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).