The eternal journal of hope and despair

February 15th 2008

Friday night in the underground station and a horde of squirrels teems out of the darkness of the tunnel and onto the tracks beside the platform. There are thousands of them, red, grey and green, forming a living blanket of rodents that foams and rushes and bubbles below me. It is impossible to keep track of the individual squirrels and they rise and tumble among themselves in the meaty swell.

“Is this Tottenham Court Road?” squeaks one squirrel, who is wearing a tiny fedora and is perching precariously on the back of a colleague, straining to stay afloat.

I look down at him, thinking about God and Moses and whether they have email addresses.

“No. It’s Holborn.”

“Lads!” shrieks the squirrel. “We’re at the wrong station!”

There is a collective groan and with that, the squirming mass disappears back into the darkness.

February 13th 2008

I look down to find a dead swan tied to my leg. The swan has a broken neck. Or a very floppy neck. I’m no swan expert.

What am I? I’m a toad. I’m a raisin. I’m a chaffinch on fire. All this and more. I am a Sunday morning. I am Wellington boots with worn-down soles. I feel like chicken tonight.

“Three pounds, three pence,” says the moustachioed Indian man in the newsagent, desperate for my friendship - or for any human contact.

“I never thought I’d live to see the day when ten Marlboro Lights cost over three pounds,” I say as a scrabble in my pockets for change.

“Who says you’re even alive now?” he muses. “You may well be dead and this is you dreaming in the afterlife.”

“A good point, well made,” I reply.

“See you later!” he cheers as I stride out of the shop into the swirling rain. The swan is still tied to my leg. I will remove it when I get home. You can't remove a swan in a hurry.

I hide under the awning of an old coffee shop as the rain rattles remorseless down. The horizon is turned into a grey, blurred smog as a black cab speeds through a puddle, splashing the bearded man selling The Big Issue. I point and laugh at him and he scowls at me. There is a deep roll of thunder and the rain intensifies. The swan at my feet is grimy. There are cigarette butts collecting in its feathers.

“Excuse me,” says the oily brunette standing next to me. “I think there’s a swan stuck to your trousers.”

“I can’t hear you!” I lie, and point skywards towards the clouds as the rat-a-tat- of the rain grows louder. I mime incomprehension. She looks away. No human contact for me today.

January 16th 2008

I get older. It's not something I try to do, it just happens. I'm not boasting.

As I get older, I ask myself different questions: "Where do I live?", "Why do onions give me so much trapped wind?", "How much is a pint of milk?", "Why do children wear such baggy trousers?"

But the question I ask myself more and more often is simply: "What is the meaning of life?"

I've always looked for the meaning of life. Mostly, I've done this by NOT looking for the meaning of life, and stumbling upon it by accident. Sometimes I've looked at the bottom of a beer glass, but all I find is dissolving froth.

The thing I have learnt is this: As I get older, I stop looking for the meaning of life in art, in books, films or dance. I have started looking for it instead in things far less exotic, but infinitely more tangible: family, the weather, money, sex. Basically, the things in front of me. Except for sex. That's mostly behind me.

January 12th 2008

I sat in Jenny's Burgers, idly stirring my tea. Sat beside me were Galileo and Copernicus. Both were tucking into their chips, bacon, beans and egg. I worried that they expected me to pay the bill at the end. I had deliberately only ordered tea as I was on a budget. Such things concern me.

"What's the meaning of life?" I asked, squinting into the spring sunshine.

"Dunno," said Copernicus.

"Mnuhsndh," said Galileo, shovelling egg into his mouth. He swallowed. "Egg's cold," he grunted.

Copericus smiled and arched his fingers together to demonstrate that he was contemplating an important issue.

"What you have to remember is that we've both been dead for many centuries. We're only here as a favour to Jesus. Normally we don't really do north London. And I'm afraid that we don't have much wisdom to pass on. Altough I do think it's worth restating that the Earth revolves around the Sun, and not vice versa."

"I already knew that," I slummed, sounding ungrateful.

Galileo flagged down the waitress, who was busy chatting to a eastern European builder.

"Bill please. He's paying," he pointed in my direction. I gritted my teeth and forced a smile.

"Basically," Galileo continued "if you're still famous, centuries after your death, you're doing ok. Don't worry too much about the meaning of life, but see if you can acheive some level of fame. I'm not talking about re-inventing the wheel, but perhaps you could get your own late-night improvised comedy slot on BBC3."

"They're going to cancel BBC3, I think," I said.

"Some things are beyond my control," he sighed. "I'll see what I can do, but I'm not promising anything.

Copernicus

January 11th 2008

Yesterday I wandered through Muswell Hill and stopped outside an art shop. There were posters and postcards and post-it notes. But it was not a post office. It was an art shop.

In the window there was a sign. It said "Framing service".

I entered the shop and approached the counter. A young man with sideburns smiled at me, indicating he was ready to serve me.

"You have a framing service. I'd like to frame someone for murder."

"Ha ha ha! We get that all the time. Very funny," he said.

"Will you do it?" I asked.

"Yeah, ok." he said, and I filled in the form.

January 1st 2008

When I was younger I managed an American hip-hop group made up of spring onions. They were called the Rapscallions.

They were a total failure, obviously.

December 15th 2007

In my sleep, I do exercise. As I lay there in bed, sweating and bereft of consciousness, I see myself jogging through a park. The park is deserted and there is no sound. Someone has pressed the mute button. I do press-ups and sit-ups. I compromise my dignity with an intense set of jumping jacks. I sprint hard, my feet pressing deep into soft turf. I can feel my lungs burn as my legs turn to pistons and pump me faster and faster. My feet almost leave the ground. My body is taut, tight and toned.

I wake up exhausted, but sadly still unfit. I roll over, my stomach wobbling the the darkness.

December 10th 2007

In the past I have written about my time with Robbie Williams. Now I feel I should set the record straight and include some of my thoughts on his erstwhile Take That colleague, Gary Barlow.

All of us are part Williams, part Barlow, just as we are all part hare and part tortoise. Even Robbie Williams is part Gary Barlow, and Gary Barlow is part Robbie Williams. No man is all one thing, despite philosphers arguing to the contrary. Gary Barlow accepts himself. He accepts that for him to succeed, Robbie Williams must fail, just as Robbie accepts that his own fate is inextricably intertwined with that of Gary Barlow. There is not room at the top of the tree for both of them.

What is Gary Barlow? Gary Barlow is the plodding village policeman who eventually solves the crime. He is the journeyman midfielder who finds his team unexpectedly heading for glory. He is the slow, steady path that leads to peaks shrouded in clouds.

Strangers often ask me who will win in the end, Barlow or Williams? I smile and explain that there is no end, only a constant ebb and flow. History does not have a final chapter, only a summary of events so far.

April 10th 2007

What is an otter? What is a badger? What is a vole? Are they mammals? Are they amphibians? Are they concepts?

No. They are not concepts. I'm pretty sure they are animals of some sort. I have come to resent animals. When I was young I projected all sorts of emotions onto animals. I don't mean this figuratively - I really did it. I captured animals from the back garden and set up a slide projector. Then I wrote words like 'happiness', 'despair' and 'disgust' on the blank slides and projected the words onto the animals. It was an entirely pointless exercise and as such, probably my greatest artistic triumph. Even as a child I knew that I was different, and that God had chosen a different path for me. All my childhood contemporaries listened to jazz and be-bop but I knew that such superficial delights were not for me. I listened only to static and silence. It was boring, but that was a sacrifice I was willing to make.

Anyway. Animals. Animals are useless. They can hardly speak at all, and none of them contribute anything to the economy. And yet they are loved in a way that I will never be loved. Life can be cruel. Life can be many things, from dustpans to vestibules. In essence, life is absurd, which is frustrating, because absurdity is silly, and silliness is bad. How can I be a true artist when silly things exist?

I sometimes feed the cats in the garden. They never say thank you, and they never stay to chat.

April 7th 2007

Natasha Bedingfield came round for tea. She brought a bottle of Greek white wine. Some people never learn.

We played chess for a while (I hadn't played since Jesus disappeared) but she has the annoying habit of saying "Checkmate!" after every move.

"We've just begun the game. You've moved a pawn into the centre of the board. It's not checkmate," I explained.

"Checkmate!" she yelled.

"I wish you wouldn't do that," I said. "You spoil everything. You're a nice girl. You're pretty, you can hold a tune and you have big white teeth. Don't throw away your future by saying 'Checkmate' all the time."

"Checkmate!" she giggled, hiding her face in her hands like a naughty schoolgirl. It's ridiculous. She's nearly 40, for God' sake.

