A regular Tuesday morning in London. Like millions of other commuters around the capital, I head for work in something of a daze. Londoners are not known for striking up conversations with each other on commuter trains. Today, however, I witnessed two real-life conversations between strangers. As a result of the derailment on the Northern Line, the Bakerloo Line was packed. At the bottom of the escalator at Piccadilly Circus, two women had a row about who was pushing who as they tried to get to the top before each other. It wasn’t a deep and meaningful exchange, but it was a conversation (of sorts) between two strangers – which was certainly different. The second instance also took place on the escalators, but this time at Waterloo. The advertisements on the walls were for O2’s lower-cost calls from home service. They were a series of postcodes. A family riding up didn’t understand the message, and another tube-rider chipped in with his opinion on the ads. He too failed to understand the message. I guess there’s something in that for O2’s ad agency, but for me, it was an eye-opener that people on the London Underground aren’t so self-involved.

On this day…

I have been away on holiday for a week and am moving into catch-up mode.

As a child, I frantically wrote letters the week before going on holiday, so I would have a nice pile of unopened mail when I returned. Yesterday, of course, there was a mass of mail on the doorstep, but most of it was corporate mailings or junk of some description. My email inboxes were the same, but where are the communications I actually want?

Back in the office, most of the mail is not junk and has to be dealt with, but, as ever, procrastination gets the better of me. I’ve read it all and acted on the urgent. The rest is delayed for the “catching-up” excuse, which can last another 24 hours. Shameful, wasteful, and it will be – ultimately – frustrating for me, but that is the spirit of putting off.

On this day…

As the British tend to do, we will look back on this past summer with joy. We’ll talk about it like we did that of 1976 – a long, hot, lazy, crazy summer. I was more likely to be playing in a paddling pool than worrying about shortages of the plastic pools back then, but I do remember the heat and picking the fruit from my father’s fruit bushes while sitting in the back garden. Sadly, the topless lads playing football on the green behind my house have given way to the Sunday morning rugby matches. This is a sign of the oncoming winter as the fields turn from their burnt golden grass to a dark-brown mud bath. Still, autumn comes first, and it’s my favourite of seasons. I think it’s time I got the camera out to start recording some of it.

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I have been unintentionally silent for a week. It’s funny because I can’t pin down why this site has been so quiet over the last seven days or so.

Anyway, I finally caught up on some episodes of Sex And The City, which have been sitting on my SkyPlus, and it finally dawned on me (seemingly after the rest of the nation) that this is a fake advertisement for Absolut. How come I didn’t catch on to that then?

Am I the only person who thinks that the Absolut Hunk, Jason Lewis, has more than a passing resemblance to Calvin Klein model Travis Fimmel? Perhaps it’s just me and the fact that long hair has never been much of a turn-on for me before. Anyway, apparently Travis is playing Tarzan in a new Warner Brothers serial, which means there’s lots of reason to see him with no shirt on should the show ever make it to the UK (although he is, apparently, not that happy about having to take his shirt off all the time – via Let Me Get This Straight).

Still, the media last Wednesday revealed that one of my favourite broadcasters, Eddie Mair, is leaving Broadcasting House (the show and, maybe, the building). Sometimes you just can’t tell when he’s being serious or if it’s just his humour. Anyway, don’t miss his final shows on Radio Four on Sundays.

Media Guardian’s site (source of the above) also brought us an interesting profile of Graham Norton (originally from yesterday’s Observer) talking about his forthcoming attempt to break in America. It seems he has developed quite a cult following in the US (Jase is a big fan) and, perhaps, it might not be too bad for the UK to take a little break from Graham. I really miss the fact that the guests on the original So Graham Norton shows didn’t know what they were getting themselves into. Nowadays, they’ve either done it before or been warned in advance. I’m sure he’ll come up with something to move the show along, and I think it’s probably a very wise thing for him not to start on one of the big US networks.

Which brings us, more or less, to today and the very good news that London’s Mayor is stopping advertisements for holiday companies that say things like “romantic, mixed-sex couples only”. Sandals, the resorts in question, advertise under the slogan, “Love is all you need”. Yeah right. [Source: The Independent]

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Yet again, I have been in Helsinki (see May or August), and yet again I did not get to see very much of it. This time, however, it is all my own fault, as I did have a couple of spare hours after the meeting, and I filled them by wandering around the shops rather than doing something useful.

In fact, this has been the theme for my life for the past week or so. I haven’t found the enthusiasm to do much at all, and given that it was my birthday at the end of last week, this seems very sad.

I’m not sure what rot has set in, but it’s about time I got out of it. In a bizarre way, a freshly ironed pair of trousers made my morning all the better today. I can’t explain that one, and I am not going to try.

What have I missed out on while away? I don’t know what has happened this week in the Hutton Inquiry (which I have been following with some interest). On a related note, Lord King was a guest on the BBC’s Hardtalk programme (shown on BBC World) on Tuesday, and he provided an interesting insight into the politician-intelligence relationship.

On a lighter note, I have missed the start of The Salon (which is not a bad thing), and Jase introduced us to the concept of Washboard Envy!

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This little gem almost slipped by today. There are some things that you just hope are true:

A 40 year-old Wisconsin man has put in a strong bid for the dumbest criminal of the year after he allegedly stole a GPS tracking device used to monitor criminals on probation.

[Source: The Register]

On this day…