Brilliant

It's taken a long time for this week to turn around but finally it has. It's been a productive day, I've been organising things for my holiday. Now I'm sitting with a packed suitcase wondering what to take out and what I've forgotten to put in.

Yesterday afternoon I was filming a project for the Hampstead theatre. We were on the bridge in Camden, and the people from the theatre were showing an image of a woman in the Muslim veil and asking random people what they thought about it. There were these two guys from Yorkshire and one of them looked at the image and just said, "sex". When he was asked about the veil he said he hadn't really noticed what she was wearing, he was just looking at her face. I kind of liked him, he wasn't contrived. He wasn't exactly bright but he had this nice kind of naivety about him. And then the older guy he was with said a couple of dodgy things about race, he didn't agree with him but he couldn't really articulate it. When I get to edit the footage I'll get an image of him up.

I enjoyed yesterday afternoon, it was the start of looking on the bright side again. I better get this case sorted out, I've foreign lands to explore.

Rubbish

What a totally frustrating, useless, waste of time week I'm having. Everything I've done this week I've done badly. This week is so rubbish if anything were to go right I'd no longer notice. This week can fuck off. Where did it all go wrong? Does the picture above show the start of where it all fell apart? (The man on the right is married with a child. Look at the way he carries on!) A tequila shot in a rubbish Camden bar, with my friends, James and Shaun. I felt ok the next day, I thought I'd got away with an afternoon on the booze, but alcohol is a depressant and maybe it got me after all.

Constant trips to Specsavers certainly didn't help, especially as they're seemingly competing for the most useless optician award. Like only ordering one pair of contact lenses for you to try before they can get you any more. And not having lens solution in stock. Then the computers go down and they don't know what to do with you, so they just move you to different chairs.

Even the bus journey to Specsavers was bad. I was standing by the door, because it was the only place to stand, so I was in everyone's way. Then I found a seat to get me away from the door and sat feeling guilty that an old woman standing by the stairs needed it more than me. Then half the bus got off and she still didn't sit down. She wasn't even that old. I had to go back to Specsavers later in the day, so I got a taxi, to stop the guilt of another bus journey, and felt guilty for spending money on a taxi. All this guilt is no good. It's a waste of energy. "It's good to feel guilt, it stops you doing immoral things. I feel guilty all the time and I haven't done anything wrong," as Woody Allen once said.

Remember the hovercrafts I was telling you about? Here's one leaving. I need a holiday.

Hovercrafts Rule OK

On Saturday, in a bid to get away from the fuzz of London for the weekend, we headed to the south coast in the car. First stop - Devil's Dyke, which hangs above Brighton, you can see the sea as you travel downwards and it gives great views over Sussex. Far below a cricket match is taking place. You can see the cricketers' whites from way up here. But where are the hand gliders? This area used to be full of hand gliders back in the eighties. The National Trust, who make you pay to park here now (thanks for that contribution) have a picture of the scene below featuring the hand gliders, but they are nowhere to be seen.

At West Wittering, we walk the sand dunes in anoraks, while below families are sunbathing and swimming. The beach is sandy, the sea blue and full of yachts, but it doesn't feel that warm. We head to Chichester to find a guesthouse, but see a sign for Portsmouth and change our minds.

Portsmouth is run down and not that inviting when you drive in, a place caught somewhere in the early eighties, like so many other seaside resorts, which is how I like it, because the early eighties was the last time I was here. We came here for a school trip and went to the fair and the beach. I remember I was 12 and wearing my first ever fashionable pair of jeans. It was when drainpipe jeans were in fashion and they were really tight at the bottom and it took ages to get your foot through the holes. Any slight gap and you were a gaylord for wearing flares. I remember there was no-one taking the money at the Maze of Mirrors and a few of us ran in. Then the guy came back and was really irate. We ran out, but one guy, Lee Dumbrell couldn't find his way out. The guy was shouting at him and he was trying to get out but he kept walking into the glass. They cancelled the school trip the following year, because apparently our visit to the fair wasn't considered educational enough.

I used to come here with my family a lot as well. We used to walk along the promenade and watch the laughing policeman. You put ten pence in the machine and the laughing policeman was behind glass and he used to laugh and we did too. He's not there anymore. The thing that really excited us though was the hovercraft. We always wanted to get a hovercraft to the Isle of Wight but it was too expensive.

I wanted to re-live that excitement, but felt that at 39 the hovercraft would no longer do it for me. We headed to the promenade anyway and watched it come in, and it's still great. It approaches the Promenade really fast. When it leaves is the best, because it inflates and the Hovercraft stands tall, and then it spins around really smoothly and shoots off into the sea. This time round though we boarded it and headed off to the Isle of Wight, on Sunday for breakfast. It was good being on it, but it still doesn't beat watching it leave.

The Weatherman's prediction.

I took the day off work. The Weatherman predicted rain but it was sunny all day. I bet the Weatherman was the first on the golf course this morning. (If you know what I'm saying, Larry David fans). T shirts with jokes on are proving very popular this summer's day. The guy opposite me on the tube wears a t-shirt that says: 'If found please return to the nearest pub'. He also has the look of someone who's just told a joke and is expecting a reaction. I wonder if he has that look about him all day or whether it was just that he caught me reading his t-shirt. A guy wears a: 'I'm with stupid' t-shirt and a big arrow pointing to his left. He is alone.

The community police officer in Regent's Park is proving very community spirited. He calls over to me asking if I'm having a good day. I go over to speak to him partly because I think he suspects me of something. Disappointed that he doesn't, I feel like saying something like: 'Yes, but your presence is making it very hard for me to sell my poor quality drugs to unsuspecting tourists'. I don't though, we just talk about parks and then he mentions something about my eyes being blue and I make my excuses and leave.

On Marylebone High Street I notice the ambulance service has gone so green they are operating by bike (see picture above) instead of ambulance. I wait around for a while to see what they'd do if they have to stretcher anyone off somewhere, but there's nothing doing so I make my way towards Primrose Hill.

The Weatherman has predicted rain again tomorrow. Could be a good day for golf.