When did I become so political? Is it age? I can string out a whole evening on martinis and questions about Labour.

I'm talking to a man with a perspex scorpion brooch inlaid with diamantes and he's a dickhead. Laura says he walks like he is on acid and he may well be. Constantly. That would be a convenient explanation. He takes her phone and we talk about the best case scenario as the initiation of an art project. It alll falls apart up close and I have to walk away.

I'm watching television, listening to a different man, a photographer. He is the victim of a suicide bomber in Afghanistan. In the immediate aftermath of the bomb he is questioning everything.

I can't sleep. I don't know what to think. I ignore a man in a lift even though I know him. Is this who I want to be, how I want to be?

I have a thought that is a great contrast while driving in Hordern Street but it escapes me now.

There's a Marlin in my bathroom. The blow dryer shakes it from its ledge and the blue/green plastic nose breaks off. I am reminded of the Salamander Hotel and my first experience of plastic animals attached to coloured drinks. I believe they were monkeys.