Saturday 20th September 2014.

The last week of the summer holiday at last. This year’s new students are moving into Bloomsbury. Torrington Square is packed with food marquees serving hordes of eager young things. For them it’s the week of Fresher’s events, halls of residence, tours of the campus, induction parties, and queues to register for library cards at Senate House. On display are vivid experiments with dyes and beards, despite the changing fashions. Always the girls with oddly coloured hair lying on grass, lost in books. Always the flamingo-legged boys running in packs and shouting ‘OY!’ to each other, looking to belong. Oh, the eternal ‘OY!’. The trees and the college blocks shrug and watch over them all, welcoming. Continuity. Life. And yes, peace. One must never underestimate that.

* * *

Sunday 21st September 2014.

I’m reading a lot of short stories this week, particularly the five in the shortlist for this year’s BBC National Short Story Award.

Of these, Lionel Shriver’s ‘Kilifi Creek’ has some interesting musings on near-death experiences, coupled with another selfish and unlikeable protagonist (as per We Need To Talk About Kevin). Rose Tremain’s ‘The American Lover’ is a straightforward affair tale, though still a moving one. Tessa Hadley’s ‘Bad Dreams’ is more a scene than a story, though I like the idea of dreaming that a book has a secret chapter. If I were judging, I’d give second prize to Zadie Smith’s ‘Miss Adele Amidst The Corsets’, for its camp title, its gender exploration, and its acknowledgement of the modern world (it mentions Obama, apps and ‘googling’ in the lower case). First prize would go to Francesca Rhydderch’s ‘The Taxidermist’s Daughter’, which manages to bring in poetic details about the art of taxidermy, plenty of witty symbolism, a touch of modernist narration, and an inspired text-within-the-text moment. And it’s a proper story too, rather than a scene or an encounter or a musing. The winner is announced on Radio 4, the evening of Tuesday 30th. If the Shriver or the Tremain wins, I will be cross. I suppose this is my form of World Cup.

Other stories I read this week: Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Lottery’ (an impulse buy, as Penguin Classics have put out a 99p stand-alone edition), Jean Cocteau’s only short story ‘The Phantom of Marseilles’, Angela Carter’s ‘Reflections’ and ‘Puss In Boots’, and Ronald Firbank’s ‘A Tragedy In Green’. ‘The Lottery’ is still as shocking as ever – I suppose these days it can lend itself to interpretations of religious fundamentalism. I like Cocteau’s story of a beautiful cross-dressing criminal, though I prefer the monologue version he wrote for Edith Piaf. In the 80s, Judi Dench performed an English translation on the radio, which I find in Oberon Books’s Thirteen Monologues.

The Carter tales still dazzle. ‘Reflections’ is startling and ambitious, ‘Puss In Boots’ is an outrageous and entertaining romp. Firbank’s early story, meanwhile, is a curious hybrid of his novel style with a touch of Saki-esque twisted fantasy. AS Byatt includes it in The Oxford Book of English Short Stories, one of my favourite anthologies.

* * *

Monday 22nd September 2014. I’m browsing in Paperchase, Tottenham Court Road. This year’s Christmas cards are out. One design has a London skyline, with the usual snow picked out in glitter. Present and correct is St Pauls, the Tower of London, and Big Ben. But there’s also the Gherkin, the Millennium Wheel, and – surely making its debut on a Christmas card – the Shard.

* * *

Tuesday 23rd September 2014.

I try an experiment in reading. I time myself reading books on Kindle, versus the paperback versions. The result: I read a book faster, and I take more in, if it’s on paper.

Amazon has just announced a new range of Kindles this week. All of them are heavier than the 2011 model I have now. Given one central attraction of ebook readers is to save weight when travelling (especially on holiday), this seems a disastrous move. No need for me to upgrade, then.

I still do not own a tablet device or a smartphone. I still buy and send postcards.

* * *

Wednesday 24th September 2014.

