Monday

Waiting for another large and unnecessary piece of former shop furniture to arrive at the house - moved a lot of furniture around yesterday to accommodate it - I'm turning the front room into a studio - I've never been the kind of person that sits and watched television.

Bonfire night here on Saturday - quite enjoyed it - thousands of people, I left before it got too messy and too drunk. Have a friend who lives in town so the vantage point of his front garden was ideal. Got chatting to one of his mates called 'Danny' - turned out he was the 'superstar DJ' Danny Rampling. I have to confess that's an entire genre that has passed me by, I have no idea whatsoever what he does. Nice bloke. I had to leave because there was a drunk girl there 'down from London' who was exploiting the occasion to be as phenomenally rude as possible to everyone. I couldn't be bothered.

Bought the Vivienne Westwood autobiography. I cannot be the only person who gets a thrill when they pick up a book and it's actually much bigger than you expected, I blame the small portions my parents would feed us as children. It's very well produced, they have used some very nice typefaces and an open wove paper with a warm, pulpy feel - the kind that holds a lot of air - so if you tap the book it sounds hollow. I'll enjoy reading it.

I made a lasagna yesterday and ate too much - as a result I had a number of quite phenomenally bad nightmares. I should have known better.

Having a really difficult time at work with a very difficult client, struggling with the relationships between them, the people I'm working with and the actual work itself.

It's still unseasonably warm, a couple of years ago we were about to go into a blizzard, there are still things flowering in my garden and I'm sitting here in a short sleeve shirt with all the windows open.

There are two occasions this week when I may need to go to Croydon, dreading it already - one on Friday which means I'll probably miss another concert.

Supposed to be getting paid by someone today - need it, have let my admin slide a bit.

Lynda Bellingham has died, which is sad enough - but she's probably done more for the rights of the terminally ill in a short space of time than anyone of her generation - my father was simply processed by the NHS when he had cancer and almost certainly had treatment he neither needed nor wanted - but simple accepted it. People do need to be able to make their own choices.

My own connection with Lynda Bellingham is so tenuous it's comic. In the Oxo adds, she had a daughter - an actress who's parents ran a small theatre school in Whitechapel during the early 1990's when I lived their. They were a bunch of delusional oddballs - working their way through a number of talentless wannabees. The girl herself was actually an overweight and very tall goth during her 'non Oxo' time. And quite rude.