"And another thing," I continued. "In your hit song Words, you use the word 'hyperbole'. But instead of pronouncing it as 'hyper-bowly' you say 'hyperbowl'. That is a disgrace. An absolute disgrace! I bet Bjork knows how to pronounce 'hyperbole' and she's from Iceland. "

"Checkmate! Front bottom!" Natasha laughed gleefully, pouring the wine over her head.

I had to give her a bath and a fresh tracksuit for her to wear. I incinerated her old clothes in the microwave. I do have some sympathy for her. Her brother is Daniel Bedingfield, and it must be hard to live in his shadow.

Natasha Bedingfield, with the body of a car.

April 2nd 2007

It was an afternoon. I wandered through the park in pungent sunshine, oblivious to the families and the men walking dogs. My fingers were frayed. I settled down in the shade of a tree, the blossom filtering out the sunshine.

After a minute of so, two crows landed beside me. I kept still so as not to disturb them. They pecked around me aimlessly, their inky black bodies losing themselves in the shadows.

Then one of the crows spoke: "Listened to anything good recently?"

I remained quiet, and after a moment the other crow spoke up: "I quite like Feist. And I'm looking forward to the new White Stripes album. But I've got to say I'm disappointed in the new Arctic Monkeys. The sound is great, but where are the tunes? There's nothing on there that matches Dancefloor. What about you?"

"I'm still lovin' the Klaxons," it crowed. "And that LCD Soundsystem single is great. Really punchy. Spirit of punk, and all that."

After a minute or so I stood up and walked away. I hadn't understood a word they were talking about.

March 25th 2007

How easy is it to murder someone? It's a question often asked on television and on cereal packets.

The theory should be harder than the reality. The natural situation should be that whilst in theory it is easy to murder someone, the reality brings with it all sorts of moral and ethical problems. This is not the case.

Murder is, in theory, difficult. Aside from practical issues, there's the moral enormity of snuffing out a life, of making it so that an individual ceases to be. This is because in theory, you are not killing a specific person, but every man. In killing, you are murdering your own humanity. You are taking a life and crossing a threshold. You are no longer a human being but a murderer, with all that implies.

In reality murder is much easier. Because you are not killing every man; you are not snuffing out some universal symbol of mankind, you are just killing one measly, paltry human being. Think of someone you know: a real loser, someone who is slow on the uptake and never gets your jokes, someone who is flawed in the way that ordinary people are flawed. Fat, stupid, racist. A terrible bowl haircut. Think of this person's name. Roll it around your head for a few moments. Would it really be so terrible to kill them? Are their hopes and dreams so extraordinary that they would really be missed? No. Not at all. Imagine killing a man called Mike? Is that a crime. Do men called Mike truly deserve to live? Or a woman called Hazel? Do people called Hazel really have souls? I doubt it very much. I doubt that they have secret lives. I doubt that they contribute much to their own existences, let alone the lives of others.

That's the difference between theory and reality. Fortunately, I am a kind old man and have no urge to murder. And I'd advise the rest of you not to kill anyone, even if they have bad breath or endlessly listen to the Scissor Sisters. We are not Gods, after all.

There. That should throw the police off my scent.

March 13th 2007

Two men sat at the bar in a pub. One man was tall and blonde, and the other was short and dark. In front of them sat matching pints of lager and a ruptured bag of salt and vinegar crisps.

"I was once cursed by an old gypsy woman," said the tall, blonde man, poking his glasses back into place. "She took an instant dislike to me and hexed me."

"What happened?" asked the darker man.

"She cursed me so that I would never be able to find my way home." he supped his beer. "And it's true. It's metaphorical, or psychological or whatever, but it's true. When I'm lying in bed at night I feel totally lost, and I know that no matter how hard I try I won't be able to get back to where I once was."

"Hmmm," hummed the shorter man. "It's funny you should say that. I was also cursed by an old gypsy woman."

"What did she do to you?"

"She cursed me so that I would always find my way back home. And it's also true. No matter where I go, I can feel home calling me back."

"Is that a curse?" mused blondie. "It seems more like a blessing."

"No. It's definitely a curse."

March 5th 2007

I awoke groggy, in a different room. Memories and smells collided. My head hurt and the world spun between the cracks of my half-open eyes. I tossed aside the covers to my bed and looked around. The room was an eclectic mix of baroque furniture and colourful retro-futurist junk. I wandered over to the window and pulled aside the net curtain, letting in blazing sunshine.

I found myself confronted by a strange view. Before me lay the oddest village I had ever seen. In the distance were spindly spires and painted citadels, and in the foreground was a bowling green, occupied by a number of fat men in stripey jumpers. The penny (farthing) dropped. I had been kidnapped and relocated in The Village, the nameless backdrop of The Prisoner, the classic Patrick McGoohan television series of the 1960s. Ordinary men would have been shocked at this turn of events, but I am no ordinary man, and for me the mingling of past and present, fact and fiction, is an everyday occurrence.

Dressing myself in my cordoroy troushers, dark polo neck and black jacket with white piping trim, I stepped outside and walked down to the village café, deserted except for a black cat picking at the discarded remains of a ham sandwich. I confronted the middle-aged waitress, my eyes stern as an Irishman.

"Take me to number two," I demanded.

"What?" she said.

"Take me to number two," I repeated.

"You need to do a number two? The toilets for paying customers only," she mused.

"No! You dolt!" I exclaimed in exasperation. "I'm the new number 6. I need to speak to number 2."

"What are you on about?" she appeared genuinely puzzled. "What's your name?"

"I don't have a name. I'm a number. I need to speak to number 2."

She stared blankly at me, a note of pity in her eyes. She turned her back on me and walked back into the café, muttering under her breath about Care in the Community. This was useless. I needed to find out more. I walked away from the café and sprinted down through verdant lanes before puffing my way up the hill towards the Town Hall.

The Town Hall was an elegant Georgian building, framed by large arches and imposing stone columns. I barged through the main doors, rushed over to the receptionist and demanded to speak to whoever was in charge. There was a hush of whispers as she consulted a colleague, and then I was ushered into the vast central room. In the middle of the room, sat behind a mahogany desk was a large, balding, goateed man. He was wearing a crisply-cut dark suit and his neck was hidden by the kind of multicoloured wool scarf normally associated with Tom Baker.

"Are you number 2?" I demanded, beads of sweat forming on my brow.

"No. I'm David Hills. I'm the mayor of the village. You're causing quite a scene here. My receptionist was most alarmed. What do you want? What's your name?"

"I don't have a name. I'm the new number 6," I informed him.

"Don't be ridiculous. Everyone has a name," he pulled out a notepad and scribbled deftly in the margins.

"No! You don't understand!" I shook my fists in frustration. "This is the Village, isn't it? You've kidnapped me, haven't you? I'm here so that you can break me and get information."

"Look here young man," snorted the mayor. "I don't know what you're on about. This is a quiet village, and we don't want any trouble. We certainly don't want information and we haven't kidnapped you."

"Oh come on! I'm stuck here. I'm playing my part, why can't you play yours? You're supposed to degrade and dehumanize me, desperately trying to get inside my head so you can worm out information! This is supposed to be an iron battle of wills."

"If you don't calm yourself I'm calling the police," said the Mayor bluntly.

"That's more like it!" I grinned. "I don't suppose there's much point in me trying to escape, is there. I could run along the beach but one of those giant white balls would only incapacitate me."

"What on Earth are you on about? Giant white balls! Why in God's name would I try to incapactate you with a giant white ball? I'm calling the police because you're clearly deluded and you're wasting my time. Kidnapping? How ridiculous. The local paper will have a field day with this! You're free to leave here whenever you want. Trains leave from here every 20 minutes. You can be in Bristol in half an hour," he rummaged in his desk and pulled out a laminated train timetable, waving it in my face.

"This is ridiculous!" I pleaded. "I'm the Prisoner. You can't just let me go. You're supposed to file and stamp me and then try to get inside my mind and discover why I quit"

"I have no interest whatsoever what is in your mind. If I want information, I use Google. Now, please leave before I really do call the police. And whoever you are, I'd advise you to seek professional help."

I wandered dejectedly out of the Town Hall and sat on the village green, watching old men play chess in berets, thinking out loud: "This isn't over. Oh no. They have more tricks up their sleeve."

No-one ever wants to take me prisoner. It's not fair.

There is no money to be made from kidnapping cats and dressing them up as 30's gangsters, with fat ties, spats and fedoras. I found this out the hard way.

Moses walked up to the top of Mount Sinai. It was early. He hadn't slept well and he was tired and irritable. There was a stone in his sandle that had been digging into his foot since daybreak.He wondered how God would appear to him today. The last time he had appeared as a burning bush, which was nice enough, if a bit clichéd. He hoped it wouldn't be a bush again. No-one likes seeing the same trick twice.