To the new Selfridges cinema for Magic in the Moonlight, the latest Woody Allen. The cinema is run by the Everyman chain. It’s been advertised as the first in the world to operate inside a department store, though when I ask the staff (who are very charming), it turns out it’s only a six month ‘pop-up shop’, ie intentionally temporary. This is one of those worrying new phrases which hint at an ever more uncertain and insubstantial world. Another is ‘zero hour contract’. Regardless, I rather like this pop-up cinema, with its little Hollywood canopy and red carpet at its entrance, all enclosed within the store’s basement. Inside there’s a bar and a lounge, though one has to go out into the main store for the toilets. In the screening room there’s 60 seats in the ’boutique cinema’ style – a mix of sofas and armchairs with scatter cushions, little tables for drinks and popcorn, and a couple of spherical 1960s den seats at the back.

Magic in the Moonlight certainly suits this cinema in aesthetic terms. It’s set in an idealised, nostalgic 1920s world, nodding to a little of Scott Fitzgerald and a lot of Agatha Christie. Cue shots of pretty locations in the south of France, pretty people who are all pretty rich, pretty vintage cars and clothes, and the requisite Charleston dances. Colin Firth grumbles his way through the film as a sceptical stage magician, investigating a young woman’s seemingly genuine powers of clairvoyance. The girl in question is Emma Stone, an ethereal and doll-like actress with the kind of saucer-sized eyes reminiscent of the young Mia Farrow – no surprises there. Like many of the recent Allen films, there’s a strangely stilted feel to the dialogue and direction, as if he is just eager to get the script shot then move on. But the mystery of Ms Stone’s powers is enough to keep me interested. That and the visuals.

* * *

Thursday 25th September 2014.

Jason Orange leaves Take That. What I always admired about him is that after the first splitting up, he enrolled at a college and continued his education. English A-Level, too. The other four never went beyond GCSEs. That said, I admit this says rather more about me than it does about them. And it’s a sign of what I particularly believe in today, ie that a return to education is a good idea de facto. Whoever you are.

* * *

Friday 26th September 2014.

The majority of MPs support the UK’s bombing of Iraq yet again, this time against Islamic State. 43 MPs oppose the motion, including the Green Party MP, Caroline Lucas. ‘I know that when I stand up and oppose the Government’s motion, I am representing the views of many,’ she writes on the GP website. I may not be in her constituency, but on this issue she represents mine. I know the IS situation needs a solution. But a pop-up war, like a pop-up shop, can only add more uncertainty to the world.

Saturday 13th September 2014. To the Phoenix cinema for Pride. This evening screening is nearly sold out; such is the film’s reputation. It’s been sold as the must-see British film of the moment, and promises something to please everyone. It’s very funny and moving, and that’s just Dominic West’s perm.

Despite the theme of gay activism, the film is very much aimed at the mainstream. I think of Quentin Crisp in the 1970s, grateful that The Naked Civil Servant was a TV film, because a big screen version would, he said, have only been seen by gay men, ‘plus liberals wishing to be seen going into and coming out of the cinema’. Times have changed, and gay people are now more regarded – at least in Britain – as people who happen to be gay, and are finally allowed to have other aspects to their lives as well. So it’s fairer to regard Pride as part of the same genre as Brassed Off, Billy Elliot, The Full Monty and especially Made In Dagenham: gritty tales of British social struggles sweetened with broad laughs and big emotional moments. Pride retells a number of true events from 1984, when a group of gay activists from London got involved in supporting the striking miners in Wales.

The requisite 1980s clothes, hair and pop music are all in place: lots of quiffs, little hats, and blue jeans with turn-ups at the bottom. In fact, looking at young people in London today, that particular trouser statement is starting to, well, turn up again. It’s also heartening to see the Gay’s The Word bookshop in Bloomsbury having a key role in the film – I only hope that people who enjoy Pride realise that the shop is still going strong today.

Inevitably some historical facts are played with: entirely fictional characters interact with those based on real people, while my pedantic side winces at the use of the AIDS ‘Don’t Die of Ignorance’ TV adverts for a scene set in 1984. They didn’t appear till two years later. But when the big emotional moments come, and the music swells on cue, the sense of earning the right to such manipulation is overwhelming. It’s hard to disagree with propaganda, if all that’s being preached is the need for basic compassion.

