Street Sadness

A nine-year-old girl, bored with the display of Bronze Age daggers in the Museum of London, turns to her mother and says, quietly, "Mummy, if we don't go and sit down and have some orange juice right this minute , I don't know what I might be capable of!"

Two young women chatting in a cafe in Peckham.      "I went to visit Michael in hoskital and there was a nurse shavin' his genickles. I said, 'What are you shavin' 'is genickles for? 'E's 'avin' an operation on 'is chest. And anyway, that's MY  fuckin' job if anyone's gonna do that!'"

Two Indian students sit in a cafe at Victoria Station drinking coffee. One says to the other, "I have a wheezer at home. It's a bit old now. I don't let anyone go near my wheezer and I guard it vell". The other nodded. It took me a while to work out that he was speaking about his visa and not his asthmatic granny.

I arrived at Chancery Lane tube station with an hour to spare. I was to meet for the first time my dear FB friend N. F. at 2pm. I thought I would have a walk around the streets first. When I got up to street-level it was raining - the first proper, drenching rain I've really seen since I've been here. It was lovely. London looks all silvery in a downpour. I walked along Chancery Lane for a w hile, getting slowly soaked and it really felt great to be out in Nature, with water dripping off my nose and soaking into my left sock through the newly-appeared hole in my sole: it really made me feel alive to the experience. Went into Marks & Spencer for a big bag of mandarins. Then I stood under its eaves while I peeled and ate a couple, watching the passing parade of solicitors' secretaries, shoppers and businessmen-and-women scurrying by with their umbrellas, and listening to scraps of their conversation as they passed. It was a magic forty minutes, and I could easil...

In the light of the fact that police in Australia are currently 'monitoring' an exhibition about the Vagina in case somebody dies of shock, it was very refreshing that in grown up, adult London I could see a very lovely exhibition today in the British Museum : Shunga: sex and humour in Japanese art, 1600-1900 . This beautiful work, some of it very graphic in its portrayal of sex, was being enjoyed by all ages of visitor. Children under 16 needed to be accompanied by an adult, and there were notices up for parents with children under 14 that the show featured sexually explicit imagery. But nobody was denied access to the art; nobody was screaming in moral outrage; no policeman was there with handcuffs; nobody passed out. It was simply human beings looking at other naked human beings. Why is that such a damned problem in backward, puritanical, moralistic Australia?

I went to the Lowry exhibition with some anticipation as I had never seen his work in the flesh before. The first picture I saw on entering the first gallery room was quite engaging: a gloomy view of a church standing in a smudgy, bleak landscape under glowering clouds. It was rather reminiscent of some German Expressionist works.   There were some quite interesting paintings of hellish, denuded, industrial wastelands with belching chimneys and sulphurous pools of factory sludge which looked like the Somme after a particularly harrowing battle. At first viewing these appeared to be metaphors for the futility and horror of warfare. But on further investigation of the exhibition it soon became clear that Lowry was neither interested in nor capable of metaphor. What you saw is what you got.   In the same front gallery I saw the first of his Breughel-esque street scenes, teeming with his characteristic stick figures clomping over the cobbles and going about their cartoony busine...

In the cafe of the National Gallery an elderly woman barged past where I was sitting with my pot of tea, knocking her bag with some force into the back of my head. At first I was inclined to put this down as an accident. But when her husband yelled out to her, "Honey! That's not the right way! Honey, over here! " and she returned, bashing her bag into the back of my head a second time, and then a third, when she had to retrace her steps yet again due to more customers sitting down, I just thought she must have been either blind in one eye or spiteful.

The fascinating spectacle of a large young woman in the dining room of the hotel in Manchester, who visited the breakfast buffet four times, filling her plate to overflowing each time and then waddling back to the table to tuck in to her second-third-and-fourth serves of sausages, beans, eggs, black pudding, and toast. It made me think of those poor French geese who are force-fed until their livers explode in rich, delicious goodness.

Strangely, such a teeming metropolis as London can sometimes surprise with sudden emptiness. Yesterday after leaving the National Portrait Gallery I wandered into Leicester Square, which I have only ever known as being chock-full of humanity. But it was empty, save for an elderly man shuffling in front of one of the cinemas and several greasy, moulting pigeons performing their mindless figure-eights on the neo-cobbles. I immediately thought of the film, 28 Days Later , and I looked nervously around me for any signs of 'reanimation'. Still from Danny Boyle's, 28 Days Later.

