Every mile is two in winter. - George Herbert

This could explain why I'm feeling so very lethargic and lazy at the moment and all I really want to do is stay at home and rearrange my underwear drawer. It's with a rather unpleasant lurching sigh that I have to get myself out of bed these recent mornings. If only I could come to the office in a sleeping bag - I'm sure I would deal with all this much better.

Still, once I'm up and about and daylight has finally caught up with me, it's crisp and sharp and pretty out there and I've had a quite quiet week at work that hasn't spoilt it. I remember walking through Regents Park a few years ago at this time in the turn of the seasons, forcing myself to take another turn despite the inside of my nose threatening to fall out in icy blocks. I'm not sure why it was so important but I suspect I had just finished reading Wuthering Heights and was looking for some flat,open green and lonely spaces in which to mope and that was the closest I could find in central London. The way it felt, to be totally alone in the damp brown grounds with the wind and the silence is still with me today. I recommend a walk through a London park in the middle of winter to anyone (but be safe!) You only have to do it once and can dine out on it forever afterwards.

In other news: This is a response to the limecat. Citrus domestic animals seem to be all the rage at the moment.

Since my last burst of enthusiasm for getting out and about to see and do things, I haven't actually managed to get out and about to see and do things: I've been meeting friends who I haven't seen for a while and catching up over coffee and drinks, I've been falling asleep on my sofa wrapped up in a big blanket with Eastenders shouting out of the TV and I've been making lots of soup. (The pleasant Western type, not the scary Chinese type. No chickens' feet or seahorses or dried endangered fungi were harmed in the making of this broth.)

However, I did spend a Friday night basking in the wonderful music of the Regent Singers, a choir that Former Flatmate A has joined and heard for the first time Faure's Requiem sung in full. I felt extremely sophisticated and enlightened, spending my Friday night in a church hall relaxing to this delightful piece - it was soothing, uplifting, very moving. I could have been an emancipated female character from an E M Forster novel - I could do this more often...

On the subject of music, John Peel has died. I don't want to talk about it. What more can I say? We will miss him; he was important to so many of us. I hope, somehow, he knows that.

I'm off to my dance class tonight but in serious doubt about my enthusiasm for it. Small scary shouty Japanese teacher barking "one and two and one and two and no no no no! What is your problem? Again! Again!" and still not getting it right... ahh. The things I do for art.

"Shut your filthy girl-gash."

People have often asked me, why do you keep a blog? Well, I like writing. I enjoy the space and spirit of blogging - uncensored, self-centred, highly subjective and a tool to express myself however I wish with no restrictions but those I exercise on myself. I'm aware The Avenue can often read like a whining teenage Livejournal "I don't like my job nobody understands I look at him and he doesn't know I'm alive and I just want to die I feel so fat I feel so ugly Dear Livejournal you're my only friend OMG MY HELLO KITTY BUBBLEGUM DISPENSER IS SOOO CUTE!!!!!1!!1!!" etc. but it suits me to whine here and allow those who follow my business the opportunity to scroll past all the tantrums and sulking. It's also comforting to know that the selected range of my friends and family abroad can share my news and get in touch and, as my recent reunion with Sir Humphrey proved, this blog is a useful tool to fill in the gaps when there's been a while since last contact.

Above all this, this blog has introduced me to some fabulous new people - Planet Halder, McReadie, Shem and others. The extraordinary things about blogging is: I've never met them. And yet I religously check their blogs each day or each time I'm online which means each day) and I notice if there hasn't been any update, I might worry a little, I pounce on the latest entries and I have an urge to comment and create dialogue because there is something that tickles my interest or maybe I just want to let them know I'm there. It's like any relationship we maintain - only this sort is conducted through what we put up on our blogs.

How can this sort of relationship between a bunch of people talking to each other through websites be at all satisfying or fulfilling? It just is - there's a very generous, open spirit in blogging; people share alot about themselves and spend a lot of time writing and posting their thoughts, opinions and experiences. When one blog encounters another and sparks fly, it's like any other relationship or bond - it's exhilarating, stimulating, inspirational. Sometimes just silly and amusing. Sometimes... just habit. You check the blog because you always do and you'd miss it if you didn't.

And sometimes, blogs and blogging can lead to some quite extraordinary events.

I met Monerz from Winnipeg yesterday who was taking a tour of London with Taxloss. I've never met her before and was only recently introduced to her blog via Shem (who I have never met, neither has Monerz) via Taxloss (who he has never met and who Monerz had never met before). And yet there we were, having lunch together, 5 minutes from my office, in central London.

It was too brief to make much of it but all the best to you Monerz)! And the rest of you - keep writing! Keep reading! When are you next in town?

Gosh. Who else is feeling all warm and fuzzy?

"I have lost friends, some by death, others through sheer inability to cross the street.
- Virginia Woolf

"A friend is a present you give yourself."
- Robert Louis Stevenson