It's the arse-end of Friday afternoon and it's been a trying week. A new system has been deployed at work, and never before have I seen such a supremely bad effort. I've decided that in most situations, the powers-that-be are fuzzy muppets. I need to become a process efficiency expert and sack half of the world. Swoosh-Swish-Hack-Schlop - heads roll, and it's for the best.

I had yet another spat with Carluccio's this afternoon, and it's my fault for going back and giving them my money expecting a fair return, like a decent fucking meal. They are on the verge of receiving a letter from me, and I might just do that for the fun of it, just to see what Fuzzy Muppet has to say. I know I keep yammering on about the failures of the service industry, I know they can't help it, which is why they are there in the first place, the service industry is where talent goes to die, where gormless half-life's make there beds, roam faceless, pallid, anemic and without any sense of awarewness through rows of people wanting what they are there to deliver. They don't get it, they just want the paultry sums of shrapnel from my pocket, my loose change, which, if they are not careful, I might actually stop throwing in the bin and start putting it on their little silver begging bowls.

I had a pasta there yesterday, which to their credit was tasty, and a perfectly measured portion. I don't like too much and I don't like to little. Today, because of the fatigue incurred over the week, I decided not to put any effort into my food plan, and I went back to Carluccio's. So unwilling was I to put any effort into my choices or thought, I ordered the same thing.

It came, quickly too, but so quickly because only half of it was there. I decided not to say anything, being the spineless squid that I can sometimes be, and thought I'd eat it anyway, full of resent and brimming with ever increasing anger, towards myself for eating it and towards the chef for plating it, and towards the plate-carrying camel who brought it to me. It was an embarassingly small portion, my seething anger didn't last very long on account of the pasta not being enough to last more than a few minutes. It was tasty though, whatever morsel was there on the plate. Once it was finished the waiter came along to remove the plate. I took the opportunity to tell him that we should all be shot, me, the chef and him. I asked him to convey the message to the chef, in my words, and to tell the chef that he should think what his Mamma would say if she saw a sad and pitiful plate of pasta. I'm sure Mamma would do nothing short of cut his balls off. Was there something she did wrong in bringing him up? Was he not Italian enough?

On second thought, that might be the probem, maybe he wasn't Italian, maybe he was from the Russian Steppes and used to surviving on a diet of Yoghurt and rat salad, scraps of breadcrumbs for croutons. When I left I had a brief conversation with another waiter as I couldn't wait for the one who served me to collect his begging bowl. The one who looked like a resurrected roadkill Koyote from a c-grade Zombie movie.

My hand twitches as Zombie Koyote encroaches, lumping along, leaving a trail of rancid waiter juice on the floor, green and slimy, his face peeling and grey, the dark rings under his late-night-working-coke-sniffing eyes make him look more like a Raccoon, the Russian Roadkill Raccoon. My hand twitches and in the split second I see Russian Roadkill Raccoon look longingly at my neck, he wants to suck the life and intelligence out of me, before I know it, he's splattered against the walls of Carluccios, ripped to shreds by the hail of bullets released by the trigger when I squeezed it.

I snap out of it, waiter boy, who was actually Tweededum from my last adventures in restuarant wonderland is talking to me. He's telling me that he's been released from coffee duty and has been set loose, like a stray dog on the floor, to serve people, to advise them on what's good to eat. He's thinking that he's been promoted from coffee boy to bus boy, but I know that he's been suspended from coffee making duty because the coffee machine had a higher intelligence quotient. He's complaining about his hamstring because now he has to walk the floor, he's telling me with his droopy eyes and sagging lips, his face like a lump of lard with palsy, that he's going to develop a good ass. I turn around, hold my face and rub my brow, there's a couple of kids sitting at a table, banging their knives and forks together, over, and over, and over, over, and over and over again. Their mother doesn't register, I lean in, really, I lean, raise my finger to my lips and tell them to be quiet, they stop and then look at me, with 4 year old 'fuck you' eyes and do it all over again, only this time at 3 times the speed. I admire the little bastards because they know, they know and sense that my present state of mind is on edge and that any attempt to stop them will be totally ineffectual.

I turn back to Tweedledum and tell him that the chef is taking the piss and that there'll be no tip. Chef fucked you OK. Now go and tell him. He tells me to express my discontent to the manager, I turn and see who he's gesturing to, it's the crocodile, still basking in the mellow glow of her own stupidity. I decide to walk, to get out of there as soon as I can.