In one of the tube stations last night I saw a big advertising poster featuring a woman with quite prominent teeth. Some wag had scrawled with black marker pen over the top: "Gee up, Neddy!" 

This afternoon we walked over to the beautiful Nunhead cemetery, which was one of five huge cemeteries set up in London in the Victorian age. The place is wonderfully overgrown with trees and brambles. Many of the moss-covered graves and headstones were crumbling into the forest that had grown up around and through them. I took many photographs there. Clambering up a grassy bank to reach a particularly picturesque group of crumbling tombs my shoes slid in the moss and I fell flat on my face in the mud, slamming my camera into the dirt. As I tremulously stood up again, with hunks of mud peeling off my clothes and face and plopping back to the ground, there was a sound rising above the rooks cawing in the trees: it was my brother's helpless laughter. Nunhead Cemetery, South London. 

On four separate occasions I have been dumfounded to witness American couples stop to take photographs of each other in front of various Starbucks venues throughout London .

The prize for the most terrifying feature in London must surely go to the 'Sky Ring' at Kew Gardens. This is a raised walkway that circumnavigates a group of tall trees. Curiosity got the better of me and I decided to go up there and take a look. I climbed all the stairs with some trepidation as I have a fear of heights. I finally reached the top and had the first of many attacks of vertigo. I was unable to go back down as I had been followed up by a load of grannies and children who were clomping up the stairs behind me - a kind of momentum had built up. I stepped out onto the platform, which was made of a steel mesh grill. Unfortunately, you could see right through this to the ground, eight-storeys below. I might as well have been walking on a sheet of glass. Involuntarily, I must have gasped because one of the grannies turned and said, "Oright, luv?" I smiled weakly and clung onto the steel wall. Then I thought, if the grannies and kids could do it, I surely could,...

The unedifying spectacle of a middle-aged Chinese man descending the packed escalator at Tottenham Court Road tube station at peak hour, vigorously picking his nose and then wiping the results off his index finger onto the steel barrier, oblivious to the horrified reactions of all of us who passed him, on the way up.

Last night I went on a Jack the Ripper walk with my brother. It was actually quite interesting and not at all crappy. Of course, each of the murder sites is now built over, but we did walk through all of the areas where the horror took place and a lot of the buildings in the area from this period are still there, including the C19th homeless shelter in Artillery Lane, where many of the women were forced to sleep on many occasions. This stands opposite a beautiful eighteenth-century Huguenot building, which today is the art gallery, Raven Row. Our guide was particularly good on the socioeconomic situation of the period and on the descriptions of the appalling poverty of the area at the time of the murders.   The walking tour was mercifully free of stupid questions from dimwits in the audience, although as we walked along the dark streets, between the relevant stopping off points, a fat Australian girl chatted on endlessly and loudly to her skinny Australian friend about what she go...

Beneath the huge tropical greenhouse at Kew Gardens they have an aquarium exhibit to showcase marine plant life. Two girls in their mid-twenties stood gazing into one of the tanks. Their mother came up behind them and also looked into the tank. Something caught her attention: "Ooh! Look! There's a fishy! Hello, Mr Fishy!... Fishy!... Fishy! Are you going for a lovely swim, then? You are, aren't you! Happy day!"

An old lady on the tube, earnestly speaking to her sister, "It's all very well for you, Vi. You don't feel the same as me. But I see no reason not to do it. It might be sooner, it might be later, but do it I will! "

Two wasps grappling on the pavement outside the mosque in Choumert Grove, Peckham, trying their best to sting each other to death.

Big black guy on the Jubilee line, built like a haystack, speaking in measured tones quietly into his mobile phone: "I believe it is in the boot of the car. Have a look there. It is there you will find the item you are looking for, in a black plastic bag, in the boot. Please be careful."

