Wednesday 8th January 2014. I note how the phrase ‘please do not hesitate to contact us’ is usually appended to emails trying to tell you to go away.

Thursday 9th January 2014. Looking at the internet today, I want to gesture at the screen and say, ‘how can I compete with all… this?’ Just adding to the sheer volume of stuff seems wrong. And yet here I am. Adding to it.

***

Saturday 11th January 2014. I meet Liam J, a student friend of Tobi H, originally from Tennessee, now based in New York, and currently staying in London on a study exchange. They’re (they prefer gender neutral pronouns) friendly, charming, and like a lot of US friends count Stephen Fry and the Mighty Boosh among their favourite British things. Despite being in town for 9 days, Liam hasn’t seen the West End. Their lodgings and campus are close to Shoreditch and the trendier East End areas, so that’s been their main haunt up till now. It wasn’t that long ago that the idea of Dalston and Stoke Newington as hip places for a night out was unthinkable. Now many bars in the West End are cheaper than some of those in Hoxton.

I’ll always be grateful for the friends-of-friends who’ve shown me around foreign cities, so am happy to do my tour guide bit. We start out with afternoon tea at the Coach & Horses, going for the full version (£17.50), as they don’t take bookings at the weekend for anything cheaper. Possibly too full for both of us: after the sandwiches, the scones and one fairy cake each, the larger cakes at the end defeat us entirely.

I explain to Liam about the Coach & Horses history, about Jeffrey Bernard and Private Eye magazine and why there’s a framed photo of Ian Hislop looking down at us. And indeed, who Ian Hislop is. The old Heath cartoons inspired by the pub (‘The Regulars’) are still on display, and are still funny.

Given Liam’s a Mighty Boosh fan, I point out Maison Bertaux next door, which has Noel Fielding’s art on the walls. Then off to the Ku bar in Lisle Street. First time I’ve been in a gay venue for a long time, probably since First Out closed. Pleased to find it has a healthy mix of ages and genders. They’ve still got the policy – their trademark, really – of having good-looking barmen who look particularly good with no shirt on. But it’s still early in the evening, so they’re wearing their skimpy vests instead. There’s a time and a place.

I show Liam the Prince Charles cinema (my idea of a ‘studenty’ cinema), the ICA bar and bookshop in the Mall, the lights of Leicester Square and Piccadilly Circus, and the cavernous Waterstones Piccadilly. Then we walk to the geographic centre of London, always good for showing visitors. It’s the equestrian Charles 1st statue on the south side of Trafalgar Square, the site of the original Charing Cross. I’m disappointed, however, that the large blue cockerel isn’t properly lit up at night.

Then a walk on Hungerford Bridge – both sides. A good spot for pointing out the Thames, the Millennium Wheel, St Paul’s, the Shard, the Southbank centre, and Big Ben. I remember how it’s the location for one of the opening shots of Love Actually. It’s in the montage where a passer-by carries a Christmas tree past the camera, to reveal the view from the west walkway: Big Ben and the Wheel at once. A very quick way of saying ‘Look, we’re in 21st century London! And it’s Christmas! Got it at the back? Right!’

Liam’s main observation about London is one of absence: there’s so much less rubbish on the street than in New York. Another is that ‘cold’ in London is really not that cold.

Monday 13th January 2014
I always seem to get ill around the time of an exam. Today a heavy cold descends.  I’d assumed the winter flu jab I thought I’d been so sensible in getting would prevent colds as well. But no, no it doesn’t. This week sees most of the full menu: ugly coughing, even uglier running nose, a croaky voice, a touch of fever, wooziness, and general unpleasantness.

Tuesday 14th January 2014.
Coughing. Revising. Coughing some more. Could be worse, I say. I could be Dave Lee Travis. Someone has to be. Not his best week.

The news today is a parade of greying gentlemen from the history of British TV entertainment, their various alleged pasts catching up with them in court.

I understand that Operation Yewtree was just a random codename picked by the police. It’s a coincidence, then, that a yew tree tends to be incredibly old and has a distinguished reputation; it often hangs around old churches. Yet parts of it turn out to be highly toxic.

* * *

Meet up for a drink in the Birkbeck student bar with Martin W, once singer in The Boyfriends. He took the same Birkbeck course as me – BA English – 2 years earlier. He’s been very encouraging, passing on a rare textbook and offering practical advice.

He’s now doing a cultural studies MA, and his latest work is very up to date: on Morrissey’s Autobiography and how it fits in with theories of commodification (the Penguin Classics packaging and so on). Not at all an unusual subject, as there’s been a proliferation of academic work on The Smiths in the last few years. The first generation of teenage Morrissey fans are now the generation in charge of everything. Not least the Prime Minister.

Wednesday 15th January 2014.
I take the Anglo-Saxon module’s translation test. I feel absolutely awful right up to sitting down in the classroom. Then I suppose the adrenalin must kick in, because everything is suddenly razor sharp. Something in my body has told other parts ‘this is too important to cough and sniff through’.

Thursday 16th January  2014.
Classes. I cough so much in 21st Century Fiction that my eyes water. Roberto Bolano does not deserve this.

I don’t cough in Fin De Siècle, but have a highly unattractive, non-stop nose blowing session instead.  Still, I learn an important style tip: fin de siècle is only hyphenated when it’s an adjective (‘during the fin-de-siècle era’), and is not hyphenated when it’s a noun. Never noticed until now.

Friday 17th January 2014.  I barely do any work on the latest essay (on Dorian Gray, due in next Thursday), due to being ill and having to write up the diary. But my mental well-being receives a booster jab when I get a ’75’ mark for the essay before this one. A decent First. The tutor’s comments include ‘a pleasure to read’, which is even more important to me than the mark. The work still doesn’t get any easier (and I really wish it did), but feedback like this becomes a form of cheering on from the sidelines.

Tags: coach and horses, coughing for sympathy, I know my Richard Curtis montages, London tour guide duty, one day one of these tags will change your life, the less fun side of tissues