The archive

Today we headed east, in order to travel west. The trip to Heathrow has been a fraught one in the past - either a prelude to separation, or a nervous weather-beaten dash to meet up. In either case, it has been a strange and sometimes painful excursion.

It feels like a long time since I've done this...as the train edges into Paddington, with a defiantly strong sun burning off the misty morning cloud layer, I'm strangely nervous to be back here. It's impossible not to remember the first, tentative…

Throughout my adult life I've encountered fairly little serious prejudice, for which I'm absolutely grateful. However there are a couple of low-grade issues which seem, oddly enough, to exercise people - my hatred of cheese and my lack of a driving license.

With only the loosest of plans we're heading east again. Having an Essex bolthole is proving hugely advantageous, but I'm out of practice at the advance booking game, and with Wimbledon reaching its inevitable conclusion this weekend, it was never going to be cheap.

Flying has always been a solitary experience for me. Save for one ill-fated trip to Glasgow which I took in the company of a small group intent on birthday revelry, I've always been in the company of my own thoughts.

It's become almost customary to write a little update at this time of year. Partly because, despite my cynicism and dislike of many aspects of the festivities, the time spent with my family over Christmas is often a calm, quiet and pleasant interlude nowadays.

There is a fairly certain sense to my London wanderings, built around a particular set of trains and a surprisingly uniform pattern of travel. I haven't, in the main, set out to do this consciously - more it's a mixture of necessity, comfort and the repeated urge to walk certain paths.

Once again I found myself in London today, again without a firm plan, though not quite as unexpectedly as last week's jaunt. This habit of dashing to the capital runs counter to my original plan - that I'd not even try to visit the city during the Olympics or Paralympics.

I used to refer to these strange interludes when something went wrong with the plan as "Lost Weekends". They've mercifully been rare over the years - save for the bad patch in 2007 and last year's "Lost Week" which oddly enough coincided with the…