It was mild this morning going to church - and for some reason as I smelt my way to the bus stop my olfactory bits were telling me I was in France. It was perhaps the faint whiff of sea mingled with indifference and a certain I don’t know what. There were lots of smells to behold on the way to catch the bus - something to fall back on when the views are invariably uninspiring outside of zone 2. Isn’t it funny how the same smell that tantalises and titillates on a Friday evening can make you queasy of a Sunday morn? The chip shop shouldn’t be open anyway; there is, as they say, a time and a place for everything.

London is a generally smelly place, though - an inexplicable tang of diesel wherever you go, like the buildings claw onto it to keep it in the streets; the danky pissy pong of the Underground, tagged with a nagging wonder of how many thousands of people that last breath has been through; and on this morning, a chorus of perfumes from the fancily-dressed dames (French version, not the Harvey Keitel one) on their way to the pentecostal church down the road from mine.

It’s the weekend; the body rests but the nose is always on standby.

I saw some headlines yesterday – ‘Recession bites’. I mean, no-one likes an economic crisis, but that’s a bit strong. They keep closing the barriers at London Bridge to get down to the Jubilee line, but when I get down there the westbound platform towards Westminster is invariably deserted and there are millions of nervous-looking people heaving their way towards the Docklands. I suspect that a novel policy on redundancy has been introduced in the financial sector; anyone who arrives after 8.55 on any given day is sacked on the spot. A more perverse but possibly more fun variation would be to take away a desk each day until you reach your desired number of staff. Now that’s hotdesking.

So wow, I’ve had a lot of jobs. I had to really sit down and think for a considerable time what they all were, I really ought to start noting things down in case I ever have to write memoirs, or else it’s just going to get even more difficult.

Isn’t winter depressing? This is always the darkest part of the year in however many senses you choose to look at it, and things tend to perk up in my mind once we’ve had the shortest day of the year because every single one that goes by from then gets longer and lighter and warmer and brighter as you get through it. On the other hand, you get to wear much cooler clothes (in just the one sense of the word this time) and the time is ripe for rice pudding.

In fact I have one in the oven right now for a church lunch tomorrow - a little rough around the nutmeg because there are no scales in the house I’m living in here in London and I’ve had to guess, but if it turns out that bad I’ll take it up to my room and appreciate it myself. Gosh that sounds seedy reading it back. I’m sure you appreciate the sentiment, readers, I like to share things with people if they’re going to receive them well, otherwise you’re doing what Jesus referred to as casting pearls to pigs. And whilst I’m sure a pig would look lovely in a nice necklace and a bit of lippy, that’s not what it’s all about.

Speaking of such - how excited am I for Tuesday? I think I may burst. I’ve decided to come out in support of John McCain, at this late stage because I didn’t feel it right to influence the race unduly as a non-voter. It just would have been fair. I’d love to see John as president, there’s something unfettered and light about Barack Obama. He doesn’t have the lines on his face, the stoop, the crack in his voice - the weight of previous responsibility, the burden of experience. And I’m unashamed about it, I like Sarah Palin. It’s far too easy to lapse into lazy European stereotype about our friends across the pond. I may expand on this one fine day if you’re lucky.

And finally, there’s another race happening that will decide someone’s future - will Lewis triumph in the big battle of 2008? Who knows, but it’ll be damn fine watching. Ciao, chaps.

Time ticks irrepressibly on by, not giving any respite except that blessed Sunday morn once a year that gives you an extra hour in bed. I love that extra hour, but it does have to be weighed against the vicious killer of small children in the spring. If that lost hour was a person it would be sectioned. I don’t like it. But anyway – the pre-life crisis, you’ll be pleased to hear, is still coming on strong. To the point, as you will have read last week, that I am considering reading poetry. I appear to have regressed right back to the angsty point that people usually process in their mid-teens, I even have a couple of hateful spots on my capacious chin.

A pre-life crisis is the worry of what’s to come, the nervousness of having the faintest tossing clue what you even want to come. The upside of this is that I’ve never yet met an adult who is doing what they wanted to be when they grew up, but I’d still like to have something not to aim for. My two options are the moment are writing and politics, neither of which I really have the stomach to get into at the moment, and possibly (of all the industries one might choose) the most fickle and dicey going. Where do I even start? I suppose I could be said to have started on both already, but getting nowhere fast.

As a neat side-dish we get to my Christian faith, where as a young man you quickly learn to heap an irrational and unreasonable amount of pressure upon yourself to sidle up to a nice young Christian girl (and there are certainly plenty of them, unfortunately none of it is mutual), where you then beg her to shack up with you and fill the earth.

The pre-life crisis point itself comes when I take a moment to sit and dwell upon my utter unsuccessitude in either area. It comes to something, doesn’t it, when you feel washed up and on the shelf at 24. Still, on with life…

A guy who came to speak to us during our induction sessions about coping on a budget (which is a terrible euphemism when you think about it, I’m sure even Roman Abramovich has a rough budget to which he keeps) he said something which stuck with me – poor people can be happy too. London is like a golden door which you can’t possibly unlock without shedloads of cash to sink into it, pretty daunting to sidle up to when you’ve got next to nothing and bills to pay.

It’s been fun to spend the past 8 weeks in London trying to figure what the horlicks one can get up to without having to dish out one’s hard-earned willy-nilly. I’ve enjoying socialising, enjoying the many free museums which will be the possibly the single best and most underrated legacy of the disastrous New Labour experiment. I’ve joined the library, wandered the streets, been to an insanely busy market on Portobello Road (nice chips, shame about the bratwurst), enjoyed an exquisite piano concert on Southbank and spent an otherwise distressing afternoon trying to hunt celebrities.

It’s a useful purging exercise – the Victorians were given to covering themselves in leeches to try and get rid of some blood, they thought it a useful exercise to rid oneself of impurities (and in many ways I would still prefer that to one of Gillian McKeith’s horrid mung bean detox extravaganzas…), and in a purely metaphorical sense that is what I have done. I did know that poor people can be happy too, though – I brought myself up on Roald Dahl…

There’s a man up the street who works for the local council, every time I go to get the train at eight o’clock in the morning he’s always there, sweeping the leaves. He’s clearly a hard worker, but this puzzles me - what urgent need is there for the local authority to pay someone to haul themselves out of their bed at the crack of dawn to sweep leaves? I suppose that commuters are a delicate lot, and God forbid anyone slips and dirties their suit. It’s a tough world out there, it really is.

Further up the street are some workmen labouring (but not enough to work up a sweat) just past signs that warned the road was closing for three months at the beginning of June. Just this past week the road has been a hive of activity, what was a south London crater is turning into a reformed bit of tarmac. I find it odd that these chaps are suddenly working that much harder now their three months are up, given the area was dormant for the last couple of weeks when I first arrived - you would think that these sorts of chaps have some schedule to keep to, a tight timeline of events to be fulfilled. Now me - I leave things until the last minute, I’m not brilliantly well-organised unless I try very hard, these things do tend to be a bit of a rush. On the other hand, I don’t build roads.

There we have it - a microcosm of society in a hundred metres.