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Friday 23 September
It "strikes cold", to borrow one of my Mum's sayings, especially around the house. Spent the entire day around the house, on my own, writing, exercising, snacking, watching, responding to Pepper's (pictured) incessant conversation. (Pepper doesn't kill as much as Chilli, but she makes up for it by talking a lot more.) Book news: finished Chapter 4, started Chapter 5. A psychological victory. Watched Sin City on DVD for my lunch: no surprises, it was visually ravishing and stylistically original, but it lacked any characters you could care about (ie. anyone who wasn't a cold-blooded killer).

Final part of Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky - Ella's Story. Best of the three, I'd say, deftly linked with the other two and with two fine performances from Sally Hawkins and Phil Davis ("Eh? What? Eh? What?"). Ultimately very sad.

Broke a habit and actually watched Jonathan Ross, solely to see Catherine Tate, who was helpful enough to be on first. She acquitted herself well, only slipped into character once, and that was justified by an anecdote. No idea why she was on: her series finished about three weeks ago, she had nothing to plug. I should be grateful really.

Saturday 24 September 
Some good news to start the day: a letter from the Planning Inspectorate informing us that the proposed O2 mobile phone mast to which we objected has had its appeal against Reigate & Banstead Council dismissed. It has been an interesting journey. When the company first applied to erect a mast just round the corner from our house, we knew a lot about the possible health risks (and at this early stage of total mobile phone proliferation, much of it is speculative, which is why we must err on the side of caution), but less about the inner workings of planning application. Now we know that councils are unable to turn down phone-mast applications on health concerns only, so as local residents you must go in hard on the aesthetic impact. It all sounds a bit namby-pamby when all you're entitled to say in your letter is that it won't look very nice, so you have to question the urgency of the mast, point out where other masts are nearby and actually suggest alternative sites, which is a bit like moving the problem around rather than solving it. However, if your main concern is actually the fact that microwaves from mobile phone masts simply can't be good for your health (despite what the phone companies say), it's a small victory to see one off in this manner. We wrote letters to Reigate & Banstead when O2 first applied. They were turned down. They appealed. We wrote further letters. They were turned down. It's people power - although here's the rub: the phone companies are not entirely evil, they don't erect masts for fun, it's simply to meet the demands of mobile users. With this in mind, we've greatly reduced our mobile usage in the house. (Much to the chagrin of those who need to get hold of me urgently. Sorry about that.)

I had the day off. Yes, I know, it's a Saturday. Paul Anderson filled in for me on the 6 Music Chart so that I could attend a combined husband-and-wife 40 th birthday party in Nottingham. It took us just under three and a half hours to drive to Nottingham, so we arrived in plenty of time to enjoy this rather fine city. Staying in the Park Plaza Hotel (which is huge but bears the scars of a very modern designer who has ensured that it looks rather beautiful and clean, but also that you can't fit your hands under the tap in the sink and that the bathroom is too dark to usefully apply makeup or have a shave in). Nice and central - it's on Maid Marian Way! - we went for a wander this afternoon, enjoying the pedestrian-friendly centre and the trams (why doesn't Central London adopt this system?), and getting a good vibe off the place, despite its apparent second highest gun crime rate in the UK.

For a house party, it was an elaborate affair, with marquee, full-size fridge for drinks on the patio and a professional DJ in the lounge with the French doors open. Though I didn't drink, I enjoyed myself, even helping to start off the dancing later in the evening. I'll admit I was rather cold out in the garden in just a short-sleeved shirt and wish I'd been less northern and taken a cardy. The host lent me a jacket at 11.00 and I was grateful for it, though dancing - even sober dancing - helped me to stay warm. (I found this when I was in Edinburgh: without alcohol it gets much colder at nights.) Cab back to the hotel at 2.00. I don't need to tell you how late that is for me. I shook the DJ's hand warmly at the end of the night (his name was Raj); he did a great job of crowd-pleasing and keeping it varied, and I liked the way he slipped into his favoured hip hop at the end (Kanye West etc.), reasoning that everyone was drunk enough not to care.