After showering and shaving this morning I placed two small pieces of toilet paper onto the resulting little nicks on my face. Then I ate a bowl of cereal before rushing out to catch my train to London Bridge. It was only as we sped through Bermondsey that I realised that the slivers of bloodied tissue paper were still glued to my chops. No wonder small children and their mothers had given me a wide berth in the street. I must have looked like Albert Steptoe shuffling down the road. On another occasion, in Melbourne, I had scratched my forehead and to staunch the bleeding I stuck a sizeable piece of tissue paper on the wound. It was only after I returned home from the travel agent, where I had conducted all of my London travel business with the, I now realise, quite traumatised young woman, that I notice that it was still gummed to my scalp. And I can't count the times recently I have been in the street and realised my fly is open. Or else there's the constant, worried, scrabbl...

A bright yellow Rolls Royce, waiting at traffic lights, containing a chauffeur and, in the back seat, just visible through the lightly tinted glass, a sad-looking sheik wearing dark glasses shaking his head disconsolately.

In the little bookshop on the way to the tube station a woman stood at the counter with her nine-year-old daughter. "Do you have a copy of The Elephant and the Baby ?" The shop assistant said that they had a copy and that it was over on that shelf. "Oh, no! I want a hardback copy, not a paperback! " When assured that there were no hardback copies available, the woman snorted, "What sort of a bookshop are you? Oh, well, that will have to do, I suppose." The shop assistant placed the book in a bag and the woman continued, "This is my daughter, Rebecca. She is nine and she loves elephants, don't you, Rebecca? Except, she doesn't like Bumpy at the moment. Bumpy is her toy elephant and he has been very naughty and rude to the other toys."

Last night my brother and I went to an amateur comedy night, upstairs in a pub in New Cross. There were eight acts, doing routines of between five-to-ten minutes each. They were mostly very funny. The most bizarre was a 77-year old woman who did a rambling routine about her sex life. Only two of the eight performers crashed and burned. So that left six very funny people on stage, and all for free. The MC for the occasion was a young Caribbean woman who did the time-honoured 'pick-on-the-audience' bit, and she was quite good at it. Early on she locked onto my brother, who has a grey beard and wears glasses, and so, naturally, she thought was Rolf Harris. Much hilarity ensued, with many references to that antipodean, kiddy-fiddling old hack.

In an unusual pocket of solitude in the British Museum, I found myself in a people-free room in the Egyptian halls. I was looking down at a tiny, carved wooden coffin containing a five-year-old boy. His image had been lovingly, and quite naively painted on the outer cover. His name was Poraiis, if I remember correctly. The information stated that the little boy inside the coffin was dressed in a red and blue gown, and he had red and blue ribbons plaited in his hair; his head was resting on a red pillow. I found it suddenly very moving and my eyes were welling with tears when into the quiet, darkened room stomped three big American girls. For some reason, although the room was otherwise empty, they made a beeline for where I was standing and stood right next to me at the big glass case. One girl was laughing at a text message she was typing on her iPhone. Another was loudly braying at the third, "Oh my fricken Gahd! Taylor said all along that she was going to come to Brandon's...

The ignominious end of a young, naked Egyptian man: curled up in the foetal position in the British Museum on a bed of sand, surrounded by the pots and bowls which were taken with him from his original burial place, thousands of miles away. Parchment-like brown skin; wisps of bleached blonde hair clinging here and there to his dried up scalp; shriveled black penis and testicles, their days and nights of love forever ended. And there he lay in a glass box in a big room in London, surrounded by screeching children, and tourists snapping their iPhones, all of whom had forgotten that they were looking at another human being.

In the corner of the French Pub in Soho, two half-pissed old codgers are in conversation. One turns to the other and, with a serious expression suddenly galvanising his beetroot-red face, solemnly proclaims: "In my childhood, of course, there was the danger of Adolf Hitler, or 'Der Führer', as he was also known."

Every time I am waiting at London Bridge station the voice that comes over the speakers is surely that of gruff old Ray Winstone. I always expect him to bark, "Oi! You slags! Get over 'ere fer yor fuckin' train!"

Sitting opposite me in the carriage a buxom young woman, on her way to work, is talking to a sales rep, trying to organise a wedding reception. He is obviously smitten with her curvaceous charms because I observe him taking sneaking glances at her décolletage whenever he thinks she isn't looking. At one point he says, "Tomorrow I have to go over to Bristols". She thinks for a second and replies, "Do you mean Bestall's? " His red face clearly indicates his crushing embarrassment.

Last night in a Thai restaurant the woman at the next table was speaking urgently to her companion: "All of my windows are hard wood. There should be absolutely no reason why they are swelling up in the rain. Now, answer me that. Why can't I lift my sashes when the weather is inclement? It just doesn't make any sense!"