As he climbed up to the highest peaks, the chalky yellow mountain leveled off and he found himself on a dusty plateau. He caught his breath and then peered down. In the far distance, the children of Israel milled around, playing with sticks and wooden circles. "Fucking idiots," he thought.

When he turned back round, God had appeared. He didn't look much like God, but he had that deity-aura that distinguishes omniscient beings from mere mortals. He looked in his mid-forties, balding but trim. He wore a dark suit with a faint pinstripe and beamed an enormous, confident smile. His shoes were very shiny.

"Moses! Fantastic to see you!" he thrust out his hand. Moses gingerly shook the Godhand and then wiped his sweaty palm on his robe.

"Has Miriam got you a coffee?" asked God.

Moses looked around, confused. Aside from God, he was the only person on the mountain. He looked down at his feet, feeling mildly embarrassed. He had no idea what God was talking about.

"Sorry. I'm getting ahead of myself," grinned God. "Coffee won't be invented for another thousand years. And Miriam won't even be born until 1961. I keep forgetting we're a few millennia BC."

"What's BC?" asked Moses. He felt he should say something. He was supposed to be the leader of the Israelites. It wouldn't do to simply say nothing.

"Hmmmm…. What?" said God. "Oh. BC. Ummm… that's before Christ. Lovely fellow. I should introduce you two one day. But don't worry yourself about that stuff now."

And with that, God clicked his fingers and before Moses's eyes appeared two chairs, and a flip chart. In his hands God was clutching a thick, black marker pen.
God smiled and then he and Moses sat on the chairs. Moses discreetly eased off his sandals.

"Right. Well," said God. "As you know, the reason we're having this meeting is that I'm giving humanity some rules. No. Not really rules… that sounds awfully Draconian. They're more like guidelines. And I felt that you would be the best person to properly sketch out these guidelines."

"Ok," said Moses. He didn't really have any idea what God was talking about.

God leapt to his feet, and with some animation, started writing on the flipchart in bold capital letters: "I AM THE ONE AND ONLY GOD."

Then he stepped back and grinned. Moses pretended to take notes.

"I should point out," added God "that this is just a preliminary meeting. I just thought it would be good to touch base and really define the perameters of the project."

"Ok," mumbled Moses.

"Obviously, what I really need is for you to take a look at the information, pass it on to your instructional designers and see what the best platform is for the message. I was thinking of something quite multimedia. You know. Something interactive. I don't want to come across as too old-school and didactic."

Moses said nothing.

God pointed at the sentence on the flipchart. "That's the only part of the guidelines that is in any way conceptual. The rest of it is really pretty much process-driven. Basically, it's a list of 'Do's and Don'ts'. What I want from you is a way of making the material really come alive! I thought perhaps we could release it in stages. Maybe get a buzz generated with something viral."

Moses nodded. He knew he should be concentrating on God's words but his back ached and he was already thinking about lunch.

"Anyway, sorry to rush you like this, but it would be fantastic if we could get this out there as soon as possible. I'm trying to get everything wrapped up before the end of the financial year."

"Right," said Moses.

And with that, God vanished, leaving behind a heavy smell of musk.

For some minutes Moses continued to sit in the plastic chair on the top of Mount Sinai, unsure of how to proceed. He called God's name a few times but heard no reply. He paced around the mountain top, biting his lip.

Finally, from beneath his robe, he pulled up two stone tablets. He eased them gently onto the ground and removed his chisel from his pocket. As the midday sun beat down, he started to write out the commandments.

It has come to my attention that there is a book on sale that purports to be about my life. I've seen it on the internet, although fortunately none of my local bookstores stock it. I suspect that if I saw I copy I would tear it up in an instant.

If the year is a long patch of mossy ground, then December is the cliff where it ends. Soon, we shall plummet headlong off the cliff into the turbulent sea that is New Year. Some of us will be dashed against the jagged rocks that are Christmas. Do you like my metaphors? I bought them in a pound shop.

So, now is a time for reflection. For gazing into a mirror and trying to detect moles and wrinkles and other tell-tale signs of ageing. Many of us will resort to the surgeon's knife and have plastic surgery in the coming year. I cannot blame any of you. Although I'd avoid the surgeons who advertising on the internet. I've seen a lot of women this year with lopsided breasts. It's a source of some misery.

I wish I could tell you that I am older and wiser than this time last year. Theoretically, even if I am not wiser, I should at least be older. But even that I cannot guarantee. I have a nasty habit of travelling backwards in time. It is entirely possible that I am younger now than I was a year ago.

Seasons come and go like aubergines. Times unfurls itself. Past live flicker before me; it is both sublime and very, very dull.

I awoke to find someone had slipped a note beneath my door. It wasn't actually a note, it was a flyer for a kebab shop, but on it was scrawled a message.

So, it seems I have a stalker. Or the kebab shop is trying new ways of enticing customers. Either way it spells trouble. I don't want a stalker. If people are obsessed with me they can send me money. Money! Yes! Money! I am not so spiritual that I will not accept cash (Pounds or Euros). But I will not accept another stalker. Stalking is the lowest form of flattery.

I have been away. For a long long time. I locked myself in a bathroom by mistake. I've been surviving on tapwater and shaving foam. It was only this morning I remembered that the bathroom door is a slider, not a pull/pusher. I am the punchline in a Benny Hill sketch.

Soon I will be away again. But right now I am here. It's an existential nightmare.

In ten days it is Jesus's birthday. I won't be getting him anything. What has he done lately? Nothing.

I saw Jesus today. We passed each other in the street and stopped and chatted. He's doing much better at the moment; he seems a lot happier. I think he has a girlfriend.

I am still living in the future, but the present is catching up. Soon the present will overtake me and I will find myself living in the past.

Here I am, over three weeks into the future. It's amazing. Don't say I didn't warn you. The sky is filled with silver cubes that radiate heat and love. Japan is now the capital of the Interplanetary Republic and the World Snooker Champion is a twelve-year-old girl from Monaco. It's a different place from my youth, I can tell you that.

And yet... am I happy? No. Of course not. Times may change but some things are eternal.

I awoke in darkness. I could sense movement. I appeared to in the back of a truck.

I banged on the sides on the truck. They boomed with the empty echo of cheap metal. I shouted and hollered, "Let me out!"

The truck slowed to a halt. I could hear chains rattling and the sound of a key entering a lock and turning. Then I was blinded by bright sunlight.

A moustachioed man in overalls peered at me. His hair was shaggy, black and greasy. He looked like a hispanic mechanic. "Pero que haces aqui en mi camion?" he said.

I stepped out of the truck and looked around. I was on a thin mountain rock twisting around snowy, foggy peaks. Aside from the man with the moustache, I was alone. We stared at each other for a while. He seemed more scared of me than I was of him, which was comforting.

"Shitto," I said. I was in Peru. I don't know how I got there. My head was sore and my memories eluded me, but the last thing I recalled was sitting at home in north London, filling in a Lottery coupon.

I shrugged and looked again at the mechanic. He was obviously of no use to me, but I asked him for a lift to the nearest town. Then I hitched a ride. And I have been hitching ever since. Let me tell you this: hitching from Lima in Peru to north London is not easy. That is why I have been away for so long. I have only just returned home. Actually, most of the journey went smoothly. It only took me a couple of weeks to get from Peru to south London. But the trip from South London to Wood Green has taken me months.

Still, here I am. Some of you may notice that the date of this entry is December 7th. Yes, it is true. The rest of you are still in November 2005, but I am already a month ahead. I am living in the future.

"Pretty fucking impressive," is my reply. Just wait until December 3, and you'll see. Everything is going to change.

Why? Because I have suffered a bizarre series of events that would take me many years to recount. I have been in constant battle with the Un-Dead. You would not believe the trials that have beset me, both in Albion and on foreign shores.

Soon, the whole world will know my story, but for now, I must beg for your continued patience.

I have been asleep for a month. It wasn't intentional. I am not even sure I was always asleep - I have distinct memories of making cups of coffee and urinating and watching football on TV.

In my dreams, there were a number of famous authors and they were berating me for the lack of narrative authority in my life. They said that I was a weak character, poorly sketched; that I lacked ontological credibility and was buffetted too easily by circumstance. They explained that character was forged by plot, by the pressures and decisions made by a protagonist and they raged that my lack of decisions rendered me impotent and insipid.

Camus sat at my bedside and smiled: "Look at you! Look at me! I am flesh and blood. I live, I judge and I am judged. Look at yourself, you cling to your bourgeoise dream of respectability but simultaneously loathe yourself for worshipping authorities and institutions that you know are corrupt. You are so human in your failings, and yet you are hardly alive."

I stirred and murmured, "... it's not my fault... I try, I try... I live in a difficult age... everything is changing..."

