Back from my travels with no worse to report than the expected upset tummy. While I was away -- without much in the way of connectivity, or time to use that which there was -- I thought it would be a cinch to fix the look of my pages. Three hours later, I know it isn’t. So I’ve lifted a good looking...

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Having tinkered over the weekend to update the engine that drives this site, I've discovered that all is not well under the hood. The Comments section rattles and there's a definite grinding noise from the Search Results and Archive page. One solution is to abandon my personal fabulous design until...

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It's every man's dream to have a penis so large that he must hire a small boy to carry it.

Not mine, I have to say. And idiotic, of course. But this did make laugh.

Something was up down at the rough ground along the Tiber where Mellie and I walk each morning. A couple of police cars and a crowd of cops, some plain clothes, some in uniform, sheltered from the drizzle under flimsy, collapsible umbrellas. There's a makeshift encampment all along the banks, hidden from the street by tall stands of "bamboo" and by the topography, and from time to time a drunk (more often than not) emerges and Mellie barks. It's a vaguely threatening place, not least because there's a sense of invading someone's space and being unable to explain that one means no harm.

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Went for a traipse round town this morning with a few errands to run; shoes, DAT tapes and compressed air all bought and paid for. Then popped into a big bookshop with a good record section, and was astounded by a neat piece of technology. Headphones with bar code scanners. So you slide the CD you want to hear under the scanner, and it plays you 30" snatches of each track. Very neat. We are now almost back to the good old days when a single cost 6/8 and an LP 32/6 and I cut my retail teeth at Hampstead Record Centre with the wonderful Dave Brodie. The hours I spent in the booth there, lined with holey hardboard and reeking of Embassies and No. 6. ¹

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