And there’s nothing like the sound of a packed audience laughing together at funny lines in a film. As the credits go up, this audience applauds.

* * *

Monday 15th September 2014. Advice for writers from Kipling: ‘Drift, wait, and obey.’

* * *

I feel increasingly non-everyman. I wince at non-fiction writing that uses ‘we’ and ‘you’, passing off the writer as some sort of default point of view. I wouldn’t dream of such an assumption. Which is why I can’t do that kind of work.

I don’t write to join in. I write to make sense of my own thoughts, then publish them in the hope they make a connection with the mind of a reader.  I can’t speak for my generation, my class, my gender, my country, my race, my historical era, or even for writers.

From this somewhat self-sabotaging stance, the hope is that what I write might be unique.  The fear is that it might be irrelevant.

* * *

Thursday 18th September 2014. What happiness means. I am sitting on the floor in a corner of a large library (Senate House today), pulling out several books at once and leafing through them on the spot, rather than taking them to a desk. Some are quite old (today it’s a 1950s four volume edition of The Arabian Nights).  No one is bothering me. I am not in anyone’s way. There are no screens or phones about. I think about the people who have turned these pages since the 50s, and those who have walked this floor since the 30s. The silence hangs and comforts.

* * *

Friday 19th September 2014. I wake to the news that the people of Scotland have voted a firm No to independence. I think this is a shame. A Yes result would at least have blown the cobwebs off so many centuries-old situations and systems, and that would have been no bad thing. Still, Mr Cameron has promised all kinds of new governing powers to the Scots by way of a thank you, and the referendum has triggered the start of an ongoing discourse over what nationhood means. What I found particularly uplifting was the huge turnout for voters up in Scotland, particularly amongst the young. I do hope this is the start of a new trend: more people using their vote. Perhaps even Russell Brand – who advocates non-voting – might admit he is wrong about something. That would be a new dawn indeed.

* * *

It’s a warm and sunny day, possibly the dying gasp of summer. Still a few flip-flop wearers about. I go to Camden to see the new Amy Winehouse statue. On the way, I stop off in Camden Square to see the older, more unofficial memorial: the decorated trees near her old house. Fresh messages and little gifts are still tied to the trunks, just as they’ve been since she died three years ago. One offering is a silver eyelash curler. A girl from Paris has included photos of herself in her laminated letter, dated a few weeks ago: her hair and make-up clearly emulating Ms Winehouse’s. ‘Amy Winehouse We Love You’ is scrawled over a nearby council sign, battling with the printed phrase ‘Clean Up After Your Dog’. As I walk on, I realise I’ve trodden in some dog shit.

It takes me fifteen minutes to walk to Camden Town proper. Here people from all over the world can be seen united in a single activity: eating cheap noodles from tinfoil tubs. The generations come and go, but Camden’s t-shirt stalls are clocks to consult for the pop culture of the day. Today I spot a t-shirt for Breaking Bad.

I find the Winehouse statue in Staples Market. It’s on a semi-circular sunken dais behind the Proud Camden building. This dais in turn juts over the lower ground level, so the statue looks like she’s performing onstage. The figure is close to the ground rather than on a plinth, and as she is more or less life-size she has a Madame Tussaud’s quality. More tourist attraction than memorial. You can put your arm around her, should you wish. In fact, I’m guessing this is the intention. And yet the tourists I see around me today seem hesitant to get too near. They take photos, but do not include themselves in the shot. I wonder if this is because it’s so new (installed September 14th), or if they feel too self-conscious, what with it being so conspicuous and public. Still, there’s some tidy bouquets at her feet, and with a letter of love from someone in Barcelona. The stature is grey except for a red rose in her beehive hairdo. The rose turns out to be real; it’s up to others to replace it. She would have been 31 this week.

Saturday 6th September 2014.