"Non! Merde!" he exclaimed, "No excuses! No delays or extenuating circumstances. You can no longer avoid your sentencing. You must be judged. You will leave and mark on this world whether you like it or not. You can no longer pretend to be invisible. You are not a pond skater, you are not a moth. You are a man, of sorts. Look at your soul. Why would anyone want to read your story? Where is the sublime? Where is the ridiculous? Where is the instinct? You are merely a cobbled-together set of cliches and camouflage"

I didn't want to listen any more. For better or for worse, Camus is dead and dead authors should not berate me as I sleep. My eyes opened, although I still felt so terriby weary.

God played a trick on me! He made me think I was going somewhere. I was of course, actually going nowhere.

I opened the door to find a giant worm on my doorstep. It was wearing a blue porkpie hat.

"Are you worried about the state of the world?" said the giant worm. "Do you think that the country is getting worse and that there is less love and spiritual understanding around you?"

"Yes... you're right of course. I AM a giant worm. But let's not get stuck on that. I'd really rather talk to you about the state of the world. Tell me... are you a religious man?"

"So... wait a minute... if I cut you in two, do you become two seperate worms?" I asked.

"Well, yes... I suppose I would. But I'd rather talk to you about Jesus. Do you think that the love of Jesus touches your life?"

They say that the universe is expanding. This may be true, but my world is shrinking. It gets smaller by the day. My world now consists of a small patch of north London. My journey from the bedroom to the kitchen is like a trip into town. A walk down the road to the shops is like a day in the countryside. South London is a different planet... I dream of it. I fear it. I hear legends and rumours of other places... Watford, Liverpool, Cornwall, Hove... but these places remain unreal, intangible. A voyage than does not involve tube stations is a laughable folly... one might fall off the side of the world.

I don't know when my world began to shrink. I only hope it does not get too much smaller.

But... there was a fifth Marx Brother, called Gummo. He appeared with the other Brothers on the stage, but stopped performing before they became international film stars. He ended up being a dress salesman, and then a showbiz agent. His role makes me wonder if perhaps there was a fifth, forgotten Horseman of the Apocalypse. Maybe he didn't make the grade. Maybe his heart just wasn't in it. Maybe he was Sloth. Or Boredom. Maybe he rode a pony, instead of a proper horse.

I had the misfortune to find myself walking through Hoxton and Dalston. The weather was affecting people strangely. The traffic was backed up all along Old Street and men in lorries sweated and swore at each other. Hip Hop and folk music blared from cafes that were disguised as industrial warehouses.

I heard shouting and saw that a group of bearded young men - possible some kind of avant-garde web art collective - were nailing a businessman to cross for being unfashionable. The young men were wearing suit jackets and trainers and were berating the businessman for his brogues.

I was tempted to intervene and try to save the man, but I was not particularly fashionably dressed myself, and the fear caught me cold.

Sometimes I have tea with Richard Briers. He's nice. He reminds me of an England that does not exist anymore; that is, an England that I have lost.

He has delusions about his stature in Hollywood. He kvetches about roles he should have gotten. He is quite mad, but his madness is comforting.

"Neo in The Matrix. That could have been me. I'd have nailed that part," he says.

"Neo is young. He's goodlooking. He knows Kung Fu. You'd never have gotten that part," I contribute.

"I know Kung Fu," says Richard archly. "And besides... what is age? Age brings gravitas. I'd have brought pathos and humanity to Neo. But they go for a prettyboy like Keanu. I can't say it surprises me."

He doesn't stop there: "Taxi Driver. That should have been me. I tried to speak to Scorsese before the movie. I lived like Travis Bickle. I was Travis. I could have done it."

"Richard. It wasn't you. You're middle-aged. You're British. You're a sitcom star. You're not De Niro," I shrug.

Or perhaps I am being disingenuous with myself. Perhaps I know what must be said, but I don't want to say it. Language and narrative have never come easy. Decisions cost me more than money.

About ten years ago I wrote a sitcom. Don't worry, you won't have heard of it - it never reached the TV screens. The show was called "Me and My God" and was about a twentysomething Northern lass called Lisa who moves down to London in search of fame and fortune. As it happens, she ends up sharing a flat in Willesden with God. The sitcom plots Lisa's trials and tribulations, as she applies for jobs, meets a variety of unsuitable men, and goes drinking with friends. It also dealt with God's eternal struggle with Satan and his attempts to maintain global religions. As the series progressed, there was a lot of sexual tension between Lisa and God, but both characters know their romance will be doomed because she's a sassy girl from Manchester, and he's an all-powerful omniscient deity.

At the same time, Channel 4 were producing a series at the same time, called "The God Squad", which was about a team of undercover policemen in London, fighting crime and international terrorism. The gimmick was that one of the policemen was secretly God, and had to outwit criminals without tipping off his colleagues as to his real identity. Anyway, with "God Squad" due to hit the screens, the TV execs decided that there were too many God-related TV programmes and canned "Me and My God".

A young man was sitting at the bus-stop. He had shaggy black hair flopping down over his eyes, and wore his sideburns long and unkempt. His ears were pierced with think hoops and he wore a faded leather jacket. He smoked roll-ups and was reading a battered copy of "No Logo" by Naomi Klein.

"You... you're the counter-culture. You hate corporations and politicians and bands that sell-out. You watch arthouse films and take drugs. You travel to Berlin and Barcelona and Edinburgh and Sao Paolo. You are trying to reinvent the wheel. No?"

"Maybe. But I am the opposite of you. I am not counter-culture." The sleet was beginning to fade, and the sun was poking shyly from behind a grey cloud.

"No you're not," he spat at me. His eyes were burning with anger. "You're no culture at all."

My neighbourhood, like most neighbourhoods, is populated by characters. Some of the characters are self-conscious "characters". They corner me in pubs and spin tales about terrorists or gangsters. They vainly build implausable myths around their own eccentricities. They are desperate to be memorable, but are mostly forgettable.

But most of the local characters are unaware. They do not sense that they are slightly out of sync with society. And maybe they aren't. Maybe it's me who is out of sync.

Character 1: is the manwoman. I see her quite often on the bus and in the local newsagent. She is, I think, a woman. But she could be a man. She has a wide face and a man's jaw. She has wavy, peroxide-blonde hair and wears a sheepskin jacket. She often wears leggings or tracksuit bottoms that she tucks into her boots. She always smiles. I think it is her smile, and not her bizarre appearance, that makes her a character. She has a naked smile that she shines at everyone, whether male or female, young or old. It is a plainly flirty smile, and causes many people to look away. She stares at me on the bus. But she stares at everyone.

Character 2: is Mr Moustache. He is a middle-aged man with an enormous moustache. That's it. That's his gimmick. It's enough. It distinguishes him from every other pensioner in north London. He is an anachronism. He seems to have been teleported into my life from a Michael Powell film.

Good news! Armageddon has been postponed by a year. I wonder what I shall do with the extra time. I will probably sleep.

Every birthday I perform the same ritual. When I was young, my mother gave me a book of excuses. And every year, on this special day, I tear out one of the excuses and throw it in a lake.

Today was one of my prison visits. Prisoners often need someone wise and fatherly to talk to. Obviously that's not me, but I do what I can. I often talk to a prisoner called Ed Murphy. ("Please don't call me Eddie. I am not Eddie Murphy.") He's an interesting, unsavoury character.

"It was always my dream to be a serial sex killer," he said, wiping his runny nose on his sleeve.

"My father was a serial sex killer, and his father before him. It's something of a family tradition. But I've never been very good at it. Oh... I was ok at the killing bit. Murder is easy enough. It's quite final, is death. You kill someone and that's it. No criticism, no guilty glances, no post-coital emptiness. But the sex... I was never any good at that. I tried raping women, but I could never escape my eagerness to please. Instead of brutally holding them down, I'd start kissing their neck and telling them how sweet they were. I really wanted them to like me. And I was always too concerned that they'd orgasm. Once I'd tied them up, I'd end up spending hours on their erogenous zones, trying desperately to tease them to new heights of ecstasy. And then I'd ask them 'was that good for you? Did you enjoy it?' But they'd just sob and cry and beg me to stop. It made me feel terrible. Rapists aren't supposed to be like that. It's a terrible thing to crave approval."

This afternoon I had the Manic Street Preachers round for afternoon tea. They were all dressed as wombles. I don't know why. They said it was something to do with socialism.

"I am Orinoco," said the lead singer James, obviously sweating and uncomfortable in his womble suit.

Sean, the drummer didn't say anything. He just piled scones onto his plate and methodically buttered and ate them.

They looked tired and listless. They had slogans saying "Art funk death squad" and "Lilac buttercup democracy" sprayed on their womble suits. They spoke seldom but sometimes whispered among themselves. They declined my offer of cider.

