My morning walk to the station: a photographic diptych

Portrait I

Few things in our tiny lives are certain, but this is. No hamster cage was ever abandoned in happy circumstances. Pain and sorrow always go before.

Part II

Nothing says school's out for summer like deserted tennis courts and an empty cider bottle.

In which I learn a valuable lesson from Neville Southall

Here is a job I would like on a permanent basis: professional fete stallholder.

This is not the kind of full-time job to fund a wardrobe of couture clothes or serious gambling habit or growing collection of fabergé eggs. It is a job to have as a kind of absorbing hobby, while your investment banker husband works every hour and never sees his children awake, and your au pair makes the organic packed lunches. 

At the moment, what with having to pay my own mortgage, I am only on occasional work experience in the feting profession. After flirting with car-booting, I fell in love with the world of the stallholder in the summertime, helping out my godmother at a community fete in central London, close to several hospitals. Almost all the classic elements were there – ballet display by local youth group, adult-education belly-dancers, stalls selling Reader's Digest Cookery Books and unloved ornaments, and an ageing rock band called Bloodless Coup. All that was missing was a member of the clergy and a guess the weight of the cake competition. To quote Craig Revel-Horwood, I LOVED it.

I am lucky, in many respects, that I work with people who are mostly my own age. In any office situation I go into, it is very unlikely there will be anyone there more than 8 years younger or older than me. By laws of proportion which I have just made up, but which I believe to be basically sound, I will get on with 80% of them, have plenty in common with 60% and could conceivably become properly great, lasting friends with 40%. 

It's an absolute boon for one's social life, of course, but you do forget what it's like to talk to people who are not wearing patent shoe-boots or Converse. But throw yourself into the fete milieu and there you are behind the ramparts of your trestle, one hand on your float, the other gripping a polystyrene cup of grey tea, with the world growing bigger and wider before your very eyes. You're selling jam to chalky-faced old ladies in too-bright lipstick, and discussing cake with father-and-son duos, any one of whom is pushing the other in a wheelchair. It is highly unlikely that any of these people have heard of Agyness Deyn, and you love them all the more for it. Their mere proximity is surprisingly exciting and you find yourself thrilling! to a hitherto unknown sense of community and embracing! the rich diversity of the human race.

Anyway, yesterday I was mostly embracing the rich diversity of middle-class three-wheeled-buggy-pushers in East Dulwich, helping my friend Miss L sell her excellent cards and Christmas decorations from a stall on the main street on the coldest day of the year, for six hours. I spent more consecutive minutes wearing a woolly hat than I ever have in my life before, I believe. And the cruel machinations of time taught me a lesson, which is that my hat is really, really itchy. At frequent intervals, I found myself rubbing it violently across my forehead and down my  cheeks in a manic attempt to relieve the irritation, like a dog gradually rubbing away its own fur. As a result, by about 10 o'clock last night, I had an angry red rash right across the top half of my face, thrown into even more dramatic relief by the regular pallor of the bottom half of my face. In a desperate attempt at remedial action, I went to bed last night with my face covered in a thick white layer of E45 cream, like someone answering the door unexpectedly to their love interest in a romantic comedy. Incredibly, no love interest at all rang my doorbell last night. I'm not sure what this means. Probably it means my doorbell is broken.

What does this mean for my future in feting? It means that I will apply a thick layer of Vaseline all over my face before putting on my hat, like Neville Southall slathering his eyebrows with it before taking to his goal. You never saw his forehead smarting scarletly.

Luckily, things had calmed down immeasurably redface-wise by the time I got the bus to Crystal Palace for lunch with my friend, Nurse W, today. On the way, the bus drove past a grass verge where I saw a grey squirrel in curiously close proximity to a magpie. Ten metres further on, I saw exactly the same scenario once again – squirrel, magpie, proximity. It was like I had stumbled across some kind of animal-kingdom partner-swapping party. It made me feel a bit weird.

