London seems sluggish this morning and the people furtive. I suppose furtive is the word I want; there’s an underlying anxiety and people seem to be moving around silently in clusters as if there’s safety in numbers. The tube in to the city was packed, which is unusual for that time of day in the middle of the holiday season.

I am guessing that there is a slight nervousness around given the news concerning the heightening of the security level to critical together with the news that security services have foiled an ambitious terror attack on civil aircraft over the UK (which hasn’t stopped flight cancellations in and out of the country, especially to the Middle East).

The weather has changed, too. Although it is still warm, the skies have greyed over and the wind is up; trees are bending in comparatively strong gusts and there is just a hint of thunder in the air.

Taken together, there is almost an air of anticipation with just a little underlying tension. I am not the most sensitive person on the planet, so if I can feel it, it must be strong.

Of course, it could all just be twaddle and I am imagining it. It might simply be down to the population pondering the collapse of the Ashley Cole transfer between Arsenal and Chelsea over the former club’s valuation of the player. I tend to the view that Chelsea never wanted him and the entire thing has just been a well-orchestrated piece of gamesmanship to unsettle their nearest and most consistent league rivals.

But I have my camera with me just in case anything interesting kicks off. I'm that anxious to tap into the zeitgeist.

The Times has the first review of the movie of the Da Vinci Code. It is assessed as pleasingly entertaining claptrap and says the film is a cat’s cradle of lunatic ideas with lashings of religious psychobabble, but it’s infinitely easier to forgive than the book that begat it.

Three stars out of five.

I find the whole furore quite funny, really. The book is an ordinary thriller: not particularly well written, but far from being the worst thing out there. The main point of the controversy is simply that it’s been read so widely and generated so much income for its author. Had the Catholic Church just sat down and shut up, I doubt it would have sold a quarter as many copies. Call me an old cynic, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if some retirement fund for aged clerics isn’t a shareholder in Random House publishers.

I have entirely failed to understand the outbursts of outrage. A church is an institution with the purpose of purveying faith according to its preferred dogma. It’s a business, that’s all, its business just happens to be spirituality. It shouldn’t hope to hold a position of privilege preventing it from being portrayed in any negative light in a novel.

What price the Reformation if that was still true?

Equally, while I’m not a religious bloke – I hover somewhere on the edge of agnosticism and atheism – I have a lot of friends who are religious. And they seem to have enough faith and common sense to know that all this controversy over the Da Vinci Code is just claptrap drummed up by the chattering classes and the media.

Only a member of a congregation who is already harbouring serious doubts is going to be worried by a novel and a movie; everyone else either recognises it as a bit of diverting tosh, or is calmed by the knowledge that God can look after Himself if He feels the need.

It’s a poor church that can’t withstand the onslaught of a poorly constructed novel, and a weak faith that crumbles in the face of the Da Vinci Code.

I have no idea if I’m going to see the movie or not. I’m torn between the thought of giving a portion of my hard earned cash to Dan Brown (it will only encourage him) and going to see what the fuss is all about.

In the meantime, what gives me the fear is not the thought that the Roman Catholic Church might have suppressed the “truth” for 2,000 years, or that Opus Dei is composed of a bunch of mad albino monks. No, it’s none of that. What gives me the fear is Tom Hanks in a wig.

Yes, Gentle Reader, I am wasting my time with LJ again instead of working. Between you and me, this is a lot more interesting way of spending time than dealing with all the paperwork that comes across my desk.

I’m not sure how many updates there will be today (as if it mattered), or whether or not I actually have anything to say, but the appearance of working is important, and provided that I type in Word, occasionally pausing to look baffled or concerned (both of which come naturally to me anyway), I can get away with this for some time before actually doing anything productive. In a few minutes, my cigarettes and I, in the company of the sudoku pages of The Times will disappear downstairs for a few minutes’ break.

It’s a hard life.

Later on today I shall write a little more of the NWO character I’m working on, and then to finish, I may excavate the Pre-Cambrian levels of my in tray to see what got labelled as urgent but was forgotten and had no repercussions. This is an important task, for it enables me to prioritise my time wasting. The ability to spot something somebody purports to need immediately, but in fact is of no consequence either to them or anyone else is a vital time management skill. Similarly, there are monitoring exercises which can be filled out in advance, provided that you take care to leave a little room for improvement, by which I mean try as you might, some stuff will miss deadline, so you just have a believable failure rate which isn’t too large to cause criticism and is big enough to allow for improvement. That should fluctuate over a seven month cycle, adjusted for the comparative quiet of mid July and all of August, so that that no-one notices a repetitive pattern building up.

You can do that on a spreadsheet, if you try to be creative enough.

You know, until I wrote it down, I never realised what hard work it can be, being lazy.

I’m off for a smoke and some sudoku action.

I think that over 90% of the population of that section of North London adjacent to the High Barnet Branch of the Northern Line must be on holiday already. Plenty of room on the Tube this morning, and no delays, which meant that my customary doze was undisturbed by close proximity to the armpits of the great unwashed. Until Euston at least. The denizens of all points around Finsbury Park, Seven Sisters and Walthamstow are evidently NOT on holiday as the Victoria Line was packed as per usual.

Something has clearly gone right this year: I have had cheap read-in-the-loo books from both my direct line manager and the boss above him for Christmas. I will soon be able to tell you the origins of many colloquial phrases thanks to the one book – I have already identified a mistake, however, so that casts some doubt on the accuracy of the other snippets. Still, interesting enough in an entirely unacademic sort of way. My immediate boss knows better: I am now the proud owner of the 2006 Dr Who Annual. It’s like being 8 again except that I am in an office trying to draft responses to idiot questions from MPs.

I am knocking off early tonight (this afternoon). I want to wander into the West End and pick up my delivery of comics and such. I may treat myself to a CD or DVD or two, too. For once, I have enough spare room on my debit card that I don’t need to touch the recently paid-off credit cards. Of course, being as organised as I am, I have yet to purchase pressies for my Goddaughter or her little brother. I know what to buy, and where best to attempt the purchase, but locating an outlet is problematic. Why are there no Woolworths in central London? Ah well, I’ll pay a visit to the Finchley branch tomorrow if the worst comes to the worst. Hopefully they will have what I’m after.

Most lunchtimes I pop across the Boots on Victoria Street to buy a packet of sandwiches and a bottle of Lemon flavoured Diet Coke for lunch. I usually wander across with a cigarette in my hand and stand on the end of Bressenden Place while I smoke it.

Over the past few months this has afforded me the opportunity to watch the progress of new building being constructed on the corner of Bressenden Place and Victoria Street. Two or three years ago (time flies, I can't remember how long ago it was, now) a bunch of perfectly serviceable buildings were demolished both on that corner and on the block behind it so that a big combination office block/mall development could go up. Since then, the new building on that corner, Cardinal Place has been steadily taking shape.


The picture is a few months old, and the end of the building is being finished off with a rounded top coming to a point where it arches down to the ground.

I assume that the name derives from the fact that it is opposite Westminster Cathedral on Victoria Street (The Catholic cathedral built in Byzantine style, not Westminster Abbey). Over the past few months, as the builders have installed the outer fittings on the corner, and started glazing the building, I have noticed that from that angle at least, it looks more and more like some bloody great steel and glass bird of prey that has landed flat on its belly and stuck its beak into the ground.

I wonder if there's a deliberate architectural pun here; maybe it's meant to be a Cardinal Bird, and is nothing to do with its location opposite the cathedral?

Or maybe it's just my overactive imagination.