We sat there in silence: a short man in faded jeans and three fallen rockstars dressed as popular childrens TV characters of yesteryear. It was poignant, except for the total lack of poignancy.

They limped out of the house into the pouring rain, looking like old warhorses who are begging to be put out of their misery.

I walked into the pub in a hurry, and pushed my way past an old Scotsman at the bar. The barman eyed me suspiciously

"Oi! Mate! Where do you think you're going?" hollered the barman. He was middle-aged and had a shaved head. He thought he looked threatening, but his tight T-beige shirt made him look like a butch queen.

"You've seen the sign. Customers only. You can only use the toilets if you're buying a drink," he pointed to the sign above the door.

I walked towards him, my bladder twisting in pain. I calmly ordered a half of Guinness and handed over my money. Then I turned towards the toilets.

"No. I don't want it. I just need the loo. I've paid you...give it to someone else if you want."

He took a deep breath and stared at me. "You're not using the loo until you've drunk your half," he said.

I reluctantly decided to play his game. I ignored the burning sensation and squeezed my legs together. I downed the booze, licked my lips and turned towards the loo.

"Excuse me mate, would you like to engage in some casual, non-specific banter about football?" he asked, chuckling.

When I was a child I spoke as a child;
I understood as a child;
I thought as a child;
but when I became a man I got very confused. Everything went wrong.

In recent weeks I have been visited by the ghost of Winston Churchill. He is not the man you would imagine him to be. In life, he was portly and stout, but since dying he has lost weight and looks young and trim. He always wears a red adidas tracksuit with white stripes down the sides. He smokes Marlboros and laughs at anything he sees on TV.

Death has a peculiar effect on some people. It's as if they had banked everything on death being the end; on there being no afterlife. And in death, they resent this lack of finality. The simmer in anger that an embarrassing epilogue has been tagged to the end of their story. They mooch and joke and point out the absurdity of existence. They recant their philosophies and doctrines and tell fart jokes.

Churchill is bad company. He swears and exposes himself to me. I don't really mind. I've been lonely lately, and he's still Churchill. I'm not naive... I know he's a slut. He doesn't just haunt me... he gets around. But I am not the jealous type.

I was waiting for the 102 bus in Muswell Hill. It was late and I was hurriedly smoking a Marlboro Light and coughing to myself. There was a woman sitting next to me; she was brunette, and was wearing a colourful scarf. I couldn't tell describe her in any more detail because I rarely look at strangers.

I looked around, confused. Was she talking to me? Women rarely talk to single men at bus stops, particularly at night.

Today I filled up the kettle. I waited for it to boil, and then I poured the hot water down the sink. I did this again, about 30 times during the day.

When I was younger, I used to go sailing a lot. I once sailed around Britain on a raft made of solid steel. On the first day of sailing, it sunk to the bottom of the sea. However, I was not deterred and continued pushing the raft along the seabed, tracing my way around the icy contours of Britain. It was during this time that I learnt to communicate with all marine life.

However, it should be noted that just because I can communicate with sea life does not mean fishes/whales/eels actually obey me. They mostly ignore me, although they are happy enough to give me directions.

The doctors say there is nothing wrong with me. I think there is something wrong with the doctors.

Women have always know that there is something unwholesome about me. They understand that I am charming but defective and will let them down when it came to the crunch. When they touch me, they recoil, having sensed something hollow, like an old, cracked bell. It is unspoken conversation, but quite loud nonetheless.

Maybe it is because I am cheap. I buy the least expensive meat in the supermarket. I pick up the CD that is scratched. I marry the girl with the wonky eyes. I avoid tall, confident people - the types with perfect hair and teeth. I surround myself with invalids and worriers, people who are busy pulling themselves apart. I refuse to invest in life - I refuse to gamble unless I know I will lose. My emotional existence is a false economy.

I am short, and therefore I have learned to aim low. Life is a long lesson in walking down the path of least resistance, and self-pity is a wonderfully comfortable embrace.

Today was National Del Amitri Day. The country stood still as men and women of all ages paid tribute to the Scottish pop-rockers of the mid-90s. Children wore velcro sideburns. At midday the church bells rang out with the opening chords of "Always the Last to Know".

I flicked the channels on my television. On BBC1, ITV and Channel 4, they were showing Tony Blair's speech, live from Westminster. BBC2 was showing a cookery show and Channel 5 was showing a documentary about Jordan learning how to pole vault.

The Prime Minister addressed the Commons in an open, democratic stance. His face looked tight and fresh and his hair looked uncommonly blonde and thin under the television lights. As he spoke, he gestured with his hands like an excitable marionette.

"...and so today, as a Nation, we remember Del Amitri. We stop and think how Justin Currie Iain Harvie and Iain Harvie affected us. We appreciate the democratic womb that bore them. Could any other nation have crafted this band? I don't think so. They were at once both universal and personal. They touched everyone, and yet everyone affected by their music felt that it was a personal gift - their songs were not statements; they were invitations to dialogue.

Their songs were crafted with sweat, guile and integrity. This was a band without pretension. They did not yearn for the empty stadium anthems of U2, nor did they dabble with the fickle retro fashion of Oasis. This was a band that understood the brave, simple immediacy of music. Everyone can hum the opening chords of "Nothing Ever Happens" and everyone can understand the simple lyrical conceit of "Driving With The Brakes On"...

I lost concentration as Mr Blair spoke. Outside, a sparrow was making heavy work of dragging a worm along the windowsill. I could hear a train rumbling in the distance.

I can never quite believe the softness of a woman's body. I prod my finger into a breast or a leg and the tip disappears into a pool of flesh. It's so unlike the architecture of a man's body. Someone once said that the straight line belongs to man, but the curve belongs to God. Well, it seems God designed women and gave the job of designing men to a mere mortal. And just as I fail to comprehend God, so I can never quite comprehend the strange aesthetic of a woman's body. Some things can be accepted, but never quite understood.

There is no such thing as reincarnation. It doesn't exist. I don't believe in it.

I believe in the "photocopy principle". That is to say... when a person dies, there soul does not disappear, but travels across space (and time) and inhabits a newborn child. But it is not a fresh, new soul. It's an inferior version of the soul that previously existed. And just like a photocopy, the more times a soul is replicated and recycled, the poorer its quality. Eventually the quality of a soul degrades to the degree where it is no longer functional (this may take thousands of years) and it is finally discarded and replaced with a new soul.

This is why some people seem barely alive; they are tired, jaded and despondant, despite the fact that they are young and healthy. They simply have a poor quality hand-me-down soul. Whereas those frustrating individuals who take life in their stride and appear happy and well-adjusted are the lucky recipients of freshly minted souls.

The allocation of souls is not based on merit; it's just a question of luck. Hey, I don't make the rules up.

I predict that Michael J Fox will rise to new levels of popularity this year and that Robert Redford and Meryl Streep will star in a film about Karen Blixen entitled "Outside Africa". Clive Sinclair will also have an extraordinary year and will revolutionise personal transport with his latest invention. The Smiths will hit new heights of atonal giddy misery. And don't worry... the miner's stike will end in March.

It is Christmas! I am celebrating by mentally freeing thousands of political prisoners around the world. I shall transmit my cheery festive thoughts to dictators and oligarchs across the globe, and they will spontaneously open the doors of their jails. Truly, it will be a sight to behold. If it works. If it doesn't work... well, I am only human (according to Dr Delfino).

Jesus was sitting in my front room, trying to play Stairway to Heaven on an acoustic guitar.

As everyone knows, Crouch End is famous for its serial killers, paedophiles and masked rapists.

Probably the most famous serial killer to come out of Crouch End was Miles Mason, who was known as "The Organic Butcher" by the press. Between 1995 and 2001, Mason killed and ate seven children from north London. However, he is famous not for the quantity of his victims, but for the bizarre manner of their selection. Mason was an ultra-liberal, Guardian reading teaching assistant, and his killings all reflected his educated, middle-class upbringing.

He selected his victims from local schools, and insisted that the children he ate be "organically farmed". If the kid was fat, greasy, raised in a council estate and cooped-up indoors playing on a Playstation, he would not be selected. Mason only targeted "free-range" children, who were encouraged by their parents to express themselves and get plenty of exercise. Mason believed that if it was immoral to eat a chicken that had spent its whole life in a tiny dark box, then the same applied to humans. He was keen to ensure that all his victims had happy, stress-free upbringings and were not simply battery-chavs on lifeless local estates.

Once he had captured his victims, he cooked them, adapting recipes from chef Nigel Slater's Real Cooking book. He ate the children with fresh herbs, locally-sourced vegetables and thick, crusty French bread. As he was plucking the skin off his unfortunate victims, he would often chide them on their unimaginative diets. "Nandos, eh? You could knock up a roast piece of cod with salsa verde and some vinegar mash in the time it takes you to go to Nandos."

