I travel to London.

I lived there for ten years. Worked there for longer. I know London.

‘Farringdon Road, please’ I ask the bus driver.

‘Mumble mumble mumble machine’ he replies.

‘Sorry?’ I reply.

‘Mumble mumble mumble machine’ he replies.

‘Sorry, you what?’ I reply.

‘You need to buy a ticket at the machine,’ he replies.

All this replying has already delayed the bus. I was last in the queue, so it’s fairly clear to everybody whose fault it is. I am carrying a suitcase as well, so I look like a tourist.

I give the people on the bus an ‘I’m not a tourist really, honest’ look, and turn to find the machine. There is no machine.

‘Sorry. Where’s the machine?’ I ask.

I am officially now the Most Unpopular Person on the Bus. The driver, however, is kindly and patient. It is, he explains, outside at the bus stop.

I apologise for the confusion, and say that I’ll get the next bus. I’m not in a hurry.

‘No problems, I’ll wait for you’.

I give my other passengers a weak look. One man looks at me as though I was the man responsible for introducing Scrappy-Doo.

I drag the suitcase out and fumble for change at the machine, which prints me a ticket. By this point, Steve Norris is considering ‘Banning JonnyB from the city’ as a key plank for his next manifesto.

I re-enter the bus and show the driver my ticket. He pulls away. I stare furiously out of the window.

I have an old git moment.

I haven’t had much relaxation over the past few weeks, due to the recent building work. So I settle down late evening to watch the scheduled programme about the Goodies.

Except the BBC has replaced it with a special edition of Panorama.

I can hardly believe it. I had cleared off the comfy chair especially.

When will the BBC tackle this incessant dumbing-down?

To be honest, it’s not been a good day, and I am gloomy.

Firstly, I missed the Kirstie Allsopp show.

Secondly, the Cheerful Builder has finished.

For six weeks, he’s been my constant companion, beavering away at the cottage whilst I juggle trying to earn a living with making inept attempts to give him a hand.

He arrived an employee and left a friend.

I wanted to ask him why he’s always so cheerful, as we had our usual morning drinking coffee and chatting about music at £12 an hour. I will miss his company and his banter. I will even, very very slightly, miss Steve Wright.

So we return to normal, which means being alone in the cottage all day with nothing but the birds and the rabbits for company.

Friday.

I wake, hungover. The LTLP has disappeared downstairs.

Something does not feel right.

Under my outstretched arm the bed seems a bit… gritty.

I need the toilet anyway, so I sit up and pull the duvet to one side.

Her allocated half of the bed is smeared in dried mud. There are leaves and a couple of yellow petals stuck to the sheet. I stare at this, goggle-eyed.

This has not happened before.

I don’t know much about such things, and at first I think she must have had some sort of very unusual kind of women’s period. But I do recall her sleeping in her clothes, so this cannot be the case.

Then I remember pulling her out of the garden hedge last night.

Honestly.

In real life she is Doctor LTLP, a fairly eminent scientist in her field. This sort of drunk behaviour is inexcusable.

Garden hedges indeed. It is undignified.

Sunday.

I wake, hungover. The LTLP has disappeared downstairs.

She reappears, cross. Apparently last night I had to be picked up from Big A’s floor and assisted home by her and Short Tony. Then I wouldn’t stop trying to sing and play ‘My Generation’ on the guitar.

However, I have always worked in what’s wankily known as ‘The Creative Industries’ and am a fairly arty sort of person. Therefore such drunk behaviour is bohemian and daring, and exposes the fascinating contradictions behind my tortured soul.

That is unfair, I know. Double standards.

But I don’t make the rules.

Short Tony has a better telly. So we went next door to watch the football.

He has bought two new ‘Jimmy White’ cues for the snooker table. Signed, a picture of him and everything.

I have always felt a bit of a natural bond with Jimmy White, neither of us having ever won the Embassy World Snooker Championship.

However my respect for him has shot through the roof, getting to the level that he has whilst using a cheap lightweight plastic wood-effect cue. The man is clearly a genius.

Presumably as he has never won the thing, he can’t afford a real wood one, as used by the Hendries, Reardons, Griffithses etc. If all his fans actually put their hands in their pockets and made a solid contribution rather than just sit there occasionally shouting ‘come on Jimmy’ and getting told off by Len Ganley then the big prize might one day be his. (Note to self – must check if Len Ganley still does the refereeing.)

Talk is cheap, boys.

That’s it!!!

There are no excuses, and Dulux has been transcribed onto my corporate boycott list of death. They join the New Covent Garden Soup Company, Serviceteam, Egg and Halliburton.

Actually, I am not quite sure whether it should be Dulux or ICI (parent company). I have ranks of corporate lawyers working on this at the moment. Just because you have a cute dog on the payroll does not mean that you are not an evil corporation.

