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.