The rest of the afternoon in the office was soothed by the nutty French lady, Hermine walking about with a bowl of lavender oil in water, waving it like the wee Catholic altar boys do their incense. Revitalising the workers, the busy little workers.

It does make me laugh really.

London is losing the plot. This morning a fight nearly broke out at Ealing Broadway Station, over nothing. This is great, so now everyone turns on each other. Yesterday there were 3 failed bombs on the Underground, by failed I mean they failed to kill anyone. A bus was also bombed.

My general paranoia and anxiety is rising.

On a lighter note, scientists have created the matter that filled the universe milliseconds after big bang. By forcing gold atoms to collide at near light-speed, a liquid was formed and not the gas they expected. The liquid is said to be 'pefect', it is more free-flowing, it moves 'as one' - much like a school of fish. Read all about it here

'and the spirit of God flew over the face of the waters...'

A man was chased by 3 plain clothes police officers in Stockwell this morning, they managed to bundle him into the ground. Police are now trained for head-shots, as bullets could set of explosive belts. 5 shots were heard, can you imagine...

I've received a mix of replies on an email sent to the enitre office with regard to this morning's shooting:

Dead and guilty until proven innocent. As long as our "freedoms" and "ways
of life" are stoically unaltered.

Mr Whitby, told BBC News: "I saw an Asian guy run onto the train hotly
pursued by three plain-clothes police officers.
"One of them was carrying a black handgun - it looked like an automatic -
they pushed him to the floor, bundled on top of him and unloaded five shots
into him."

Some people thought it inappropriate, others loved it.

I slept the sleep of the dead last night, it's been a while; my mental furniture is being moved about, the nights are filled with the grinding and creaking of wants and needs, the dusty halls of my primitive psyche are buzzing with demands for immediate satisfaction. Desdemona dusting me down, picking through the crevices of my mind like mental floss, finding hidden pearls and waking dormant desires. I am divided, unstable, yet content that my once, supposedly stable platform is being rocked. Life is happening.

I was talking to Tom Waits, right there, shooting the breeze. His voice like warm meat , freshly ground, the smell of whiskey permeating the smoky air. Dark and dimly lit by the overhead, shaded lamp carving a neat line in the black background, swirling pillars of blue smoke, alive and dancing disappear into nothingness. We talk about St Christopher, the drunken piano, Romeo and the fact that he’s bleeding, we talk about the girl with the sun in her eyes, and he tells me my heart was not meant to be tamed. I believe him.

‘Can I kiss you, and then I’ll be gone…’

-----------------o0o-----------------

I woke this morning feeling rested, ready to face the day. The days that have been grinding me down, inch by inch, battering at my spirit with a wrench, twisting me every which way, cranking me up to maximum torque, ready to strip my thread and come undone, then loosening its grip, on my reality, so far that I spring a leak, spray my feelings in all directions and I feel like I’m going to burst like a whistling boiler, steaming and screaming and dreaming, burning, red hot, like a pressure cooker ready to splatter everything in sight with bits of me, my very fibers left scattered, floating in the air like a million feathers, swept every which way the furious winds that blow command them to.

And I said I woke this morning feeling rested. In some bizarre way, all this turmoil is revitalizing. Maybe even some day, I’ll understand.

-----------------o0o-----------------

Croissant and Coffee...

I went to Carluccios for breakfast this morning; I was hungry and felt I could actually eat something without wanting to wretch from the anxiety that has consumed me. The place was disorganised and if I worked there in any authoritative capacity people would be crying, flying out the door, doing the 100 m hurdles to the nearest job centre; there would be sackings. The world has gone soft, soft and fuzzy.

It's past 8am. Usually the nice lady from Sanremo is there to ease me into the day, tolerate my broken Italian as I ask for the usual, Caffé Latte Milano and a Croissant, the only variable being the ham I choose to have on it. Usually the fridges and deli counters are packed, handsome and inviting, berry tarts, cheeses, hams and salami call my name, the Mortadella, however, sits there like an orphaned, unwanted lump. The nice lady from Sanremo is part of my program, she helps smooth over glitches, patches any cracks that may appear, makes me more compatible with the day ahead.

