Saturday.

I've had a headache all week, and two flat tyres on the bike. The weather has been a bit rubbish and I need a haircut - however, I'm fairly chirpy and being pragmatic about everything.

A couple of friends are going through the most horrendous personal grief at the moment that has turned their lives upside down - but they are handling it with incredible calm and fortitude - so I can't complain about my little lot.

Work this week has been very hard and tiring, a lot to do, all difficult, and part of it dealing with the most unbearably passive aggressive monster imaginable. I'm not letting it get me down. I'm in work tomorrow and working in-house on Tuesday - next week looks really busy already.

Small dog has gutted the last of my chairs - I give up, now sitting on hard wooden kitchen chairs for the foreseeable future.

Looked out of the window earlier - a neighbour is cleaning out his garage - as I watched he appears to have rediscovered his long forgotten porn stash, work has now stopped.

Someone stole my seagull proof rubbish bag while I was at work. Very disappointed in that.

Friends are selling a really nice two bedroom cottage on top of the West Hill of Hastings at considerably less than market value for a quick sale to pay for emergency medical treatment that's not available on the NHS, literally just re-wired and re-plumbed - 80 foot garden. Anyone interested - email me.

Later this afternoon a Vulcan Bomber will fly over my house - looking forward to that.

Have a new camera back - so I can take photo's again - and the new lenses I bought are great. I'll get the other one repaired when I'm feeling flush - will probably cost more than the camera is worth.

A big arts festival opened last night in Hastings, went to the performance and launch party - much more professional than usual - very good turnout - got told off for talking while a fat bloke was singing - just burst out laughing. I found being in a large crowd really difficult until I'd had a couple of drinks. Had a discomforting episode of face blindness and realised that I'm constantly confusing the husbands of two friends with each other

Whilst Ore Village may be tumbling headlong towards gentrification - what with a shop called 'Simply Vintage' opening (nothing in there is vintage at all, it's just tat painted white and then scuffed) - the local charity shop for the blind being re-painted in Farrow & Ball colours (proper undercoat and everything ), a new Aldi about to open (they sell lobster and champagne now) - I was heartened to see something more familiar. Very overweight middle aged woman in a floaty Summer dress, and a large, half full urine bag taped to her ankle with the tube ascending upwards - must have been worried it would ruin the cut of her garment.

last night a woman I've never seen before said hello to me - and pointed out that I walked past her house every day with my dogs, I went to great pains to assure her that I always pick up after them.

Have been watching a series of documentaries about great cities going through periods of cultural flowering, have watched one on Vienna and one on Paris - the presenter is very good, but I think the BBC have realised he's an 'asset' and are 'sexing up' his role, he's gone from academic and historian to fully groomed sex god in one fell swoop - lots of distracting tableaux, out of focus shots of him in sunglasses and 'fun' sequences. Very distracting.

Senile dog has been staring at me for an hour - no idea what's going on in that head.

George Osbourne was in a building around the corner from my studio on Friday - they kept it very quiet. Listening to Theresa may talking about 'imminent threats' on the radio was depressing - she was trying very hard to sound important, serious and powerful - she just sounded like Janet Brown being Margaret Thatcher. talking terror threats - it's really unhealthy to make us all think that there are monsters lurking everywhere. When I lived in Aldgate and the IRA set of the Bishopsgate bomb, and I watched from my balcony as a giant cloud of smoke filled the sky and pieces of foam insulation snowed down onto my house - I was shocked, but not filled with fear - the only time I've ever been frightened was when I saw a group of black clad policemen with real machine guns on the streets of London.