London, for gay men, must be one of the cruisiest cities on the planet. Certainly, the cruisers must be the most forward and direct. Today on the Northern Line the carriage was very crowded - standing-room only - and very hot. A good-looking guy squeezed on and stood next to me. He surveyed me for a few seconds and worked me out. Then he said, "Phew! It's bloody hot in here, isn't it!" I agreed that it was. He undid his top two shirt buttons and continued, "Are you hot?" I concurred. He went on, "Even the poles are hot!" And at this, he ran his hand suggestively up and down the vertical yellow bar between us. Then he looked up to where I gripped the overhead bar, "Is your pole hot, too?" To which there was no other answer possible except, "Yes, actually, my pole is also pretty hot". Unfortunately, I was due to meet my brother upstairs in ten-minutes, so his generous offer fell flat.

Woman to friend on the Northern Line: "I was litcherly that close to forlin' off. I litcherly was!"

In the late afternoon I found myself in South Kensington, so I called into the French patisserie 'Paul', opposite the tube station. Once again it didn't disappoint in terms of good coffee, great food, and beautiful young staff. Today all the guys looked like they'd just stepped off a Bel Ami film set. [Gay reference] As I waited for my lovely coffee to be lovingly made by the lovely hands of one of the lovely Bel Ami guys, I kept being snapped out of my reverie by the piercing shrieks of two young girls who were in the shop with their mother and their Philippina nanny. One was aged about eight and the other, a fat thing aged about six who was wedged into a pusher. It was the older girl who had the most piercing screech. Everybody cringed at the horrible noise, even my lovely Bel Amite. I then noticed that the mother had escaped to a table outside, leaving the nanny to deal with the little bastards. After enduring the din several more times, and turning to glare at the ...

For some reason South Kensington tube station entrance seems to have recently become a bit of a 'meat rack'. I've noticed this each time I pass through, at all times of the day or evening. Today was no exception and, sure enough, there were a couple of rent boys standing up against the wall just inside the entrance. Alas, I am on a very tight budget.

With two hours to kill before I was to meet someone this afternoon I sat on one of the benches in Soho Square to write down some observations in my notebook, watch people and eat a couple of mandarins. A young Russian girl sat down next to me, engrossed in a conversation on her iPhone. "You hurt me so much I wanted to die! Did you know that?.... You lied to me!... You lied to me... A big lie!... Did I ever lie to you?... No!... You made things too complicated for us... Now my sister cannot come here to me... Did you know she's only twenty-five and she shares one room with six other people?... I told you it was my last text message ever to you... I cannot any more!... You are a beast!"   And, with that, she hung up and walked away.

Last night at the tube station there was a very long line of people waiting their turn to step onto the escalator to get up to the exit and street level. There must have been around sixty people in the queue, slowly and patiently shuffling forward. All of a sudden, striding in single file out from the tunnel entrance behind us, came a tiny Chinese grandma, a tiny Chinese grandpa, a tiny Chinese daughter and her tiny Chinese husband. Fearlessly, they marched up to the head of the queue and pushed right on in. We all watched in amazement as they sailed up the escalator in front of us. Then everyone started laughing at their audacity.

Over the manicured lawns of the beautiful Kew Gardens many fat Canada Geese endlessly deliver many fat gobs of dark green goose shit, oblivious to (or perhaps because of) the deafening roars of the 747s that rumble overhead every 24 seconds (I timed them) on the flight-path to Heathrow. A little further along the path and I read the noticeboard at the new kids' playground, which states: 'This playground is for children aged 4 -11. Please take precautions as it is unsupervised'. Under which, somebody has written in black felt tip pen: AND WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR UGLY, CLUMSY KIDS!

We took a day trip up to Faversham to look at the house that my brother and his wife are going to buy. We went through the rooms as they made their appraisal. Having left their house in Peckham quite early in the morning I hadn't had a chance to go to the toilet for my morning 'delivery' and by the time we reached this picturesque Elizabethan town I was fit to burst. Later, as we wandered through the quaint Edwardian house they were considering, I seized my moment, politely pushed past the eager young estate agent and locked myself into the downstairs bathroom to take my ease. As they were all standing just outside the door it was quite difficult to really 'let go', so to speak. But finally I managed to deliver all of my steaming compost into the bowl. Having completed the task, I then stood and pulled the flushing chain. Nothing happened. I flushed again, and again nothing happened. And there it all sat in the bowl, glistening insolently back at me. I had a panicky...