Sunday 25 September
Breakfast in the room at 8.00 and on the road by 9.00, as I had a job to go to. I was back in Central London at the too-early time of 11.30 (I expected the M1 to be a lot worse), so there was plenty of time to read the Sunday papers. Had another fine old time with Richard Herring; at one point, during a discussion about porn channels at the Hilton Hotel, laughter made me unable to speak. I like it when that happens.

Very tired this evening, only having had about five hours' sleep. Nodded off during Waking The Dead and had to record the second half. We gave it another go after last week's disappointingly impenetrable opener, and it was back on the old form. I don't know what went wrong. Bed by 10.00.

Monday 26 September 
Lovely night's sleep. Nine hours. Due to the paper boy being on a holiday (a holiday to which he is fully entitled), we've been getting the Guardian and Independent delivered at about 1.00 since last week. That's no good is it? I have literally been reading yesterday's news at breakfast. We'd assumed it would be back to normal today, but they didn't arrive at all. I had to go and pick them up myself at 2.00. It's a tricky situation. I appreciate the shop's difficulty if someone's away or if they are let down, but I can hardly threaten the newsagent with taking my business elsewhere, can I? To whom? They are the local newsagent. There is no alternative in delivery radius. And I can't imagine that newspaper delivery is a big money-spinner for them. It's lucky I don't have a job, or the situation would be untenable.

Talking of not having a job, Curb Your Enthusiasm: Season Four arrived in the post! Excited? I should say so. It's been too long without Larry David's forlorn face and his pathological inability to let it go. Too long without Jeff Garlin's cheeky fat grin. Too long without the white-noise-plus-single-chord of the HBO ident followed by that jaunty theme tune! I was tempted to just stick the DVD on and watch all ten episodes back to back. But alas, today was VAT day. It's never as daunting or painful as I imagine it will be. It's basically three months' worth of bookkeeping. If I filled in my books weekly, or even monthly, "doing my VAT" would merely involve totting up the figures and sending off a cheque to HM Customs & Excise. But there's nothing like a deadline to spur me into action, and I've grown used to the three-month blowout. Due to a late start (I had to find my favourite scene on a DVD of Giant for Radio Times and distill its magic into 120 words first), it took until about 3.00, including the trip to the newsagents.

Listened to two hotly-anticipated new albums while I entered and totted: You Could Have It So Much Better by Franz Ferdinand and Odditorium by The Dandy Warhols. The first was thrilling, the second an awful dirge. In FF's case, the single is the worse thing on it, in the Dandys', the opposite is true. It gives me no pleasure to knock the Dandys, whose previous albums have given me so much pleasure, but I fear they've lost it.

By about 3.00 I was grilling some fresh sardines for a late lunch. Then the tapes of a TV programme I am reviewing for the Mail On Sunday 's Night & Day magazine arrived by bike. So I took my sardines into the lounge and settled down with Monk , the US detective series about an obsessive-compulsive, played by Tony Shalhoub (who won his second Emmy for the role last week). It's been showing at random times in the afternoon on BBC2 but I've never seen it, so the Hallmark channel (who show it more regularly) sent me three episodes. I watched two and half of them and fell asleep on the sofa. This always happens if I watch anything in the afternoon. I really liked Monk.

Woke myself up with a workout at 6.20, by which time it was already getting dark. That's depressing. I've grown used to exercising in natural light over the summer. Not any more. Fed the foxes at 7.00 so that I could avoid stepping in their sh--- in the pitch black.

Made some more pesto, this time with coriander as well as basil and pine nuts in place of walnuts. Much better. Watched half of last night's Waking The Dead followed by the second part at 9.00. It was the one in which Boyd was framed for a hit-and-run. Exceptionally good. I say again: I don't know what went wrong last week. I think perhaps they felt the need to come back with a bang, hence the glamorous transatlantic storyline involving an airfield in Arizona, but it just over-thickened the narrative soup. This week we were back on steady ground.

