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.

Apologies, oh wise ones, for my lack of attentive tippety-typing these past few cycles of pulsating tiredness we like to call days. I find myself rolling into the house quite hungry at eleven pm most evenings having done nothing much in particular and with not a lot to show for it. Much like life, I suppose - which is not to be disingenuous because I do very enjoy my life at the moment, save for the tiredness and the lack of time to get my copious thinking into pixels. I’ve had to ration back what I carry in my little man-bags, because lunch takes priority and my tupperware box is somewhat copious - I’ve been wedged in awkward spots several times now on the train of a morning simply arising from an overweight satchel and it grates, readers, it really does.

I have some stories about the commute which I have no doubt is becoming intolerably, insufferably turgid to you all, but alas is all I have to write about what with the embargo on all the juicy stuff. I was on the train the other morning - standing room only, as per usual, and the train went over a particularly vicious bump, which just shouldn’t happen in a civilised country. I felt myself tumbling ever forwards, centre of gravity rapidly caving in to a fight it knew it was going to lose. I extended a stretched hand out in front of me, which is the survivalist instinct of someone who doesn’t want to land on their face, let me assure you, not as some may gather, the distinguishing feature of an unrepentant pervert.

I fell over and grabbed this poor girl’s boob who was standing in front of me, it was by far the most embarrassing thing that happened to me last week. She stared at for a moment, and then she turned round. Excruciating.

The other thing that I have discovered on my extensive travels to and fro is the reason why I keep falling over on the escalators: I have this particular pair of shoes with a slightly pointy toe on them, which in my head lend me a manly elegance and a rather raffish air, the man about town, a city slicker (as opposed to Stevie Wonder without a piano; sitty clicker…just thought of that, here all week, etc) - as opposed to the harsh reality where they look like clown shoes and catch on escalator steps.

But ah, that’s life - with it’s vagaries and shames. Now I’m off to bed, I’m ruddy exhausted.

I’m at the bus stop, warmth being remorselessly drawn from my backside by a mean metal bench. A girl approaches. She looks like she’s talking into a hands-free, she sounds like she’s yelling at someone on the other side of the street.

“I’m telling you, those chicken wings are sick, Sasha, they’re bad.”

I believe, in the parlance of lesser-aged contemporary folk, that they must be good chicken wings. Sasha doesn’t know what she’s in for. My bum grows ever colder.

“Can I have your attention please?”

Why do people always ask this? I always think that someone’s attention is a precious thing - you need to earn it, deserve it, do something. If you just say what you’re saying I’ll decide on my own whether you can have my attention or not. It’s an inherently redundant phrase.

“Apologies for the delay, this is due to signalmen giving us the wrong route. We will shortly be on the right route.”

Yes, that got my attention.

I had this triffic little idea today that I would wander round London aimlessly looking for ’slebs, because I have not seen any yet since I’ve been in the UK’s only and rather useless answer to Hollywood apart from political heavyweights wandering round the protected confines of the Houses of Parliament, and besides, I’m not going to write about all that just yet.

‘What a wheeze’, I thought to myself. ‘This will make rather a good little blog post, provincial happy chappy goes out on the hunt for publicity-hungry starlets and miscellaneous nonentities and isn’t going home until he strikes it lucky’. That was quite a long thought, and it got me on the tube all the way to Kensington, where I walked to Knightsbridge with no such luck. I did get to see some nice diplomatic places with flags hanging limply out the front in a mocking salute to Blighty. I enjoyed looking at the cars outside all of the embassies, Rolls-Royce Phantoms galore, but it seems the Ambassador from Togo drives an old Rover, which surely can’t be doing anything for relations with either their country or ours.

I ended up on the Victoria line headed for Oxford Circus, thinking I might spot someone on Oxford Street out doing a spot of shopping in their sunglasses, pop-socks and carrying lots of those cardboard bags that you only get from fancy shops who only deal with plastic of the Amex variety. (Getting papped for Heat magazine carrying an M&S carrier bag: Priceless. For everything else, there’s Mastercard.) This is where the whole day went sour, for as I was getting off the tube train at said station my reverie was disturbed by screaming, and lots of men running down the platform coming out of the carriage next to mine. The screaming was coming from an Asian girl, crying and clutching a bag to herself. A striking blonde girl was in tears near the wall, a hole had appeared in an otherwise throng of people, confusion reigned. I can only admit to my feebleness and say that I didn’t do anything except watch as this screaming woman asked for someone to pull the alarm. I have said previously that I would be the first to die in a disaster film, most likely in a comical way. I doubt I shall be laughing myself.

I have no idea what happened earlier, but it was upsetting. As I left the station in a daze I heard several announcements for the police to go down to the platform, but there’s nothing on the internet to suggest to me what might have happened that would have had people in the carriage in tears. I can only imagine that there are hundreds and thousands of these little episodes going on every day in this city, things that can have a profound effect on someone’s day, that can affect their lives even. These are things that don’t get reported, don’t get heard of - the police come, the tube train is released and within a few hours the schedule is back to normal, by the next morning the mess has been mopped up and there’s nothing more to tell. If it’s really big it gets a plaque and a couple of days on News 24.

As I bumbled about the rest of my day there was a older woman on the kerb near Hamley’s with a bad noseblood, a man who tripped over his ridiculously over-sized bag at the bottom of the escalator at Euston station, three occasions where I stood Peter-like, involved but detached, an invisible cock crowing in the background. It shook me - not out of fear, but into a more involved relationship with my surroundings. What a load of crap, looking for famous people - London breeds a depersonalisation, a distance, a coldness. Perhaps this is why the bold and the beautiful like to come here and buy cardboard bags full of tat, because no-one is interested in them until the pictures come out next week.

