Tired!

Hey Blogophones.

It's not quite dark and I'm sitting in the basement of an internet cafe somewhere just off to the side of Leicester Square.

And I haven't had much sleep, so I'm getting that 'I'm nearly on Fire' Feeling.

It was my fault for switching on the TV and discovering that Almost Famous was playing last night.

As someone with frequent aspirations to be a rock journalist (I still lament that even though I was published by the time I was 17, I never met my Lester Bangs), it is still a pretty resonant movie for me.

Though I don't recall if I really met my Penny Lane either.

Come to think of it, that movie really isn't much like my life.

At all.

I'm babbling and rambling.

Here's what I've been up to today:

After what really constituted a short nap, I showered off the grime and got dressed to go to the Neil Gaiman Book Signing.

After arriving at Holborn at 1015, I was somewhat surprised to see that Forbidden Planet was actually closed. Closer inspection of the window revealed that the Book Signing was actually YESTERDAY!

Jeez. My not reading the calendar has hamstrung me once again.

Nevermind. Neil Gaiman will be back here. Once he writes another book. In another five years.

Ha.

Actually, I'm not too upset.


Because being dragged out of my cocoon enabled me to do some wandering I otherwise wouldn't have done.

I think this might be part of a pattern: short period of depression and psychic paralysis followed by exploration and finding things I've never found before (unfortunately, in the past exploration has meant that I haven't been dealing with the problems that contributed to my ongoing depression, but that is by the by).

Anyways, being as London has to recover from it's collective hangover on Sunday, nothing opens til 12. I was in the centre at 1015.

So I wandered up Great Portland Street and kept going.

And going.

And somewhere along the way I wound up at Regent's Park.

I wasn't feeling very Parkie (or Zoo-ie, for that matter - London Zoo is nearby (some would argue it actually makes up part of the park), so I wandered down to Regent's Canal and followed that North.

And saw... Houseboats. Weird, custome painted (Black and Purple with a Wrought-Iron garden chair at the back was my favourite) houseboats. Long and thin. Like Gondolas with rooves that people lived in.

I reckon I'd like to live in a houseboat. Provided there was somewhere I could get a hot shower.

Eventually I made it to a really nice area called Paddington or Maida Vale or something. I had sausages and mashed potatoes on a floating cafe, and eavesdropped on overpaid academics talking about their lives.

And I found a nice pub called the Bridge or something. And a floating art gallery.

Then I wandered over to a bus stop on Edgeware Road (half of all the shop signs were half in Arabic) and took a bus down to Archway.

Looked in Virgin. Played piano in the musical instruments shop in the basement.

Then I went to Borders, where they have finally made available the application forms for the Christmas Temps.

I grabbed two (I'm going to slip them in at two different locations).

The Info girl actually remembered me from me quizzing her a couple of weeks back.

Up to Forbidden Planet of buy another Transmetropolitan trade paperback and down to Leicester Square to see if the Ghost In The Shell sequel is playing anywhere. I don't think it is.

Oh well. DVD I guess.

In another window I'm reading about Lester Bangs.

It's all soundbites, but that's okay.

This week, tickets to buy and stuff to do.

I'm too tired to write any more coherently.

Over and out.

J