Mason was the engineer of his own downfall. In June 2001 he kidnapped a pleasant young boy named Oliver Samuels and was preparing to kill and cook him. However, when the boy tearfully confessed that he had eaten four McDonalds in the last week, Mason marched the young boy to his parents' house, angrily rang the door bell and furiously harangued the Samuels on their son's dietary habits. Didn't they know the crap that went into McDonalds meals? Why didn't Oliver eat organic beef from the local butcher - just as cheap and twice as tasty.

The Samuels phoned the police, who arrived on the scene almost immediately. Mason attempted to flee, but was hampered by the fact that he did not own a car and insisted on riding a bicycle. As he was carted to the station, he yelled: "Honestly, there is absolutely no reason for you to have pursued me in a car... do you not realise the pollution you're causing? If just a few of you would actually walk, or ride bikes, London air might actually be breathable. You people disgust me."

Condaleeza Rice has been staying at my place for a few days. She likes to get away from Washington before Christmas. It's pretty fun.

This morning we woke at 5.30am and went jogging around Alexandra Park. We did laps of the duck pond, and each lap Condy would wave and shout a greeting to the ducks in a different language. The first lap was Russian, the second lap was Spanish and the third lap was Vietnamese. I lost count after that.

We showered (seperately, we are just friends) and then had a light breakfast. After that, we settled down in front of the piano. Condy tinkled the ivories and I sung - I do not have a good singing voice, but it seems to entertain her. We did some Rachmaninov and some Schubert and then some showtunes. She loves it when I sing "Send in the Clowns". Sometimes Yo-Yo Ma joins us on cello, but he's on tour at the moment.

We had a quick lunch and then watched the football. She's a massive Arsenal fan and won't hear a bad word about Thierry Henry.

"How can people say he's not a big game player?!? The amount of vital goals he's scored for the Gunners... I remember a Champions League game a couple of seasons ago when Arsenal needed to score and he had a fantastic header - and he's supposed to be useless with his head." I nodded and smiled. There's no point arguing with her.

Then we headed up to Muswell Hill and watched a movie. It was ok, but there was a group of kids being noisy in front of us. They wouldn't shut up, so she called some of her secret service goons and they shot them with tranquilisers. They'll wake up with a headache. Eventually.

The last few weeks have been strange. My sense-of-self has gone awry and I lost myself for a while.

Every so often, I like to check that my vision of the world roughly tallies with how other people see the world. I look at a pigeon. It is a plump grey bird. I check in an encyclopedia and find that, yes, pigeons are plump grey birds. I ask a neighbour. She confirms that pigeons are plump grey birds. I am pleased, but not content. I look at the time. It is 3.15pm. I phone the speaking clock and find that it is actually 3.16pm. I am not quite right, but I am only a minute out. I am basically in sync with the world. My concept of existence is roughly mirrored by empirical (yes, yes, I know the dangers of that word) evidence.

"No. It's a milk float," everyone else says. And they are totally sure it is a milkfloat. And that worries me.

And then last week, my sense of self dissolved almost totally. I remained convinced that I was themanwhofellasleep. But everyone I met saw me as someone else. The Indian man in the newsagent swore that I was a 12-year-old boy. The cashier in Boots seemed to believe I was a thirtysomething black woman. The man from the Liberal Democrats rang on my doorbell and assured me that I was an elderly homeowner. He talked of our previous chats with a certain degree of patronising familiarity.

I do not like it. I know that I am plural... I know that all is not as it seems. But I do not like it when this happens...

It was dark. I put on my dressing gown and wandered into the garden. I looked up at the moon. Someone had drawn a stupid smiley face on it.

I went to my monthly meeting of Artists Anonymous. It was in a cold, damp church hall in Hornsey. Everyone was bearded and scruffy - even the women. I had a thermos flask of bovril and sipped gingerly in the silence.

The first to speak was a painter. He looked like he hadn't slept in a week. "If I could... just paint... the perfect line... it would sum everything up. Everything would be better. If I could... just capture the way I feel and put it on canvas, everthing would be ok."

After him, a musician spoke up. He had sores on his lips. "I am looking... for the perfect melody. The greatest melody. I know that when I find it, everything in life will fall into place. The hidden symmetry of nature will reveal itself to me. I... just... can't find it. I find nice, good melodies, but they aren't enough. I need to find God's melody. I know it's out there somewhere."

Then a writer spoke. He looked like a writer. "My book isn't long enough. It's already 4000 pages long, but something is missing. There are characters. There is plot. There are metaphors and similies, but it doesn't... it doesn't make sense. It doesn't pin down life. It's still smaller than life. It needs to be bigger than life." A solitary tear crept down his cheek.

Finally, it was my turn. I didn't have a lot to say. "Um... I'd suggest that you're all making the same mistake. You think that art will solve your existential problems. Perhaps the problem isn't with art, it's within your lives."

They all looked at me with hot, glowering eyes. "What the fuck do you know about art anyway?" they hissed in unison.

Tottenham Hotspur football club had invited me to the club to give the team a motivational pep-talk before an important game. Their recent results have been poor, and as a long-suffering supporter, I felt it was my duty to try to help the club. Last year they had invited Paul McKenna to hypnotise the squad, but they had overpowered him and buried him by the halfway line. Next time a game is on TV see if you can see the mound.

I walked into the dressing room and looked around. The players were sitting in their kit, silently focused on the game ahead. The manager introduced me and then left the room. He didn't want to cramp my style.

I took a deep breath and begun: "You are all bad people. All of you. Week after week you disappoint me. At the beginning of every season I have such high hopes, and inevitably you let me down. It's not like it's happened once. Every single season you let me down. You're all overpaid and lazy. I hate you all. If your parents could see you now they would be unbearably ashamed. You are awful, rotten people. Yes, even you Jermaine! You guys slumber in the safety of mid-table, always promising more and never delivering the goods. And as soon as you start playing well, you sit there hoping that Chelsea or Arsenal will buy you. You are bad, bad people. I want you to go home tonight and apologise to your families. Apolgise to anyone you see. Repent your awfulness. Every day you should wake up feeling ashamed, because you're bad players and bad human beings. Now go out there and win a football game. It's not too much to ask."

Then I walked out. The door slammed on its hinges. I don't suppose they will invite me back next year. I don't care. I said everything I needed to say.

I was asleep. She didn't turn on the light, but I knew she was in the room as soon as she opened the door. I was half awash in dreams, so it didn't seem unusual. My eyes closed, I could hear her kicking off her shoes and taking off her clothes. I had no idea who she was but I didn't mind. She crawled into bed beside me and put her arm around me. Her skin was soft against my chest. I waited, hardly breathing. I could tell that her eyelids were fluttering. Then, it could have been minutes or hours... I heard her lightly snoring. It was a dry, slender wheeze. She was a smoker. I opened my eyes. I could only make out her silhouette, wrapped around me. But I could smell her. I didn't mind it at all. I closed my eyes and slept.

When I awoke the next morning, she was gone. But there was a note on my bedside table: "Last night was great. We should do it again. XXX."

That is what happens when you leave your door unlocked. Normally, it's not so pleasant.

My friend Phillip is known as "the man who killed one thousand blogs". His is not an empty title. Far from it. If you own a blog, you should fear him greatly.

Phillip had been unemployed for a couple of years when he saw an advert in the Haringay Advertiser. It was from a group known as the Association for Web Justice (AWJ) and they were in need of Standards Enforcers. He pondered the advert for a few curious seconds before calling the freephone number listed in the ad. The AWJ secretary explained that they were a legislative body funded by a right-wing think tank and were dedicated to improving the internet by ridding the world of ineffective blogs. Phillip's eyes lit up like Roman Candles. He hates blogs. He asked if he could have an interview for the position. He rushed out and bought a new tie from Sock Shop.

Needless to say, Phillip got the job. He's been doing it for 18 months now and is the leading Standards Enforcer in London. He spends the morning surfing the net, looking for tired, uninspired, unoriginal blogs. He doesn't have to look hard. Then he traces the blog owners. If they live within his catchment area (Greater London, Watford and Luton), he drives over to their house and confiscates their computers. The blog owners normally protest ("My blog is good! It's important that the public knows how many lagers I had with Lucy and Gary last week") but the AWJ is perfectly legal. And anyway, they have the best lawyers in town.

It may seem harsh, but Phillip believes in a zero-tolerance policy in regard to blogs. He says that if left unchecked, blogs will swamp the internet to the point where no other form of HTML existence will be possible.

So, if you run a blog and it's just another humdrum catalogue of your daily blah, beware. There may be a knock on your door at any moment.

A famous author came round for lunch. I won't tell you his name, except that his Christian name is Ian. He was tired and angry; he was having trouble with his latest novel. He complained that his agent didn't like the ending, and was pressing for a rewrite. It was too open-ended - the publishers wanted something less ambiguous and more conclusive.