I spend a day in town with Mum, meeting her off the 1031 train at Liverpool Street. We manage to pack in two exhibitions and one major art installation, along with lunch (stir fried tofu for two on the terrace of the British Library’s restaurant, with hardly anyone else about). First up is the Quentin Blake show at the House of Illustration, one of the buildings in the new Granary Square development, north of King’s Cross station. Like the station itself, the development is an impressive mix of Victorian buildings tidied up and put to new use, alongside scatterings of new architecture: the astroturf steps by the canal, and the matrix of pavement fountains, with their multi-coloured lights.

We investigate the viewing platform set up opposite the square. The usual aluminium panels denoting which building is which are covered in angry comments, scrawled in black ink. Everything in sight is attacked: ‘ugly!’, ‘terrible idea!’, ‘waste of space!’, ‘waste of money!’ The anonymous writer even accuses the sign of getting its facts wrong: ‘NO! That’s on the LEFT, not the RIGHT!’ I check the skyline. The sign is perfectly correct.

I can’t help thinking this is a real-life effect of the vogue to leave angry comments under every piece of information on the internet, and as a matter of course, too. The implied message really being ‘I exist and I am lonely and I want to matter.’ Or put more simply, ‘I troll therefore I am’.

Mum, however, does like Granary Square. She daringly adds her own comment to the graffiti – though she’s careful to do so in pencil: ‘Nonsense! Think positive! Be a Polyanna, not an Eeyore!’

[On Friday the 12th I revisit the viewing platform. The sign is now wiped clean of any graffiti, and is back to normal. This is the equivalent of that most ubiquitous statement on the Guardian site: ‘This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn’t abide by our community standards. Replies may also be deleted.’]

* * *

The Quentin Blake show includes a whole room dedicated to Michael Rosen’s Sad Book. Other Blake works on display are his pictures for Voltaire’s Candide, for David Walliams’s Boy In The Dress, and for his own wordless book, Clown. A film reveals that Mr Blake does his drawing standing up, like an architect, and that he uses a light box, not just to trace but because it ‘feels friendly’. Illustration, he says, is about choosing a single moment in a text, then living in it. ‘You own that moment for as long as you like.’

In the gallery shop, Mum impulse-buys Oh No, George! by Chris Haughton, a mad and funny picture book about a naughty dog. Though it’s aimed at the very young, the lesson of self-discipline is all-connecting. I end up getting a copy for myself. Somewhat ironically, the book is hard to resist.

* * *

I show Mum the new Hatchards at St Pancras, fast becoming one of my favourite places to browse. It’s an example of how best to lay out a small bookshop: a little bit of everything, with as much as possible displayed face out, and lots of tempting tables. The new Beano annual (for 2015) is given prominence, and with good reason. The cover shows Dennis the Menace and Gnasher in St Pancras, running to catch the Eurostar.

At the National Portrait Gallery, we take in this year’s BP Portrait contest. Teeming with people. In contrast to the Kings Cross viewing platform, the thoughts of visitors are this time solicited, in the shape of a touchscreen. You tap on the painting you think should have won. I have no idea if the results are collated somewhere, but it gives the sense of feeling like one’s opinion matters, and that’s the true spirit of the age. My favourite painting is by Clara Drummond, ‘Portrait in Blue and Gold’. A second prize would go to ‘Eddie In The Morning’, by Geoffrey Beasley, which Mum is also keen on.

We wander through a corner of Trafalgar Square. At least three things are going on at once. In the main space is the stage for a rally by The People’s March for the NHS (sample slogan: ‘NHS – Everyone’s Concern, Nobody’s Business). In the corner is a busking set by Jake Heading, a pleasant, bespectacled young singer who’s drawn quite a crowd. And a few yards away from him are the usual living statues. Recently there’s been a spate of trompe l’oeil performers in the touristy parts of the city, particularly Floating Yodas. These are people dressed as the little green Muppet-y creature from the Star Wars films, whose costume hides a seat attached to a sturdy pole, so it looks like they are levitating. As we pass, one of the Yodas takes off his rubber mask to mop his streaming brow. ‘Sweatier than it looks, living statue work is’.