 

Three chords and a stick-on ponytail

I cannot help it. I  have a guilty well of fascination for any truly brazen fraudster. I would never suggest they didn't deserve their punishment, or that what they were doing was to be encouraged, but as someone who's permanently apologetic and slightly nervous, their audacity astounds me.

Some months ago, I discovered the extraordinary story of Gene Morrison, who set himself up as a forensic scientist and faked a career from it, having completed his qualifications at the University Of Owning Lots Of CSI DVDs. My favourite part of his scientific methodology was his 'lie detector' machine, which was actually just a normal computer. He would decide himself whether he thought an investigatee was lying, then press a button so the word 'false' would flash up on the screen.

Today, on the way home, I read in London Lite the story of a man who was impersonating Francis Rossi from Status Quo. I am quoting the newspaper directly here, as their words need no elaboration (Is this plagiarism? I don't know, but let me attempt to counter it by saying that the London Lite is a marvellous free newspaper. Of all the free evening newspapers in London, it's in the Top 2):

"The trickster promised Dover's town councillors that he would perform free at their festival with his 'friends' Sir Paul McCartney, Charlotte Church and Queen's Brian May. 

The council was duped into letting him judge a carnival float competition and attend a VIP event at Dover Castle.

There were inconsistencies which could have given the game away. Like why the conman did not possess a Francis Rossi-style ponytail, or why he could not play the guitar. According to reports, the man claimed: 'I can't grow my hair long any more. A fake ponytail is stuck on three hours before a gig.' Asked to play the band's hit Rockin' All Over The World, he declined, saying he had arthritis."

I don't know what lesson we can learn here apart from, if you didn't realise it before, you should never, ever trust a man in matching denim jacket and jeans.

Don't worry if it's not good enough for anyone else to hear…

I have joined a choir. This is obviously a good thing – physically, emotionally, socially, but most of all because I now have an official Hobby. A proper thing you actually Do, and can smugly write in the designated box on application forms, rather than apologetically resorting to vague concepts like cinema and music. I now belong in the ranks of people who do lindy-hop and go birdwatching. I'm also feeling quite passionate about one of these activities too. I'll let you guess which one.

I heard an amazing story of romantic derring-do at this week's rehearsal. Someone in our choir also sings in another choir – a small, exclusive a capella outfit who specialise in pop songs. This Sunday, one of that choir, or one of their friends (this detail escapes me) is going to propose to his girlfriend in Sainsbury's (I won't say which one, because she's probably reading and I'd hate to ruin the moment). But here comes the magic. As they're trundling up and down the aisles, the members of the choir will also be there incognito, in the guise of ordinary shoppers. At the designated moment, our hero will begin singing It Must Be Love (Madness, if you need reminding) to his girlfriend, and the choir will gradually join in, to the joy and amazement of bystanders. Oh yeah, and the girl. The performance will culminate, of course, with the proposal.

This is glorious for two reasons. Firstly, who knew that these foolhardy romantic gestures even happened in the real world? And secondly, it's a heartwarming throwback to the days of That's Life and their 'Get Britain Singing' campaign, which I would like to see revived. If you are too young to remember, one moment an old lady would be cruising the greengrocer aisle of her local supermarket, the next thing Doc Cox would be looming towards her in a white plastic pork-pie hat singing I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles, perhaps weighing a ripe grapefruit in each hand like a pair of breasts, or engaging the startled pensioner in a clumsy waltz.

Singing and romance. What could be better? Obviously her saying yes would be better. I was discussing this with Mrs Jones earlier and she offered a sobering reminder of how my godfather had proposed very publicly once on an aeroplane, only to be turned down flat. But I am clinging to the threadbare ropes of optimism.

Good luck, Romeo.

Economics

Yesterday I broke my self-enforced Primark ban. I had been smirchlessly ethical for several months, but was finally lured in by the promise of cheap Halloween-themed tights for the spooky party season. Once I was in there, I almost immediately thought, 'In for a penny, in for a penny' and lapsed quite dramatically, eventually arriving at the tills bruised, battered and burdened with quite the pile. What would Panorama have said about that? I don't know. I don't watch Panorama. It's depressing. But like my dear friend Mrs G says, Primark's OK as long as you don't buy anything with hundreds of sequins on it. (Thus necessitating nimble underage fingers.) THIS IS A JOKE.

