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.