I went to Boots the chemist tonight for some shampoo. I bought the one called 'Seductively Straight'.... they didn't appear to have Gorgeously Gay.

Standing in the line for an ATM machine in the East End today, in the icy wind, the elderly woman standing behind me suddenly shouted, "Fuckin' hell! That fuckin' wind'll freeze my fuckin' tits off in a minute!"

I was walking through Regent's Park, on my way up to the entrance of the zoo. It was lunchtime so I decided to see if the eating place was still there that I had visited on my last trip to London, two years ago. Sure enough, halfway up the park's long central pathway, was 'The Honest Sausage'. Since my last visit the proprietors have changed, from a couple of middle-aged mums to an Eastern Euro family of father, daughter and mono-browed son. The son was behind the counter, shuffling about in, as I later observed, very big shoes. I scanned the fare, which was written on boards hanging on the wall above his large, oblong head. The hotdog was eponymously titled, but I certainly wasn't going to ask Eyebrow to provide me with his finest, 'Honest Sausage', so I plumped for the banger and mash with onion gravy.   Eyebrow took my order and disappeared out the back. More people arrived in the queue behind me. Eventually, he returned from the back room and stood at t...

London 's Natural History Museum is today seems to be predominantly set up for the entertainment of children and, accordingly, it is chock full of dinosaur skeletons. For the intrigued adult visitor, however, there are also interesting pockets. Everywhere, one is confronted by the strange, unheimlich , other-worldliness of taxidermied animals, which are at once part of the world, yet also forever apart from it. On entering the main entrance hall one is struck by the wonderfully demented, Neo-Gothic Victorian architecture - all stained glass windows and great vaulted arches - which is somehow reminiscent of the interior of Chartres Cathedral . When originally built, this architecture was obviously intended to elevate Science to religious status. Which is ironic because so much of the collection deals with Evolution.  Walking up the wide stairs to one of the upstairs galleries devoted to the evidence of Darwinian evolutionary continuum, an American woman complains to her husban...

At the Victorian & Albert Museum, an elderly tourist vigorously tap-tap-taps her keys against the beautiful, delicately-carved marble nose of an C18th young lady.

At the National Gallery, a middle-aged Greek woman made a great show of genuflecting and 'crossing' herself every time she came to a picture of a saint. As there are probably many hundred such paintings in the collection her ostentatious display eventually became such an incredibly irritating annoyance that I contemplated shoving her roughly in the back. (I think it's what Jesus would have wanted).

A tall, middle-aged Dutch man went to the trouble of picking up with his fingers every variety of cake and slice in the National Gallery cafe's wide selection, bringing each trembling item one by one up to his face, sniffing it and then replacing it. I therefore decided not to have anything with my pot of English breakfast tea, after all. Which is a pity as the Bakewell tart had once looked very tempting.

To the impossibly handsome young Indian man serving coffee in the National Gallery's cafe: You had me at, 'Hello, Sir, how I now can help you?'. But when you then nodded, smiled and winked I almost passed out with gratitude.

I've lost count of the times young Chinese women here have spoiled my viewing pleasure in galleries. There I am, enjoying the work of art, standing in my usual Patrician viewing position: slightly to the left of centre of the picture, right elbow on left hand, right hand on chin, head slightly cocked in the universal position of attentive openness; spats gleaming white; glistening monocle screwed into my right eye; top hat set at a jaunty angle; and then it happens. Without fail, she will be a young Chinese woman; she will have been walking slowly around the gallery room, looking at the pictures; she will then walk across between me and the painting I am viewing, and stop dead in front of me. I mean DEAD IN FRONT ! Sometimes, this will be only a foot in front! -close enough to smell the hair conditioner. The first time it happened I thought it was a bit odd. After a dozen times I began to think they must teach this in Chinese schools as some sort of cunning destabiliser of Western...

Before I left the hotel this morning I put all my loose change on the little shelf near the door so that I wouldn't be weighed down by a pocketful of metal at the start of my journey. When I got back to the hotel this evening the change was gone. A note from the Polish cleaner was there in its place. It read: 'THAKNS FREND'. I estimate there was about £9 in the booty.