I realise, by the way, that I am the only man on earth who didn't watch No Direction Home, the Scorsese Dylan documentary on BBC2. Never has a documentary been trailed so heavily in so many publications. Life's too short.

Tuesday 27 September
Back to normal: the papers were delivered at 9.30am. I had a very uneconomical trip into London for just one meeting. However, it was a potentially important one and it was at Channel 4, so I was able to walk there from Victoria Station in ten minutes' flat. I can't reveal what it was about. Needless to say, Rob from Avalon was involved, and two commissioning editors. It's all hot air and a two-sides-of-A4 treatment at this stage, but the vibes feel positive. 
  
Made some homemade lemonade (ie. water, freshly-squeezed lemon and lime, and a teaspoon of this crazy natural sugar substitute I can't remember the name of, something like Zyclone). Very nice. Then sat down to watch Downfall at last. I've been dying to see this German film about Hitler's last days ever since it came out. It did not let me down. Bruno Ganz was phenomenal as the Fuhrer, ranting and raving as you'd expect, but presented as a deluded, wounded human being not a monster. Some say this is a flaw of the film; not me. Downfall makes no attempt at backstory; there is no motivation here, it's just the long, drawn-out suicide of a leader under siege.

Bingo! The papers arrived before I got up, and I got up at 8.00. That's the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it. I had a weird dream last night: I was joining Spiritualized. I turned up at a rehearsal and things started badly when Jason Pierce blanked me. For some reason, I was going to be singing for them. They started to play a song and I didn't recognise it, which was a problem. Jason sang it, and I tried to work out how I would copy him. Then, I was suddenly going to be their drummer. This was a better arrangement, as I'm no singer but can play the drums a bit. Nobody was playing the drums either, so there was obviously a vacancy. However, the next thing I knew, they had stopped playing and were packing up. The drums were suddenly wrapped in corrugated cardboard, ready to be taken away. Then I woke up.

Writing day. I've been reading back the chapters I've already written for the book and I really do like them this time. Your confidence goes up and down in waves when you're writing a book. Whilst on the treadmill this morning (that's the actual treadmill, not a figurative one) I had a brainwave about moving a couple of chapters round. That seemed to help.

Tony Blair has said at the conference in Brighton that the Labour party are "change-makers". Except for one quite conspicuous change.

Someone from the Independent asked for my thoughts on You Could Have It So Much Better by Franz Ferdinand, which I duly passed on via email. Unfortunately I had missed the deadline. Useless. Here are my (edited) thoughts, for posterity:

Franz Ferdinand had a lot to live up to in my house. Their first album almost singlehandedly restored my faith in intelligent British pop music and has lost none of its elegant sheen through overplaying or its greedy amount of singles. I'll be honest, I was slightly underwhelmed when I first heard the single 'Do You Want To' - choppy and catchy, with an audacious video, but simplistic and not as toweringly good as their previous work. However, it turns out to be the worst track on You Could Have It So Much Better, which is otherwise magnificent. The trick they've pulled off is retaining the early-80s angularity of the first album whilst expanding their palette into new areas. You get recognisable Franz Ferdinand like the instant-favourite title track, 'Evil And A Heathen' and 'The Fallen', which, incidentally reminds me of 'Up The Hill And Down The Slop by The Loft' - nice reference! And you get softer fare like 'Eleanor Put Your Boots On' (whose source I have just nailed as 'Apple Scruffs by George Harrison). This has the intelligent ring of Lloyd Cole about it. Kapranos is in fine voice, and lyrically he's still packing in the wonky references to Radio 4 and Tesco's profits, which put the band in a more rarefied enclosure than the likes of Hard-Fi, Bloc Party or the useless Killers. I'm even older than Alex Kapranos. I can remember this stuff from the first time around. But Franz Ferdinand repackage Gang Of Four and Josef K (plus David Bowie this time around) with such style, wit and care. The first album had novelty on its side; this one wants, and deserves, a deeper love.

