The North will rise again

The hotel room overlooks the bay and salt marches of Grange-over-Sands. Back in the north, for Matt's wedding (he who leant me the entire series of the Sopranos to get me through last winter). We arrive at ten on Thursday night and the streets are empty. We peer into an Indian restaurant and know the only two people dining. (Fi and Doug).

A shop on the main street sells everything from footballs, to rucksacks, to tie cleaner to headstones (see picture above). A man walks past in a t-shirt which has the body and legs of a frog below his neck. He is the frogman. His girlfriend walks beside him, looking immensely pleased with her frogman.

In the taxi to the wedding the driver points out an old man on one of those motorised old people mobiles, driving in the middle of the road.

"He's a menace that man. I always see him. He drives in the middle of the road. He thinks he's in a car." He's explaining this as we follow him, trying to find a point at which to overtake him.

Then, he adds: "He used to be the mayor of this town."

The wedding is fantastic, everything is right; the location, the speeches, the delicious food, the constant booze, the playing of 'where's me jumper'. Then there's the little touches; the lottery ticket bought for each invitee, the taxis that pick us up to take us to a classic country pub in Windermere the next day. Tremendous.

After the peace and quiet of Grange it feels a little depressing to come back to the non-stop traffic of London. However Monday night I'm standing at Highbury and Islington station and who should walk past me? Ian Brown of the Stone Roses. The trademark bowl, the rock star strut, he's very thin is Ian and he looks quite scallyish, but you only see these indie star types in London. Over the road there's a couple of Kaiser Chiefs in the pub.

People in glass houses

Saturday on Gloucester road, I can’t find a bin to put my empty water bottle in but there’s a bin for knives. I didn’t know Kensington was the epicentre of knife crime. It is open house weekend in London. First stop: The Luxpod, a box room transformed into a luxury pad, apparently. It’s all mod cons but you couldn’t fit a cat in it, let alone swing the thing. The mews houses around the corner, which aren’t part of the open house look far more inviting, with their small village like streets. It’s great, you come to a city and look for a village feel.

At the mews house in Camden everything is sleek, white and there’s nothing out of place. It feels strange looking in a stranger’s wardrobe. There’s lots of light and space but somehow it doesn’t quite feel like home with everything shut behind doors. The bookcase that reaches to the ceiling is impressive though with its ladder that reaches the top shelves. Also the fridge, which opens like a drawer.

Our final stop is a three storey glass and concrete house up by Highgate cemetery. The concrete steps between the floors make you long for painted walls and carpet, something soft, but the kitchen at the top with its remote controlled ceiling that rolls back to let in the open air is tremendous.

We head towards Pimlico, the water bottle still in my hand.

Autumn feeling

It's starting to feel like autumn. You start to feel the cold in the air at night, it's getting dark too quickly and no matter how gingerly you walk past trees the leaves are starting to fall. It rained all day. It's time to get the roll neck jumpers ready. Soon we'll all be drawing the curtains as soon as we get home and pressing our backs against the radiators.

It didn't feel this way 36, 000 feet up as we flew back to London from Dubrovnik. Everything felt possible. My mind was racing with plans; getting in shape, starting a photography course, I was tempted to buy expensive colognes from the duty free shop and start anew. I even thought it possible to win the Aston Martin outside the duty free shops, even though I hadn't paid £20 for the raffle ticket. I felt like James Bond up there. The pilot spoke in a confident self-assured manner. We were in safe hands. (I think the secret to becoming a pilot is it's all in the voice).

Back on the ground today, navigating my way through the rain things don't feel so good. The pilot in my mind is George Costanza and there's no reassurance. For some reason I always think about being at University when autumn approaches. It's because it started in the autumn and I'm always thinking of when we went down to the Albert or Ye Cracke in the cold, with everyone from the house in Grove Park and meeting up with people from Uni, in about 1992. Everyone in doc martens and big coats. It makes me nostalgic and melancholy too.

