La nuit

Whenever I have had a friend who has been out of work for a while I have always mercilessly berrated them for sitting around on their lazy asses all day long and not getting out into the City, not only to look for a job, but to take in the many and varied cultural delights that London has to offer. London! It's like an orgy for the senses - avante garde dance, a deep appreciation for fashion, brilliant theatre and fine cuisine. How can you not throw yourself into it with gusto?

But of course, as you all know, for a while now the shoe has been on the other foot and it is now me who is un-em-ploy-ed. And all of those things cost money. So sitting around on my ass seems sensible.

Not working for a significant amount of time does weird things to you that no one ever really talks about. One of these is that your body clock goes to hell. You don't get up early in the morning for a simple reason, that being you don't have to get up early! So even though every night you go to to bed with the intention of getting up early and starting the day as you would if you actually had a job to go to, when the alarm goes off at 8.30am it is quickly flung across the room. Since the beginning of the month I have got up before 9am only once.

The effect of this late rising is that you don't get tired until about 3am. All my life, I've always thought that the time between 1am and say 6am was kind of like a no-man's land: everyone is asleep and the world is really quiet. It's a bit sinister. It's one of the worst things about insomnia - waking up and knowing that you are really, really alone. But in the last couple of months I have really made my peace with those five hours. This has helped by a little bit of non-human company, in the form of a family of foxes who live in the bushes just beyond our balcony at the back of the apartment. Whenever I go out for a late night cigarette I invariably see one of them. Sometimes I whistle and they look up at me, totally fearlessly. Cool foxes.

But I think the real reason that I have become so au fait with night is because I can appreciate it for what it really is - peace and quiet. I am a country boy - born and raised. I grew up in the kind of place where the sky is literally teaming with stars at night and it is always so quiet. Both of which you rarely get here. There is always noise and there is always too much light.

But I've found a little bit of that in London now. At about 2.30am. It's cold, quiet, some of the streetlights have gone out, foxes are playing and I can sit and puff on Marlboro Lights and blow smoke rings that gently float off the balcony towards the trees.

It's kind of solipsistic in a way and I think I like it.

On a completely different subject I chickened out. I didn't take the gay porn back. My friend Matt told me off for being a pussy, but Matt is a very different animal to me. He would, without any embarrassment, go in with all gun's blazing and probably not only would he get an exchange, but also a free dildo and a blow job from the assistant for his trouble.

Maybe I'll pluck up the courage tomorrow.