I get back on the train back to London Bridge feeling like I’ve been nipped by this place - like a unfamiliar dog that gives you that quick warning that it doesn’t like you scratching its ears. Living here is different from looking at its picture or watching on the television. It’s hotter, smellier, more emotional, more dangerous, more demanding of you.

Duly noted, I’ll watch my step.

I spotted a ‘you know you’re getting old when…‘ moment the other day on the tube - an avuncular greying chap got on a Jubilee train (all the exciting stuff happens on the Jubilee line - did I tell you about the evangelism man? I don’t think I did. I shall be shortly be producing a post entitled ‘Several Things That Have Happened To Me On Public Transport’) and was offered a chair by a dynamic young City-type - he might have been in finance, but he didn’t have the cowed expression of someone whose friends have all been fired and he’s next. There’s a lot of that going around at the moment.

Anyway - older chap gets offered a seat. ‘What a nice gesture’, you might think. Someone willing to give up their seat that someone else might attempt to pass across London in a modicum of comfort, you don’t get that a lot here. Normally people have to ask you for a seat, much like the woman in crutches on the bus last Sunday. Hey, I was comfortable and there was an bloke snoozing next to me. But yes - a really nice gesture. The Avuncular Older Man pasted a look on his visage that closely approximated a neat blend of confusion and disgust, before the internal measuring scales tipped onto the side of resting his knees. I took that look to be a look of realisation that this man was now one of those hooked, hunched, walking stick figures on the sticker that exhorts people to give up this seat in aid of someone more doddery than yourself.

This man clearly didn’t look in the mirror of a morning and see an unfortunate old person on a sticker. Depression ensues.

Not quite cold enough to see your breath, but cold enough to require a scarf and somewhere to put your hands. This is the British autumn - although perhaps ironically, given the name, this could also be our lot for the British summer. As soon as I figure out who to sue over global warming I’m onto it, you don’t promise sub-tropical temperatures if you can’t deliver on it.

It’s getting chilly out, which isn’t necessarily the way I like it, but it does mean I get to wear my coats and scarves, which I do like. You have to balance these things. What I find astonishing is the constancy of sweltering temperature on the tube lines whatever the rest of the world might be doing. Incidentally, have you ever thought about the air down there? It’s smells musty like it’s been there since they built the thing, how many people must that last gulp have gone through? Doesn’t bear thinking about, really. I remember hearing years ago that if you have a glass of water in London, it’s been through seven people before you. This mildly disgusting and I don’t know how true it is - there must come a point on the planet when every single droplet has been through someone, somewhere - now that’s community.

But yes, it’s getting chilly out. I work from nine until close, which means that shortly I won’t be seeing my house in daylight of a weekday until sometime in 2009. This is the sort of thought that fills me with dread. I don’t much like being cold, that feeling of emptiness in your extremities, a certain discomfort. I like cosiness, being cooled by a light breeze, the feel of the sun on your face. I wouldn’t mind if the country got a couple of degrees warmer, really - I’ve never really been to Norfolk, never had a chance to form a bond, I doubt I’d miss it when it was gone. (Now there’s a good line to hamper a career in politics. Writing it is, then.) This chilliness makes it hard to get dressed in the morning - not through reduced motor control, although that is occasionally an issue in my slightly drafty bedroom, but because I either dress warm for the little trip to the train and suffer thereon, or I get hypothermia before I’ve even made the next train from platform 1 for London Bridge.

Life’s tough, and winter is dog eat dog…(although has anyone ever seen a dog eat another dog? What a stupid expression.)

That’s it. Two women had a fight on the train the other day – what on earth is that all about? I’ve seen two dicey arguments now, although thankfully no-one has been stabbed yet. The oppressive trip into work of a morning brings out the worst in people, whether it’s a cross word here or a barely noticeable shove in the ribs here, or whether it leads on to full-blown arguments about whether people are moving down the carriage or not. There’s no solidarity or community there, just a million different people heading in the same direction. I’m not pretending that everywhere else I have lived was peace and love and skipping, but you were allowed to talk to other people on the bus to school in Coventry, and in Bangor you even nodded and wished a passer-by a good morning without fear of being sectioned.

I visited my MP’s constituency yesterday, it was great fun. When I got back to London I had to negotiate the Underground and then fight my way through London Bridge railway station. I live in Forest Hill, which isn’t particularly foresty but it does have trees - I can see several from my bedroom window, which I certainly wasn’t expecting when I moved to the Big Smog. I would have been happy with a seedy alleyway that wasn’t full of nappies, I don’t have big expectations. When I got to London Bridge it appeared there hadn’t been a Forest Hill train in approximately three weeks, which meant that seven thousand people were stood by the timetable board waiting for the platform number to appear for a train that was imminently departing. It was particularly gruesome - I think I saw some old women get trampled in the melee, people were running along the platform and diving into the train to make room. Even normally it’s not a proper commute unless you’ve left a nose mark on the window and have newsprint from some obnoxious pillock’s Telegraph running down the other side of your face.

This was particularly bad - the trains always remind me of a really old kids’ programme I used to watch on channel 4 on a Sunday morning that had little red chaps going round with oxygen bubbles on their backs, they were blood cells. It was all about how the body works, but it was always pretty busy near the heart. The other thing that came to mind was a stark simile of convulsion - like John Prescott eating packets of biscuits, we’re forcibly imbibed and then ejected from our vessel. I’m surprised there aren’t any more incidences of people getting severely injured on the way into work. I feel for all those people in the City, I really do, but if 5000 jobs going means I get a seat on the train then I think we have to maturely consider the fact that the economy has to reset itself and there is natural collateral as part of that.

Sigh - quarter past seven, means I have to get my packed lunch sorted. I love it really, but that kicks in around 10am.