When I buy four tins of ‘Once’ paint, I feel entitled to expect that I will only have to paint once. ‘Once’, you see. It is quite straightforward. ‘Once’ = once.

It is my opinion, I told the Lady in Customer Care at Dulux, that your ‘Once’ paint should not be called ‘Once’. It should be called ‘Twice’. In fact, on some bits of the wall, I would be justified in referring to it as ‘Three Times a Lady’.

They offer a money-back guarantee that ‘Once’ = once.

But I do not just want my money back.

I want compensation for the fact that, us being averse to spending our weekend painting, we ignored all sorts of interesting colours in the shop and considered only those available in the ‘Once’ range.

I want compensation for the aforementioned weekend, spent painting.

Most of all, I want compensation for the consequences of my initial comment to the LTLP that perhaps the paint wasn’t working because she wasn’t brushing it in properly, and it was typical, and let me have a go.

Once. My arse.

Sometimes I hate this being English thing.

No, that’s not an allusion to the football. To give you all a rest, I have resolved that this blog will be a mentioning-the-football-free-zone for the next two weeks.

It’s to do with the way ones mind is conditioned to work.

Here’s an example. Friday. The station car park. I am approached by an unshaven and slightly wild-eyed stranger, who mumbles a request for a lift.

My very English thought processes go, in this order:

- I cannot refuse point blank, as this complete stranger will think I am rude and there will be awkwardness.

- I cannot pretend that I am not going in that direction, as somehow he will find out that I am lying, think I am rude and there will be awkwardness.

- He might be a maniac. However, being chopped into little pieces seems worth the risk, to avoid being thought rude and the ensuing awkwardness.

I therefore offer him a lift, with all the insane generosity of a Stephen Gerrard back pass.

Damn. Football-mentioning-free-zone starts now.

Our few attempts at conversation peter out. He stares out of the window a lot. Occasionally, he takes a packet of pills out of a bag and studies the instructions.

There is silence between us. Not the easy silence that you get between friends, but the awkward, awkward silence of awkward awkwardness. Damn you, this being English thing! I live a life doomed to awkwardness.

It’s that sort of silence that you get when you invite Arial Sharon and his wife to tea, only to find that you’ve double booked with the Arafats.

We drive a few miles. I concentrate very hard on the road.

Still. He does not seem to be a maniac. This is a bonus. It just shows. Just because somebody is wild-eyed and unshaven does not mean that they are a maniac. Thinking that would be akin to racism.

“What’s with the pills then?” I finally ask.

“I’ve been to a Chinese healer. He was amazing. I walked through the door, and you know what he said?”

“What did he say?”

“He said: ‘I can tell you get angry very quickly’.”

“And do you get angry very quickly?”

“Oh yes. Really, really angry.”

The wild-eyed, unshaven loon.

Silence fell again. By this point, we’d moved on from the Sharon/Arafat tea party debacle. It was now the type of silence that James Herbert would have featured, had he written a book entitled ‘The Silence’, about an evil silence that goes about turning people mad. Except this WASN’T a James Herbert book, so I couldn’t even skip to the porn.

We drove another mile. I dropped him at the petrol station.

This post originally appeared on Naked Blog.

I go for a run.

Run! Run! Run!

Past the duckpond then right onto Cuckoo Hill. Haven’t been for ages and it shows.

This is a milestone run for me, in that I am wearing my NEW BRANDED RUNNING SHOES.

I don’t think I’ve ever had cool branded trainers before. I was a geeky unfashionable child with a mother who did not understand the importance of youth culture. This is probably why I am so excited to be one of the New Wave of Brit Bloggers (© 2004 Peter McNaked).

They are Nikes! I feel like the dog’s bollocks as I run, and make trendy street hand signals to the village kids with my thumb and little finger. Run! Run! Run!

When I bought them, I was torn between a cool brand and specialist running shoes. Then I found that Nike makes specialist running shoes and my problem was solved. They also make specialist badminston shoes, volleyball shoes, basketball shoes, squash shoes, discus shoes and table-tennis shoes. It is important to buy a pair for each sport you do, otherwise you will not perform to your optimum.

The point was that I was after serious sports wear, not fashion. I actually got them a few months back, but haven’t worn them up to now as I didn’t want to get them muddy. Run! Run! They are comfortable and bouncy.

I am concerned about Nike’s reputation for exploiting a vulnerable workforce.

However, I have the bright idea to make the run ‘ethics-neutral’. So, every ten paces, I make sure I think a very liberal thought. That way it balances out. I also resolve to read the Guardian extra hard when I get home.

The Cheerful Builder is beavering away on my return. By this point I am gasping for air, but the air is a combination of plaster dust and paintstripper (and air), so I sink into a patio chair outside. I need more exercise.

* * *

I’m home! So I’ll make myself a cup of tea and check out Hackney Lookout.

During my blog holiday very many interesting things have happened. Rabbits, hitchhikers, the works.

Back to normal next week. Have a good one.