Sloppy gussets

I woke up and looked out of the sitting room window to find London in thick fog. Visibility in Highgate couldn't have been more than a couple of metres. It all looked rather romantic. 

Gasping for a cup of tea, I drove up the M1 towards Northampton. The sun was threatening to burn through the mist at every stage of the journey but by the time I'd reached my destination she was still struggling to be seen. 

I walked across Midsommer Common in an autumnal haze, listening to Lana Del Ray. One of the canal boats on the river obviously had a wood-burning stove, because the sweet smell of wood smoke was filling the air so that you couldn't tell where the swirling mist ended and the smoke began. 

The interview with Bernie Keith on Radio Northampton went very well. I was thrilled that he played both Yellow and Blue from the EP - in full - and we must have chatted for a good fifteen minutes. He's very easy to talk to. Very well informed. And he encouraged me to talk about some of my childhood experiences in the county. I found myself recalling a rather traumatic encounter with a group of teenaged lads from when I was about 7 or 8. I'd gone down our little lane on a pair of roller skates, fallen over and grazed my knee. A group of lads, they were probably 15 or 16, came and stood in a circle around me and took it in turns to spit at me and call me gay. I went home feeling reserved. I wanted to tell my parents what had happened, but was sacred that somehow if I acknowledged the cause of the name calling, they might tell me to behave in a more masculine way, which was what the teachers at school said I should do, shortly after I was banned from playing with girls! 

People, of course, will always be scared of homosexuality. Anything different is frightening, but unless there are laws preventing homophobia we'll never be able to change hearts and minds because people will always be able to say that if it's wrong in the eyes of the law, LGTB people can't expect equality. 

By the time I'd emerged from the darkened corridors of the radio station, the sun had burned through and created a rather lovely hazy day. I sat in a cafe for an hour with my old mate, Anna B, who produced my film about Watford Gap. It was so lovely to see her. We talked about her son, Harry, and dreamed up ideas for new films. I had to rush back to London, which felt a shame. I'd quite like to have hung about and caught up with a number of other old faces.