* * *

We end the day at the Tower Of London, there to see the red porcelain poppies planted all around the grassy moat. A staggering sea of red. One poppy for each life lost in WW1, arranged so it looks like they’re pouring out of one of the Tower’s windows. The poppies circle the whole Tower, and hundreds of other people are here to get a good look at them too. It may be a simple symbol, but it’s a powerful and unforgettable one.

* * *

Sunday 7th September 2014.

To the St James Theatre Studio in Victoria for a new one-man play: Quentin Crisp: Naked Hope. Written and performed by Mark Farrelly, it’s an interesting indication of where QC’s reputation might be today, fifteen years after his death. Certainly the 80s Sting hit ‘An Englishman In New York’ is heavily relied upon as a qualification. Not only is the song played in the show, but it’s alluded to three times in the limited space of the flyer. I always thought the association was unfair, given Crisp’s dislike of pop music full stop. But I should admit that I’ve never cared for the song itself, its melody and production being too bland for my liking. My apologies to Mr Sting.

Mr Farrelly is rather muscular in comparison with the two main actors who’ve played QC in the past, John Hurt (on film) and Bette Bourne (on stage). He makes me think how a young Laurence Olivier might have approached the role, because his version of Quentin seems as much critical as it is affectionate. It hints at unaddressed layers beneath the surface, perhaps even that Crisp was something of an unreliable narrator. The show is much more of a dramatisation than an impersonation. In fact, the sense of Quentin Crisp playing a part himself is accentuated halfway through, when Mr Farrelly changes clothes and wigs in full view of the audience, going from 1960s London Quentin (retelling the events of The Naked Civil Servant), to 1990s New York Celebrity Quentin (delivering his Messages Of Hope lectures, hence the title: Naked Hope).

There’s also a moment where a member of the audience is asked to get on stage and help him read his question cards, which I’m sure is something the real Crisp never did. At first this seems pure pantomime, just something fun to break up the format of a one-man show. Yet the lingering effect is to remind the audience of the way Crisp would go through the motions, always giving the same answers to questions, as if reading from a script. So Farrelly suggests there might be something not quite so inspirational about that. I disagree. I’m biased, but I think words in themselves can be a sufficient approach to the world, even if they’ve been polished and prepared and repeated so much that they might appear insincere. A good aphorism, like a good story, can retain its own self-contained freshness and sincerity, because it represents pure meaning.

* * *

Tuesday 9th September 2014.

I’m at Senate House Library, reading The Day Of The Triffids by John Wyndham. At one point I realise with delight that Senate House itself plays a major part in the novel. It becomes the base camp for the London survivors, being one of the tallest landmarks in the city at the time it was written, circa 1950. I also discover that there’s a Book Bench celebrating the connection outside. It depicts triffids on Tower Bridge. The bench is tucked away amid the foliage by the front of the building, lurking there, as if ready to sting.

* * *

Wednesday 10th September 2014.

The opening line of The Day Of The Triffids is one of the greatest in literature:

‘When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like a Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.’

But after that, some lines irritate with their deep 1950s-ness. The hero’s love interest is called Josella Playton, which makes her sound like a lingerie brand. Even the 1980s BBC TV adaptation inserted a scene where she says ‘I’ve always hated the name Josella. Just call me Jo.’

One line of the novel is:

‘His companion was a good-looking, well-built girl with an occasional superficial petulance’.

What exactly does Wyndham mean by ‘well-built’? Curvy? Athletic? Double-glazed? Upholstered? Cantilevered? Or just… waterproof?

* * *

Thursday 11th September 2014.

