Well, here's a thing.

Could just be a coincidence?

September 19th, I post this image of "professional listener" Isabel.

September 29th, I discover I'm number seven for the google search on professional listener.

But look, just above me, a seemingly anonymous Telegraph journalist posted a story the following day about visiting that exact Isabel.

Now, Belsize Park, West Hampstead and North London in general is crawling with the literati and media wannabes. The image's clear enough for someone to email directly from my picture. But any number of freelancers could have walked past that card that very day. Although it was only small. Maybe everyone in Costbucks that afternoon was scribbling away some media story?

I don't suppose it matters. It's just interesting. Well, a bit.

What do you think?

Steve Bowbrick has put up a cute little bowblog: note his kid wrote to the Tooth Fairy because they lost their tooth.

I wrote that note: about a hundred years ago. And the Tooth Fairy (AKA my dad) wrote back. The words are indelibly printed on my memory: "NO TOOTH, NO MONEY."

Of course - in case you're thinking my Dad's dead mean, which he's not - he gave me the money in the morning.

Hot off the press: Musicbites a nano-publishing endevour that gives you all the info you need on the music/downloading/iPod stylee world.

So last week I went to a meeting, and the client brought in their funky new digital agency, and they guys were tieless and looked like my dad in the seventies (aka cool) and it was all very Starbucks. Except today, I check out their website, and it turns out they can't spell Shoreditch.

Shofar Idol - because it's that time of year.

Can I just say that there's a very worrying trend right now to "share" how "blessed" or "totally blessed" one is about something. "I feel very blessed."

There've been at least four in my earshot this week.

I feel very sick: if one more faux celebrity or comfortable zone-three dweller tells me how f***ing lucky they are, I'll give them something to feel something else about.

I have discovered SkyFex Remote Assistant - from Yoz, of course - and it's very fab.

Professional listener?

Image(614)
Originally uploaded by sashinka-uk.

Have you ever thought of being a professional listener? Doesn't sound bad, £25 an hour.

Not entirely sure whether this is for real or some kind of contemporary art installation, you know the Hoxton type. Although this was in a newsagent's window in Belsize Park. Whatever next?

What I did recently:

Marc Salem (mentalist) at the Tricyle - I was the first person he invited to join him on stage

Eltham Palace - south London's finest Art Deco hangout (check out my photos)

London Open House - our chosen venue (Dollis Hill synagogue, now decommissioned Art Deco haven), but we went to the Stables Art Gallery, and saw Ken (our mayor) with the wife and kids. My observations: (1) his wife and kids are very young compared to him, (2) he is much thinner in real life, TV really does make you add 10lb (3) I always say I'm the only person in NW6 who's never seen him locally, and now I have.

And tonight, Pride & Prejudice with S at the Tricycle.

I got really excited about this John Peel memorial concert, before John Peel Day, until I discovered the gig is on Kol Nidrei, and the day is Yom Kippur.

So it's no music for me (and 250,000 other Jewish people) on the solemnest day of the Jewish year. Oh well.

So, is it Felix Dennis' baby, or Felix Dennis's baby? (I have a real problem with apostrophes - I only got about 70% on Lynne Trusses Punctuation Game).

This apropos a conversation at the weekend about Kate Moss'/Moss's boyfriend. Pete. You know, the bloke who used to work for me.

I'm not 100% sure I get The First Post. Must try harder. Although I have just discovered (in print) The Week - Felix Dennis' baby, and I am very taken.

Rain in Spain (OK, North London)

rainy day
Originally uploaded by sashinka-uk.

It's raining, it's pouring... and I finally had the new stairs to my garden finished. So new, that the paint totally repels water like it's supposed to.

Cool, eh?

Call me paranoid, but I've been interested to know the level of flood risk in NW6. Took a bit of judicious googling, but here's the Environment Agency's flood maps (it's slightly tempermental code - doesn't accept a postcode from this front page, but you'll work it out).

Just what you wanted on a rainy day like this.

Google have launched the beta of their new Blog Search tool, and while the world clearly doesn't revolve around me, I'm not top for bus shelter or British Gas or any of the subjects close to my heart/keyboard.

Oh well. It seems... full of blogs I've never heard of. But then, probably the world is.

VOIP is the new black, clearly: EBay is buying Skype, for $2.6 Billion, and only a couple of weeks back, Microsoft bought Teleo.

I'm feeling 1999 all over again: what exactly is the business model? When I worked on a (sadly now defunct but rather famous) internet mag/rag, the business model used to change regularly while I went to lunch. I was on the commercial side, I hasten to add: I came to writing late.

