Andrew Collins's Blog, page 58

Day Four

Important milestone to log at the start of Day Four: I finished reading one of my books last night before bed. The Kennedys by Peter Collier and David Horowitz, first published in 1984, which means the saga ends just as David Kennedy dies. He was one of Robert Kennedy's 11 kids. (Did you know the Kennedys were Catholic?) It's been a rip-roaring read and I recommend it to anyone who's interested in Camelot but doesn't necessarily want to read lots of conspiracy theories about who shot JFK and RFK. It's about the family, first and foremost, and the effect the deaths had on the family are what Collier and Horowitz are interested in.

Before the day begins, I am up very early and uploading a few CDs onto my laptop which I have managed to get from 6 Music: Submarine EP by Alex Turner, Grinderman 2 by Grinderman and Witchhazel by Matt Berry (I'm meeting him later when he guests on Roundtable).

Now I have to stop writing this and start writing a) five Films Of The Day for Radio Times (I usually split these duties with Barry Norman, but he's been pressed into service memorialising Elizabeth Taylor, so I'm doing his), and b) some jokes for 7 Day Sunday. These must all be done and delivered by lunchtime. It's another of those days where I split my day fairly evenly between writing and talking. These are the two main things that I do for money.

Please note, whoever it was who said they found this week of blog entries "creepy" and foreboding – possibly because of my black t-shirts – that I am wearing a bright green stripy top today.

Phew. I've been out and about a lot this week, with no clear days, so have only passed through the British Library sporadically and for short shifts. I completed the five Films Of The Day for Radio Times before I left the house: for the record, Wanted, Donnie Darko, Just Friends, The Kingdom and High School Musical 3, as we aim to please a wide audience with our choices and terrestrial premieres are automatically shunted to the top of the pile, for self-evident reasons of public service. If I have my own reservations about any of the choices, I am allowed to express them, and I made clear that you have to be child of a certain age to enjoy High School Musical, and I am not a child.

I sent my Radio Times copy through at 08.57 and travelled up to King's Cross to write all my topical gags for 7 Day Sunday at the Library, sending those through, completed, at 11.24, and that's my urgent work done. Incidentally, I seem to have been having more success logging on to the Library's free wi-fi this week – it has been playing me up since before Christmas and despite their best efforts, the dedicated IT Support people couldn't crack the reason why. Maybe they have fixed something at their end using all the information I gave them, including my AirPort ID number. It's still not 100% efficient, but after that nightmare patch during which I couldn't even log in and was forced instead to resentfully use up the monthly capacity of my dongle, I'm grateful for anything.

That said, I couldn't get a network at all when I needed to send off my work, so I was forced into Costa in St Pancras (the station itself, paradise that it is, has free wi-fi). Here, I cashed in the chips on my loyalty swipe card for a £2.45 medium soya latte – unlike the other chains, they do not charge extra for soya – and completed my business. I can't work out if it's the Library or my ageing MacBook that's the problem, but if the AirPort picks up St Pancras wi-fi instantly, it can't be me, can it? I found myself at the centre of an uninvited commotion in Costa when, having picked up my coffee and paid, the metal rack where they display some cakes fell off the counter and onto me. It crashed to the floor, and I heard myself exclaim, "Fuck!" It must have been pretty precariously balanced to fall off the counter, but my first thought was to apologise to those in the queue behind me for saying, "Fuck!" "Sorry for swearing," I said, which I hope was appreciated.

The Costa staff, whose rapid response was admirable, asked me if I was OK. I was OK. I was more worried about a) swearing in mixed company, and b) the wasted cakes. Maybe they put them back in the booby-trapped display rack and sold them. They were certainly picked up within the boundaries of the Five Second Rule.

Anyway, here's a picture of me in the Piazza outside the British Library to calm me, and you, down.

(If you look in the bottom left-hand corner behind the woman's head, you can just make out one of the seven yellow signs that read CAUTION: STEPS.)

Another achievement: yesterday, I finished reading almost every word of last week's New Yorker, which included a great expanded book review about Major General William "Wild Bill" Donovan who was put in charge of America's Office of Strategic Services during the Second World War, a lyrical overview of Abbas Kiarostami's films, a hilarious memoir by Tina Fey about her time as head writer on Saturday Night Live, a review of a New York revival of Jason Miller's play That Championship Season and a nice piece about the father of gerontology, G Stanley Hall. Add that to the BP oil spill epic and you've got what counts as a vintage issue of the magazine. I don't usually read all of it. The new issue has arrived to replace it, and there's one piece I fancied on first flick through, something about writer's block in Hollywood. Could be a bit heavy with roughage, this one. We'll see.

My next stop is a studio in Central London where Mr Blue Sky is being edited, and where the new scene I have written will be recorded. Enjoying the Grinderman album, by the way.

Day Three Pt2

So, back end of Day Three and another 6 Music show ticked off. Really getting my feet under the desk of someone else's show now. It always happens when you get a week: the rhythm, the routine, the reclaimed relationship with the rest of the team, which is two other people but always seems to change slightly since the last time you did the show as the BBC do like to move staff around, almost imperceptibly. Anyway, I reached halfway at 5.30pm. Sad and happy at the same time. Sad to be in the home strait, but happy to be in the home strait, if you see what I mean. (I am working flat out to fit in my other work, so will enjoy the time I get back next week, but broadcasting on 6 Music is my favourite thing, really.)

In my hands above you will see one of my Seven Inches Of Love, a regular feature of my own which, as "Super Sub" (I think that's official), I sort of apply each time I get a week or more to fill. It's an excuse to bring in a vintage seven-inch vinyl single from my flight case at home and play it on the radio. This is more than I can do with it at home, as I don't have a record player. So, indulgent, but fun, and tonight's was Tom Baker, b-side of Boys & Girls by The Human League, from 1981. A gatefold seven-inch sleeve with a fabulous cover. It sounded great on the radio, all moody and electronic and foreboding. I remember my friend Dave buying it for me, because he was buying a copy for himself and he asked me if I'd like him to buy me my copy (physically buy, not pay for). So he handed it over one evening, at Film Club, in fact, and I remember it being in a plain brown paper bag. He'd traced the cover image in pencil onto the bag – a detail I forgot to mention on air.

Anyway, here, for the record, are my excellent team this week: Alannah and Paul. She revealed today that someone told her she looked like the little boy who appears on the quiz show in the film Magnolia (from whose soundtrack we played Wise Up by Aimee Mann). This made me smile. She sort of does. But it's not an insulting comparison for someone to have made, I don't think.

So, an action shot from the 6 Music studio to end this entry. I left my blue scarf either in the studio or on the back of the chair in the office where Nemone puts her coat. Hope it's still there tomorrow. I have become attached to it.

