Thursday December 2nd 2010. London and much of the UK is currently covered in snow.  I wake up today shivering and cursing my ability to throw off heavy blankets in my sleep. Not to mention my bedsit’s lack of central heating. I have an oil-filled radiator plus a small fan heater, both of which plug into the mains, guzzling up £1 coins in the meter at a frightening rate. Still, I feel more at home in a cold Victorian bedsit in London than I would in a well-heated modern house anywhere else in England, such is my dyed-in-the-hair metropolitan blood. And I can use the heating of libraries, galleries and cafes in the daytime.

I’m convinced there’s only two ways I’d be permitted to live in any settlement outside the M25: either like the Christopher Lee character in ‘The Wicker Man’ – the eccentric yet powerful lord of the manor – or as the first sacrifice the second the crops fail. Actually, the locals probably wouldn’t wait for that.

When I visited a bookshop in St Ives last September, the woman on the till warned me – within seconds of entering and presumably with no awareness of The League Of Gentlemen –  ‘We mainly stock books for locals. Not so much for Londoners.’ I hadn’t uttered a word.

But then, as proof of my innate London-ness, one of the things I first noticed when in St Ives was that there wasn’t a single drycleaners. Plenty of art shops and art galleries, but the moment one gets a blob of acrylic on one’s cravat, it’s off to Penzance with you.

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Yesterday morning: I surprise myself by getting up at 5am for a spot of voluntary work. I am collecting for the international HIV charity Mildmay, as my bit for World AIDS Day. I stand with a bucket and tray of red ribbons by the ticket barriers in London Bridge station, from 7am to 10.30am. Without a break, too, though that was my choice.

I also choose to never shout at passers-by, hoping my status is clear from my bucket – and the unflattering t-shirt they give me (the things I do for charity). Partly because I’m not the shouting sort, but mainly because I think people might be grateful NOT to have a street fundraiser barking at them or impeding their path on their entirely blameless journey. I can’t do ‘fun runs’, I can’t shout or collar pedestrians, but I can do is what I once did at school for charity – a sponsored silence (a sly way of keeping children quiet in class, I now realise).

So I just stand there with my bucket, careful to be visible while keeping out of people’s way, not speaking unless I’m spoken to, and armed only with a hopeful smile. It seems to work: by the time I knock off, my bucket is satisfyingly heavy with coins, and more than a few notes too.

Find out more about Mildmay and donate at www.mildmay.org

Am back in the Highgate bedsit after three weeks flat-sitting in Crouch End. No more cat to look after me.

Somewhat taken aback by the contrast in heating. In the flat, there was a boiler and radiators and the knowledge that I didn’t have to pay the heating bill. Back here I have just my little electric fan heater for the room. Which used to be fine, except that Highgate, like most of the UK, is currently in the grip of a proper winter spell. I sit here at my desk still wearing my winter coat, with the fan heater on full right by my toes, and still I shiver. During the night I don two old t-shirts plus my old jogging bottoms (noting that it’s about time I bought some pyjamas), position the heater right by the bed, and still I’m freezing.

Tonight, then: blankets. And I’ve just bought some M&S pyjamas – first time since my teens. I chose the ones that looked the most like hand-me-downs from a Matthew Bourne ballet. I can’t be bothered working out if pyjamas on grown men are stylish or not. They are on me, and that’s an end to it.

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During the day I spend as much time in heated public buildings as possible. Library, cafes, shops. Quite the opposite of being ‘snowed in’: the snow helps to get me out of bed (7am) and out of the house. Highgate like Crouch End still looks like Narnia, the snow crunching pleasingly underfoot, but central London is utterly, hilariously devoid of the stuff. A sense of the capital saying to the snow ‘Don’t you know who I AM? Don’t you DARE fall on me. I’m a Very Important City Centre.’

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In the London Library toilets, one member walks straight from the cubicles back into the library without washing his hands. This is something that many men do which utterly appalls me. If he’d been a recognizable author, like more than a few LL members, I’d instinctively feel like naming him here and urging the world to boycott his books. But then I remember about WH Auden and his peeing in the sink (as brought up in the new Alan Bennett play). Not an excuse, but a reminder to trust the art, never the artist. Particularly the piss artist. Readers of my own work might like to note that I always wash my hands after visiting the lavatory. Whatever you think of it, it has been written by properly cleansed hands.

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Packing away the Christmas decorations, I notice that 2009’s Christmas seems to have brought me more Christmas cards than I’ve had for years: 30 to 40 of them. In this digital world, it feels even more special. I know I go on about my love of getting proper handwritten letters and cards, but actually getting them is something else. Thank you, all those responsible. One favourite is from the band The Real Tuesday Weld. It contains a little 3-inch CD EP of the band. I’d forgotten how lovely 3-inch CDs were. Favourite track: ‘Plastic Please’, featuring the Puppini Sisters. It’s a fanbase mailout, but singer Stephen has handwritten a greeting to me: ‘To Dickon. Keep Dreaming.’ Which makes all the difference.

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I see in the New Year by DJ-ing at White Mischief at the Proud Cabaret venue off Fenchurch Street. Lots of gorgeous dressed-up people, and fantastic live acts, particularly Frisky & Mannish, plus The Correspondents, who do a real 1910-meets-2010 techno rap set, merging cravats and waistcoats with what looks like skinny emo leggings. My own highlight is helping to locate a burlesque Judy Garland’s detachable plait. That says it all.

Highgate this morning. Chaos on the roads, happiness for schoolchildren everywhere: