa, idly surfing, it's someone I've just heard asking for a request on the radio. Late night working....many unhappy memories...

A few weeks ago, I picked up a slim book of poetry by Gioconda Belli, which I'd spotted, hidden in the shelves of a tiny news stand, whilst I was roaming the small shopping area of Managua airport's departure lounge.

Nicaragua relishes poetry; as much as it can be said to be the Land of Volcanoes - pockmarked with flooded extinct craters, and those that still froth and smoke, and occasionally vomit - it is a nation that celebrates the sensuous imagery and the exquisite concision of meaning that only poetry is capable of.

The nation's politics are complicated (and never free from interference); it's landscape apt to writhe and wriggle; but poets are it's life force, able to sketch the struggles, the joys, the complex human comedy we find ourselves in, with the passion and intensity that Life in all it's ragged glory requires.

There is a line from one Gioconda Belli's poems (the anthology, incidentally is called From Eve's Rib) that stops me in my tracks, nine simple words: "God carved into me a workshop for human beings".

I love that image of a womb as a workshop for new humans. And I see a sadness in there too; there are women I know who have dreamed of forging new lifes in the crucible of their bodies, except that circumstance has not allowed the work to start.

As a man, I thank poetry for this insight wrapped in a metaphor that is unforgettable.

The longest, arrow straight, bend free road I've ever been on was one I travelled a few days ago between Managua and Leon, in Nicaragua. A highway without the hint of a kink or a curve, just perfectly straight, with a heat haze forever shimmering in the distance.

It is a numbing experience to be sat on a bus that seems to make no distance on a never ending line of a road, nonetheless, it is a strangely enchanting one, simply sitting for hours taking it in as Nicaragua's plays it's rhythms before you.

Solitary labourers, carrying small backpacks, and a machete in one hand, walking in the dust of the road's margins; the occasional, riotously liveried, 'Chicken bus', steaming past; then the convoys of second hand American Mack trucks rolling by with unknown cargoes' and always a joyous invocation to Jesus slapped on the windscreen; along with Central America's other workhorse, the Toyota 4 x 4 pick-up, weaving between the trucks and the buses. Nicaragua at work.

Off-stage, but never completely out of sight, were the countless spirals of soaring, patrolling vultures, tasting the air with the extraordinary sense of smell. Below them, small, scattered groups of thin cattle, nosing through the fields. And, always, a single dog trotting somewhere.

I never thought a simple journey on a bus could be so fascinating.

At the heart of Boris's mayoral campaign was the pledge to clear London's streets of the Bendibus, an articulated public transport juggernaut, but something I've always enjoyed seeing, winding and bending from the hips as it clunkers through London. I'm sure it will be replaced (I know it will - it's one of the very few BoJo pledges that might actually happen) by something sanitised and clean.

Clean, schmeen; I think our streets need pepper, they need spicing up, buses ought to have character, so I say to TFL: be bold, take a leap of faith and add a real dash of strap hanging exuberance and near psychedelia - order a fleet of 'Chicken Buses', those second hand US school buses that smoke through Central America at speeds that are obviously out of kilter to the condition of the bus and definitely unsurvivable in the event of a burst tyre or collision.

God, they are an experience. I've been on several this month, and watched in awe, hundreds more hammer around the tiniest bends with the doors flapping open, or shave past one another, at the same distance a man applies a razor to his stubble, and always in the manner of Formula one drivers duking it out round the toughest Grand Prix course.

These are buttock busting contraptions. Six hours or more bouncing on a ruined chassis along rutted, pot-holed roads, overtaking on the inside and outside, around blind corners, and the crests of every hill turned my rump into two sandbags.

Somehow I always had a seat, and for that I'm grateful, I saw two women sitting on two up-turned buckets once, their faces pressed against the spokes of someone else's bike. That was the journey where I was squeezed like a near empty toothpaste tube might be in the hands of a fervent recycler against the window by a truly enormous woman. Gargantuan does not meet the grade, this was something beyond.

Often I would wake up, to the sound of chicken buses shudder along the nearby streets, belching and wheezing, audibly clanking up and down the gears, or if they had a few yards free space in front, roar like a squadron of tanks crossing the invasion line.

There's nothing they can't accommodate or carry; the squawking chicken, obviously, after all that's why they are called what they're called, or a couple of squealing pigs darting between the seats, sometimes the bedstead strapped on the roof along with several sheets of glass, and always my rucksack lashed to the top.

Nor is there anything mute about the colour scheme; it's brash, eye-poppingly raucous, and more often than not there's a reference to Jesus spray-painted in screaming hues. There's some modesty, however; not every chicken bus is near dayglo, many remain in their original deep yellow US School bus tan with their old school district name still visible. The irony could n't be starker; probably being sat on a bus marked Topeka School District or Clark County Education Board will be the nearest most Central Americans will ever get to the US.

You can buy models of these buses, but where's the all action version, the one that spews out a cloud of black smoke the way the real ones do. The air is chewy when they pass. I've taken in lungfuls of burning diesel and smoking brake fumes as the Chicken buses have rolled past me.

By God, I miss them. There's a romance and a frisson they have that dear old London Transport will never have. Just think though if TFL did take that leap of faith and a fleet of madly painted, horn blasting chicken buses starts to stream through London's streets.

Sixteen hours of solid travelling including a hair-raising mini bus gallop through Guatemala City and then two planes. Can I get a seat other than the middle of a row of three ? My eyes are cinders. That's it. To bed.