Well it was "Blossom" that finally did it. I was keeping it together but "Blossom" set me off. For reasons too complicated to list here I find myself back in Finsbury Park, the absolute last place I want to be. And it's "Blossom"'s: Kelly's hairdresser, the woman who Kelly would impersonate every time she returned, delighted by all the things that had gone on in the shop, Blossom, the woman who cut off Kelly's hair in preparation for her chemo, and who did her hair for free when there wasn't enough hair to warrant a proper cut. That was the one. I broke down in the street. I should never have come back here, it's a ghost town. Attempting to meet Doug and Edward. My phone has just died. There will undoubtedly be fall-out from this. At this point I can only guess its size and shape.

Day trip from London to Letchworth Garden City to see Laura, Stew and the kids. It is idyllic. We chat, we have salad, I have beer. The children style their hair so they can look like me. Rose and Alec show me their drawings. They are peppered with the usual sort of inspired insanity that adults might aspire to and can never achieve. They are both banal and full of wild conjunctions of things. Cats and crocodiles appear regularly but the cat is wearing leg-warmers and there's a cow crushed beneath a milkshake. And then there is Alec's unique story telling style. If he draws a planet with stink lines steaming off it which he labels "Planet Smell" you could be forgiven for imagining that you were looking at Planet Smell. No, says Alec, when I ask him if indeed it is Planet Smell. It's not a planet at all but a cold sun that people can walk on. But does it smell, I ask him. No, it stinks. So why, I ask him, isn't it called Stinky Sun. Because it's called Planet Smell, he counters with perfect logic and and a triumphalist hand clap. One nil to Alec. I'll see them again soon. They are touring the country over the summer and will be in Belfast on the 26th August. Better push a broom round the place.

The film was made. I've seen the rushes and virtually every shot came off. The scenes seem suffused with light, the camera dancing with Arthur, out star, following him, shadowing, reading him. It is a duet between the observed and observer. Sometimes the lines are literally, as well as figuratively blurred, and Arthur seems to engage the camera, become its confederate. His face is astonishing: open and wide eyed with a perma pouting bottom lip and a huge acorn-cup of hair. The camera loves him. He is a gift and deserves one in return. We'll pay him in Wii games. We shot everything on a tight shots list in two days. On occasion we were ahead of schedule! I actually do think we have a film: a short, sweet, good-looking film. It is exciting.

I've eaten an awful of cheese and wine since I've been here. Jess and Simon are consummate hosts and play convincingly to my many weaknesses so I've eaten little else. If I was here longer than a weekend I would be dead. Their baby Esme, recent, still has that new car smell, is about the cutest baby I've seen. Huge brown eyes, a ready grin (she smiles with both teeth) she also has an easy going and moderate temperament. She didn't get that from her mother. Last night saw a convention of the grand order Red Alsations, surely the last one ever as two of us have now moved to different countries. All of the boys looked great, thinner than ever. Truly we were the indie Sigue Sigue Sputnik ( with Rene from Rene and Renata on vocals). Ian was his usual quiet, handsome self in a pair of extraordinary vulcanised jeans and biker boots, disappearing as the night drew on and the loud-mouths got louder, leaving only his Cheshire cat grin. Ben and Martin both seemed far more confident, swaggering almost, in a careful, diffident way. Martin has grown his fringe out and batted away Jess' assertion that all of her friends found him attractive with practised modesty. Ben had been preparing a compilation album of Red Atlas materiel, even going so far as to remix and add instruments to the tracks. His sleeve, based on marble end-papers (the type you find in plush, elderly hardbacks) were inspired: conferring on the Atlas an appropriate literary fustiness. I liked every thing about the album: the title ("Everything thing is permitted...but you need a permit"), the liner notes (which I wrote and no band member, bar Ben, will ever read) to the colour scheme and finally the music, which I finally get. We were actually a good, tight muscular little band that made interesting noises and had good lyrics. Who knew? We drank a lot of wine and beer and we laughed a lot and then, finally, I suppose we broke up.