She's not there today and the counters are missing the usual medley of meats and cheeses. No mini calzones and pizzette to tempt me. I stand and watch two Muppets fumble with the coffee machine like two gas station attendants confounded by the pump, like two plumbers attempting a hip replacement. It’s all out of kilter and I think maybe they ought to dose themselves with some of their own caffeinated beverage, and lots of it, double it up… By the looks of the service staff, the human sales interface needs a pipe shoved in their arms, drips of pure espresso squeezed into their veins, a bus parked outside with jump leads ready to be applied to their chests and a few thousand volts rammed through their listless bodies until they scream, scream ‘service anyone?’, until their consciousness begs to serve those who pay their salary.

I finally manage to get one of the plate-carrying camels’ attention and the Gaggia coffee machine is still getting the better of the two fools trying to get it to work. I’m already dreading the coffee I’m about to ask for, but I need it, gasoline. I’m tempted to suggest that the manager buy them a Meccano set to help them learn simple mechanics of how to get the coffee into the handle and the handle into the coffee machine in less than 20 steps.

I ask the plate-carrier who’s now addressing me where all the meats are. She tells me they’re in the fridge. I’m tempted to ask her what they’re doing there, and instead of mindlessly standing about looking for the long lost brain cell that oozed out of her. Why doesn’t she wake up and get the meat from the fridge into the deli counter? Maybe so that I can see it? Maybe so that I can have some? That is, after all what’s supposed to happen here. My grandmother moves faster than you, and sadly she’s no longer with us, I want to tell her. But it’s not my job to tell her that, it might well be my duty to tell her manager, who I recognise as just another comatose crocodile basking in the mellow glow of her own stupidity. All sign of life has been doused by the damp blanket of below average intelligence.

I can see the clockwork ticking over, the rusted and broken gears of her thought process stammering into place, slipping back, jerking forward, 1 jerk forward 2 slips back, clunk-eek-clunk, the dimmed glimmer in her eye, like that of a dead fish, the smile on her face, not because she’s feeling particularly perky, it’s one of blissful ignorance, people who grin for no reason are either cooling their teeth or are not up to the challenge of thinking, much like a dog moronically bearing it’s teeth for no reason with a look in it’s eye, searching and pleading for meaning, ‘please tell me what I am, please – help me make sense of this, give me context, give me a purpose and a reason for being…’

She’s not aerating her teeth, because it’s not hot today.

I order a croissant with baked ham. She begins by playing some kind of snap with the colour-coded cutting boards. There’s a white one, a brown one and a yellow one. I can see the point of the white one, it’s for dairy, brown, ok – it’s for cooked meat. But the yellow one, it’s for raw poultry. If I saw one of these supremely uneducated and unqualified deli farm-hands cutting raw chicken here, I’d break out into a venomous rant. She then decides to clean the board with cheap, bleached paper toweling, at which point I’m intrigued because now she’s on auto-pilot and doing things to fill in the vast chasmal nature of her consciousness. It’s almost very good artificial intelligence, almost.

She retrieves a croissant from the pastries tray, which is about all there is on display, and places it down on the white cutting board. I can see confusion hit her and it’s the last thing she needs, she stares at the croissant for the better half of a minute, wondering how she’s going to go about this. She’s got two items to consider; a croissant and ham, and I think maybe I should encourage her, with her severe lack of mental capability to make a list, because mentally, she’s a black hole, dark matter and I slowly step back, step away. What if it grows and becomes all consuming? Anything more than 1 item is a list my dear, croissant, ham. Mise en place.

I make my presence known, it’s hard not to when you’re waiting for a fucking croissant and a coffee and you’ve got Tweedledum and Tweedledee behaving like stone-age man over the coffee machine whilst Gaping Chasm of infectious dark matter stares at the piece of layered, crispy basked pastry in front of her, as if it was an alien life-form.

The sprockets move and clunk once more, clunk-eek-clunk. She picks up the croissant and moves it, now you think I’m joking, but I’m not. I was beginning to think that maybe it was an intelligent croissant, well, it’s more intelligent that her anyway, but maybe the croissant is intelligent enough to open itself up and invite the baked ham in to peacefully co-exist as a delicious combination, it’s purpose, by design to fill my stomach before it fucking eats itself and I collapse in a shrivelled and spent heap on the floor of a trendy London Italian food store. Imagine that, dying of starvation at the hands of someone with an anvil for a brain, on the floor of a food store. Marvellous.

I catch myself being infected by the dark matter, I was right, it’s infectious. I step away.