Watched another Law & Order UK and an episode of Battlestar Galactica back at home: Colonial Day from Season One. (We're working our way through the box set again. It's an annual ritual now.) Nice to see Starbuck all scrubbed up, although we all prefer her in her work clothes, right? Oh, and Law & Order UK was good, and had a meaty part for Ruth from Spooks, but was spoiled by something that obviously didn't translate from the original American script about the death penalty. They should have just dropped it, but instead squeezed it to make it fit by cooking up a totally erroneous thread about a referendum on capital punishment, which nobody in this country wants. Clang!

Day Three

I begin this at home, in that calm period before I leave the house and throw myself on the mercy of public transport during the couple of hours that used to constitute rush hour but which has been relaxed and expanded to include everybody who roughly goes to work between 7am and 9.30am. Which, in London, is a lot of people. Day three, then. You may or may not have noticed that I have been wearing black t-shirts all week. This is unusual. I have tried to "grow up" in terms of how I dress over the last six months and have started to wear shirts as a matter of course. But I threw an old black t-shirt on and I quite liked the way it looked around my neck again. Being me, I have plucked out an identical black t-shirt every day. I'll grow out of it again. But with the short new haircut, it's a close as I'll get to looking younger now that I am not young. The danger is, as you get older, "younger" clothes make you look even older! Why did nobody ever sit me down and tell me when I was young what being old would be like? (Still, I had Nick Cave's Tender Prey on my iPod on the way to the station this morning, and City Of Refuge made me feel alive and vital and excited and dark, and that's not something I expect to lose, even when I'm 56, or 66, or 76.)

I have reverted back from Israel by Martin Gilbert to When The Lights Went Out by Andy Beckett, the book I was reading before I allowed Israel to queue-jump when The Promise was on telly. I have returned to Beckett's book, because a) it didn't deserve being bumped, it's absolutely brilliant, and b) I have grown weary of the way Gilbert tells the story of Israel, which is a compelling story that needs to be told, but perhaps not in the relentless, plodding detail of the way Gilbert tells it. I may yet return to it, but for now, I'm back in the 70s in Britain, and enjoying the fourth section, The Reckoning, which begins in 1944 at the Bretton Woods economic forum where the International Monetary Fund was founded. Britain in 1944 has been described by Beckett as one of the "creaking left-leaning nations" in need of international handouts. Between 1947 and 1971, Britain borrowed more from the IMF than any other country! It's a compelling story, but compellingly told. (The copy of the book I have is an advanced proof which Faber kindly sent me. That's why it's all orange and plain. But I kind of like it.)

And here is today's packed lunch, minus the boiled egg, which was in a pan boiling when I posed the still life. I have a packed day ahead, too, with a long stretch at Radio Times, followed immediately by 6 Music. The elements of my lunch will be released into my system at regular intervals. Well, that's the plan. I might just scoff the chilli and the yogurt in one powerless sitting. We'll see. (Can this diary get any more interesting?)

On the train, which was standing-room-only (I don't even look for seats on trains in London; I stand by default, assuming that if I sit down, someone more deserving will get on and I'll have to give up my seat anyway, so I cut out the middle man), I saw a man reading The Economist, who carefully tore a section of the top of the front cover off and tucked it into his pocket, leaving a gaping hole in his magazine. What was it? Was it something from the advert on the reverse side? This was at the top of the page, don't forget, so it can't have been a phone number or a form, which usually appear at the bottom of an ad. Was it a coverline that he really liked? Or was it actually the magazine's logo? Maybe he was embarrassed about reading a right wing magazine in a recession caused by the very system the magazine seeks to support. (When I was a Marxist, I had a letter printed in the New Statesmen correcting the figures given by the then-editor of The Economist in a column he'd written. I was very proud. My figures were based on research I'd done while writing my biography of Billy Bragg – they were to do with the old truism that standard of living improved under Thatcher, when in fact it improved for the richest people, but got worse for the poorest, a far less convenient truth for her cheerleaders, which included the then-editor of The Economist. This may well turn out to have been the only time in my life where I felt confident enough to challenge anyone on economics.)

A mention, I think, for Before The Fall, a mind-blowing new compilation album from Ace Records gathering together 24 original tracks that have been covered by The Fall. Outside of the obvious ones – the Kinks, R. Dean Taylor, Sister Sledge – these are mostly proper nuggets and obscurities covering rockabilly, Australian punk, US garage, dub reggae, novelty pop and at least one entry from a 1974 New Faces. I can't stop listening to it. Mark E Smith is a certified genius against whom all geniuses must be measured, and this album reveals new layers to his brilliance, without him even playing or singing a note. Dan Maier, TV Burp writer and Karaoke Circus judge, helped compile it with the admirable people at Ace. Details here. A few years ago, they asked me to provide a Top 10 for their website, based on their rich back catalogue; although the biographical details are woefully out of date, it's still there.

I arrived at Radio Times to find a new computer on my desk. In the subsection of the open-plan office where the Film Unit sits and where I get an actual desk despite only being in one day a week, we have been magically upgraded from the old monitors to these slimline new ones with no big, humming monolith beneath the desk. Typically for Apple, you have to feel around an apparently smooth, buttonless area on the back of the monitor to find the on/off button. (I have looked it up and it seems to be a 27″ iMac. Nice.)

As you can see from the picture above, which I have taken using Photo Booth on my MacBook, I like to have both computers open when I am at my Radio Times desk. I am like Rick Wakeman. And, instead of actually writing 650 words about motion-capture technology for the magazine, I have just taken a picture with the iMac's Photo Booth application, just because I can. Now back to work.

Even though you can't tell, this building is where they film The Thick Of it, specifically the bits where they're walking up and down big modern wooden staircases. It is called The Media Centre, and you can't get a mobile signal in it. There is a measure of irony there, isn't there?

I will post this now. I will always remember where I was when I found out that Elizabeth Taylor had died: sat at my desk in the Radio Times office, packing my bag to leave, having satisfactorily written 650 words on motion-capture technology and Disney's decision to pull the plug on the proposed digital remake of Yellow Submarine, directed by Robert Zemeckis, following the box office failure of Mars Needs Moms, which is released here in the first week of April, but has bombed over there. Because Radio Times is a weekly, we don't really go big on obituaries, as they always look out of date. I don't imagine I'll get through the rest of the day without being asked to write something about Elizabeth Taylor for the magazine to mark her passing. It is sad that she has died, and she really was one of the great movie stars, and the first actress to be paid $1,000,000. (When she co-starred opposite Lassie in Lassie Come Home, she was paid less than the dog. Mind you, the dog, Pal, was male.)

Day Two Pt 2

Here I am again, "shifty", as reader Kiki observed below of these diary photos. Yes, I certainly feel shifty when I take them of myself in public. I'm at 6 Music in this one, in the main office. You can see some furniture, a pot plant, desks and a framed, blue 6 Music logo behind me. Day two continued with a packed lunch at my desk. It's not "my" desk, it's the "Presenter Hotdesk," which means, when you're filling in for Steve, you find that Nemone has left her coat over the back of the chair, as if perhaps she's a holidaymaker reserving a deckchair. I put my coats over her coat. I like to come into the office at least an hour before going on the air – although today I came in two hours before as the library had started to stifle me. In this regard, I am dissimilar to other presenters, especially Steve himself, who prefers to rock up moments before 4pm. That's the kind of insouciant professional that he is. I like to decompress, and use the printer, and have my packed lunch at the desk.