But shopping at Primark is never quite the bargain you think. In the same way that the whole menu at a cheap restaurant somehow tastes the same – whether you're eating fish, fowl or fondant – every item you buy from Primark swiftly acquires the same anti-lustre, and sense of mild abrasion against your skin. Fashion fatigue seems to set in all the more quickly. 

One of the questions I have been thinking about recently, apart from why have the M&S instore bakery stopped doing cherry scones ('Mummy, what did you do during the great glacé cherry famine of 2008?), is when is it OK not to be thrifty? Cheap tomato ketchup? Sacrilege. Cheap bubble bath? Itchy skin-flakes. Cheap medication? Hmm…

Earlier this week, I decided to have a flu vaccination. If I get flu – proper, serious, I-really-mean-it flu – I can't work. If I can't work, I don't get paid. If I don't get paid, I might have to start taking in washing. My ironing skills are poor. You can see the urban tragedy that would unfold.

But where to go? Should I patronise Boots and pay £15 for a flu-free winter, or head to Superdrug and be immunised for the knockdown price of £9.95? What is the difference? Is Boots dishing out the Cristal of anti-flu medication? While Superdrug is the Asti Spumante? Or is it more like getting your hair cut? The higher price secures you the services of the Nuryev of vaccinators, while the lower gets you the work experience girl, who clumsily pre-swabs your delicate flesh with fingers swathed not in latex, but the debris from the bottom of a crisp packet. The top-end practitioner will enquire discreetly after your well-being, but then leave a companionable silence between the two of you, so you can relax and really enjoy the Immunisation Experience. The cheap version performs a tireless, squawking monologue, based on the considerable source material of her chequered dating history.

Being as neurotic as I am, it will come as no surprise to you that I chose reassuringly expensive. Your health is your wealth, right?

It's not Terry's, it's MRINE

Despite a late night, I had to be up revoltingly early (to me anyway – it probably constitutes a lie-in to anyone who has children or a purpose) to have an MRI on my finger. 

One of the true and amazing facts I have learnt today about the world of MRI is that the smaller the area they are taking magic pictures of, the longer you have to be under the MRI hairdryer for.

Since they were zooming in on the top my finger, I had to lie on my front and extend my arm out in front of me ('like Superman', the scanner operative told me) for 40 bloody minutes. This is neither as effortless or as comfortable as it sounds, which is just another of the many reasons why Superman was a hell of a guy.

One boon of lying on your front for people who are slightly anxious (tick) and claustrophobic (tick) is that you feel you are just lying in a white room having a bit of a nap, rather than being able to see that the ceiling of your space-chamber is only eight inches or so above you, and you are trapped in what essentially looks like a cross between a pod in a Tokyo capsule hotel and some kind of state-of-the-art coffin. Or, if you prefer, that you are part of some giant techno experiment, like Mike Teevee at the climax of his story arc in Charlie & The Chocolate Factory. And because the scanner is really noisy - I mean, it really is like being inside an enormous scanner - you have giant headphones to wear and they let you bring a CD with you to play. To try and distract myself, I chose a goofy compilation I had made for a party, the contents of which I found myself trying to justify, and then apologise for, to the radiographer – who obviously couldn't care less and was only thinking, 'Jesus, we've got ourselves a talker.' OK, there may be something quite seriously wrong with my hand, but the excruciating pain of that would be as nothing next to a medical professional mocking my love of the theme to St Elmo's Fire. 

Halfway through the scan, they took me out and injected something or other into my hand. It took three attempts, and after the first one the nurse said quite casually, 'Oh dear, that vein's burst,' which is not a brilliant thing to say to someone of a nervous disposition like myself. But fortunately all I have to show for that particular micro-ordeal is three plasters and the most slimline bruise I've ever had.

