I do not know anyone's number by heart

I went out for an errand early today and on my return I discovered I had locked myself out of my home. I had nothing on me. Nothing. Okay, I did have some cash and my transport card and my bank card, so I wasn't completely disconnected from the system. I could have gone to work, but I needed stuff that was indoors, locked in. I had to stay around the area. Normally, one of my flatmates works from home. Not today. I only managed to stumble back in at 10pm.

I spent the day in forced retirement at various public places: coffeeshop, internet shop, restaurant, another coffeeshop, barbershop, bookshop, etc. The experience was not as bad as it could have been, and I did get to think about things from a different vantage point than the one I am used to (which tends to mindlessly follow on from whatever it was I was doing before). On the other hand, it was disruptive. I could not even call people to cancel plans; in today's world, I do not know anyone's number by heart.

Still, I did manage to borrow pen and paper from various random people and got to ponder some writing ideas. I miss unplanned heavy pondering.

And I had a number one at the barber!


Londoners love their alcohol haze, that's what one of the London Evening Standard's rising columnists says. Nirpal Dhaliwal does voice something that I've chewed over for a while and wanted to post about. In fact, I drafted a couple of blog posts on the subject but never got around to finishing them. Nirpal's article summarises a lot of what I want to say, except I think the opposite. Anyway, this guy, he's come to my attention in the last year or so, and every post I've seen is well-written and interesting. He nails the well-travelled, single, 30ish, London voice.

Will Self, established writer that he is, is always enjoyable. His way with words, his wordsmitherry (hey, I am no Will Self) are distinctive. He voices a liberal, sophisticated, atheist, London voice.

Hey, you wanna laugh? Please read how children are too hot to handle for Iranian TV.

Yes, I had a lot of time to read the papers today! Even the not particularly noteworthy Evening Standard!

Want to read my future posts? Don't forget to subscribe