Midnight and beyond

It’s just gone Jools Holland. I fell asleep in the chair, having driven more miles today than a rally driver in Monaco. Jim is in the flat, BB is in the attic, and I am on my last legs.

Don’t worry about me, you who are concerned that I will never touch real food again. I still love my nosh it’s just that I don’t want to be putting pounds of it in my mouth all in one go. Once the detox has settled down I dare say I will be eating half a pig again for breakfast.

Today I visited Gino De Campo’s deli in Borehamwood. He wasn’t there but his henchman Heath was. He very nearly didn’t let me talk to the diminutive Italian thinking I was a rabid stalker. In the event Mrs De Campo materialised and all was friendly over a cup of cappuccino and a Danish. Gino is well and when he gets back from whatever mad shoot he is on, we will meet for dinner and swap stories.

Yesterday I had a lovely meeting in Soho with a producer called Ri. We liked each other. She remembered me fooling around on LWT when she came home from school.
The number of women who used to breastfeed their children to my slot on breakfast TV is astounding. However, Friday was a good day.

Lunch with Rib and Ri – sounds like a comedy duo – right in the centre of Media Land. A tuna salad next to Cameron’s ‘Flatwhite’ coffee bar in Berwick Street. We met Cam when he came onto the show. He is from New Zealand and is a real life barista with a knack of being able to make a chocolate palm tree on the top of a frothy coffee with one hand whilst he’s juggling the books with the other.

I then had tea in Patisseri Valeries in Old Compton Street with my old friend Linda., after which we went off to a hairdressers in Dean Street where she had a trim. It was bang smack in the centre of a gay area and the magazine on the settee I was sitting on, bore witness to the fact. When I got to the centre pages, the photos of friendly males were explicit. I couldn’t put it down. Not because it was scintillating, but because I didn’t want to appear naive, which I am. I wanted to look cool, which I wasn’t, give the impression that l read that kind of literature everyday of my life, which i don’t’.

Let me tell you some of the appendages on those men folk were more terrifying than meeting a saber tooth tiger in the dark on the banks of the Orinoko River in the depths of night in the middle of the rainy season. I think I have made my point, as indeed, did they.

After the barbers we went to hear Michael Chabon talk in ‘Foyles’ on Charing Cross Road. He writes back to back with his wife every day of his life. He likes to do at least a thousand words a day. He has four children. After he has packed them off to school, he and his wife go into the writing room. They clatter away on their respective keyboards until lunch time then they take a short break, then clatter away again until it’s time to pick the kids up from school. He is a Pulizter Prize winning author, a screen writer, a family man and good-looking to boot, as well as being a very entertaining speaker. I went out and bought his new book today just because he so impressed me with his few chosen words.

He loves comic books and has the dubious honour of appearing on the Simpsons as himself. He was paid for the screen play of his latest book before he had even written it. That’s how much they trust him. If I weren’t so tired, I would tell you who ‘they’ are but right now I can’t remember who I am, let alone a pile of American producers in Hollywood.

Then Linda and I went to the Ecological Awards, sponsored by The Observer and Ecover, pronounced EEEE by gum go COVER the budgie’s cage it’s late. It was full of screechin’ journos and well dressed media molls.

Lucy Seigle presented the awards and the young lad who fronts ‘Never Mind The Buzzcocks’, Simon Amstrell made bad taste jokes that were very funny. I lunged for the canapes but only managed three bites of broccoli tempura and three glasses of fruit punch. I left by 9.45, took the Number 19 bus to the flat and awaited the arrival of Jim. We set off home for Sussex, arriving at 12.45. The dog was delighted to see us, the cat was delirious at our arrival and the daughter was in the studio penning a new track.

Finally, at 3.00am, we went to bed.

When I got up at 8.00 this morning, I decided to go to visit my mother which is where we came in. Now it’s 12.45 which is the time I arrived home last night. I have got to break the habit!

I have meditated, exercised and drunk nearly half my body weight in water but now my eyelids are so heavy and I am in danger of falling asleep over the key- boazzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz