Not really feeling like doing anything

at the moment - I am 6 days into my holiday, and without a foreign sojourn (for two weeks at least), I have slumped into the apathy of early British summer. The weather has reverted to type, with grey skies and mild drizzle, so any efforts to wander around London have been curtailed - so much so that on Tuesday, British power stations conspired to cause a black-out in the Museum in Docklands - but it did mean that there is free entry on Sunday. And to the Jack the Ripper exhibition as well. It was the first time I have been to Canary Wharf in years (maybe even a decade) - it is still as inhuman and business-orientated as ever, but having been to both Hong Kong and New York in the interim, the tall buildings and fully-paved plazas with the merest sprinkling of plants seem to be the functionalist-impressionist dream of the architects of these modern centres of capitalism.

Since then, not much else, I’m afraid. Shopping. Listening to music. Watching daytime TV in 10-minute bursts. Cleaning. Cooking. A hint of reading - mainly odds and sods of Russo-Soviet history and culture inspired by Dimbleby in Russia - as he wandered through Samara, there were odd glimpses of murals and mosaics that still linger from its days as one of the centres of Soviet arms manufacturing - manna from heaven for me, as they lacked the finesse of the standard north-western Russian propaganda.

I have also been revisiting the Muppet Show on DVD - the first series so far, and, childish as it may seem, it makes me laugh. A lot. I think that may say more about my sense of humour than the quality of the jokes, but still. I have even almost forgiven them for selling out to Disney.

Mark Lanegan and Isobel Campbell

have a new album out, “Sunday at Devil Dirt”.

I have to say that as it plays in the background whilst I type, it is rather good. It certainly mines the same seam of Southern fried gothicism as post-Birthday Party Nick Cave, and Lanegan’s warped and world-weary tones are not a million miles away from Mr Cave, but there is a far clearer jazz and blues, rather than gospel influence on both the music and the lyrical concerns.

A number of things have been playing on my mind recently…

Will I ever manage to remember the declensions of Czech nouns? Was my nocturnal nosebleed symptomatic of some as yet undiscovered ailment, or was it simply due to hayfever? Why did I wake up as it started to bleed? Why is Jonathan Dimbleby doing a show about Russia? When will my book about the vestiges of Celtic tradition on the Western periphery of Europe arrive? Why do I loathe dressing up my meagre achievements in a veil of recruitment jargon on my CV?