This is my recession-beating plan: on a Sunday I cook up a huge cauldron of something like chilli, or a pasta concoction, maybe even a lasagne if I'm in sauce-making mode. This I then decant into a Tupperware tub for the next five working days, so that wherever I find myself on my self-employed travels, I can eat lunch without giving money to anyone. It's a fabulously controlled, cost-effective and fun way of life. Like being a schoolboy again, except with much better food. I usually carry the tub, an apple, a bag of mixed nuts and mixed dried fruit, a boiled egg, and a pot of yogurt, often accompanied by a small clingfilm parcel of soft fruit, such as blueberries or strawberries. This keeps me going all day, if I carefully dispense it at intervals. (I often eat the nuts on the journey home, to keep my protein levels up when they are dipping.) Can you imagine how much money I save by not buying expensive readymade sandwiches and ready-packaged tubs of fresh fruit and croissants and pastries? £££££££££££s every day! And I know what I'm eating.

Since it's in the public domain, I guess I am allowed to say that it was my friend Billy Bragg's mum who has died. (I found out from his website.) He's had to cancel a US tour because of it, and nobody in the US would deny him the time to grieve. I met his mum, Marie, on a few occasions while writing my Billy Bragg biography, and afterwards at Bragg family events. She went through a load of Billy's stuff with us in her front room in Barking and was always funny and honest about her feelings. A key contributor to the book which Billy wanted to be definitive, she was a formidable lady, and my thoughts are with Billy and his family.

Because I have "product" available through Go Faster Stripe, I have access under the bonnet of the website and can see how many of the C&H CDs and my audiobook and now DVD have sold. This is potentially dangerous, especially when something has just been released, such as Secret Dancing, as you can become obsessed in the same way that you can become obsessed by ticket sales when the website shows a seating plan. I won't reveal the figures, but I will say a big thank you to all who have ordered it so far. It's only been out for a few days and already it's selling well. This is so gratifying and flattering. I hope those of you who have received it – and I know how efficient the service is – enjoyed it. It's available here.

Another enjoyable show between 4-7pm on 6 Music. Because of the way we are arranged, there is only one fully live studio (the other two are for pre-records), and this means "handovers" are not conducted through the glass, as is traditional, but on the hoof. In some ways, this is a symbol of 6 Music: the incumbent DJ packing up his or her things and vacating, while the incoming DJ arrives and unpacks theirs, all the while exchanging pleasantries and banter. Nemone, who precedes me, is of course winding down to vacating her slot full-time – to Radcliffe and Maconie – before moving to weekend breakfast, so these will be my last available handovers with her in this current "life" of 6 Music. (When she arrives in Jo Good's slot on Saturday mornings, I will have vacated.) Anyway, due to a conversation about Andy Cole the footballer which I hadn't been party to, Nemone and her team were discussing the distinction between Andrew and Andy (apparently Cole is trying to re-establish himself as an Andrew – if you follow football, you'll know this). I explained that I had been Andrew from the age of nought to around the age of 13 when I became self-conscious and switched to Andy. Nemone asked when I'd changed and I said, "When I became a man," jokingly. She probed further: "When did you become a man." Rather crudely, and because this was all taking place off-air, I provided further, biological evidence of when, for a teenage boy, that might have been. I regretted the crudity of the reference, but I think I got away with it in mixed and mostly female company. It's the sort of thing Richard Herring would say, and just about get away with. I said it for shock value. It's a weird thing, the handover. So little time to say anything meaningful.

The handover at 7pm to Manchester does not really exist. Your producer, in my case Paul, calls the control room and gets them to switch "the network" from London to Manchester, and the studio in London is left for Gideon to take back at 10pm. This makes the vacation of the studio at 7pm rather quiet and low key, and perhaps even a little melancholy. You leave the studio empty. But we had fun in it for three hours.

Tired again in the evening, back home in front of the telly, but I managed to stay awake for part two of Nuremberg, a 2000 TV miniseries recorded from an obscure movie channel starring Alec Baldwin and Brian Cox, which I thoroughly enjoyed, except when the writer felt the need, or obligation, to put in a little love affair between Baldwin's prosecutor and his female cohort. Whether this really happened at the Nuremberg trials in 1945-46, I don't know. I certainly don't care. I'm now in the market for a book about Nuremberg. As if I need another one on the pile.

Day Two

You're going to get bored of these Photo Booth application photos, yes you are. Day two: I'm in St Pancras station again, not because I love it, which I do, but because I had need to buy three cards from Paperchase. A birthday card for my recently married niece, a Mother's Day card for my mum on April 3 and, with great sadness, a sympathy card for a friend whose mother has died. Probably best not to try and read anything too profound into the life of a card shop. Its job is simply to help us mark events. Needless to say, if you ever think that a card sent at the time of someone's passing is merely a token, then you can't have lost someone close to you: a card really means something in that horrible aftermath.

I saw a man collecting for charity in one of the overground stations I pass through this morning. He was dressed as Scooby Doo. He looked daft, but that's the point, isn't it? It seems that we will only give money to charity if someone does something daft. In the same tunnel between stations was a homeless man, sitting on the ground with his back against the wall and with a gorgeous black Labrador curled into a seemingly contented doughnut next to him, on a blanket. Two potentially deserving cases for our spare change, one dressed as a dog, the other with an actual dog for a companion. I am the type of person who's statistically more likely to give money to a homeless person with a dog. I wish my change to go toward feeding the dog, but cannot specify this, without buying dog food and giving that to the man. I feel sorry for the dog when I should feel sorry for the man. I do feel sorry for the man, of course, but it's the dog I feel most sorry for. This is not an easy thing to admit. We who have homes, and are thus in deep, deep debt to whoever gave us our mortgage, do not have "spare" change – how can we have? But we do have a home, albeit one that we mostly do not own.

Yesterday, I took the time to help a confused man who wished to get a Tube train to Alperton, which is far west up the Piccadilly Line. I couldn't work out if he was foreign, or just confused, and he had a lot of teeth missing, so his hyperventilating voice was made less comprehensible by the whistling gaps. He called out to anyone who was passing as he had studied the Tube map and was still baffled by it. Was he in the right place? Was he on the right line? Was he going in the right direction? He seemed agitated. I traced my finger down the Tube map for him to show where he needed to go, and checked the indicator boards to see if the next train would take him up the correct tributary of the line. It did. He needed a lot of reassurance before he would let me go. I gave him that reassurance: he only needed to get on the next train and look out for his stop and he would not need to change trains. I'm guessing he was a visitor of some kind. Once I had deposited him on the platform and repeated, clearly, that he was in the right place, he seemed satisfied, and demanded, "Put it there, brother!" I shook his hand. I liked the phrase. It was straight out of an old Hollywood movie. My guess is that he would ask many more people if he was on the right train between King's Cross and Alperton. I hope they were as patient with him. And I hope he found what he was looking for in Alperton.