A group of young Londoners cluster around a newspaper stand at the entrance of a tube station. One of them is reading aloud from a newspaper an article which said that British doctors had revised-up their earlier suggestion, and they were now advising that seven or eight serves of fruit and vegetables per person, per day, was the minimum requirement for good health. The boy reading the paper looked up and said, "I'm a goner, then. Fuck me! I'm lucky if I eat four or five serves a month!"

I am in Manchester on an overnight visit to check out some important Victorian art at the city's Art Gallery, and also in order to experience something of the city that gave rise to the Moors Murders. I can't think of anything to say that won't sound churlish. So, here it is: The whole city is covered in cigarette butts to a degree that beggars imagination. I did a quick calculation and on average every square foot of pavement has ten butts within it - consequently, the entire city smells like a giant ashtray. A mother shepherding her two kids from a bus stop yells at one of them, "Shurrup you! I'll fookin' batter yer." There is clearly not a great deal of civic money available for things like maintenance of streets and buildings, which is not the Mancunians' fault, but nobody here seems to use the rubbish bins provided in the street. The entire city centre is strewn with fast food wrappers and empty plastic cups. Puddles of vomit glisten on st...

As I write this I am travelling to Manchester on one of Richard Branson's Virgin trains. (Does their name imply that they have never been into a tunnel?)   The service is very good. An announcement came over the speakers five minutes after departure, delivered in a very appealing Manchester accent: "This is the 11.20am service to Manchester. Tea and coffee will be served shortly. And something boozy will be available after Milton Keynes."   After Milton Keynes a young man came by with a trolley and asked what I would like for lunch, "Hello, Boss, we can offer you a chicken and mayonnaise sandwich, a tuna salad or a ham and cheese roll." I asked for the tuna salad. The young man reached into his trolley, swore and hurried out of the connecting door. A bit later he came back, wrapping a tissue around his index finger. "Sorry, Boss, I cut my finger on the tray. Didn't want to contaminate your food". He handed me a ham and cheese roll and he was so s...

Overheard an immaculately-coiffed old duck talking to her friend in the basement cafe of the National Portrait Gallery: "I must say that I really look forward to all of this Global Warming they are talking about, it will do wonders for my garden." Her friend looked askance at this. The old duck continued, "Oh, I know they say that some islanders are going to be swamped, but what on earth are they contributing?" I must have gasped involuntarily at this because the coiffed old duck quickly changed the subject.

And tonight after dinner a heavy rain began to fall - the first since I've been here. And up drifted that unmistakable, wonderful smell of wet London pavement.

The highlight of the day, apart from seeing some wonderful art, was witnessing the chaos caused by a shuffling old codger in the Tate Britain gift shop. In the late twilight of his years, and plainly 'bewildered', he wandered along after his wife, picking objects up at random and then putting them down...and then picking them up again...and then putting them down, again. He came to a shelf full of souvenir coffee mugs with street-scapes by L. S. Lowry printed on them. He picked one up, and then attempted to put it down again, only to misjudge his aim and knock another mug, which in turn teetered on the edge of the shelf. Gathering enough wits to acknowledge the impending drop of that mug, the old coot shot out his hand to save it, only to crash into the rest of the mugs, taking out a dozen that smashed on the floor.

Lunch today was at a restaurant in Soho. It offered a standard two-course lunch for £8, and one could choose from a large range of starters and mains. I decided on home-made tomato soup, followed by braised veal cheeks with mashed potato and a garden salad. I sat in the window and gazed out at the passing parade scuttling by in the light drizzle that had just begun to drift down from a sky the colour of lead. As my meal arrived at the table I counted myself very fortunate indeed to be sitting there, in the centre of the civilised world, about to tuck into half a baby cow's face. 'Moo!'

Advice to young tourists in London: It is always busy in London streets, and particularly in Oxford Street, with its hordes of tourists, shoppers and workers. Remember that here it is impossible to walk in a straight line due to the sheer weight of numbers of people coursing on their way. One has to constantly make judgements and reassessments about the direction that the people ahead of you are taking and whether they are about to change their direction unexpectedly in a split-second - sometimes in mid-step - or if they even decide to stop dead in their tracks, or turn on their heels and reverse direction. All of this happens all the time. This entails much weaving and ducking and diving in order to accommodate the vagueries of a million pedestrians. Which makes it even more unbelievable to see so many young tourists sauntering along this bustling street, in this teeming metropolis, with their iPhones held inches from their uninterested faces, tapping in their text messages to their f...

