Sleep on Sunday night was disturbed by frames from the Zapruder footage whizzing through my head instead of the angelic choirs and visions of utopia that I'd been hoping for. That'll learn me not to watch too many Kennedy documentaries too late in the evening. A mistake I've just made again, incidentally.

Monday. National Portrait Gallery. Gerald Scarfe's excellent cartoon of Henry VIII with a very wide face. Now that's satire. Also photos of Trafalgar Square through the ages. I noted that a big Bovril sign has presided over most of the UKs major celebrations and demonstrations over the years. On to the Tate, via Hungerford Bridge and yet another point-blank refusal to travel on the London Eye. 3 times I've sat there while braver acquaintances have made the 40 minute revolution. This time Jenny spared me the wait and instead we walked past the RFH, through that ludicrous so-called “micro-climate” that they've installed on the riverside walk, powered by an enormous wind turbine. I'm sure there are better things to do with alternative energy sources than spraying freezing cold water over innocent pedestrians every 30 seconds or so. As if London wasn't damp and gloomy enough already.

Post-Tate, to the Rosemary Branch, where we met up with and somehow managed to come a respectable 3rd in the weekly pop quiz. We failed to win outright owing to a lack of familiarity with Jermaine Jackson's back catalogue (again) and complete ignorance of what the current number 1 single is.

Today there was photo sessions for 2 forthcoming Observer columns: one dressed up in a white tracksuit in a graffiti-covered sk8 park in W11, and another as a hard drinking / smoking NYC punk in a cellar. Good fun. Was informed by photographer Alex Maguire that a very rough pub not far from his home is being replaced by a swanky pizzeria; he suspects foody mafiosi. Grisly murders are discovered with the victim drizzled with balsamic vinegar and a sun dried tomato over each eye.

To Notting Hill, and a wander past my old flat at 1 St Charles Square, just off Ladbroke Grove, where in 1990 I was paying a paltry £35 a week.

Now in Muswell Hill, where I've just turned on the telly and seen utter the phrase “Hung like a Klingon.” Excellent.