If you set your iPod to shuffle in the woods, does it play 'Pet Sounds'?

A beautiful faux-spring day. I spent some of it sitting in a churchyard talking about books and sundry related issues with the ice-cap-melting sun in my eyes. I saw a heron and two dancing tortoiseshell butterflies. (There was actually someone else there as well. I wasn't crouching over an ancestor's grave telling them about the mixed feelings of giddiness and shrugginess I'm alternating between over this here book, about which I'm thrilled and not really much bovvered at once.) It was bliss, frankly, even if it made me fret about stuff as the world is really meant to be doing more. (That first link's really good, by the way.)

Previously, at about 1am, I was on Oxford Street when a large sleek heart-coloured American automobile slouched by. I admired it - I like a bit of car occasionally. I did ogle a VX220 earlier - you almost never see them as they never caught on, but apparently they're brilliant. They are properly sexy cars, because they have a certain wackiness and humility about them. People just didn't want them cos although they're basically modified Lotus Elises, they still said 'Vauxhall' on them. People are shallow. At least the ones who buy sports cars, it seems. So someone with one of those I might infer could look past the superficial and I would be immediately Interested, whereas a knob with a Porsche could take his pretentions elsewhere. Most cars that are meant to be sexy leave me cold. But yes.

I was trying to figure out what it was (something wide and American, in any case) when I noticed it said 'WESTWOOD' in big silvery letters across the top of the windscreen. So in fact more like

WESTWOOD

And lo, as it slunk by I clocked that still really not entirely unyouthful face in profile. Despite having met quite a few quite famous people and all but witnessing that they go to the toilet just like the rest of us, I am filled with a certain helpless unapologetic childish glee upon sighting a Famous. On this occasion the glee was somewhat enhanced because well, it was 1am, work it out for yourself. So I did shout, or rather holler, "WESTWOOD!" Or indeed

"WESTWOOD!"

If I'd had my wits about me I would have gone

"WESTWOOD GOODLOOKINGOUTTHERE MYMAINMAN UPINTHEBUILDING BABY BOY HOLLA BACK!"

But y'know, I think I made my point clearly and concisely. Then I made to my companion the neither concise nor clear point that Westwood is actually brilliant, because while many many claim to, like, Not Give A Fuck what people think, he is one of about three living individuals who actually Don't. He must be one of the most ridiculed public figures ever, but he continues to be ridiculous without a blink. It is hard not to believe he's not putting it on, but I think if he was then the enormous number of hip hop artists who give him mad props would have nothing to do with him, and would probably go out of their way to insist that he's a laughable assbag who insults their culture every time he loosens his chiselled white jaw. And, y'know, surely the fact that he was popped in a drive-by shooting in 1999 gives him credibility in his field. Unless someone just thought he was a laughable assbag, of course, in which case the rotten bastard should have put their gun away and just posted something rude on the Radio 1 website like any normal idiot.

I'd just come to London for the first time to live (excepting when I was born, because I was born in London and am a proper actual Londoner and deserve some sort of prize dammit) and was staying in Kennington when said incident went down. (Ooh look, and that's the hospital where I was born that they took him to as well. In London.) I was aghast. The guy doesn't even allow swearing on his late night show and dubs noises over all the fucks in the stuff he plays, which means some tracks just consist of a smattering of phat beats and loads of birdsong like they have on Big Brother when someone says "Adidas". He's just a nice bloke. Bonkers, obviously, but nothing warranting a cap in the ass or even in the arm.

(Heh: "police think he may have been followed". Oh, really?)

So I am down with Westwood, due to his setting of a beautiful example of how to be yourself even when white middle-class tossers who would probably love to be a bit more like you like Toby Young and Marcus Brigstocke smugly deride you as a fraud, and everyone else thinks you're a bit of a silly embarrassing twat. I salute his indefatigability.

Go hard, brother number one. N junk.

A bit of a week of new excitingness, really, aside from celebrity hollering (I also saw Neil Tennant in Soho last week, although I didn't holla at him, it would have been inappropriate.) This year is looking at least some shade of fine. 'Fine' in the urban sense, I mean.

Could someone tell me why they silence out the 'god' in 'this ain't a scene/it's a goddam arms race' in the Fall Out Boy song of the same name when the video is on the telly, but not on the radio? I suppose Nietzsche would listen to emo.

Hot turkey

It's finally got warm and, as ever, I'm not sure how to deal with it. Warm weather means worrying about flab and pallor, which in turn makes me disgusted with myself for succumbing to such boringly oppressive ideals. It also means being peppered with insect bites. I usually get one healthy bout of them around this time of year, a liberal sprinkling whose marks then linger for the whole summer. Curses. I just spent half an hour trying to clap one small black flying thing to death, and when I succeeded I didn't even realise it. Finally saw one wing and ink spot on finger indicating battle had been won. I've recently developed the ability to catch flies with one hand and then release them, but this one wasn't going to get the opportunity to feast on my soft white flesh.