‘A knife’ I tell her, a subtle hint as I don’t want to be too direct. I could see her contemplating using her two left hands to open the croissant. Had this happened I would have gone berserk and would most like be in prison for Grievous Bodily Harm.

She turns, looks at me and I sense the mildest panic from her, this must be one of those moments when the gaps in her consciousness narrow and she can almost think and realise that she’s not coping. She leaves the croissant and I’m making a treaty with the vehement torrent of hunger brewing in my stomach. She’s in the fridge now, but the fridge where the meat shouldn’t be, now she’s doing what she should have done 45 minutes ago. I wonder if I could cram her in there, maybe if she knew how it felt to stay there over night, she might have a better understanding of why to get the meat out and into the deli for display. She finds the baked ham I’m after and lifts it up onto the counter. She dumps it on to the yellow board. Now I know you don’t know what that is, you scavenger, but it’s not a live fucking chicken, is it? She then moves over to the meat slicer and I’m filled with two emotions, depending on which way this goes, one is to leave; in which case I would be filled with rage because I’m just never going to get what I want, the other is to witness the death of a black hole by her becoming tangled in the wheel of a fast spinning blade; in which case I would cheer out of sheer delight as justice would have been done.

Is this what I want first thing in the morning?

Believe it or not, but the two fools all the while have been trying to make coffee.

I am about to leave because it's going to be messy, I had a good night's rest and had this been any other day, something would have happened. Tweedledum leaves the coffee machine because for some inexplicable reason he can tell that she's not coping. She looks at the slicer, and I think that if she is incapable of fathoming the croissant, well, using the slicing machine would be as easy as piloting the Millennium Falcon into infinity, at the relative speed of light.

Tweedledum is managing not to prepare himself for inspection under a microscope and I see reams of ham fall from behind the blade. One step closer on the evolutionary ladder, I think to myself. Gaping Chasm is back, staring at the croissant, she sees a rack of knives in front of her, stuck on a magnetic strip screwed to the wall and pulls one down. I know knives, sharp knives, I’ve nearly lost fingers many times over and the fact that I’ve got fingertips left almost makes me believe that there is a God with a big bushy beard and a penchant for flowing robes. I can see the knife is not the right implement of destruction to be used on something as delicate as a croissant, something serrated would be more appropriate. She is going to use the knife on the pastry and I’m about to have a heart attack; imagine you go to the hairdresser and she’s wielding a pair of garden shears, well that’s how my croissant is feeling, remember this is an intelligent croissant, it’s beginning to shed it’s layers, like a lizard loses its tail, it’s hoping to distract Gaping Chasm in hope that she’ll go for the quivering flake instead.

There she goes, like a lumbering fool, cutting the croissant and I say to her ‘You might want to consider using a serrated knife on that!’ she turns and stares at me with dead fish eyes. She turns what remains of her attention to the croissant and proceeds to hold it down, making sure it does not escape. ‘You’d be better off using the back of the knife’ I tell her, she turns and smiles, she thinks I’m joking, Jesus, she thinks I’m enjoying the demolition. That’s my fucking food you’re assaulting there! She doesn’t understand that in order to get any use out of a knife, you need to slice, back and forth, not push, don’t push, a croissant does not require brut force.

At this point the chef appears and places a plate of roasted peppers and tomatoes with basil into the deli counter fridge. ‘Chef’ I say, ‘you need to give them a serrated bread knife’ – he stares at me and I can see he doesn’t understand me, I’ve stepped into the twilight zone, they’re zombies, all of them. Chef leaves, and I see that Gaping Chasm has opened the croissant, much like one would open a baguette with a blunt spoon. It’s been mauled and molested and I see her in a new light, she’s a croissant pedophile, she’s just raped my croissant and it’s lying there sobbing, defiled and dirty, damaged and beyond any salvation.

She stuffs it with the ham, wraps it up in a warm paper blanket, as one would a rape victim, some comfort that is! Tweedledee has managed to magic up a coffee and I just want out, get me out of here. I pay, Jesus, am I soft, I pay? I leave, confounded.

Who would ever think that buying a croissant and a cup of coffee could be so difficult? Please, Ms Sanremo, come back!

