In a cab at 8.58pm around Holborn, there was a car in front with the registration number NJ53 NBB, which had emblazoned across its rear windscreen: “DO NOT TRUST NORWICH UNION INSURANCE” with a phone number. I rang the phone number: it was Norwich Union. Strange way for an insurance company to conduct an advertising campaign, but hey, it worked. Well, I didn't actually take out any insurance, but now their number is lodged in my mobile phone, surely it's only a matter of time.

I just started re-reading “Provos”, the excellent book by Peter Taylor about the IRA. I opened it at Chapter 1 on the tube last night, and glanced to my right, to see this:

The Year London Blew Up is a forthcoming programme about the IRA's bombing campaign of 1974/75. Not that spooky, I know, I'm sure far greater co-incidences happened during the previous 24 hours, but there you go. It's a slow journal-day, today.

I went to a gig by a band called Simple Plan, which I've reviewed for Playlouder. I hated it. I managed to expand that hatred across 700 words and include the phrase Simple Plan seem to be striving for an expression and reinforcement of the basic emotions of a 13 year old boy.

I must have found my way onto some kind of mailing list. There are yet more letters in my postbox, addressed to Franz Ferdinand and asking for items to be donated to charity auctions. Rainbow Animal Rescue and the Naturewatch Foundation arrived today. I'm assembling quite a collection, and wondering what FF's policy towards charity is. The Free French have, so far, been uninundated with similar requests.