To Highbury to visit Shanthi S. She gives me a birthday present: The Animals, a fat collection of Isherwood’s letters. Then we walk to the Dalston Rio for Two Days, One Night, a French language film starring Marion Cotillard. The BBFC certification card at the start surely crosses the line from content warning into plot spoiler: ‘Contains one scene of attempted suicide’. So all the cinemagoers are waiting for that. That aside, it’s a very straightforward Ken Loach-esque tale of a factory worker tracking down all her co-workers during one weekend, in order to convince them to vote against her redundancy on the following Monday. The dilemma is that a vote to keep her is also a vote to lose their own bonuses. I felt it was the sort of film that might become socially important as time goes on, but found it a little too straightforward to be properly engaging.

Saturday 30th August 2014. I’m reading a couple of 1950s novels, both dealing with issues of race. One is Doris Lessing’s Grass Is Singing, set among the white farmers of Southern Rhodesia, while the other is The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon, about West Indian migrants adjusting to Britain. Lessing’s prose turns out to be up there with Orwell in its unadorned realism (no messing with Lessing), but it also has the seamless shift between perspectives that one finds in George Eliot. That said, the white characters get the lion’s share of the empathy. Selvon, meanwhile, manages to represent 1950s London entirely through a kind of Caribbean modernist patois, most impressively in a section which runs to ten pages without any punctuation. The only dashes are to indicate swearwords. I’d expected the scenes detailing the grimness of being a penniless immigrant, but hadn’t realised that there’d be so much broad comedy too. Despite all the poverty, the novel is ultimately a love letter to the city.

* * *

In the evening I go to the Old Red Lion Theatre in Angel, in the hope of seeing a new play, The Picture of John Gray by CJ Wilmann. It’s about the real life Gray who inspired Wilde’s Dorian. It’s had rave reviews. Too many as it turns out, because the show is sold out, it’s the last night, and there’s no returns on the door. So instead I treat myself to a solitary meal at The Gate, the vegetarian restaurant nearby. I’m annoyed that I can’t see the play, but cheered that fringe drama is evidently in good shape.

Watch Doctor Who. Rather silly goings-on which involve shrinking Mr Capaldi’s Doctor so he can be injected inside a Dalek. Not the most logical of stories, but it’s very visually impressive. There’s a nice spooky moment where the Doctor is swimming about in a kind of distorted slow-motion world, meant to represent the Dalek’s eye.

* * *

Sunday 31st August 2014. To the Royal Albert Hall foyer, to look at the Peter Blake mural there, ‘Appearing at the Royal Albert Hall’. It’s a variation on his Sgt Pepper album sleeve, being a montage of photos of about 350 people who’ve performed at the venue, all jostling together in a crowd. Some are in black and white, including the Beatles and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. There’s a Dalek (presumably from the Doctor Who Proms), and the main boyband of today, One Direction. I think the photos also indicate the age of the performers at the time they appeared there: the Monkees look much older than their 1960s heyday, and are minus Mike Nesmith, who I know didn’t join in with their reunion tours. So that would suggest the first Albert Hall show by the Monkees was fairly recent.

* * *

I do some studying in Swiss Cottage library, which is open on Sundays. At one point a middle-aged man wanders past, talking to himself while staring at the bookshelves. ‘I can assure you the Americans are on the moon,’ he says. ‘What are we doing about it?’ He says this quite loudly and clearly, with a well-spoken accent. Then he moves on.

I dip into Peter Nichols’s memoir, Feeling You’re Behind. He’s honest about his envy of other playwrights’ success, particularly those who, like him, were living in Bristol in the 1960s. Funny how rivalry often involves shared locations as much as shared generations. Tom Stoppard’s stardom is one of those he resents, though he adds ‘he was already a star on Blackboy Hill’. Reading this today, I remember that I once met Stoppard’s Bristol landlady, when I lived there in the early 1990s. She lived in Clifton, and indeed close to Blackboy Hill, and had an old photograph of him framed in her living room, looking like a fifth Beatle.

* * *

Tuesday 2nd September 2014. A letter from Tobi H in New York. He thinks I should move there.  ‘You’re just too British to stay in England.’

* * *

To mark the opening of its new branch in St Pancras International, Hatchards have installed some display cases by the Eurostar arrival gates. They tell the history of the main Hatchards bookshop in Piccadilly, and include artefacts from past book signings. This means that one of the first things people arriving in Britain will see is a large ashtray once used by Bette Davis.