I thought, as bruises go, it might look slightly more impressive. In fact, it looks a bit like a varicose vein in my hand which, having done some work for pregnancy and baby magazines, I can tell you is far from the least unusual place to have varicose veins.

I got to King's College Hospital early, so I walked into Camberwell for a mooch round Woolworths. There aren't many local shops where  they sell saucepans and fancy dress under the same roof – while simultaneously keeping the tradition of pick'n'mix alive – so I like to give them my business whenever I can. And thank Christ I did, as otherwise I would never have known of the existence of this:

One of the Chuckle Brothers – and I believe it to be Paul – must get through more eyeliner than Russell Brand. (In researching which Chuckle Brother is which, I've discovered that Chuckle is not their real surname. Sorry to be the one to let you know.)

While I was in Woolworths, I bought myself a Terry's Chocolate Orange as they were only £1.25 and I figured I deserved it. Even though I am now 34 and responsible for earning and disposing of my own income, a Chocolate Orange somehow retains the childhood air of Extremely Special Treat. And although full-price they probably cost less than a pint of beer or a shop-bought sandwich, it still seemed gloriously decadent. However, after the scan, I went to do my weekly shop at Sainbury's and found they were selling two Chocolate Oranges for only £1.93.

I felt like a fool.

There are no words

I must share something with you, so you can feel as soiled as I do at this time. I am nothing if not giving. 

If you sell your soul to Facebook, you inevitably end up making friends with people from your past who you were never particularly close friends with when you were at school together. I have several 'friends' who fall into this category.

One of them has genuinely just posted this status update.

'[NAME OF FRIEND] has just heard of female circumsision.....any one had it? LOL never knew it excisted'

This is truly a new personal low.

Dictionary corner – US special

1) Yesterday, on their early-evening Beijing highlights programme, the BBC showed how US television was choosing to cover the continuing success of swimfreak Michael Phelps. I think it may have been NBC who described him as 'the winningest athlete in history'. Apparently, 'winningest' is a perfectly legitimate adjective in the US – but not over here, of course, because it sounds COMPLETELY RIDICULOUS.

2) Meanwhile, Miss L and I are in a pre-holiday hotel-booking frenzy. Just today, Miss L received an automated reply to one email enquiry which read: 'I will be away from the office on a personal renewal returning Monday 18th August.' I do not know what a personal renewal is. Discounting baptism or gender reassignment, I'm assuming it's some kind of grandiloquising of the mythological 'duvet day', where the jaded office worker emerges from the chrysalis of their bedclothes to live again a butterfly. 

Next time in Dictionary Corner, I attempt to ascertain if grandiloquising is a proper word.

Three steps forward, two steps back

If, like me, you read or occasionally work on mid-brow, middle-youth women's magazines, you will have come across many articles about how to achieve the state of happiness. Real, genuine, inner, total, spiritual, lasting, you-may-no-longer-need-to-read-women's-magazines happiness. The kind that sees you pictured on the page in soft focus, a low sun behind you, your hair well-conditioned, some kind of organic white cotton dress on and an ecstatic, God-I-am-just-so-amazingly-happy!-Look-at-me-and-how-happy-I-am smile on your face. This, the articles claim, is happiness that propels you skywards above trivial concerns like fretting that your toddler can't count from one to ten in French, or worrying whether you should be tipping your cleaning lady.

A constant in these features is a menu of tips from happy women, who are inevitably successful start-up businesswomen or celebrities who Have It All. And one of the tips invariably tells you to think of three good things that have happened to you that day. It's count your blessings for the noughties. Over the last couple of years, I've been amazed to actually find myself doing this. I am congenitally hostile to the literature of self-help, but this advice somehow disarmed me. 

So today, I had lunch with a new friend (1), I had a lovely comment on this blog (2), and my friend Stuart did clever and artistic things with some ideas we have for world domination (3).