A woman on the Jubilee Line turned to her husband and said, "Here's a question for you - would you ever let Jamie Oliver cook you a meal?" The husband thought for a moment and then replied, "Probably. But only if he promised not to eat it with me."

At a quarter-past five this evening on the packed Northern Line tube I stood at the door waiting for it to pull in to Moorgate Station, where I would change lines. The train stopped, the doors opened, the crowd on the station parted at the doors to let us all off the train. All except one woman wearing a hijab and carrying a big bag. She barged right in through the door of the train, pushing against us, before any of us could get out. Such amazing rudeness. Perhaps that's all we infidels deserve?

I always visit London Zoo whenever I am in town. But for me the incidental things one sees are as interesting as the animal exhibits. Today I photographed empty enclosures and pathways devoid of people.   It's always very instructive to watch how people behave when faced with real-life nature in such artificial environments, and to listen to their comments. The ignorance never ceases to appal. Here are a few examples from today's visit: Woman in front of the glass-fronted enclosure of the exotic, beautifully coloured Congo Peafowl: "Brian! Have a look at the funny chickens!" An American girl in her early-twenties squeals with infantile delight in the aquarium, gazing at the six-inch-long Elephant Fish: "Aw! How cute! Baby dolphins!" An Irish family huddles along the wooden fence of the Emu enclosure. One of the teenage boys throws half a cup of coffee over the nearest bird's back to "make the fuckin' thing do something!". A plump Goth ...

At the zoo, a family of replica gorillas, cast in bronze, is positioned near the enclosure of the real animals. One of the sculptures is of an adolescent gorilla lying on its back in a casual, relaxed manner. Some wag had earlier stuck an 'erect' banana in between its legs. The effect was irresistibly funny and was only spoiled when a kid mashed the offending phallic fruit into the animal's metal groin with his foot.

One of the male toilets in London Zoo has in front of its doorway a sign that reads 'Caution - Wet Floor!' I need to inform everyone that this is not due to the ministrations of the cleaner. It seems that dozens of men and boys seem to have fully entered into the spirit of the Zoo and let their primal side have full reign. Talk about marking your territory! It was like wading through a pungent Yangtze River in there today. And, as I have a hole in my shoe and socks like blotting paper, I now have in my possession DNA samples of much of greater London.

At the London Zoo kiosk a woman in a hijab demanded, "Chicken! Chicken! My Chicken, you have!" The perplexed girl behind the counter picked up every sandwich in the display, one after the other, holding each one out to the woman and asking, "Do you want this one?" ..."Do you want this one?" ... "Do you want this one?", before eventually crossing her arms and saying, "We ain't got no chicken".

After I said goodbye to R. B. in Soho, I called in for lunch at an Italian restaurant in the area. One lasagne and two glasses of Chianti later and I was wandering through the gay village of old Soho again. I called into Ku Bar on the corner of Little Newport Street and Lisle Street, which had banners proudly emblazoned over its outer walls proclaiming it had won 'numerous awards for best gay bar'. This is usually the kiss of death for a gay pub, and so it proved to be upon entrance. However, from my perch on a stool in the front windows I was afforded a terrific view of the street and the passing parade. As I sat there over the course of an hour it was interesting to watch many dozens of young Korean people walk past, read the outside banners and start to laugh with hands over their mouths in shocked fascination. And there were a great many men walking by with their girlfriends and wives who did a kind of guilty double-take as they read the banners, which made their worried ey...

Caught the fast train to Heathrow, which was very efficient. Unfortunately, in our carriage was an American family of mother, father, child and grandmother, or 'Grammie' as they all referred to her. They all spoke in unnecessarily loud voices, as if they were calling to each other across the Great Plains of Kansas. The father was fat and had a grey General Custer beard. He wore a stars and stripes scarf on his head. "This carriage smells like pickles!", he bellowed at us all.   My fellow passengers and I were very glad that the carriage was crowded, so that the American family had to stand up for the twenty minute journey - it was the least we could do for them. The child, a girl of about seven, began skipping on the spot as she bellowed an interminable made-up ditty about a mouse, in a house, and a 'kouse' and a 'fouse' and a 'pouse' and a 'zouse' and a 'bouse'. Mother American bellowed, "Careful of Grammie's bad toe,...

