Frenzy

So a World Cup frenzy is hotting up, and everyone's hoping against hope that England will do well. I'm not altogether sure why anyone bothers. We'll scrape into the quarter finals and go out against Germany on penalty shoot-outs, the pain is written on the walls. I suppose, as a long-term supporter of Eurovision, I'm a fine one to talk, but at least with Eurovision, you can support another country who perform better! When it comes to the World Cup, we place our faith and hope in a group of over-paid bastards with silly hair-dos, who camply prance about like the world owes them a living, before being utterly smashed into the ground by Jonny Foreigner. Actually, that sounds almost identical to Eurovision, doesn't it? I've always thought of it as the gay man's World Cup!

I have been so profoundly traumatised by extraneous noise today. Sirens seem louder than normal and I have never heard such shrieking on the tube. I think it's the large crowds which are probably disturbing me most. I feel insanely agoraphobic when Nathan is away.

Still, I was very pleased to have overcome my ludicrous fear of weekend people to make my way down to the Southbank late this afternoon, where Ian was celebrating his birthday. He does the same thing each year; hires a table at Giraffe and tells all his friends he'll be there from 4 until late. These things are always fairly self-regulatory, people come, people go, and if you stay for a long stretch you'll meet all sorts of interesting people - and if you're lucky, you'll get to eat a Key Lime Pie!

Samantha Bond was there, but I didn't have the opportunity to tell her that we'd met, in 1996, I believe, at the stage door of the Adelphi theatre. It was the night of the Dunblaine massacre; that awful occasion where a gun man had gone into a primary school and shot loads of children. I can't remember whether she told me the news, or whether it was something which was filtering around, but I do remember feeling terribly shaken and explaining to her that there had been a shooting at my own school when I was a child, and that I hadn't, until that moment, realised quite how high the stakes had been. There but for the grace of God and all that...

I fancied an evening stroll on my way home, so walked up through Soho to Tottenham Court Road station, which was rammed to the rafters. Heaven knows where all those sweaty tourists were heading at 9.30pm, but at one stage the people standing both to my left and my right were snogging, which I consider to be unacceptable tube behaviour. No lust is so all-encompassing that it won't wait ten minutes to be continued behind closed doors. I stood in a corner of the carriage, desperately hoping they'd all get off ('scuse the pun) at Euston, which some did, although it wasn't until Kentish Town that I was able to sit down.

Nathan comes home tonight, which I'm thrilled about. I've missed him rather a lot this week.