I wasn't much in the mood for talking. As you may have noted from recent journal entries, I have not been in good spirits. I blame the weather. My grandfather was a hedgehog and I always have the urge to hibernate when winter approaches. I resent waking up on days such as these.

"Don't write it as a novel. There must be about 5000 sentences in here. Sell them seperately. They're pretty good."

"Sell them individually. As song lyrics. As catchphrases. As slogans. As poems. Bumper stickers... as anything... I don't know... use your imagination."

I smiled and pulled out a card. It was Larry Herbert's business card. Larry Herbert is the the best word-broker in the UK. If you want a word sold, he could sell it for top dollar. He once shifted 100 "ands" of mine for five thousand pounds.

I ate five pizzas. I drank two bottles of scotch. I smoked 400 cigarettes. But it did no good. It did no good at all.

In anticipation of Trick or Treaters, I had switched off all the lights and drawn the curtains, so they would assume that there was no-one in the house. Nonetheless, the doorbell rung. And of course, I answered it.

"Who are you supposed to be?" I asked one of the children, who was wearing a fake beard and a pair of old glasses.

"Oh. Ok. Yeah, that's pretty good, I suppose. Just a moment... I'll see what I have in the house."

"Insulin. I figured that you kids eat so many sweets over Halloween, that at least one of you will eventually develop diabetes. So I always hand out insulin instead. Ask your parents and they'll show you how to inject. You won't like it at first, but you'll get used to it. In a few months you'll forget that you ever survived without it."

Today I talked to the man selling the Socialist Worker outside Wood Green library. He was in a frightful state. His skin was blotchy and irritated as though all the frustration and hatred in his body was trying to force its way out through his pores. Every few seconds a new spot would appear on his face, swell to the size of a pea and then explode, projecting acidic pus onto the street. The paving stones were pockmarked and uneven - it was clear that weeks of pus had eroded the concrete.

"Everything," he hissed, wiping his greasy hair away from his eyes. "Everything in the world. Everything that springs forth from human corruption. Everything born of original capitalist sin. You... are.... all... such.... scum." He was having trouble speaking. It was as if his physical body was merely a conduit from some extradimensional source, and was struggling to contain his accursed essence. He looked as though he might explode or implode at any moment.

"Hmmmm... I am not actually scum. I am ok. I've killed a few people, but those were mistakes. I do my bit." I smiled as I spoke.

"You don't understand," he barked, his head juddering uncomfortably from side to side. "If you're not with me, you're against me. To... be... good... is not enough. You must be ideologically sssssound. You must believe in the eradication of human choice. You must worship the dog god dogma."

"Um...no thanks," I said. "I am sure you're a nice man and everything, but you're scaring people and everyone thinks you smell."

Walter Matthau came round for a beer after dinner. He's been dead for a couple of years, but he's still better company than most people I know. That face... I could kiss it if it wasn't decomposing.

"Pshaw! I can't complain," he said, flicking a maggot off his lapel, "though the food is dreck."

"It's like being alive, except there's less rush. I smoke a cigar, I play gin rummy, I listen to the radio. I chase the girls a bit, but dead girls aren't as nice as living broads. No class. They've seen to much. But you know... it's ok. It's like living in Florida."

He looked well. It embarassed me that he looks so at ease with himself, dead, while I looked like a nervous wreck. It has not been a good week for me.

He caught a cab back to the afterlife. I offered to pay, but he smiled and waved away my gesture... he is a gentleman.

There is a spare room in my house. It's filled with the butts of every cigarette I have ever smoked. There are 40,000 of them. I can't bear to throw them away. I am a hoarder of useless things.

I was sat on a bench with a woman. The sky was clear and the air was crisp and fresh.

"I love autumn," she said. "It's the colours. All that red and orange. Look... it almost looks like that tree is on fire."

"It is on fire," I replied. "I set it on fire. Actually... we should probably move from here. It's getting quite hot."

Today Morrissey came round for tea. It was unexpected, and there was no food in the house, so I had to give him a plate of iron filings. Later on, I had fun pulling him around the lounge with a giant magnet.

Morrissey surrounds himself with a large entourage. He pays them to insult him and make inappropriate suggestions. "Why don't we do a two-step remix of the new single?" "You should work with Nelly - he's very hot at the moment." "You're past it. You're balding and no one thinks you're relevant anymore."

Then, when he's had a few hours of abuse, he tells them to leave and moans: "Ohhh... do you see what I have to put up with?"

I was wandering in the rain, lonely as a cow. I found myself in a small, dark club in a Soho sidestreet. It was called "Club Delusion". I wandered in. It was awful.

The room was full of short, ugly men, dressed fashionably in suit jackets and jeans. They looked at each other nervously, waiting to pounce if they felt a fellow clubber was not dressed fashionably enough - or worse still, if they were dressed too fashionably. For every three men, there was was a tall, bored-looking woman, staring down at the men, possibly searching for early signs of baldness.

A man called Jack hurriedly approached me and thrust his hand into mine. It turned out that he was the owner of the club. One of his eyes was focused on mine, but the other flitted wildly in its socket. (He later explained his eye condition - it allows him to talk to one person, but keep an eye on the rest of the club, in case someone more important walks in).

I asked him why the club reeked so strongly of failure and evil. He smiled proudly.

"I wanted to set up a club where London media types could really revel in their delusions," he said. He swept his arm around the room, pointing at the hunched masses. "Aren't they magnificent? Not one of them is happy. They all think of themselves as movers and shakers on the cutting edge of media and fashion, yet in reality they have no influence at all. They come here in small packs and network with each other in the hope of making a vital breakthrough. It's fantastic. None of the guys has any desire other than to land a job commissioning bad television and boasting about the amount of coke they do."

"They are here to look bored. They are very good at it. I hire them to add some glamour. None of them would touch the guys here with a bargepole, because they all have delusions that they are supermodels, when most of them just work as PA's in the city. There's a fantastic lack of interplay between the men and the women here. I have a motto for this place: "everyone goes home alone". That's why the music is so loud... so people can't really talk. I want that kind of atmosphere where people can stare glumly across the bar at each other, wearing fixed smiles and kidding themselves that they're metrosexual trendsetters," he looked up. His roving eye was glowing and pulsing in its socket. "Can you excuse me for a second," he said. "I've just seen someone I think may work for E4."

He pushed past me and rushed to the door, where a tall bouncer had a small Scottish man in a headlock. I didn't see him again.

I got the tube home. Somewhere down the carriage, a drunk was shouting out incomprehensible verse. I admired him.

Today I got on a train. As soon as I'd gotten myself settled and found my copy of Metro, the train fell into the sea. My Metro was soaked. This country is going to the dogs.

When I was a young man, I used to write poetry! What a fool I was! I wrote of destiny, and tragedy, of autumn leaves and summer rain. I imagined that history would recall me as a perceptive dreamer whose sensitive verses has articulated the agony of the age. Needless to say, it was a phase that I grew out of.

It all ended rather awkwardly at a poetry reading, where I killed four people with a badly rhyming couplet. The pen is truly mightier than the sword.

Sometimes I am contacted by old friends or academics who plead with me to revive my poetic ambitions, but to no avail. Poets are weedy ingrates who chew gum and smell of stale urine. And I do not chew gum.

However, I do fondly remember some of my poems. And in the spirit of nostalgia, I will present you with some short works.

This is a poem I wrote to commemorate the death of my good friend John F Kennedy. He was a sweet man, but never presidential material. I always imagined he'd end up washing cars in a local garage.

Many academics have analysed the role of the pig in my poetry. I wish they wouldn't. I wish they would shave and get a proper job.

This is a poem I wrote about the death of Diana, princess of Wales. She was also a nice girl, but a bit needy. A lot of cultural commentators felt that this poem summed up the mood of the nation in those hysterical days that followed her demise.

The world of poetry is poorer for my absence. But my life is greatly enriched by its lack of poetry.

I sat in the waiting room outside Dr Merrick's clinic. He's my new psychoanalyst. I am not sure whether I trust him or not. He seems very nervous, which doesn't make me feel good about myself. Also, his trousers are always stained. I think it's salad cream.

On the waiting room wall there is a poster. It reads: "No. I am NOT the elephant man. Nor am I related to him in any way. You may think your jokes and jibes are funny, but they are NOT."

After I'd waited half an hour, Mary, Dr Merrick's softly-spoken assistant, told me it was my turn to see the doctor. I shuffled into the room. There was a spotlight over the bed, but Dr Merrick himself was shrouded in darkness. I could hardly see him, but I could see the plumes of smoke that drifted across the room from his clove cigarettes.

