Cracking time last night, catching up with Hugh over drinks in Notting Hill, and then over whiskey back at the flat. OK, so the whole “not going to bed ’til 3am on a work night” thing was a bit ill-advised, but still, very pleasant indeed.

Have you ever noticed how life just utterly rocks?

I love this time of year. End of the summer, when the air cools, and I have some energy again, but the sun is still warm enough that I can get away with a t-shirt and a light jacket. Walking across Putney Bridge with the midday sun glinting off the Thames from a blue, blue sky dotted with white clouds, I can feel autumn coming in and all of it makes me smile. Transmetropolitan weather.

No, not the comic, the song that the comic takes it’s title from. This is weather to “kick up bloody murder in this town we love so well”. Yip-ai-ay, indeed.

So, I had this long post written about why I write this thing, and then my browser ate it. (I write this straight into the browser – I know people who write what they want to say in word first, and then spell check it and generally tidy it up. Kind of seems contrary to the spirit of the thing, to me.)

So, instead, an irrelevant diversion: “Fame a la mode” (Polnareff, still) covered by Blaine Reininger is a fabulous, fabulous song. Seedy sounding, a kind of desperate glamour, weirdly kitsch. Ace.

Oh, for fuck’s sake!

Does no-one understand irony any more? I love many of you dearly, but I am slightly boggled at the response to what I posted the other day. I mean, OK, several of you only know me through this, but there are a few of you I thought had a better handle on my character than this. Still, I have to do something like this every six months or so, so I suppose I’m about due for a new dose…

For the hard of thinking: I am a hopelessly soppy old romantic. I have no desire to be anything but. I see couples kissing in the street, and I think “Awww!” Most of my favourite songs are about Love. (Not Lovesongs. I’ll get to them another time.) The memories I hide inside when I’m feeling down are almost all romantic moments, because they cheer me up. I don’t share them with other people, generally, because, well, they’re memories that belong to me and my ex and no-one else.

Yeah, I am a cynic. What I’m not is bitter. Yeah, I think this is an imperfect universe. It’s also a beautiful and marvellous place, filled with enough strangeness and wonder to last me ten lifetimes. Yeah, I think that the human race is stupid and weak and small. But I also think that my friends are some of the most marvellous people on the planet, and y’know, they’re human.

How the fuck can I be bitter when I have a life like the one I do?

For the record, then: if I make a joke out of something nice, if I suggest that something is good and pure, and badly needs to be dragged through the mud, this is IRONY. It means that my actual reaction is “Gosh, I wish there were more things like that.” The more ludicrously over the top and nasty I’m being, the more likely this is to be true.

This isn’t always the case. Sometimes I’m feeling small and mean-spirited. But especially when it’s just a throwaway line like that, you’ll read me wrong less often if you assume it’s a joke.

Shopping yesterday, mostly because I got locked out of the house, and then discovered I had quite a lot more money in the bank than I thought did, and payday is in a couple of days. CDs: Birthday Party “BBC Sessions”, going cheap at HMV. “And The Ass Saw The Angel” – CD of readings and music by Cave, Harvey and Clayton-Jones. Also cheap at HMV. “A Tribute to Polnareff”, v. cheap at Tower. I’m listening to this right now. I have no idea of Polnareff is or was, but there are a lot of artists I like singing in French. It’s very good. Can anyone tell me who the fuck this creature is, then?

Also bought a couple of books and a DVD not going cheap, and then (and I’ll be smug about this for some weeks, I fear) bought a jacket for twenty quid that should have cost over 100. It’s not a perfect fit, but it’s not awful, and frankly, 20 quid for a nice black linen jacket is fine by me.

I am bored as hell. I want to go out and do something, but I can’t think of anything to do. I was vageuly thinking of doing either Camden Market or Merton Abbey Mills, but the weather has fucked that. I’m kind of tempted just to go out and put myself on a train to somewhere random, but I don’t know where I’d go.

Geek moment: Something on my person beeped, and I had to check four different devices to find out what it was, and what the appropriate response was. I think I may need help.