After work yeserday, Roberto, from here one out known as 'the Italian' and José, the Spaniard, reminded me that I had agreed to go to their house after work and cook a lavish meal. I did't really want to, what I really wanted was to be left alone, I've got things to think about. We had postponed our dinner so many times, that I thought, out of social duty, to go along. Besides, I thought, it could actually be nice, London was fine, hot and sunny, but let's BBQ. The Italian is more fanatical about food than I am, so all of our conversations are about food. Not bad really.

The Italian has been telling me about an Italian wholesaler in Maidenhead. He suggested that we go there and buy the necessary provisions - we all agreed.

He has been parking his car in the covered parking lot outside work for months, using a 'lost' corporate card. The card didn't work, and we were left at the boom for an hour while the Italian went to sort it out after the drive-through box voice told him to report to the office. The Italian arrived later, sans card, and fined for using an illegal card, which I paid. That's £30 in fines for one day. I must be doing something wrong.

We set off to Maidenhead in the heat of Saturday afternoon. The shop was great and I filled up on the free Prosciutto and Pecorino. The shop is run by an Italian family, as fresh and Italian as the day they arrived, some 30 years ago. Their English as bad and it was all very charming, it left me wanting to live 5 lives simultaneously. I left with a very good looking bounty of Italian delicacies.

After the Italian shop we drove to Cookham, there is a very nice French speciality shop where we bought more food and wine. I bought a very nice Beaujolais which could be chilled and a Chardonnay. We set off back to Ealing with the boot of the car piled high. The heat was intense and I slipped off into a dream with the sun beating down on the back of my neck. It was not unlike a general anaesthetic and I was determined to make the most of it, when you feel yourself slipping away, don't resist, don't hold on to consciousness, let slip, go headlong into the place where only the fantastical can happen.

Going through Southall, which is the little India of London. The streets are alive and buzzing with markets, people and food. It is actually worth a visit as there are some Indian desserts I am after. It would be a good place to buy my Asian spices and ingredients. Because Southall was so busy, the stopping and starting of the car caused it to overheat, so we had to stop, fill the radiator with water, soak up the Southall atmosphere. Once again, I want to live 5 lives simultaneously.

When we finally got back to Ealing, it was late afternoon and we settled in with the Beaujolais. I couldn't bring myself to cook, I just wanted to sit in the cooling afternoon, drink a glass of wine and shoot the breeze. I had anticipated not wanting to cook, so I bought 'picky things' from the Italian shop, marinaded melanzane, superp olives, cheese and José prepared a spread of cured Spanish meat, Lomo and Chorizo. After this had been demolished, the Italian decided it was time to fire up the BBQ, I was not going to argue. When the Italian gets it into his head that he wants more food, come hell or high water, he is going to cook it. I watched from the comfort of the chair, in the shade of the umbrella and the glass of wine my hand.

The Italian lit the fire and proceeded to throw everything on at the same time, before the coals had time to settle. A mad frenzy of juggling sausages, pepper, chicken and bread, all of which had been administered to the grill at the same time, ensued. I laughed, first inside, until I could contain it no longer at which point I just had to let loose and howl, from deep within my midriff. The Italian poked and prodded, and in much the same way a cat would play with a dying mouse, the Italian flung food about. Nothing was spared a lancing by the fork, absolutely everything had to be examined, tossed about, speared and charred, all in a raging open flame. Even the bread was in there, being burned alive at the stake.

If there is one thing I learned about cooking food it's this:

Don't play with it! It's all about consistency, get the heat right and leave the food. Let the heat and the food become acquainted, let them flirt and sizzle, them them work it out and you'll be fine. Don't fuck with the food. When I see people playing around with it, I no longer want to hurt and maim them, or even kill them like I might have done in the past, now all I want to do is say something. Since I was actually supposed to be doing the cooking, I let it go and decided to enjoy the Italian chargrill pandemonium that was being played out like a Roman battle in front of me.

To his credit, and don't ask me how, the Italian managed not to turn it all into a cremation. We eat and drank until dark, eat and drank some more, a fine bottle of Primitivo made it's way to the table. We sat and talked till late, about life, love, food and travel. A couple of joints made by the hands of the Spaniard were passed round to end a perfect day and once again I wanted to live countless simulateous lives.

It was time to leave, and given my somewhat wobbly state I thought twice about catching the last train home. I considered staying, but waking up in my own bed on a Sunday morning is worth the potential tribulations that lie ahead when in a state. José did make an attempt to get me to stay over, but I thought the ride home could be potentially interesting. I thought that I could only end up somewhere interesting with interesting people if carrying a great big box of delicious things about and if it did go horribly wrong, I would only end up lying in the gutter feeding myself white anchovies washing it down with a bottle of Chardonnay.

