a) MTV2 is on in the background. Zane Lowe is very, very bad at his job. If he were a carpenter, he would have hammered nails through several of his fingers, and his knuckles would be red-raw due to careless use of an orbital sander. Dreadful.

b) These are the kind of nails that Zane Lowe ought to be using:

These are very large nails, found in a Tooting hardware shop. I would love to see the item of woodwork that is held together with these. I would have no problem seeing it, as it would also be very big indeed.

c) I like post offices that hide in the back of small suburban department stores.

I like small suburban department stores, too. I pitched an idea to Time Out re writing about them. No reply. I would have loved to compare and contrast Harrods with Smith Bros on the Mitcham Road. And indeed I can, no-one is stopping me, but then again, no-one is paying me either.

d) Look. A self service check out.

Just installed in Tooting's branch of Sainsbury's. I love this. The machine does not ask you if you are OK, or if it can help you with packing. It also, in the case of the Tooting branch, holds a considerable advantage over the cashiers by not singing “It's A Kind Of Magic” while scanning your milk and cereal, and asking you menacingly if you like Queen. Only flaw: it didn't recognise my signature and a human being had to come over and check that I wasn't committing a dastardly act of fraud. I wasn't.

e) Why, oh why oh why, is the fashion in men's shoes veering towards the kind of footwear that Tollund Man would have worn? I complained about this a few months ago, no-one took any notice of me, but now, look, a whole shelf full of them. Ridiculous. They won't protect you against the current English climate (wet, in case you hadn't noticed.)