I have written the extra scene for Mr Blue Sky. This is me having finished writing it, although it can't be the British Library as you are not allowed to take photographs in the British Library and I do not break rules. It could be anywhere with some lights on the ceiling.

I am worried because I have two weekly commitments – Radio Times and 7 Day Sunday, the topical 5 Live comedy show – and in a neat, predictable, ordered week, I spend Wednesday afternoon at the Radio Times office, overseeing the main pages of the film section and writing my copy, and Thursday morning in the British Library writing topical gags for 7 Day Sunday (which has two more shows to run, with Al Murray in what used to be Chris Addison's chair). However, with a radio show to do, 4-7pm, I will not be able to get to the Radio Times office, and that means my copy will have to be written off-site on Thursday morning, when I should be writing gags. This is called a knock-on effect. Due to the topical nature of the gags, and the time-sensitive nature of my Radio Times duties (the schedules close at 3.30 on a Weds afternoon, before which we cannot be sure which films will be showing on the terrestrial channels), their coexistence relies on careful balancing. How will I manage it all? Who knows? That's why I woke up in a panic this morning. Panicking will not help. Clear thinking will.

Oh, by the way, as I go about my boring business, the country I live in is bombing another country again. I'm getting the same nauseous feeling in my stomach that I first experienced, I think, when America bombed Libya in 1986. Whenever a superpower – or this country – bombs a country in the Middle East or Africa, which are the main places they dare to bomb, I get uncomfortable. Regardless of the circumstance, it always feels like the flexing of military muscle and an advance of thinly veiled imperialism. (I know, this latter response puts me shoulder to shoulder with Colonel Gadaffi, but we are very different in many other respects.)

I guess the first time I felt this geopolitical/existential upset tummy was in 1982 when Margaret Thatcher sent her task force to the South Atlantic to win back the Falklands. Having been raised on war movies and Action Man, I think I had safely compartmentalised "war" as something that happened in the past, not in the present, and I didn't like the way it felt to have British servicemen and women being sent halfway round the world to their potential deaths. (This was heightened by the rumour going round school that conscription would be next.) I found myself, in 1982, just quietly wishing it would all be over very quickly and they could all come home. It felt pretty surreal to see the front pages. I can't pretend, aged 17, I was a big reader of newspapers – that came later – but you couldn't avoid them, and my grandparents took the Sun, so I read that every Thursday when they came round. The irony is that my grandparents were not right wing, at least politically – my granddad was a shop steward! – but saw no irony in their choice of daily paper.

Frankly, since the 80s, this country seems to have constantly been on the verge of invading some country or other, or at least bombing the shit out of it and really trying very hard not to kill any civilians, honestly. No matter who's in power, left or right, they seem to fall all too easily into the role of tank-riding warrior. Even the ultimate softy David Cameron – perhaps especially him, although he's got the chest-beating Tony Blair to beat. It seems fanciful now to think that Harold Wilson, a Labour Prime Minister, actually stood firm in the 60s and refused to send British troops to help the US in Vietnam. I know he made excuses about needing the troops elsewhere, but the fact remains: Britain stayed out of it. If I was Prime Minister I would never invade any other country, or bomb them, or kill anybody, and I would just deploy the army to do displays and help the emergency services and provide technical assistance for films. This is why I will never be Prime Minister. Well, one of the reasons why. (As a side salad, the chapter I am currently reading in Andy Beckett's When The Lights Went Out, his history of Britain in the 70s, concerns campus Marxism. The campus used to make Marxists of us all. Certainly pacifists. It didn't for a while, but perhaps it does again now.)

I finished reading the big, long piece in the New Yorker about the BP oil spill. I found it fascinating and even-handed. Although the magazine takes an instinctively left-leaning stance on politics, it is really all about seeking the truth and checking the facts afterwards. Thus, Raffi Khatchadourian's exhaustive, 24-page chronicle (which poses the question, "Were there any heroes in the BP oil disaster?") is not necessarily a hatchet job on either British Petroleum, or the US government. If anything, it accuses the media – including some ill-informed single-issue bloggers – of oversimplifying the situation and fanning the flames of dissent between locally concerned Louisiana politicians and a huge oil company losing millions of dollars a day which it actually would rather not have been doing.

The real bone of contention comes towards to back end of the crisis, when BP started spraying "dispersant" over the layer of oil on the surface of the ocean, namely Corexit, formulated in the late 60s as an alternative to BP1002, an industrial detergent and degreaser which had been dumped into the Torrey Canyon slick off the coast of Cornwall and had "done more harm than good" to the surrounding environment. (In Beckett's book, because everything joins up, he explains how the Torrey Canyon gave birth to the green movement in this country.)

Corexit certainly disperses oil, but its toxicity had not been fully tested when it was tipped into the sea, much to the concern of the Environmental Protection Agency. I found this passage alarming: "Scientists often test the toxicity of chemicals by pouring them into a tank filled with animals and seeing how many die after 96 hours." Ouch! We learn from the conclusion to the piece that the bulk of the spilled oil was indeed dispersed and its particles pushed into the deep "midnight zone" of the ocean where it can be naturally consumed by microorganisms, and that species such as sea turtles seem to have escaped any lasting damage. I use the word "seem" advisedly. These things can take generations to truly disperse from the food chain. "Only" 5,600 seabirds were killed – compared to say, the 250,000 that died as a result of the Exxon Valdez spill – but because industrial fishing was restricted during the disaster, many fish populations have thrived. You'll have to buy the magazine or subscribe digitally to read the full piece yourself, as they don't give the big stuff away online. I was having a conversation with my neighbour the other day about the parlous state and damaging effects of the rolling news media; we agreed that the best time to read about something is after it's finished, not while it's happening.

I'm going to stop now and publish this half, otherwise it will be as long as a New Yorker piece. Off to 6 Music shortly.

Day two

You're going to get bored of these Photo Booth application photos, yes you are. Day two: I'm in St Pancras station again, not because I love it, which I do, but because I had need to buy three cards from Paperchase. A birthday card for my recently married niece, a Mother's Day card for my mum on April 3 and, with great sadness, a sympathy card for a friend whose mother has died. Probably best not to try and read anything too profound into the life of a card shop. Its job is simply to help us mark events. Needless to say, if you ever think that a card sent at the time of someone's passing is merely a token, then you can't have lost someone close to you: a card really means something in that horrible aftermath.