La Vita e Bella!

Billie Holiday's telling me it's summertime, Lois confirms, I'm a believer.

I've been thinking about numbers, as a natural phenomenon, much like the languages that we speak, that messages, feelings and concepts need to be relayed and delivered. It is what it is, it has to be so.

I was nursing a bad hangover a couple of weeks ago and was trying not to contemplate anything while I sought some kind of normality in my caffè latte and croissant stuffed with Tallegio and Prosciutto.

All over the office, on every usable space, posters have been put up. A man standing with his arms folded, in his cubicle and it sais 'The CEO of cubicle 36, building 10'; being hungover I was searching for the significance of the numbers. 36 has a square root, 6? But where does 10 come in to it?

We work on a base 10 number system, more commonly known as decimal. We can alter our number systems to base 6, base 8, base 9 and so on. Different patterns appear in the numbers and strange, unseen things can be done with them. Many number tricks just make use of changing the base, and can leave you feeling confounded. We use this altering of number systems in programming computers, changing the way bits are moved and how.

Then it dawned on me, in a base 10 number system, the sum of the consecutive numbers from 1 through 36, so 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 ... 36 = 666. Test it for yourself. Now, the main component of our software is something called Cube processing, the data is fetched into a cube, and can then be manipulated much the same way as a Rubics cube. A cube has three dimensions, x, y and z. The square root of 36 only left us with 2 6's. 666 not only gives us the infamous number, but it gives us the dimensions of a 6 unit cube; cube processing, cubicle 36.

I left my coffee and croissant immediately and took one of the new starters at work upstairs to meet HR. HR wasn't there, so I had a chat with the recruitment consultant. I looked down and what did he have on his keyring. 666. Printed right there on his keyring. This was one instance of the number too much for such a short space of time. Feeling out of kilter I went outside to smoke, to fray my nerves even further. Robin walks out, on his t-shirt i see 6...6... oh christ, please no ...5; 665, neighbour of the beast. I laugh, that was close I tell him and I tell him my half-baked realisation and the the sudden oddity of numbers. He laughs and tells me that he's just been to the post office and that the guy in front of him had a t-shirt on that said 666. Robin pointed out that they were neighbours.

I did some reseach into numerology and the mysticism of certain numbers or combinations of them. On 07/07/2005 London was attacked. Look at the date, 0+7/0+7/2+0+0+5 = 7/7/7. OK I thought, so what's the significance? In both the Quran and the Torah those numbers are significant, God, Heaven and Earth each add up to 7. Business Objects adds up to 11, which is a master number, in numerology there are 3 master numbers, 11, 22 and 33. 11 is a master number because that's where Messiah and Lucifer reside, along with Business Objects, now I found that quite funny.

Yesterday I got an email from Andrew, telling me the following:

He was driving his wife, sister-in-law and kids to town, he looked at the odometer and pointed out that it was on 7773. As they rolled up to the traffic light, the final 7 clicked into place and the people in the car errupted with cheers, 7777 on the odometer. Andrew looked up, looked at the registration of the car in front of him, it read s777. Holy crap, Andrew thought, that's seven 7s. It was suggested that they play the lottery that night.

That was yesterday, 16/07/2005. Let's look at that, 1+6/0+7/2+0+0+5 = 7/7/7. He bought 7 random rows of numbers for the lottery.

Now let's look at the winners. The match 5 lottery had 7 winners, each one of them wins £234, 547. Add those digits together. 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 4 + 7 = 25. 25, well 2 + 5 = 7

Sadly, Andrew was not one of the winners, although He did have every number, but in each line that he had bought. He'll never play again, you don't get spoken to like that.

It's Saturday morning, I'm at work and the denial is deeper than that experienced on Mondays. Saturday's just aren't meant for work, and quite frankly, even though it's easy money, my personal time is worth more.

I walked through the passages of Paddington station. I made my way up from the Bakerloo line, up the toothy escalators, through the urine colored, thick and fetid air, muttering under my breath, excusing myself from the other drones who are standing to the left. I don't know what's wrong with me, normal behaviour would be to launch into a rant and express my desire to wake them all up with a cattle-prod or any other appropriate CART (Commuter Attitude Readjustment Tool) - instead I let them go, I decide to stay calm and let it wash off me, St Christopher telling me to hang in there.