This morning I woke at 5.30am, and couldn't get back to sleep. So I turned on the TV, where I watched that ridiculous pipsqueak Jeremy Kyle. Even the little man performing a sign language routine for deaf people throughout the whole program, in the corner of the screen, seemed furiously indignant and self-righteous.

Caught the last tube and walked up the street towards the hotel. Along the way, met a nice young chav.  "Oi, mate, 'ow's yer night been so far?... Not from round 'ere are ya?" He accompanied me all the way to the door. " Is dis yer 'otel, den?" The next morning, Oscar Wilde's description of  'feasting with panthers' came irresistibly to mind.

To the young man who tried to pick me up outside the toilet in Tate Britain today, thank you, but I had already eaten.

In Kensington High Street the pedestrians made way for the ranting homeless man in their midst. He was weaving erratically along the pavement, clutching a can of Special Brew and yelling at the top of his lungs, to nobody in particular, that he was, "Going to put you in a fucking grave , you wanking cunt!" I went into a cafe for a pot of tea and his roaring gradually receded from earshot as he disappeared down the shocked street. A bit later, I was browsing in the window of a bookshop and I heard the same man. This time he was in a happy frame of mind, performing to a group of teenage boys by banging with both grimy hands on a rubbish bin. After a while, he turned to them and yelled,  "I don't need no fucking instrument to stand out in a fucking crowd!"  Seeing their amusement, he tried his hand at some stand-up comedy,  "They call me Santa Claus!...Hey, boys, why does Santa Claus live in the South Pole? The answer is L.O.L" At this surreal non-s...

I sat on a bench in Green Park watching the squirrels doing their skittish, neurotic dashes over the grass and up tree trunks. On an adjacent bench a young woman was crying, surrounded by policemen. It seems that a madwoman - a perfect stranger - had walked up to her, slapped her face and punched her in the arm for no reason whatsoever.

In South Kensington to make the pilgrimage to take some photographs of the house in Reece Mews where Francis Bacon spent the last decades of his life . When I arrived there was a group of schoolgirls on their lunch break in front of the entrance to the house, sitting on the ground, smoking. I asked nicely if they would mind moving for a minute so I could take some photographs. One of them suggested that I might care to fuck off. So I went away to have a pot of tea and await their dispersion. The drain at the entrance to Reece Mews, South Kensington. I wondered how often Francis Bacon had woken up face down in it. The house in Reece Mews, South Kensington, where Francis Bacon spent the last several decades of his life living and working. Today it is much gentrified, alas.

Spent the day out in the magnificent Kew Gardens - a usual haunt whenever I am in London. On the walk down the well-heeled suburban street from the railway station I passed a haughty woman tugging the lead of an elderly cocker spaniel which was lying down, refusing to budge despite her exhortations. Exasperated, she finally snapped, "Tanzie! Come on, now! Stop laying down in the sunshine, you lazy thing! You're not a Spaniard!"

It was great to see in the Tate Modern bookshop the other day the book of international miniature sculpture, in which my partner, Daniel Dorall, is included. A young woman was flicking through it and she called her friend over to show her Daniel's work, which she proclaimed was "bloody brilliant!" I was so proud that I even took a photo of the book on the Tate's shelf.

The main purpose of my visit to Soho today was to meet for the first time the delightful Patrick Dalton, the originator of the Facebook group, 'Shit London', and the author of several spin-off books from that venture. What a really lovely man he turned out to be (Phew!). We met in The Coach and Horses pub in Greek Street, haunt of journalists and writers. I wanted to thank Patrick for Shit London, w hich gave me hours of hilarity during my illness, when I really couldn't find much to laugh at, and for indirectly introducing me to my wonderful new family of Facebook friends I met on there, who always had me in stitches - and still do. I feel I have known them all my life. In my initial email to Patrick I asked whether I should wear a green carnation so that he'd recognise me. But he assured me that my regular tramp's outfit would suffice. We started off inside with our pints of bitter but as the afternoon turned to evening we moved to the tables on ...