I saw a man collecting for charity in one of the overground stations I pass through this morning. He was dressed as Scooby Doo. He looked daft, but that's the point, isn't it? It seems that we will only give money to charity if someone does something daft. In the same tunnel between stations was a homeless man, sitting on the ground with his back against the wall and with a gorgeous black Labrador curled into a seemingly contented doughnut next to him, on a blanket. Two potentially deserving cases for our spare change, one dressed as a dog, the other with an actual dog for a companion. I am the type of person who's statistically more likely to give money to a homeless person with a dog. I wish my change to go toward feeding the dog, but cannot specify this, without buying dog food and giving that to the man. I feel sorry for the dog when I should feel sorry for the man. I do feel sorry for the man, of course, but it's the dog I feel most sorry for. This is not an easy thing to admit. We who have homes, and are thus in deep, deep debt to whoever gave us our mortgage, do not have "spare" change – how can we have? But we do have a home, albeit one that we mostly do not own.

Yesterday, I took the time to help a confused man who wished to get a Tube train to Alperton, which is far west up the Piccadilly Line. I couldn't work out if he was foreign, or just confused, and he had a lot of teeth missing, so his hyperventilating voice was made less comprehensible by the whistling gaps. He called out to anyone who was passing as he had studied the Tube map and was still baffled by it. Was he in the right place? Was he on the right line? Was he going in the right direction? He seemed agitated. I traced my finger down the Tube map for him to show where he needed to go, and checked the indicator boards to see if the next train would take him up the correct tributary of the line. It did. He needed a lot of reassurance before he would let me go. I gave him that reassurance: he only needed to get on the next train and look out for his stop and he would not need to change trains. I'm guessing he was a visitor of some kind. Once I had deposited him on the platform and repeated, clearly, that he was in the right place, he seemed satisfied, and demanded, "Put it there, brother!" I shook his hand. I liked the phrase. It was straight out of an old Hollywood movie. My guess is that he would ask many more people if he was on the right train between King's Cross and Alperton. I hope they were as patient with him. And I hope he found what he was looking for in Alperton.

I have written the extra scene for Mr Blue Sky. This is me having finished writing it, although it can't be the British Library as you are not allowed to take photographs in the British Library and I do not break rules. It could be anywhere with some lights on the ceiling.

I am worried because I have two weekly commitments – Radio Times and 7 Day Sunday, the topical 5 Live comedy show – and in a neat, predictable, ordered week, I spend Wednesday afternoon at the Radio Times office, overseeing the main pages of the film section and writing my copy, and Thursday morning in the British Library writing topical gags for 7 Day Sunday (which has two more shows to run, with Al Murray in what used to be Chris Addison's chair). However, with a radio show to do, 4-7pm, I will not be able to get to the Radio Times office, and that means my copy will have to be written off-site on Thursday morning, when I should be writing gags. This is called a knock-on effect. Due to the topical nature of the gags, and the time-sensitive nature of my Radio Times duties (the schedules close at 3.30 on a Weds afternoon, before which we cannot be sure which films will be showing on the terrestrial channels), their coexistence relies on careful balancing. How will I manage it all? Who knows? That's why I woke up in a panic this morning. Panicking will not help. Clear thinking will.

Oh, by the way, as I go about my boring business, the country I live in is bombing another country again. I'm getting the same nauseous feeling in my stomach that I first experienced, I think, when America bombed Libya in 1986. Whenever a superpower – or this country – bombs a country in the Middle East or Africa, which are the main places they dare to bomb, I get uncomfortable. Regardless of the circumstance, it always feels like the flexing of military muscle and an advance of thinly veiled imperialism. (I know, this latter response puts me shoulder to shoulder with Colonel Gadaffi, but we are very different in many other respects.)

I guess the first time I felt this geopolitical/existential upset tummy was in 1982 when Margaret Thatcher sent her task force to the South Atlantic to win back the Falklands. Having been raised on war movies and Action Man, I think I had safely compartmentalised "war" as something that happened in the past, not in the present, and I didn't like the way it felt to have British servicemen and women being sent halfway round the world to their potential deaths. (This was heightened by the rumour going round school that conscription would be next.) I found myself, in 1982, just quietly wishing it would all be over very quickly and they could all come home. It felt pretty surreal to see the front pages. I can't pretend, aged 17, I was a big reader of newspapers – that came later – but you couldn't avoid them, and my grandparents took the Sun, so I read that every Thursday when they came round. The irony is that my grandparents were not right wing, at least politically – my granddad was a shop steward! – but saw no irony in their choice of daily paper.

Frankly, since the 80s, this country seems to have constantly been on the verge of invading some country or other, or at least bombing the shit out of it and really trying very hard not to kill any civilians, honestly. No matter who's in power, left or right, they seem to fall all too easily into the role of tank-riding warrior. Even the ultimate softy David Cameron – perhaps especially him, although he's got the chest-beating Tony Blair to beat. It seems fanciful now to think that Harold Wilson, a Labour Prime Minister, actually stood firm in the 60s and refused to send British troops to help the US in Vietnam. I know he made excuses about needing the troops elsewhere, but the fact remains: Britain stayed out of it. If I was Prime Minister I would never invade any other country, or bomb them, or kill anybody, and I would just deploy the army to do displays and help the emergency services and provide technical assistance for films. This is why I will never be Prime Minister. Well, one of the reasons why. (As a side salad, the chapter I am currently reading in Andy Beckett's When The Lights Went Out, his history of Britain in the 70s, concerns campus Marxism. The campus used to make Marxists of us all. Certainly pacifists. It didn't for a while, but perhaps it does again now.)

I finished reading the big, long piece in the New Yorker about the BP oil spill. I found it fascinating and even-handed. Although the magazine takes an instinctively left-leaning stance on politics, it is really all about seeking the truth and checking the facts afterwards. Thus, Raffi Khatchadourian's exhaustive, 24-page chronicle (which poses the question, "Were there any heroes in the BP oil disaster?") is not necessarily a hatchet job on either British Petroleum, or the US government. If anything, it accuses the media – including some ill-informed single-issue bloggers – of oversimplifying the situation and fanning the flames of dissent between locally concerned Louisiana politicians and a huge oil company losing millions of dollars a day which it actually would rather not have been doing.

The real bone of contention comes towards to back end of the crisis, when BP started spraying "dispersant" over the layer of oil on the surface of the ocean, namely Corexit, formulated in the late 60s as an alternative to BP1002, an industrial detergent and degreaser which had been dumped into the Torrey Canyon slick off the coast of Cornwall and had "done more harm than good" to the surrounding environment. (In Beckett's book, because everything joins up, he explains how the Torrey Canyon gave birth to the green movement in this country.)