There's a trian waiting on my favorite platform, number 10. Nice and round, base 10, decimal, besides, it's right in front of the birth canal that just ejected me from the yellowing halls of the undergound. I'll tell you about the number 10 at some later point. I'm even happier because it's a Heathrow Express, comfortable and air-conditioned and it makes this morning easier to deal with. I take my place in the train, find my seat but there's a creature eating, Jesus, it's worse than the smell of Napalm in the morning, I imagine, and I wretch, have to move. Don't people know that you can't eat hamburgers and other assorted poison on a train. Once again, I let it go and decide to leave hamburger guy. I walk away and find another, empty carriage, I let it flow off me. St Christopher is hanging in there, relaying messages from St Francis de Sales to remain patient, there's a lot of energy to be spent elsewhere, don't waste it on the hamburger guy.

I seat myself, drink some water, last night left me in an interesting state and it's a small wonder I'm thirsty. I take out my book and begin to read, it's a short journey and I contemplate watching the world pass by instead. The usual blurb comes from the speaker in the carriage to please get my ticket ready for inspection. The blurb is repeated, again, and again and I don't feel like tearing it from its hinges, St Christopher and Francis are in collaboration, doing their best to keep me level, this is going to be a good day.

The conductor arrives, asks for my ticket which I produce. He pulls out his gadget, it looks like some kind of Geiger Counter. I hand him my card and watch as he scans it. I wait for the little green light to tell him that I'm a good citizin. I take my rides, I pay my tickets. The red light flashes and I realise that my ticket has expired. Mr Conductor sits in front of me and his posse follows, 3 more of them surround me as if I'm going to jump out of a fast moving train because my ticket's expired. He tells me there's a £20 penalty. It's my fault I tell him, I'm quite happy to pay but he keeps going on about what they do or don't accept, I'm not stupid but I'm not understanding. St Christopher is lurking in the shadows, St Francis de Sales, quivering in the corner, I'm alone with the Heathrow Express regulators. St Chris and Frank have forsaken me.

He asks how I want to pay, I hand him plastic and he makes the transaction. Hurry up I tell him, Ealing is a couple of minutes away and that's where I'm going. Don't worry he sais, I won't be going further than Ealing. So, the £20 penalty I've just paid does not include a ticket to ride? The more I look at him, the more his eyebrows turn to roaches, his face like that of a battered crab, the lenses of his eye glasses are the same color as the fetid, tepid air of the underground. His posse surround me, standing there with their arms folded as if they were bouncers outside a Soho club. They're speaking to me as if I'm a cheat, a petty thief who's stolen a ride and I bite my tongue, showing St Chris that he can stay in the shadows, oh, and tell St Frank to stay away, he's no good to me anymore. Turncoats, the pair of them.

Crabman pulls out a notepad, a battered old notepad and holds it out, as if he wants me to take it. I don't want to take it, look at it, who knows where it's been, Jesus. The corners dirty, the pages mattered and infested. He sais he wants my name and address. I turn to face the dark, adjust my eyes. I even call out, St Chris, Frank - are you there? My eyes adjust to the darkness and I see they've fled, jumped from the fast moving train. Bastards. I ask him what he wants my name and address for and he tells me that I've committed an offence, if this happens twice I can be prosecuted. I still don't understand the notepad, it's not a legal document, it's heresay. I tell him that could just as well write down that my name is Bob, Bob the builder, I live in cardboard box number 36, Kings Cross. He doesn't see my point and asks one of his heavies if they're OK after being abused. Now crabman is insinuating that I'm abusing them. He raises his voice, becoming more stern and not speaking to me as a good civilian anymore, now he's reciting standard responses and I feel the oil drain from my plumage. The water thrown on my back has seeped through. I've got a problem with the notepad. Why? I ask him, are you equiped with a Geiger Counter, a credit card machine, but when you want my details, you produce a piss-stained battered notepad and pen. I want to tell him to fuck off, leave me alone, I've paid my £20, now just fuck off. Why? I asked him. Why don't you have the proper tools to do your job? This is 2005, and you produce a notepad? He still doesn't see my point. I make him write down my name and address. He doesn't understand that he's just taken my bank details, that nothing will come from the information that he's just scratched down in his infested little book of doodles and shit. I watch him make the typos and I leave him with it and forgive him for he knows not what he does. His posse are still surrounding me, all for having an expired ticket.