When you consider that the lunch took place in Leon, it's actually four things. Christ, maybe I am actually happy. But then, with perfect dramatic timing, the bad news snuck its arm around me to chloroform my good spirits. Firstly, I discovered, purely by accident, that a lovely friend of mine has been quietly, but horribly, unhappy. Then, secondly – and this is a detached, random sort of sadness – I read that Father Adelir Antonio de Carlo was confirmed dead, his remains discovered off the coast of Brazil a couple of weeks ago. I hope that history remembers him. I will. Father Adelir Antonio de Carlo had lifted off three months earlier, elsewhere in Brazil, attached to 1000 helium balloons. He was attempting to break a world record and raise the money to build a rest shelter for local truck drivers. A previous attempt, with half as many balloons, had seen him blown over the border into Argentina. This time he had packed with him an array of all-weather clothing, cereal bars and communication devices – all of which signified that this would, more likely than not, End Badly. Yet our hero's conviction didn't waver, and he was not to be talked down into coffee mornings, jumble sales and other more pedestrian endeavours. It seems a quaintly old-fashioned kind of martyrdom, and although the outcome was, of course, no surprise, it still adds a weight or two onto an already  heavy heart.

And it means that I'm now only +2 happiness. Or am I? It seems wholly inappropriate that a nice lunch is the perfect inverse of a friend's bad fortune. The latter should be far more significant. Even counting triple, I'd be, at best, back to zero. And that's if Father De Carli's death only counts as -1. The women's magazines don't explain this. I should obviously be thankful that I'm still technically in the black, happiness-wise, and start counting again tomorrow.

Celebrity sums

In the absence of absolutely anything on telly worth watching on a weeknight, yesterday I watched Pal Joey from the Sky+ library which I have been carefully curating for just such a cultural famine. I think it's the first film I've seen with Rita Hayworth and, to be honest, I couldn't really see what the fuss is all about.

She seemed to be a combination of this:

and this:

In end-of-the-world news, I have seen a suspicious number of giant ants today, in various parts of London. It's the apocalypse, of course, just so you're in the loop. 

It's the most wonderful time of the year

This has been the most important weekend in the south-east London calendar. For this weekend it was the Lambeth Country Show, which is exactly what it promises to be – a country show just a few hundred yards from Brixton. Hay-on-Wye has books and Mariella Frostrup in wellies; Sussex has Glyndbourne; Goodwood has, like, Goodwood, which is apparently glorious. We have sheep-shearing, falconry displays, an eardrum-corroding sound system, owls, and the Labour Party selling bric-a-brac.

Where else would you see children milking a simulated wooden cow? Or hard-faced, shorn-skulled army cadets with tattoos on their necks enthusing over a stall selling fudge in all the colours of God's beautiful rainbow? All this at the same time as you're enjoying a wholemeal bap bursting with farm sausages.

Every year, I have two favourite attractions at the LCS. The first is the aforementioned display of owls, beatifically enduring their less-than-desirable working conditions… 

…except for this one, my favourite, and clearly the old lag of the troupe. I love the way he looks so entirely full of contempt, quite as if standing on a plinth and being stared at by people ambitiously dressed in shorts is so utterly, utterly beneath him.

I think the owl concession may have changed hands in recent years. All this year's owl wranglers were kindly elderly men. In a previous year, I swear I remember a satanically red-faced 50-year-old barking at a toddler to stand back because 'THIS BIRD COULD KILL A CHILD.' I think he was let go.

And then there is the tent where you can thrill! at the best onions in show, gasp! at the first-prize bonsai trees, swoon! at the most superior baking and cross-stitch, and – best of all – be amazed! by the finest fruit and vegetable modellers in Lambeth and surrounding area. Let us begin with the children's class:

The tiny tortoise family on the left of the frame was declared the winner, but if you ask me, this penguin was swizzed.

 

Meanwhile, first place in the grown-ups' classification went to this effigy of a modern-day icon:

It beat this ambitious recreation of The Magic Roundabout:

I can only assume the sculptors lost points for painting on Zebedee's features with Tipp-Ex.

Hey big spender

In addition to War And Peace and the works of Charles Dickens, one of the many noteworthy and cultish books I haven't read is The Bible. 