So the, Finsbury Park and its ghosts. It doesn't seem to have changed much but then again I dont feel inclined to investigate it too closely. I feel raw, unpeeled. A picked apart mollusc, ready for the pickle jar. I haven't ventured too far, just the route from Jess' house to the train station, but everything is suffused with Kelly's memory, the memory of the life that we once had and that now neither of us have. Though I can at least claim that my lifelessness is figurative. Finsbury Park, as I say seems unchanged. There is building work going on but then there was always building work going on. I can see the famous mosque now from the train platform. Could I always see it? Just being here is hard. One day I'll be able to come back here and enjoy it; the memory of our life together, the walks, the parks, the restaurants and cafes. But if this journey has taught me any thing its that I'm still a long way from fond memories. I'm still here. I'm still living this.

Thirteen Pieces of Gum.

Start making our film tomorrow: "Thirteen pieces of gum" is go. I'm quite excited but its going to be extremely hard work - we've been quite ambitious! I'm first A.D. Which means I'm the buffer between the Director and the cameraman. I'm a nag basically - I fully expect to be the most unpopular person set - typecast again, eh. Should be brilliant.

John's not mad.

Have been re-reading some of my blog entries, spurred on by the kind words of kind people, and I thought I should say something about the rather skewed version of myself it portrays. A lot of the posts are written in extremis, as a kind of cathartic exercise. When I'm out, whistling, with the sun on my face and new freckles budding like shit-brown daisies, I'm not writing a blog. I'm doing stuff. I may even laugh. Not smile, I never smile. And not because of any Morrissey-esque affectation but because my teeth used to frighten children, horses and postmen. They are alright now but I still hide my mouth when I laugh, like a character from "The Mikado". So, it's a bit one-sided: 1) I'm not that fat. I'm fatter, certainly, than I was as a stripling youth, but hell we all are, you're just not as vain as I am. You're probably not that bothered. I still have a thirty two inch waist...unfortunately it's around my neck. Ithangyew. I met my friend Eunice for the first time in real life about a month ago and she was expecting this wheezing Falstaffian figure: Orson Swells. She didn't get one. No, I look okay. Just better in the flesh than in photos. There's a sort of Francis Bacon smeariness to my jaw-line in photos that I've been assured is not there in real life. 2)I'm not necessarily an alcoholic. I am, for instance, not drinking, drunk or hung-over right now. I do drink too much. But then everybody does, if you drink at all. Unless you subscribe to "mumsnet" in which a single glass of wine at the end of the day will solve every single problem that you have. 3) I do sometimes sleep. I have bouts of insomnia but they are not constant. Nothing in my life is constant. I can't even rely on insomnia. Who can you trust and why would you want to? 4)I am not constantly depressed. I go for seconds, sometimes minutes at a time without crushing black depression pressing down on me like a leaden night. Black butterflies? Black jump-jets, more like it. And jump they do. 5) I am not suffering from Witzelsucht. Actually, I can't vouch for this one as I haven't seen a neurologist, but I think the condition is a mild and manageable one if I am. Witzelsucht is a set of rare neurological symptoms characterized by the patient's uncontrollable tendency to make puns, tell inappropriate jokes and pointless or irrelevant stories at inconvenient moments. The patient nevertheless finds these utterances intensely amusing. It is associated with small lesions of the orbitofrontal cortex. If I have ever made a pun or told you a joke it was in an effort to entertain and amuse, not as a neurological imperative. I was trying to make you happy. As for finding "these utterances (and I resent the term!) intensely amusing" I can assure I have never found any thing I have thought, written or said remotely amusing. I'm like my own "Bright Club" audience. Right. So there you go. Let's see if this thing will let me have paragraphs. Otherwise it'll be another monolith of text, like a literary version of a late period Scott Walker track. I'm cow punching, Daddy.