Corexit certainly disperses oil, but its toxicity had not been fully tested when it was tipped into the sea, much to the concern of the Environmental Protection Agency. I found this passage alarming: "Scientists often test the toxicity of chemicals by pouring them into a tank filled with animals and seeing how many die after 96 hours." Ouch! We learn from the conclusion to the piece that the bulk of the spilled oil was indeed dispersed and its particles pushed into the deep "midnight zone" of the ocean where it can be naturally consumed by microorganisms, and that species such as sea turtles seem to have escaped any lasting damage. I use the word "seem" advisedly. These things can take generations to truly disperse from the food chain. "Only" 5,600 seabirds were killed – compared to say, the 250,000 that died as a result of the Exxon Valdez spill – but because industrial fishing was restricted during the disaster, many fish populations have thrived. You'll have to buy the magazine or subscribe digitally to read the full piece yourself, as they don't give the big stuff away online. I was having a conversation with my neighbour the other day about the parlous state and damaging effects of the rolling news media; we agreed that the best time to read about something is after it's finished, not while it's happening.

I'm going to stop now and publish this half, otherwise it will be as long as a New Yorker piece. Off to 6 Music shortly.

Day One Pt 2

Alright, so this is the second half of day one. As accurately pointed out by a pedant after the first entry in my week-long boring-life experiment, it's wiser to write a diary after the day in question rather than in the middle of the day that's actually happening. I'll get the hang of it just in time to stop.

Luckily, I took one more picture using my laptop, in the bar of the Curzon cinema in Soho, where I saw Norwegian Wood. (See how helpfully I have written my review of the film as a separate entry, so it's easy to avoid.) To the left of my head you can actually see stills of Norwegian Wood, which they have put on the wall while the film is playing. Interestingly, one of the lights above my head was on the blink, and was flashing on and off while I sat there, waiting, giving the alcove a certain David Lynchean sense of unease. Two men came to fix it, and I was fascinated by the clear hierarchy that existed between them: the older man told the younger man what to do, while the younger man was up the stepladder. Which man would you rather be? I'd quite like to be the man up the stepladder, actually doing the thing, rather than the man at the bottom shouting out instructions.

Considering it was a lunchtime, there were quite a few cineastes in. Do cineastes tend also to be self-employed? Or just independently wealthy? I quite like going to the cinema on my own, when circumstances dictate it, especially to arthouse cinemas. It is a brief window of opportunity for fancying yourself. This is easier when you have a nice, neat new haircut.

When I arrived at 6 Music for day one of my five-day stint in Steve Lamacq's chair and logged on to the BBC computer, I discovered that Caitlin Moran had caused a minor stir on Twitter by posting an old publicity photo from the set of C4′s early-90s youth TV show Naked City. She had published it on Facebook, so I couldn't access it. I asked if someone clever could transfer it to Twitter. Caitlin couldn't. A number of others could. So I re-publish it here:

For the record, left to right: Andrew Collins, Caitlin Moran, Johnny Vaughan, Stuart Maconie, Michael Smiley. We were the presenters of series two, in 1994. I have happy memories of that show. Stuart and I had somehow managed to launch ourselves as a double act on Radio One, and we signed up with a showbiz agent who doubled our money at Radio 1 and got us a slot on a TV show. It all happened very fast, and we were both still working at Q, where I held down a proper, nine-to-five day job, features editor. So it was a bit of mischief spending one afternoon a week in Battersea filming a youth TV show (in the first of the series, Mr C from the Shamen, Fish from Marillion and Tony Banks MP engaged in a joint-rolling competition, if I remember correctly). Stuart and I did a self-contained satirical look at music from a sofa on a gantry while disconsolate, bused-in teens shuffled around below us. We thought a long career in TV awaited us. It didn't, really. Off the back of it, Johnny became one of the highest paid men in showbiz and eventually settled as Capital Radio's breakfast DJ, Caitlin stuck to her calling, which was writing, and Smiley – whom we rarely met as he was the roving reporter – pursued acting, and must still be stopped in the street for being Tyres in Spaced. You will note that in the photograph I am wearing a S*M*A*S*H t-shirt. It was a prop. It wasn't mine.

Tremendous fun doing Steve's show, as it always is. Unlike, say, the breakfast show, or Nemone's show, or Lauren's, it's much less formatted, and guests do not feature heavily. This is preferable if you're filling in, as there's less prep to do. Apart from speaking to a listener on the phone for Good Day, Bad Day, and the choreographical nightmare that is Roundtable on Thursday, it's mostly about playing music and generating texts and emails, which are my favourite things. (Paul the producer has kindly parked the student radio feature, My New Favourite Band, and the thing with Robin Ince, as these are Steve's. As luck would have it, I saw Robin for a very quick pint after the show, as he was downstairs at the Radio Comedy department with Michael Legge, working on their Edinburgh Fringe brochure copy, and he berated me for dropping his feature.)

The best thing about doing any show on 6 Music is the immediacy and creativity of the listener response. I asked for great songs written for the movies, and the feedback was enormous. I asked for suitable songs to go with a trivial news story for Steve's long-running National Anthem feature, and the suggestions were wide-ranging and very clever. I mentioned playing Cud on Twitter beforehand, and all the Cud fans came out of the woodwork – and a member of Cud! – which just makes playing their Peel version of You Sexy Thing from June 1987 all the more pleasurable. There really is no place to work like 6 Music. I mentioned I was doing a week's work there to my hairdresser, who is 22, and he clearly had no idea what I was talking about. That's sobering. I mentioned its threatened closure and glorious reprieve and, again, a blank. You should never fool yourself that just because it's in the Media Guardian, it's in the whole wide world.

A pint after work? It's unheard of. I actually rarely drink these days. Not through any sort of forced temperance like Richard Herring, just through a combination of lack of interest, fear of the ever-extending hangover and broader health paranoia in my mid-forties. When you are my age, booze and bad eating show very heavily on your body and face. You can't get away with it any more. That said, I have a homing instinct for pubs, and the invitation from Robin and Michael to go for a quick one was actually impossible to resist. I stayed in the pub for a whole 20 minutes, then went home.

Nodded off during part two of this week's Waking The Dead mystery, which might well be ironic.

Never did finish the extra scene I owe for Mr Blue Sky. And when I plugged my iPod into my laptop, iTunes failed to recognise it and it would not sync, so I had to reload all 8,800 or so songs. This took ages.

This diary is proving popular. I get between 500 and 1,500 visits a day to this blog. It usually settles around the 750 mark, even if I haven't posted anything new. It spikes when I post something. It shot up past 1,500 for a couple of days recently when, not coincidentally, I wrote about the return of Adam and Joe. And it went up to those dizzy heights again yesterday. Don't expect me to keep this up. I woke, on the morning of Day Two, in one of my regular panics that I won't be able to get done everything I need to get done this week. The work is closing in on me. I'll do my best.