Yet recently I have been practising something that I understand from popular culture to be one of its tenets – turning the other cheek. I have been performing this gesture not in the face of hostility and aggression but in the face of items of clothing I cannot afford in a variety of high-street and online outlets.

Around two and half years ago, I dropped out of 'the system' – yeah, you heard me, stiffs – by giving up my middle-management job in magazine publishing. Shortly after, I turned back to 'the system' as it did pay quite well, but this time as a free agent, with my new-found sense of liberty tempered by a 30% pay cut. It's taken me about two and a half years to comprehend that this means I don't earn as much as I used to. These days I live – and this may shock some of you – on a budget.

I didn't really hit it off with that particular concept at the outset. But now we are actually becoming friends. And I believe I may now be turning not-buying into an art form. Just this afternoon I didn't buy a red cashmere cardigan on eBay. I bid (or bidded, as they don't say in America) for it, but with the serene security of knowing I would be outbid by a less zen, more profligate rival a few minutes later. I also not-bought a Whistles frock. I did then actually buy a dress in the Toast sale, but it was 70% off and what kind of chump would think it was smart not to buy that? I'm poor, not an idiot.

The mere idea that I don't have to buy absolutely everything I touch in a shop has come as something of a revelation. Apparently you're actually allowed to pick things up, then put them down again and walk away. Is this what everyone else has been doing all these years? Furthermore, I've discovered that, due to my prodigiously low boredom threshold, if I just hold something in my hand and walk around a shop for 10 to 15 minutes, by the time it comes to paying for it, I am already tired of its company and can put it back with a light heart. It's true, I live in a fashion microclimate where the seasons really do change that quickly. 'That's £45 you've saved,' I smirk to myself as I exit the shop, clad not in a costly new outfit, but the rosy glow of self-righteousness.

Not-buying also works if I technically do buy something, take it home, look at it for a while, then return it to the shop and get my money back. This actually feels to me like I'm making money. Last week, a hysterical episode induced by low blood sugar and the cancellation of all southbound Thameslink trains compelled me to comfort-buy this from New Look at Moorgate:

It is a nice dress. If you are Avril Lavigne – skinny, 23 and Canadian. I am 34 on the outside, 73 within, East Anglian and of no fixed gym routine. Therefore the dress is enjoying a mini-break only in my flat, holed up in its carrier bag, with only its receipt for company. It will return to the New Look mothership within 28 days. If I was a different person – not a Capricorn, for example, the squarest of all the signs – I could wear it out once, douse it in Fabreze, then brazenly take it back, with very light soiling, to the shop. This, however, is impossible, thanks to my uncanny ability to get jam on everything. Even if I have not eaten any jam. How does this happen? You cannot seek to explain a God-given gift.

Among the other things I am not-buying are a portfolio of property, at home and abroad, an aquarium of high-maintenance tropical fish and Cristiano Ronaldo, just to keep him locked up in a cupboard. It is surprisingly liberating. Join me.

The Jones family twee

It would seem that Miss Jones was always a woman of letters. And with that sentence I've just fulfilled a secret ambition to be the kind of individual who refers to themselves in the the third person.

I've been doing a good deal of spring cleaning lately – punctuality never my forte – and I've found pages upon pages of creative endeavours from my childhood, including all manner of notes, such as the above. It seems that my parents could barely go to the end of the road without me composing some kind of sonnet cycle celebrating their return.

However, despite the affectionate declarations, I think the subtext is quite clear. Mum, can I have some sweets?

And talking of sweets:

This pavement in Dulwich on Saturday could have meant only one thing: the catalyst for a nuclear tantrum. Or a gingerbread cottage just a quarter-pound's worth of pick and mix away. OK, that's two things.

The cat's whiskers

Spotting slinking around an outdoor cafe in Kew:

Purr-cule Poirot. 

Introducing The Special Jones Award For Enthusiasm

I may have said it before, but it was at least a month ago. As qualities go, enthusiasm is one of my very favourites. 