Ealing rolls up and I'm escorted off the train, crabman gets off to make sure I make my way out of the station but I let it go. I let it go because I've got better things that occupy my thoughtspace right now

Uncle Xander and Piccalina, Robin Tait.

Caught unaware leaving work, in a rush.

I have just been for lunch in Ealing Park. The sun is out, it’s a fine 25º and if it could just stay this way for 2 months, with Autumn appended, I’d be satisfied. Lunch consisted of a Panini from Carluccio’s.

The park was good, my stomach felt like the a giant knot before hand and what I needed to do was eat, recline, and eventually slip off into a comforting nap. The flight path from Heathrow augmented my fleeting dreams with sound.

Yesterday we spent the afternoon in Paddington Recreational. Phil made a huge Pimms and gingerbeer cocktail, thick with fruit and mint. He warned me before hand that drinking a bottle of Pimms is the equivalent of a bottle of Gin. Martha had a couple of drinks, Patrick had one or two, Jake, Patrick's sane cousin had none as he was on the motorbike. That means that within no a couple of hours, owing to the heat, Phil and I managed to work our way through the whole lot of it. This happens at least once every summer. You underestimate the Pimms and you end up rolling around, on the safety of the grass, laughing, and laughing some more.

Patrick had us in stitches with stories of his imaginary employees. A couple of years ago, in order to secure a meeting with an important prospective client, he invented an employee called Josephine (followed by a fantastic double-barelled French surname). Josephine teased and flirted in her emails, reeling in the new prospective clients, they would find her irresistible. Once the meeting was secure, Josephine would write and tell them that she was unable to attend the meeting as she was off playing tennis in an exclusive tournament in Lausanne, Switzerland - but her trusty partner, Patrick would be attending the meeting in her place. All the imaginary employees would CC each other in on emails and everyone was involved. Josephine was killed off, and apparently there are still people who inquire as to her whereabouts.

We got to watch all the Australian alpha gorillas throw balls about in the park, thumping their chests while their women looked on. This proved quite entertaining until a man with a dog that retrieved tennis balls turned up, the dog won. And I don't like dogs.

A fine time was had by all.

The house is bustling with people this morning. Martha and Phil's old friend Patrick stayed over and are still busy eating the Spanish Tortilla I made for breakfast. Patrick is a very entertaining character, and in his absence there are wonderful stories to be told. He is the kind of person who can make the best of a bad situation. He has just been telling us of his Apocalypse date. With last Thursday's bombings in London, seemingly you had people realising that they should get as much dating and socialising in that they can before they get sprayed against a building or train carriage.

I was absolutely shattered yesterday. After work I spent the rest of the day out, meeting Alex for a coffee, walking in Ealing Park and shooting the breeze. I got home at about 20:30 and went straight to bed for a nap. I was woken up at about midnight when Phil got home and made Tappas. Pimentos Padrones, lomo, croquettas, pickles and Jamon made for a perfect midnight snack. I went back to bed, content and contemplative.

The skies are blue and it's set to be a fine 29 today. Tom Waits provides my soundtrack for the morning and I have an overwhelming desire to put on my best shirt, buy a good hat and damage the credit card by flying off to somewhere exotic and exercising my right to disappear. Maybe Cuba, to drink rum, smoke cigars rolled in the thighs of hot blooded Cuban Señorita and listen to the live sounds of the Buena Vista Social Club.

I recently had the pleasure of meeting a kindred spirit who read my mental ramblings here and seemed to enjoy them; finding the blog worthy of both laughing and crying. This caused me to go back and read most of it myself. Doing this transported me back, even though as recently as a year ago. It's good to go back and know where I was this time last year, where my head was and where my heart was. I realised then that there was a lot I never recorded, never blogged and now stands to be lost in time only to maybe be extracted later by some strange catalyst. So thank you Alex for enjoying the blog, it has inspired me to spend some more time here.

I am at work, and along with the rest of London I'm still feeling out of sorts - as you all know there were attacks on London last Thursday. I couldn't sleep last night, which hasn't happened for a while, lately I've been sleeping like a baby on Ketamine. But not last night. I left a party early to get some sleep on account of working today, so it makes it worse to then thrash about waiting for the mind to stop playing pinball with itself.

Humans really ought to come with the following features, volume control, a mute button and an off switch.