I lay down and explained that I had a lot on my mind at the moment. I told him that there were too many thoughts in my head, and that they all seemed to be fighting for control of my mind.

He coughed again and explained that the subconscious worked in very much the same way as a flight on an airplane. Sometimes the subconscious mind is overbooked - there are too many subconscious thoughts jostling for the same positions. When this happens, a person's mental air hostess upgrades some of the thoughts from subconscious to conscious and they occupy the front part of the mind, where they are separated from the subconscious by a thin curtain.

Then he coughed again - loudly - and told me that my time was up. I'd only been there for eight minutes.

Dr Bruce Banner came round for tea. He is always very highly strung. And oh-so-fussy. No milk in the tea. Just one sugar. No gelatine in the boiled sweets. He gets on my nerves a bit.

"No. I didn't know that. But I should have guessed. You don't like anything, do you?"

"Don't say that!" he gripped his mug of tea and the veins in his temples bulged with blood.

"I don't know why I bother with you," I said. "You never like anything I do. You just come here to complain."

He stood up, spilling his tea on his lap. He shook a fist at me. "That's not fair! You know how difficult this is for me!" he wailed.

"La-de-da, Poor old Bruce Banner, blah, blah, blah, gamma radiation, blah, blah, blah, huge green muscles.... it's just me, me, me with you, isn't it Bruce?"

I gingerly prodded his face. He was right. What had appeared to be shaving foam was indeed his face. His jaw was white and creamy-looking, but it was firm to the touch, like a fresh mushroom.

Some time ago I set up a detective agency. It just seemed like something to do to pass the time - I didn't really expect any clients, but I liked the idea of having my name stencilled on a glass door.

I was sitting at my desk, enjoying the angle at which my fedora fell over eyes, when the doorbell rung. It was a fat, frumpy, middle-aged woman. She looked nervous and clutched her handbag to her chest. I was disappointed... I had always assumed that only glamorous, svelte, young femme fatales went to detective agencies. Once again I have been left stranded by false information on television.

She sat across from me at the desk and I offered her a mint. She declined, but seemed grateful for the gesture.

"Lady," I said. "When most people go missing, it's because they don't want to be found." I had no idea if this was true or not, but it was something I'd once overheard on the radio, and it sounded like it might comfort her.

"Oh no, not my Gerald! He's not like that at all. We're very much in love," she sobbed.

"He disappeared a week ago. I saw him after supper on Thursday, and then I popped into the lounge to get a book for bedtime, and when I returned to the kitchen, he was nowhere to be found."

"Um.... he's about six inches wide, with a horn-rimmed frame, and two clear panels of glass."

"Lady. That's not your husband, those are your spectacles. You've just described your glasses - and if I might be so bold, they are hanging around your neck on a chain."

She frantically grabbed at her chest, recovered her glasses and hurriedly put them on her nose. She blinked like an owl. Her eyes suddenly looked huge behind glass.

"Oh! Thank you! Thank you so much! I am always doing this... I am afraid I often mistake my husband for my glasses. I have been lost without them for the last week... I am very near-sighted and life without my spectacles is unbearable!

"What about your husband?" I asked. "Is he missing or not? Are you even married at all?"

"I am afraid Gerald died some years ago," she confessed. "But you seem nice. And I'm so very lonely. Could I have that mint?"

People always talk about drowning kittens in sacks, but it's really not that easy. Let's not even start on the pain of chasing a cat, stunning it, and then getting it into the sack. My problem is that the cats always seem to float. It's not like I fit them with inflatable armbands or anything. I just shove them in the sack.

But when I dump them in the river, they refuse to sink. They just bob along the surface, getting mewing and floating downstream towards the sea.

Today I went to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. It was in an old church near Muswell Hill. There were five or six men and a couple of women. I didn't say much, I just sat in a corner, nursing my pint of Guinness and slurping unnecessarily loudly.

Everyone spoke in hushed tones. There were silences and occasional bursts of dark laughter. Eventually Richard, the guy in charge, turned to me and spoke. He was fat and bald and had no discernable eyebrows. He wore a wide, generous smile. His teeth were yellow.

"Well, yes. You don't have to give your real name. But it would be nice to know what to call you."

"Ummm... ok, Captain Savage. Where would you like to begin? How long have you been drinking?"

"I don't drink. I never have," I admitted. "I've always been more interested in the anonymous part of Alcoholics Anonymous. I have always yearned to be anonymous... to annihilate my personality and history."

"Ok," Richard looked bemused and puzzled. I could see he was wrestling with his innate goodwill. "So... you don't have any kind of drink problem? Because this is Alcoholics Anonymous. If you don't have a drink problem, you probably shouldn't be here."

"Yes. I understand. I don't mean to be peevish, but this place should really be renamed. At the moment it's called Alcoholics Anonymous... if you're not interested in people being anonymous, then you should just call it Alcoholics."

Some of the alcoholics had begun to mutter under their breath, and I began to feel unwelcome in the small, dusty room. Outside, it was almost dark.

I spent most of today staring at a blank piece of paper, waiting for a message to appear in invisible ink. But the message didn't appear. It turns out it was just a blank piece of paper.

To talk of money is distasteful. I was rich when Rockefeller was a mewling pup. I have overseen empires that would make Donald Trump quake with fear. Money is my unnecessary evil. Nonetheless, sometimes I am obliged to work. For some form of social interaction, if nothing else.

One of my jobs is editing the "witty" comebacks used by Anne Robinson on The Weakest Link. Anne is a nice enough woman, but has never been suited to the harsh glare of television. When the bright lights in the studio shine into her tiny eyes, she freezes and is reduced to a tongue-tied blob of plastic and silicone. Therefore, in order for her to maintain a level of control, everything she says is tightly scripted by a crack team of writers. And for my sins, I am one of those writers.

A week or so before production, Anne sends me a list of ideas - things she might like to say to contestants on the show. I then work on the comments, and fax them over to the BBC. Sadly, Anne has a somewhat limited imagination, and all her proposed comments are unbroadcastable insults. I simply tear them up and send her the same list of snide, semi-dry comebacks and she uses them instead. You'd recognise them if you've ever watched the programme. Last week the list she sent me was the worst yet - It was like an angry tourette's sufferer stabbing a piece of paper with a cheap biro. Every single one of her proposed comments was "You shits. You fucking shits. I hate you all." I was almost tempted to leave them unchanged, but I feel sorry for the poor woman. She is a lost soul in the cruel world of early evening television entertainment.

The film was about a young Indian girl in England who wants to be a footballer. However, her family are devout Muslims and want her to live a traditional life and get married. She is torn. She loves football - it's all she thinks about - but she also loves her family and doesn't want to disappoint them. Eventually, she decides to pursue her dream of becoming a footballer. Sadly, she breaks her legs and is unable to play anymore. She is penniless and her family shuns her. She is forced into prostitution to earn a living. She becomes a heroin addict. Her addiction consumes her and at the end of the film she is found dead in a council bedsit, having overdosed on smack.

There is much talk of parallel universes. It is all hogwash and heffalumps. There are no such things.

Scientists - or frauds as I call them - endlessly theorise about time and space. They claim that for every possible decision, there are infinite outcomes, and that these theoretical outcomes form splinter universes that run parallel to our own. It hardly seems likely. One universe seems more than enough.

However, I will concede there are moments when the universe plays tricks on me... when realities appear to diverge and converge.

These blips only occur at bus-stops: If I pass a bus-stop, and ponder getting a bus, a strange thing happens. Reality seems to split in two. In one reality, I wait for the bus and ride it home. In the other reality, I cannot be bothered to wait for the bus and I walk home. These two realities juxtapose, and whichever decision I take, I am consumed by anxiety and the two "themanwhofellasleeps" race each other home. Sometimes the "me" who took the bus wins. Sometimes the "me" who walked wins. It doesn't seem to matter who gets home first.... it's the strange sense of unreality and anxiety that defeats me.

"My life is torment," said the goth. "With every breath that I take, God mocks me."

"The Incubi and Succubi of boredom and sterility stalk me," he continued. "I can feel the icy fingers of Death clutching my breast."

"I am the God of Fuck," he said. "I am the Prince of dread, of doom, of nothingness."

"Ok, I'll have to stop you there. Look... life isn't so bad. I mean, life IS that bad, but the don't be so melodramatic. The thing about life... it's not about extremes. It's not about God, or death or suffering. It's about banality. It's about the humdrum details: tube journeys, weather, itchy skin, Sunday afternoons, football matches. You can't exist on a diet of high drama and excitement. Life isn't lived on the edges, it's lived far from the edges, in the safe little corners of everyday... however dull and inconsequential they might be."

Once again I found myself in Wood Green shopping centre. Over the haze of neon and chirp of hospital radio, I noticed a commotion in the market place. There were the usual booths, offering