Today, I opened a book of stamps I'd bought days ago, to stick a couple on the most mundane of correspondance. But the very sight of them lit me up a little inside. Last week, in Marble Arch post office, the man who had sold them to me had responded to my request for a book of first class by taking the trouble to open up the booklet and press the insides against the glass dividing us. 'Look! They are special ones. See?' he beamed. And they were. Two giant images of fully flaked-up 99s, dwarfing the queen's-head rank and file.

I have scanned them in for posterity, using scanning technology and a scanner. Full marks for brain-buckling use of perspective in your work, stamp-design robots.

The point is, my friendly vendor (friendor?) was so genuinely pleased to be showing me this small ray of novelty, and not in a half-hearted 'Has anyone told you about the post office's travel insurance?' kind of way. And as a result, he is the first ever recipient of the Special Jones Award For Enthusiasm In Otherwise Humdrum Quarters (SJAFEIOHQ – an acronym to live in the brain, if ever there was one). Have a certificate, sunny Marble Arch P.O. Operative, and a little piece of my heart.

I am feeling more sentimental than usual today.

Trolley pash

Today I was in the branch of Starbucks that nestles (or should I say Nestlés) inside my local branch of Sainsbury's (big up, you tiny local businesses) doing some work and minding my own cappucino. I wasn't working for Sainsbury's or Starbucks, although I am precocious in my grasp of the self-checkout. 

Before too long, an elderly couple came and sat opposite me. There was nothing remarkable about them, clothed as they were from the conventional over-70s lookbook of tartan, quilting and the darker neutrals. There were no wedding rings on display, so I took the view that they were on a shop-date.

Given that they had plumped for the sofa directly opposite mine, rather than the many, many vacant chairs and tables all around us, I wondered whether Mr Silver-Haired Shop-Date had chosen that particular side-by-side seating arrangement as groundwork for the classic 'yawn, arm-stretch, lateral-embrace' courting sequence.  But of course it was nothing so vulgar. Perhaps they had simply chosen the sofa for its proximity to the window, and the conversational aid provided by the view (as small talk can be taxing on such occasions). The rain, he correctly surmised, was holding off. 

They each had a cup of tea, of course, and shared a cheese sandwich on white bread which, with admirable daring, they had brought in from Sainsbury's itself (rather than buying a modish Starbucks wrap) and conspiratorially opened up the packaging under cover of a plastic bag.

Charming, of course, but soon my eyes were drawn to a far more romantic spectacle – their tartan shopping trolleys smooching together beside the table. Here they are, in all their erotically charged glory. To the left of the frame, you can see the lined notebook I was furtively using as a shield for my cameraphone. 

Tea drained and sandwich eaten, they trundled out of the shop and away across the car park. What with it only being 4pm, it wasn't exactly into the sunset, but aptly, they walked under a grey, overcast sky with the faint promise of some sunshine.

Pinpricks Of Depression In An Otherwise Lovely Weekend

1) The Aisle Of Macabre Sculpture in TK Maxx, Lewisham. This is not a feature that is particular to Lewisham. It is in the mission statement of every branch of TK Maxx to achieve an Aisle Of Macabre Sculpture – grimacing cats, bodies entwined with a gloomy lack of eroticism and the like. But Lewisham trumped them all this weekend, with the Severed Otter's Head.

It is a curious piece of artistry. The otter seems to me a lovable breed. Who would revel in the concept of its decapitation heartily enough to pop this proudly on their mantelpiece? Perhaps only the world's least convincing hunter. 'Well, modesty aside, that one put up quite the fight, let me tell you. We wrestled on the river bank until I proved its master. Then I had its head glazed and jet marbles inserted in its eye sockets, the better to preserve my spoils. And now every visitor to my three-bedroom semi is transfixed by this trophy, begging me to tell just one more time the story of how I tamed the beast of the estuary. It is indeed truly the skill of the glazer to make it look precisely like a piece of roughly hewn china tat.'

Let us also pause a moment to reflect on how dirty the shelves of Lewisham TK Maxx are.