Postcards from Croatia (Part 3)

At a guidebook recommended fish restaurant I am slightly disconcerted that my fish still has its head and tail intact. The fish looks at me from the plate, as if to say; 'I was swimming earlier and enjoying myself, just like you. Now you're going to eat me'. He doesn't even taste that great. According to the guide book the service is spot on and they make a fuss of you. The waitress treats us with a mixture of bemusement and disdain.

The best restaurant in town (that we found) was Sesame, and fed up of fish by this time, we head there for the meat dishes. (The cow I am eating has had the decency to leave his head in the kitchen). We sit on a balcony with grapes growing on vines climbing the walls next to us. It's the perfect place to sit as the evening cools. It's so good, we go a second time. The waiter looks at us as he hands us the menus and then says: ' You were here already?'

On Friday we walk the city walls, peering at a woman as she hangs out her washing, another as she sows, sitting outside the front of her house. Elsewhere tourists rest around the old fountain. But it is time for us to leave. We leave the local kids playing football by the port, the same kid being sent to swim - fishlike- to retrieve the ball every time it ends up in the water. We walk up the winding steps to collect our suitcases and coats, and to take off our shorts and shades and to put on our civilian costumes, passing a strange car on the way that is covered up to protect its paintwork and its wheels from getting a suntan.

Postcards from Croatia (Part 2)

We are here in 30 degrees of sunshine, amongst the coloured flip-flops and shorts, a part of the tourists, no longer seeing something than pointing a digital camera at it and trying to capture it, trying to take a part of Dubrovnik old town with us. The sea is so clear and so blue - an aqua marine blue maybe - and I photograph it but can never do it justice.

We walk down winding steps, looking across the gleaming terracotta roofs at the welcoming blue of the bay. Couples take it in turns to take pictures of one another at the port. Wild cats roam the old town. Children fish with an elemental rod and throw their catch onto the hot pavement for a cat to play with and finally eat.

On the Isle of Lokrum there are no cats but peacocks roam freely. There are no beaches as such but rocks to lie on or jump off into the sea. The forest here is noisy, with loud see through insects, but cooling, and we walk through, beach towels over our shoulders. We buy Mares (shoes that you wear on stony beaches and can swim in) from a stall by where the boat picks you up. The woman seller is animated.

"Mr, Mr, you try these on here," she says, pointing to the step of her shop. And when I try to put them on over my sock, she gesticulates wildly with her hands and shouts "No" in the kind of manner that suggests I'm trying to burn her shop down.

When I try the Croatian for thanks - "hvalar", she fobs me off with a sarcastic gesture of the hand.

The following day we are on the isle of Lopud, beach towels draped over our shoulders, walking 2 kilometres uphill, crossing the island to find its only proper sandy beach. We hit the top of the hill and see it gleaming beneath us. It is worth the wait. Sand under foot takes us out to the clear blue sea of the bay. The sea is so salty and you can lie on your back in the Adriatic Sea and stare at the pure blue above you, the sound of moving pebbles beneath you and think: this is how it should be. You try and block out the world, the past, the time, the worries and just for a few seconds everything is perfect.

Postcards from Croatia

Hi, we are in Dubrovnik, I have fifteen minutes on this computer and counting. The weather is fantastic, 30 degrees, nothing but blue skies. Today we have been to the Island of Lokrum which has insects the size of bees and look the same but see through who can make the noise of about fifty fireflies and make the trees vibrate. Dubrovnik is beautiful and we went to a fantastic restaurant last night where grapes were growing on the branches next to us on our balcony seating. We were told to relax and enjoy - perhaps we didn't look too relaxed but we feel that way now. I will get some pictures up soon and let you know how our boat trip to the islands goes tomorrow. I better go, the clock is ticking, you can probably work out how many words a minute i can do - the y is in a weird place on this keyboard and seems to be appearing in every other word I type. We are off to sit on our balcony and admire the view. See you soon.