Bloody students

Quick review of the film I saw at lunchtime, Norwegian Wood, the perfect middle-of-the-day, go-to-the-cinema-on-your-own arthouse experience: a grief-stricken meditation in a foreign language on love, loss and lubrication. (The last l-word was glibly chosen – it's only a 15-certificate and not exactly Ai No Corrida, but there is some frank talk about one character's failure to become aroused.) Based on an apparently famous 1987 Japanese novel which I've never heard of by Haruki Murakami – about whom there is a piece in the new New Yorker so I will soon be an eloquent expert – it's set in the late 60s and concerns three students at a university in Tokyo, which might well be Tokyo University. Now, this is a languid, slow-moving, self-consciously directed, exquisitely scored film that spends well over two hours moving slowly and photogenically over a number of orange-bathed summers and snow-flecked winters, each as pretty as a picture. The three protagonists – whose inter-relationships I won't go into, in case you go and see it one lunchtime on your own – are all lovely looking and even when they are wracked with grief or pain they look lovely. You kind of want to be a student in late-60s Tokyo, albeit perhaps without the convulsing agony of loss and loneliness.

Directed by Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung – who, again, I've never heard of, which is why I am not a regular contributor to Sight & Sound – Norwegian Wood is a serious piece of work, which begs to be taken seriously, although it is so langorously paced, there is a massive tendency to drift off and drift back in while watching it. I did this, and it didn't ruin it. What does that say? Jonny Greenwood's score is sublime: so heavy with sadness and beauty. When his music hits the verdant Kyoto hillside, you're in good company.

But you can't help thinking: pull yourselves together, the lot of you – you're young and living in a great city at a great and tumultuous time (the main protagonist Watanabe actually sort of sleepwalks past two student revolutions!), you're good looking and thin and attractive and you don't appear to have to go to lectures, and the noodles look delicious, and you all want to sleep with each other, and look out of the window, it's all lovely!

Apart from that, if you're in the mood for love – and loss and pain and misery – and you like Radiohead, well, you may well already have seen it. And yes it's named after the Beatles song, but I'm not sure why, except that the song is in it. Perhaps it was clearer in the novel. Anybody?

Day One

Inspired, belatedly, by Richard Herring's daily blog Warming Up – which, if you don't follow, you should: it's truly mindbending that he's kept it up without fail since Monday November 25, 2002 and it is simultaneously revealing, pithy and hilarious – I thought I'd try and write a blog entry every day for five whole consecutive days about my daily working life. I might look back on it in ten years' time, when I am still going about my self-employed business, writing a bit, talking on the radio a bit, reading the New Yorker on public transport and having a few meetings, and think, "Wow, my life hasn't changed a bit in ten years!"

Day One: my daily working life involves moving about a lot. I used to spend a lot more of my days in coffee shops but I am currently on a sensible economy drive, which means avoiding coffee shops and spending more time in libraries and other people's offices, or the coffee shop of the Curzon cinema in Soho where, as a member, I feel comfortable just sitting with my laptop on my lap. (By the way, as it's only five days, I will make no attempt to jazz this up and make it profound or sexy. This is my life as it occurs to me, as it were.) So, my first refreshment of the day was the free glass of mineral water I was given at my hairdresser's. I could have had a free tea or coffee, but I know it would be disappointing, and also, I assume it will have hair in it by the time I finish it.

I spent my childhood having my hair cut by Mum and Dad's friend Carol who lived up the road. In my teens, I visited my first ever ladies' hairdresser, because I had become a preening ninny. However, my hair was mostly cut by friends' girlfriends-who-were-hairdressers. In the 80s, in Northampton, a hairdresser was just about the coolest girlfriend you could have. I think I went out with a trainee hairdresser once, but not for long, and in any case among my circle of friends in the sixth form, there was always one who was going out with a hairdresser. When, during my college years, I literally grew out of stupid haystack hair, and having it cut for free by fellow students, I graduated to visiting an old-fashioned barber, firstly one in Parson's Green, then one in Brixton. These haircuts were short, manly and cheap. I loved them.

It is only in the last 15 or so years that I have returned to ladies' hairdressers. I must admit, I quite like the pampering aspect. I trust my current hairstylist (yes, my hair is styled, not cut), although it's best not to get too attached, as they're always moving or being promoted to a new, more expensive grade. Anyway, it's a two- or three-monthly pleasure to have my hair cut, and that's how I began my day, having first sent through a list of records I fancy playing this week while I fill in for Steve Lamacq on 6 Music. What fun! For the record, I have suggested songs by Tom Waits, Solomon Burke, Baby D, Cud, Bauhaus, the Ohio Players, Killah Priest and The Move. (The trick is to introduce records or artists into the show that aren't already likely to be in the pile. This is actually quite difficult on 6 Music, as the pool of old music is so deep.)

I always feel my age in the hairdresser's. I am literally twice as old as my regular stylist. When he asks me if I am busy – his traditional opening gambit – I often wonder if this means he actually remembers me, and that I am self-employed, or if, in fact, it's a safe, homogenous question that he can ask anybody. (I don't flatter myself: it's the latter, isn't it?) I remember lots about him, but he is the only hairdresser I ever talk to, and I am one of about 200 people with hair that he talks to over the course of a couple of months. He told me about his 23rd birthday party last time, which had taken place in a club in King's Cross which opens at midnight, and at which he and his friends had stayed until about 5am. It would have been sad if I'd envied his life, and his youthful stamina at that point. Luckily, I didn't.

The picture at the top of this entry was taken while I took the train from South London to King's Cross, where the British Library is. The picture above was taken in a coffee shop at St Pancras station, because I had a completed loyalty card and was able to buy a coffee without spending any money. There is something romantic about the Eurostar announcements in the background, and the constant turnover of travellers with suitcases coming in and out while I sit here and observe them, going nowhere.

Actually, I have decided to go to the Curzon to see the Japanese film Norwegian Wood. This will be my "lunch hour" – it's two hours long, but since I am working until 7pm, and won't be home until 8pm, I am taking an extra hour in lieu. This is what being self-employed is all about. I can actually guarantee five days' worth of income this week, which, for instance, I couldn't last week, and can't next week, so I am feeling more relaxed than I might be about paying for food and utilities.

If I was rich I would spend all day in coffee shops. (Having recently read and enjoyed Stuart Murdoch's diary Celestial Cafe, published by Pomona, it seems that he does spend all day, every day, in coffee shops. Mind you, he is mostly in Glasgow where perhaps the cost of living is cheaper than it is in stupid London.) Also, if I was rich, I would not have to worry about where the next job is coming from. Now that Mr Blue Sky has been recorded, the project that has dominated my thoughts and my waking days since September has receded into the background. Nothing that big or that personal has filled the vacuum, so it's back to doing bitty things, and hoping 6 Music presenters will get the flu, go on holiday or fall pregnant.

By the way, my main writing task today is to write an extra scene for Mr Blue Sky – an important linking/establishing exchange between two of the main characters whose absence has become apparent during editing – so that's what I'm doing now. Or will be, when I am not doing this. Fortunately, the actors required, Mark Benton and Michael Legge, are available to come in and record this scene on Thursday. I'll write about that on Thursday.