* * *

Wednesday 3rd September 2014. My 43rd birthday.

Where does the time go? On the internet.

I chat to Mum on the phone, then head off to do my usual birthday task. I like to celebrate that I still have working eyes and legs (what else is a birthday but a celebration of a still-working body?). So I try to go somewhere I’ve not been before, to treat my eyes to new sights, and my legs to new terrains. It needn’t even be outside London.

Today I visit the newly-opened Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, being the site of the Olympic Games in 2012. I’d kept clear of the Games while they were on, but was always keen to visit the actual site. So I take the High Speed train from St Pancras, and arrive just after noon. A dry, sunny day. I take in the Meccano-like ArcelorMittal Orbit watchtower, as designed by Anish Kapoor, go on a boat trip up the River Lea (the tour guide is a charming older lady, ‘born and bred in the East End’), then I wander around the fresh new parklands and wetlands of the area. Even though there’s plenty of other visitors (lots of East London families and pensioners), it’s incredibly tranquil and pleasant. All the garish branding of the Games has been stripped away – no more McDonalds logos. Just lots of new grass, wildflowers, waterways and ponds. There’s also lots of public art (I like the circle of mirrored columns in Victory Park), and there’s a scattering of tasteful kiosks and cafes. It’s a perfect place to spend a birthday, in fact: old material renewed for the future.

Small children in swimsuits splash around the snake-shaped fountain by the base of the Orbit, where the water jets sprout from the pavement one by one. Such a simple way to keep small children happy on a warm day. The Orbit turns out to have its own patrolling hawks: I meet one of them on the gloved arm of a chatty gentleman by the entrance. From him I learn two things: 1) the colour red is particularly attractive to pigeons, and 2) nothing keeps pigeons off a huge red sculpture like the presence of a hawk.

A lift takes one up to the tower’s two 360 degree observation decks – one has to walk under a very Kapoor-looking funnel first. There’s a couple of long distorted mirrors on the top deck (more Kapoor ideas), offering an upside-down view of the skyline. The lower deck comes with high-definition zoom screens to identity the sights. I manage to locate Highgate Hill, seven miles away, by looking for the distinctive green dome of the Catholic church. I’ve often been able to see the Orbit all the way from Highgate High Street, so it’s satisfying to see this view in reverse. I also look into the Olympic stadium next door, currently closed and back to being a building site: nothing to see but cranes and forklifts. I learn that it’s being given a new roof, and that it will then serve as a ground for West Ham, while also hosting various athletics events.

A bit of drama in the Orbit view today, too: flames and black smoke are visible from a tower block, a few miles to the south. The staff pass around binoculars. One particularly bored staffer sings ‘London’s Burning’ over and over again, until his colleagues tell him to stop. I later find out that the fire is actually in Bermondsey, in Surrey Quays Road. No injuries, and it’s all put out by 4pm. Barely makes the local news. Still, it’s fairly alarming to watch at the time, and from such a vantage point.

I take the optional staircase back down. It runs around the whole tower inside its own tunnel. Every ten steps is punctuated with speakers, playing noises recorded at places like Borough Market, local football matches, and at the building site for the stadium.

* * *

In the evening: to the Odeon BFI Imax to see Lucy. Scarlett Johansson once again stars as a non-human. This time she’s a woman who accidentally becomes super-intelligent, but the transformation is progressive, and she has hours left to live. The film doesn’t hang about either: the entire future of mankind is done and dusted in about 90 minutes. The man who wrote, produced and directed the film is Luc Besson, which makes it not just comic book fun, but bande dessinée fun – it’s easy to imagine it drawn by Milo Manara. He even sets the finale in Paris, purely to stuff it with car chases and shoot-outs for no very good reason. It’s an outrageous film, frankly, but its sheer abandon carries me away. Luc Besson is 55. I may not quite share his aesthetics, but his sheer energy and nerve is a good thing for a fortysomething’s birthday.