2) Dropped Soft Toy. Traditionally, this species is seen propped up on a fence or gatepost by a good samaritan who refuses to say die, hauled onto woolly tiptoes to catch the eye of its bereaved owner in case he should return to the scene to search for his fallen comrade. But this was an example for the eco-conscious 00s, captured lying prone in juxtaposition with a brown, garden waste recycling wheelie bin.

3) The man sitting next to me at Daniel Kitson's performance at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre who insisted on checking his cocking Blackberry every ten minutes. It was a glorious evening, with a heart-warming turn, a gentle breeze, tiny white feathers from the local birdlife blowing picturesquely across the scene like snow, twinkly lights, trees, and twinkly lights in trees. What could truly set the occasion off? Hmm. A cup of hot chocolate to warm the hands on? A cashmere blanket? An overhead comet? Wait, I know. A lit-up two-inch square of self-importance flashing regularly in my peripheral vision would be perfect. Thank goodness you're here, Mr Blackberry, with your chinos and carefully combed hairline of denial.

Things I Have Seen On My Way To Work That Are Guaranteed To Ruin My Day No. 5489

Today, in Charing Cross Station, a late-middle-aged man, smart and well groomed, dressed in a canary yellow P&O Ferries T-shirt and matching baseball cap, handing out flyers for a P&O sale, surrounded by much younger and wildly enthusiastic young men doing the same job.  Posture: stooped and weary. Expression: looking for all the world like his spirit was trickling away across the concourse like a dropped cup of coffee.

More reasons to eat at Morrisons

The last time I was working in the same building as my friend Betty, she took me to the fashionable Engineer pub in Primrose Hill for lunch. This time, as if to keep my feet on the ground, she took me to Morrisons' coffee shop.

It is quite a heady contrast. You don't see many celebrity wife-swappers in there. You don't even see Jade Goody. What you see are several white-haired old men quite alone, gazing down at their cooked lunch, cup and saucer of tea and slice of cheesecake. There's something about that combination of solitary elderly gentleman and coffee shop that forms a big black cloud over my head. In all likelihood, each one is probably just enjoying some quality Me Time before picking up his wife (who he's loved a little more with every one of their 50 years together) from the hairdresser, and needs my pity like he needs a faulty hearing aid.

Still, despite this melancholy spectacle, I am always cheered by a visit to somewhere that is by and large untouched by progress. The Morrisons cafeteria speaks of a time before soya lattes and health and safety. There is no barista to steam your milky drinks. Instead you are let loose in front of the hot beverage machine to create your own deranged cocktail of tea, coffee and hot chocolate, and self-harm at will with scalding water.

The menu features nothing to jar the senses. All the meals have been carefully chosen from a soothing colour palette of yellow, orange and brown – jacket potato with baked beans; jacket potato with tuna; omelette and chips; egg and chips; sausage and chips. Make up your own, if you like.

As I was paying the princely sum of £1.51 for a coffee and a teacake as big as my head (I am strangely in love with a teacake lately), I heard one of the orderlies shouting to a colleague: 'The customers are asking for forks again.' As though this was an outlandish demand equal to requesting a jacket potato garnished with the moon on a stick. 'They want what? We ate with our fingers in my day and it was good enough for us.'

To me, it is endlessly comforting to know that there is at least one corner of London where it is forever 1983 – the year of Thriller and All Night Long. And who on earth could not feel better for remembering this (which I'm also officially posting as a belated birthday dedication to Miss W)…

Au revoir

I will be taking an enforced week off from the blog, but will return with stories of rites of passage and extraordinary garments that have recently found their way into the Jones portmanteau. Thank you to my small but loyal band of browsers for the browsing you have done until this point. I will see you, metaphorically speaking, very soon. Until then, as Daniel Day-Lewis says in Last Of The Mohicans: Be strong, survive, stay alive. I will find you.

 

Daniel Day-Lewis is like myself, very pallid. We are probably distantly related. Or perhaps we resided in the same sanitorium for consumptives in a previous life. Also, my hair quite often looks like this. But I don't even have to be runnng.