2001-03-28 - 7:30 p.m.

�I open my eyes and look at his face again. Oh good god, so nothing�s changed. The shopping to eat and the coffee to drink, the untrustworthy work in this miserable clink��

Good god, I�m staring down the business end of a three-day working week. I�m not sure my delicate occupational* sensibilities can take it. That�s over fifty percent of my free time gone (discounting the weekend, natch). I do get paid extra, though, I suppose�I can buy that second maraca and maybe a pot of pureed monkey glands, just for emergencies.

*For more time than I care to admit, I envisaged �Occupational Therapy� to be some kind of motivational course for people lacking in work ethic, a treatment I�m sure I�d qualify for.

What is work, though? �Why should I let the toad work squat on my life?� said Philip Larkin. But then, he was just a trumped-up old whoopsie. It�s undeniably a transaction. But what is the currency of this transaction? �Money!� I hear you mumble. Well, yes�.to the ignorant and inattentive layman. Surely the currency is time. You trade your time for money, but only so that you can trade money for other things which, like food, will buy you more time on this idyllic near-paradise we call the planet Earth. Erm, as usual, I forget my point. But aaahhhhhh�think about it.

Ahem.

�Well there�s the television, the radio, the telephone � it all helps�there�s the car, the sex, the love, the alcohol � it all helps, it all helps��

OK, now off for a long-overdue London rendez-vous with Ms Pixgrrl, who is undoubtedly my favourite Californian-based D�Lander visiting London at this precise moment. But only if she promises not to get me drunk.

�Sometimes I want to�push the pedal down a little further, until the car is unhappy�mainly mornings�mainly mornings��

Today�s special guests (on repeat at the moment, for some reason�)