There's another one. You'll get yours, chum.

The warm weather also brings a certain reflectiveness. This year I've found myself having to face up to some hard facts, having been sitting resolutely on them as if on a treacherous sofa concealing a gang of renegade springs. Some of them are so dreadful that I cannot yet look them in the eye. Some are just about tame enough for me to approach and, hopefully, overcome. If others can tackle such Herculean tasks, then so can I.

The truth is that I have a problem. An issue, if you will, with excess. Booze, drugs, sex. The usual suspects. For some time now I've been denying that I'm on a slippery, slidey slope. It's a swine and a bastard, but this month is where I finally stand up to it, see it for what it is and find it in myself to change, if only for four weeks. Because if I'm honest, brutally honest with my weak self, I'm not getting nearly enough of any of them.

I seldom don't opt not to drink alone. I just can't accept that fourth beer; the fifth and sixth and seventh all fly by into someone else's mouth. Wine goes down like it's general anaesthetic laced with Toilet Duck. Rare is the night when I crack open a bottle and suddenly I'm waking up at lunchtime with a French pig shitting in my head. I pop pills and snort lines and smoke like there's a tomorrow and I have to get up especially early for it. I get wild and crazy almost every two years. It affects my mood; I'm often agreeable, chatty, sensible, starting conversations in the street. It's reached a point where my life is becoming intolerable - the tedium is out of control, and it's past time I dealt with it.

Thus I'm embarking on a filth-encrusted fucking vomit-flecked steaming flailing bugger of a bender for the entire month. I will storm every pub I pass until its derelict cellar reverberates with pleas for mercy. I will light each virgin Marlboro with the fizzling embers of its predecessor. I will eat cannabis sandwiches and take three spoons of coke in my mushroom tea. I will cultivate some sort of sordid mutually-beneficial arrangement with Camden Town's dealers. It's going to be a motherfucker, but with God's help I'll conquer this terrible affliction.

I began in earnest yesterday by gradually consuming all the alcohol, bleach and psychoactive material in the house. This afternoon I drank my weight in Malibu. I like Malibu. It tastes like Keith Richards falling out of a tree.

Now I can't catch that fly. Ah! I'll breathe on it.

That's quite enough of that

In the words of Richard E. Grant, "Balls." But, like, in a good way.

Flatmate is soon come, and with him half the rent, thank Jebus. More significantly, though, with him comes good company and regular washing-up, no but really, he is very good people as we re-established during his recent visit. We used to sit in a boring job wondering why we'd been blessed with all this brain we weren't using, emailing each other silly crap to stay afloat. One day we emailed entirely in haiku. Heh. He is even more apologetic for his very existence than I am, so I've decided we should have a Sorry Box. At 50p per expression of contrition, I reckon we'll raise enough every week to get shitfaced every Friday.

Not that it takes me much, admittedly.

Other recent badness-cancelling things of late have included my birthday, which involved lots of laughter and love and a gratifying number of bottles for the recycling man. And a cake, even. Blueberry chocolatey cake and candles. I blew them all out in one go. I am big.

Also, this town is great. I know three of my neighbours which is practically worth a documentary. The town itself has got amazing heritage, and here and there some staggering examples of fearsome Art Deco architecture. There's a certain brash confidence and angular arrogance and fearlessness and gorgeousness about things from the 1920s that I love. No sense of how much worse things were going to be - they thought the very absolute worst was behind them. The town hall is this vast breathtaking stern white Russian thing, and the assembly hall next to it is about as amazing with its roof-height glass doors and the shouty motto

FELLOWSHIP IS LIFE - LACK OF FELLOWSHIP IS DEATH

That's me told.

There is also one duck, called Gerald, that sits by the fountain and looks imperious. Good old Gerald.

The downside of all this gloriousness is that the cinema - boarded up for the last two years or so, which is bad enough because me likee films on doorstep - turns out to be a Grade II listed example of Art Deco sexiness also. If it had just been the shitty 60s joint I thought it was it wouldn't be such a travesty that it's lying neglected. It's just covered in nasty white tiles with one of those concretey outcrops over the door and a grotty white vertical cinema sign, and smells of what the Scottish call 'pish'. But the other night I went over the road to look up at the building properly, and it has these long slender elegant windows and is sad and beautiful. Bugger.

Window still isn't fixed. But dog is healthy, blue flowers are sprouting in big clusters in the garden, and I'm grateful for wot I got.

Oh, and that there is a red-arsed bumblebee. It got into my bedroom and the dog nearly ate it. I got it in a glass. It was waving its front legs in the way bees do when they're asking the bee god to come and lift them up. I gave it a blob of Lyle's Golden Syrup. It continued the bee dance of death for a while until it discovered the sticky medicine, then fell to sucking at it with immense and solemn concentration. When it had finished after half an hour or so in a syrup trance, I put it on a flowery plant in the garden. It fell off. I scooped it up again. It sat for a second and then took off, flying off at tree-height.

Ah small things, and small things with furry legs that need sugar.