I mean, I always wrote (shopping lists, freeform crap, stories I used to email to friends, desperate for feedback, management reports with a witty edge) but I didn't write. And then, suddenly, I had my nice boom-erea executive payoff and take-the-laptop-too, and all the jobs I got offered were internety, and I felt burned, and it had been quite stressful, running around trying to raise money before the Americans pulled the plug (I had a huge A0 poster on my wall that said EMBRACE AMBIGUITY) and I just thought, what-the-hell. I'll take a bit of time off, write, study, see what happens.

First time ever in my life I've done that, and I haven't looked back since. I was born to be free-form, self-managing, self-employed (ie, the only job I can probably take is a top one). I'm the employee who sits in team meetings saying "but why are we doing it like that?" which not everyone likes. I made all my employers a lot of money though. And me a little, on my ESOPS (fables, some of them) and ShareSave and all manner of irregularly capitalised things.

This was supposed to be about internet telephony.

Oh well.

I must get Skype. I think I have slight new-tech inertia right now, as my TV set up is lousy too. It's just you have to learn a whole new thing and sometimes your old things fall over.

It's crazy because I have a lot of friends/clients overseas, so I do have an international calling habit. So do most of my friends, it seems: D mentioned at the weekend that even though many of my buddies are not geeks, he hears the word Skype around my friends more than he does in his tech job.

And I should have been an early adopter. I am for most things. I'm an early adopter with early adopter fatigue. You can't be a born again virgin.

I may be talking drivel.

No-one has commented for a while and I'm starting to feel like the kid in the playground who didn't get picked for the team (because I was that kid).

Say hi. Tell me about VOIP. I heard a headset is not so expensive, but then my desktop doesn't have bluetooth, although my laptop does, but my wireless network is not well, in an intermittent kinda way and that would be annoying.

"Hello?"

There truly is a literary festival on every corner: viz - the Beverley LitFest. I don't even know where Beverley is.

I suspect British Gas is on some kind of job-creation scheme.

But before I get to that, do notice that they head their site "general - editorial". That's exciting. Why not head it "British Gas." Does what it says on the tin and all that...

So I'm on a direct debit tarrif, paying around £20 a month. A few months ago I realised I had a £70 credit, and rather efficiently - or so I thought - reduced my monthly direct debit to £5, as I figured that would cover the next two bills, as one was summer.

Job done.

But then I get a letter from British Gas telling me I had a credit of £70 and they were returning it to my bank account. The next day I got another letter from British Gas saying they had increased my direct debit payments to £20 a month.

So: two letters to me, lots of internal hassle, costs of colelcting direct debits, costs of refunding my £70. It all says "inefficient process and a waste of time."

No wonder energy costs so much. It's nothing to do with the gulf, obviously.

Emma Bossons, a Chesire lass and a Moorcroft designer to-boot, has had her life insured by her company for £1.5m. I hope she's on a decent profitshare/bonus (they say she's responsible for 40% of their £6m turnover.

Clarice Cliff and Charlotte Rhead didn't have it so good.

The new format Guardian launches on Monday - I'll be first in the queue at the newsagents.

You can see a preview of the Berliner here, front page here, and the whole of tomorrow's edition here (huge pdf, if you're on dial-up, put the kettle on).

I think I am going to develop and market a new salad dressing, and I'm going to call it... OIL FOR FOOD.

I think I heard snippets of Creative Genius on Radio 4 in the last few weeks. But due to the wonder of radio on demand, you can listen to it any time you like.

I went to Sheva Brachot (post-wedding party) for some friends last night, who got married in Sunday at LIFFE. The Futures Exchange... don't you think that's poetic? Like, when you get married you exchange futures.

Regular visitors here probably know that I am a huge Malcolm Gladwell fan. Huge. My fandom, at least. He's smart and funny and sees the world in a quirky way that makes sense.

I loved The Tipping Point - he said something new and interesting in a meaningful way. Blink was kinda dissappointing, though. It left me with a so-what feeling, like although he said it all very entertainingly, he didn't tell me anything I couldn't hav heard round a dinner table in NW3/N10/N16.

I hadn't looked at his website for a while, so I've just realised that he's re-architected, and added a new section, his disclosure statement.

It's long, and written in sections like one of his New Yorker articles. It'a liberal hand-wringing about how sucessful he is, and what a cushy number he's got: his New Yorker contract, paid speeches and the odd book. It's a therapy session about bias, transparency and accountability.

There's a very simple answer, Malcolm. Just give up the New Yorker gig. Freelance for them when you fancy, and do the other stuff.

See, angst over.

Jonny Freedland has a very insightful piece in today's Guardian - Receding floodwaters expose the dark side of America - but will anything change? - that has completely caught where I'm at.

I'm appalled to learn that in the state that gave us Missippi Burning, actually, life for some has not changed that much.