The middle feeder was . . . hey, you don't want to know! But on that subject, yesterday I took delivery of some new sunflower hearts in bulk (the birds' favourite - as recommended by Bill Oddie). I buy them from a very nice bird food website and it's always the same van driver, who now knows that if nobody's home, he can put the seeds straight in the shed. He's like the seed fairy. I leave the house and the shed is empty; I return home and it's magically replenished. I keep my seeds and nuts in large, white 10kg plastic tubs. The squirrels, naturally, having eaten their way into the shed in an assortment of places, also eat their way into the tubs. I've had to chuck out a number of them and replace them. However, by simply placing an empty tub on top of the one with seeds in, it seems the squirrels can't get a purchase with their invasive little teeth, and I've had no gnawing trouble for months. Perhaps that's why they punish me by bringing down the middle feeder.

As a combined result of the temperature dropping, the nights moving in and about six hours spent standing in someone's back garden on Saturday night, I have the first stirrings of a cold coming on (feeling less than 100%, very slight ache in the bones, hint of a sore throat, snotty nose, beginnings of an asthmatic wheeze). I'm sure I can stave it off with increased vitamin C and Echinacea. Went out for a spontaneous curry tonight. Felt like some hearty carbohydrates and health-giving spices. The Wimbledon Tandoori supplied both. Tremendous. Watched two Curb Your Enthusiasms when we got home. Just hearing the theme tune brought a wide smile to my under-par face. What a tonic. Ben Stiller and Mel Brooks seem to be this season's recurring cameos, plus blind Michael from season three. Jeff has lost a little weight, I think. For some reason, Sheryl's cousin doing the card trick made me laugh the most. Too tired to contemplate staying up for the E4 edition of Lost , so forgot to tape it instead and turned in early. You have to look after yourself.

Thursday 29 September
Catching up with TV "overnights" (a pet obsession of mine) on the Media Guardian website this morning, I was really sad to learn that The Green Green Grass is down in the ratings from a massive 9.1 million debut to 5.6 million last Friday, beaten by Taggart on ITV1.

Went along to another read-through of Not Going Out in a community centre in Ladbroke Grove where they've been rehearsing all week. It was great seeing it all fleshed out and moving about in an approximation of the set. It came to life. Lee, director Gareth, producer Charlie and I had a final script-tweaking session afterwards, a reference to Pol Pot changed to Charles Manson, that kind of stuff. I cannot tell a lie: this is a thrilling process for me.

Film screening tonight, thanks to an unexpected commission from Front Row to review Kinky Boots for them on Monday's programme. (I got the call as I walked to the station, and since I was heading into town, I thought why not?) The film is the latest in the feelgood Full Monty mould: ordinary people do an extraordinary thing, in this case a shoe factory threatened with closure in Northampton starts making boots for male drag queens. Yes, you heard right: Northampton. It is to my home town what Monty was to Sheffield. It's an odd film, very formulaic, and a little flat, but admirable in one significant way - there are no stars and no obvious concessions to an international market over and above making Northampton look like a 19 th century town by only shooting terraced streets and the cobbled Market Square, rather than McDonald's or the Carlsberg factory. Fair enough, it suits the story, which is basically about provincial prejudice about crazy Soho queens. I admired the unknown lead actor Joel Edgerton (who, it turns out, is Australian) for his game attempt at a Northampton accent. Robert Pugh couldn't manage one, nor could Nick Frost, nor Linda Bassett, nor anyone else in the cast, so good on Joel Edgerton!

Home in time for Spooks. More terrorism, this time of an Islamic nature. Enjoyed it so much we watched the next episode on BBC3 at 10.30, which was a kind of David Kelly-style adventure. I love Spooks. Next time I am near Millbank I'm going to find Thames House like some kind of tragic MI5 fan.

Apparently the Independent have managed to squeeze in my Franz Ferdinand appreciation. It's in tomorrow's paper. Hooray.