They were playing Florence and the Machine in the hairdresser's. I did not find it relaxing, and I suspect it undid all the good work of the head massage. (I asked my stylist if the music was the same in all branches of the chain, but he said it wasn't, and that it was from an iPod playlist on shuffle. I wonder who decided to put Florence and the Machine onto this playlist. There was also a song by Arctic Monkeys, one of the more useless recent ones, and the rest was modern R&B, apart from Ride On Time by Black Box, which was my favourite song.)

I do not promise that this will be an exciting week. The ridiculously long piece I am currently reading in the New Yorker is about the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It is 24 pages long – exhaustive even for the New Yorker! I am halfway through it. They have just started using chemicals to disperse the oil to stop it reaching the Louisiana coastline, and a scaremongering marine toxicologist has gone on CNN warning of chemical effects on the human population, saying that one shrimp fisherman had started "bleeding from the rectum."

I have just had a Direct Message on Twitter from the comedian John Moloney. And my neck is itchy from the haircut. Will write again tomorrow.

Day one

Inspired, belatedly, by Richard Herring's daily blog Warming Up – which, if you don't follow, you should: it's truly mindbending that he's kept it up without fail since Monday November 25, 2002 and it is simultaneously revealing, pithy and hilarious – I thought I'd try and write a blog entry every day for five whole consecutive days about my daily working life. I might look back on it in ten years' time, when I am still going about my self-employed business, writing a bit, talking on the radio a bit, reading the New Yorker on public transport and having a few meetings, and think, "Wow, my life hasn't changed a bit in ten years!"

Day One: my daily working life involves moving about a lot. I used to spend a lot more of my days in coffee shops but I am currently on a sensible economy drive, which means avoiding coffee shops and spending more time in libraries and other people's offices, or the coffee shop of the Curzon cinema in Soho where, as a member, I feel comfortable just sitting with my laptop on my lap. (By the way, as it's only five days, I will make no attempt to jazz this up and make it profound or sexy. This is my life as it occurs to me, as it were.) So, my first refreshment of the day was the free glass of mineral water I was given at my hairdresser's. I could have had a free tea or coffee, but I know it would be disappointing, and also, I assume it will have hair in it by the time I finish it.

I spent my childhood having my hair cut by Mum and Dad's friend Carol who lived up the road. In my teens, I visited my first ever ladies' hairdresser, because I had become a preening ninny. However, my hair was mostly cut by friends' girlfriends-who-were-hairdressers. In the 80s, in Northampton, a hairdresser was just about the coolest girlfriend you could have. I think I went out with a trainee hairdresser once, but not for long, and in any case among my circle of friends in the sixth form, there was always one who was going out with a hairdresser. When, during my college years, I literally grew out of stupid haystack hair, and having it cut for free by fellow students, I graduated to visiting an old-fashioned barber, firstly one in Parson's Green, then one in Brixton. These haircuts were short, manly and cheap. I loved them.

It is only in the last 15 or so years that I have returned to ladies' hairdressers. I must admit, I quite like the pampering aspect. I trust my current hairstylist (yes, my hair is styled, not cut), although it's best not to get too attached, as they're always moving or being promoted to a new, more expensive grade. Anyway, it's a two- or three-monthly pleasure to have my hair cut, and that's how I began my day, having first sent through a list of records I fancy playing this week while I fill in for Steve Lamacq on 6 Music. What fun! For the record, I have suggested songs by Tom Waits, Solomon Burke, Baby D, Cud, Bauhaus, the Ohio Players, Killah Priest and The Move. (The trick is to introduce records or artists into the show that aren't already likely to be in the pile. This is actually quite difficult on 6 Music, as the pool of old music is so deep.)

I always feel my age in the hairdresser's. I am literally twice as old as my regular stylist. When he asks me if I am busy – his traditional opening gambit – I often wonder if this means he actually remembers me, and that I am self-employed, or if, in fact, it's a safe, homogenous question that he can ask anybody. (I don't flatter myself: it's the latter, isn't it?) I remember lots about him, but he is the only hairdresser I ever talk to, and I am one of about 200 people with hair that he talks to over the course of a couple of months. He told me about his 23rd birthday party last time, which had taken place in a club in King's Cross which opens at midnight, and at which he and his friends had stayed until about 5am. It would have been sad if I'd envied his life, and his youthful stamina at that point. Luckily, I didn't.

The picture at the top of this entry was taken while I took the train from South London to King's Cross, where the British Library is. The picture above was taken in a coffee shop at St Pancras station, because I had a completed loyalty card and was able to buy a coffee without spending any money. There is something romantic about the Eurostar announcements in the background, and the constant turnover of travellers with suitcases coming in and out while I sit here and observe them, going nowhere.

Actually, I have decided to go to the Curzon to see the Japanese film Norwegian Wood. This will be my "lunch hour" – it's two hours long, but since I am working until 7pm, and won't be home until 8pm, I am taking an extra hour in lieu. This is what being self-employed is all about. I can actually guarantee five days' worth of income this week, which, for instance, I couldn't last week, and can't next week, so I am feeling more relaxed than I might be about paying for food and utilities.

If I was rich I would spend all day in coffee shops. (Having recently read and enjoyed Stuart Murdoch's diary Celestial Cafe, published by Pomona, it seems that he does spend all day, every day, in coffee shops. Mind you, he is mostly in Glasgow where perhaps the cost of living is cheaper than it is in stupid London.) Also, if I was rich, I would not have to worry about where the next job is coming from. Now that Mr Blue Sky has been recorded, the project that has dominated my thoughts and my waking days since September has receded into the background. Nothing that big or that personal has filled the vacuum, so it's back to doing bitty things, and hoping 6 Music presenters will get the flu, go on holiday or fall pregnant.

By the way, my main writing task today is to write an extra scene for Mr Blue Sky – an important linking/establishing exchange between two of the main characters whose absence has become apparent during editing – so that's what I'm doing now. Or will be, when I am not doing this. Fortunately, the actors required, Mark Benton and Michael Legge, are available to come in and record this scene on Thursday. I'll write about that on Thursday.

They were playing Florence and the Machine in the hairdresser's. I did not find it relaxing, and I suspect it undid all the good work of the head massage. (I asked my stylist if the music was the same in all branches of the chain, but he said it wasn't, and that it was from an iPod playlist on shuffle. I wonder who decided to put Florence and the Machine onto this playlist. There was also a song by Arctic Monkeys, one of the more useless recent ones, and the rest was modern R&B, apart from Ride On Time by Black Box, which was my favourite song.)

I do not promise that this will be an exciting week. The ridiculously long piece I am currently reading in the New Yorker is about the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It is 24 pages long – exhaustive even for the New Yorker! I am halfway through it. They have just started using chemicals to disperse the oil to stop it reaching the Louisiana coastline, and a scaremongering marine toxicologist has gone on CNN warning of chemical effects on the human population, saying that one shrimp fisherman had started "bleeding from the rectum."

I have just had a Direct Message on Twitter from the comedian John Moloney. And my neck is itchy from the haircut. Will write again tomorrow.