Coming to this internet cafe has become a regular lunchtime event 3 days a week. This is somewhat embarrassing, as the office I'm working in next door has a 3 zillion oober-bit connection… but also the added drawback of firing off an email to your supervisor every time you hit a website containing offensive language. In fact, not even offensive language; just language. “This website contains language. You will now be sacked.”

So, thus, here, now, yes, to check and send email and prop up the part of my life not dedicated to constructing adverts for books of dimensions 468×60 pixels. It's actually a ridiculous size for advertising books, as books are generally not long, thin, and wider than they are tall. If someone published such a book, they'd clean up on the old click-through rates, that's for certain. Oh dear, I'm boring myself.

The current issue of Time Out has my piece on thrift shopping, minus the para on slightly damaged crockery, and including a para on the CEX games exchange on Rathbone Place that I didn't actually write. You can tell it's not me, as it uses the word “guys”. As I said to Will earlier, the only situation in which I would possibly use the word “guys” would be if I were booking tickets to see a production of Guys'n'Dolls (unlikely) or attempting to reason with a group of bikers who had just found me tucking into their packed lunch (more likely.) Anyway, it's in, that's the main thing. Now I have to write another clutch of paragraphs on how I might like to be proposed to on the 29th February. Loudly and slowly, perhaps.

I've also got the gig of reviewing something like 20 pubs and bars for the next Time Out Pubs & Bars Guide (you see, they thought it best to include reviews of pubs and bars in the Pubs And Bars Guide, understandably.) They're all in Notting Hill and Westbourne Grove, and the trawl begins tonight. Sadly money is somewhat tight, and I'm merely permitted a thimble of lager shandy in each one. I'm looking forward to going to the Austrian themed Tiroler Hut; not so keen on shambling into swanky cocktail bars in my parka and asking for a tumbler of lemon barley water (no ice).

Then I've got 1500 words to do for Tank magazine on London's ailing local department stores. I seem to have created a niche for myself for “going somewhere and then writing about having gone there.” Can't believe I've been so stupid as to only suggest places within a grotty tube journey of my flat. Pitching will now begin for a series of articles comparing density of sand granules on the world's most unspoilt beaches.