I’ve started writing on my hand again – I used to do that when I was a teenager. I also did it in my early twenties. Then I stopped for a while. Not sure why I stopped – I just did. And now, at 31, the back of my left hand says ‘Call Vic’, because I need to call her, along with a hastily added ‘+ Dad’ underneath, because I need to call him too.

I need to call Vic because we’ve been trying to plan a weekend get-together for about, oh, eight months. When I call her she’s busy — when she calls me I’m busy. We will talk on the phone tonight, if I notice the note on my hand before 9pm (it is not acceptable to call anybody after 9pm) and if she answers. We will see. Vic, if you’re reading this – hello 🙂.

I need to call my dad to talk about taxes. I do not understand them and I don’t have any money to pay them. It is the latest hurdle in a series of a great many hurdles over which I must toss my body, in a po-faced Fosbury Flop. It is not insurmountable. Nothing is insurmountable! I will surmount it.

I went to Italy a month ago, for one week. It was really nice. I saw David in Florence. I saw two of him, in fact: one in a town square, and one in another square but on top of a hill, where people go to watch the sunset. I’ve decided to make Michaelangelo’s David my ‘body goals’ figure for the next year or so. He has a nice flat torso; it looks like you could use him as a desk, if he went into the ‘bridge’ yoga position and held it for a few hours, which he obviously could because he’s made of rocks.

My problem with trying to look like Michaelangelo’s David is that I have love handles. I never knew I had love handles until somebody told me a few years ago: ‘ha ha you have love handles’, they said. Since then I’ve noticed them. I look at myself in the mirror – facing away and looking back over my shoulder – and wonder how to get rid of them. I can diminish them, sometimes; a good fortnight of gym and salads does the trick. But then I get itchy and impish – I want to be silly, dammit! I want pints and sweets and extended periods of lying down! – and they swell once more. I sometimes feel like Faramir, raggedly fighting on to defend Osgiliath against the inexhaustible orc-bands of Minas Morgul.

God it’s nice to write again. I stopped doing it for a couple of months for no real reason; I simply had other things to think about. I read ‘The Night Manager’ recently, by John Le Carre. I did not care for it. I’m reading Jurassic Park at the moment. I like it much better.

Italy was amazing. It was one of the best weeks I’ve had in yonks. It was so good that when I came back to London I was thoroughly depressed and wanted to die. A coffee in Modena is a euro. A euro! That’s 80p, probably! A coffee in London costs £4. If you want some cake with it, that’s the lion’s share of £10. Ten quid! For some dirty bean-water and a sugary bit of sponge! Fuck off – fuck right into the distance.

I’m wrestling with London. I want to love it – I really want to love it. At times, I do love it. I love it when I’m passing through Trafalgar Square at night. I love it when I get off the train at Blackfriars and I can see Tower Bridge and all the skyscrapers glittering in the sunlight, or looming in the gloom, or beaming through the dark like spaceships. I love it when I go to the theatre. I love it, sometimes, on the Underground, when I’m heading out somewhere special and everyone else is going somewhere too, and it feels all electric and good-natured and crackly.

I can’t help but feeling that everything would be swell in this city if we just said ‘right, no more silly rents’. Imagine that! Imagine it: across the country, rent capped at £300 a month, which is about what it feels like we should all be paying to be allowed to sleep in a room. £300 a month feels good, normal, fair. Imagine it! All the spare money everybody would suddenly have. We could all buy things – fuck, all the coffee and cake we liked! And we could buy new clothes and interesting cheeses, and we could go for nights out and spend and wake up and shrug and laugh – oh, how we’d laugh! We’d howl.

I think about money a lot, at the moment. Never did that in any other city. That’s a big minus point against London – how much this place makes me consider my dough, or lack of it. I don’t like thinking about money; it’s tedious. It turns me off. When I find myself talking about it I can’t help but feel a bit greasy, a bit rat-like. I find myself saying the word ‘grand’ a lot, instead of ‘a thousand’. I hate it; I feel like Del-Boy.

Annie is coming in four weeks: her annual UK tour. The last mental image I have of her was taken through insane, blood-shot eyes at some ungodly hour on Paris’s Metro, last September. It will be good to see her again and make new memories. Oh! And Seth visited recently, for only 48 hours, because he’s a dad now and he wanted to visit but couldn’t be away from his family for long. I took him around a few nautical, piratical pubs over the course of a jolly (and progressively jollier) afternoon. I introduced him to Alex, one of my oldest friends. It was nice and odd seeing them chatting together; felt like a cross-over episode of a TV show.

Anyway, that’s all my news for now. Just a little writing practice – one hour of power. I have run out of time; I have a lesson to teach.

Farewell!