Monday 5th October 2026

Woke around 0400...took a couple of hours to nod back off again!!! Woke again at 0845. Read in bed for a bit...Aki brought me a mug of tea. Got up and porridged. Did an hour or so's work at the laptop. Made pesto with basil from the back garden. Slung a ham salad together for lunch, then we walked down to Angel for the exercise, and because Aki wanted to buy nuts from Sainsburys. Caught a No.153 bus back to Holloway with our prize. Early dinner...ravioli with the homemade pesto sauce. I headed off into town to see Graham Fellow's 2006 road movie, "It's Nice Up North". Aki stayed home for a JCUK zoom meeting. Spotted Graham in the darkened auditorium and went to give him a hug before finding a seat. The movie had been shot by Graham's friend, the photographer Martin Parr, who had died suddenly last December, and the movie was preceded by a short film Graham had made to pay tribute to him. The film itself was infused with the usual ramshackle charm of everything Graham does in his comic character role of John Shuttleworth, and basically saw him and Martin on the Isles of Shetland seeking out whether people were friendlier the further north you travelled. There was a brief Q&A with Graham at the end. Graham introduced me to the comic, Alan Francis, and we had a brief chat about the state of the acting profession, before I left for home. Ambled up through Soho, which was very busy for a Monday night, and caught a bus from Tottenham Court Road...