Just in case you too live in London and have woken up this morning with a desperate desire to learn Yiddish.

I learned all about Pritikin from David Aaronovitch in the Guardian, a few weeks back.

In some biazzre real-world link-fest, this article led me to William Leith's book, The Hungry Years, which I devoured like a person who hadn't seen sustenance for a while.

There's a part of me that thinks I love the intimacy of this kind of writing: I don't know David/William/whoever, but I know how much they weigh and their innermost fears. But then there's a part of me that says "pull yourself together, don't tell me your crap."

I'm both, I guess. I'm an emotional voyeur, but with boundaries.

OK, I'm back. I'm blogging. I'm here.

I know I went quiet for a while - combination of holiday (lovely), work (busy), fatigue (the world, you know), but I'm here now, honest.

And in January I'll have been at this for four years - that's a whole lotta wordage. I'm guessing, about 500,000 words.

I do like it when people say hello. I know it's slightly needy/childish, but humour me, please. I realise I let you down slightly, but I promise to blog at least once a day. And, very probably, often much more.

I realise that this merely demonstrates my ignorance, but when I used to hear the lyrics to American Pie - drove my chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry - I never actually knew what a levee was. Like I didn't know what tsunami meant, before.

Maybe the lyrics mean something now: I hope the music doesn't die in the Big Easy. I am sad about the world. Must take drugs.

Note: through the wonder of google-fu, just found an analysis of the lyrics: it's all about Buddy Holly's death.

A great piece a couple of weeks back in the Independent by Ned Temko - former JC editor, now Observer Cheif Political Correspondent - about citisenship and why he wants to be British.

Remember my bus shelter? (I just had to let it go in the end, I mean, life's too short. Also, I think I got close to making someone at Transport for London go on permament sick leave). Anyway, sounds like DiamondGeezer's got similar troubles.

Oh, I wish I lived in New York. I'd be at like everything at the New Yorker Festival.

You know how you say "I wonder whose job it is to..." - well, turns out it is actually someone's job to name Atlantic hurricanes.

There's a storm coming...

I don't know if it's the time of the month, or just my overwhelming sense of humanity, but I'm getting very emotional about New Orleans and Katrina.

And while I know there's a difference between weather and ... that other thing it's different from, I feel like there's been a lot of natural disasters in recent years. I mean, even this year, with the tsuanmi. Or maybe, as I get older (puhsing thirty, right?) I have an increasingly acute sense of the fragility of life.

And not even just the natural things: Beslan, 7/7, 9/11, yesterday in Baghdad. The world just seems scary, somehow. I'm a lot more interested in insurance than I used to be.

So I've been utterly overhwelmed watching what's happened on the news, and at the amazing humanitarian response (on Craigslist New Orleans, there's pages and pages of people just offering spare rooms and shelter).

But I'm not going to link to a million other hurricane-style things. Because there's a bit of me that is torn by the bystander-grieving. Like, when I was kid, growing up near Manchester airport, it sometimes happened that there'd be a crash or something at Ringway. And my mum's cleaner (and a whole bunch of other people too) would always go straight down there to watch. Like there's often a motorway accident on the other side of the road from the original one: rubberneckers taking their eye off the road. Disaster tourists. Grief porn. I'm sure someone else has already thought up a bunch of good words for this.

This doesn't in any way detract from the horror of what people have to deal with in the American South (and I guess, selfishly, that I won't be going to New Orlean's Jazz Fest for a while). It's just that maturity has taught me that I have choices about what I "consume" (media, food, whatever), and I can't help the world knowing the detail. Like I didn't watch the Beslan programme on Tuesday. It doesn't mean that I don't want that community's life to be healed as soon as it can, it just means that I know where to draw the line, for me.

I read something at the weekend, that because I have a brain like a seive right now, I can't find, but it was about conspicuous compassion, apparently a truly twenty-first century happening. In my fragmented media life, I saw some woman on TV this week, who'd had terrible things happen to her, that made her change, and when she was interviewed, she talked about her mum getting cancer, and something else, and then she said "and Diana. When Diana died, that really affected me."

Now, Diana's funeral went practically right past my door, so purely for the historical experience I stood on the Finchley Road, and I know from firsthand experience that the people crying were crying as much for themselves as her. Their conspicuous compassion was as much a mourning of what they'd lost as what she had.

I don't have any answers. This may just be a random rambling emotionally flamboyant something-or-other, but what I'm saying is...

... that while I don't want people to think I'm some kind of cultish nutter, the world is in a bad way. I know, I'm glass half-empty. There's good stuff, too.

What I'm really saying is - and maybe a weblog isn't the place to say this, but whatthehell - one of the few things that works for me is knowing that there's a bigger game plan, somone/something up there.

So, what I can say is that I'm praying.