Up to 31

Centre Point has always just been one of those really big buildings that's just there and serves no real purpose in my life. That was until last Friday, when it was up to the 31st floor to the Paramount venue for Reverse' Sunrise clubnight.

I was ridiculously excited in the week between getting a ticket and setting foot in that lift. Needless to say the 360 degree views of London at night were pretty amazing.

and enjoyed by all...

View soaked up, as well as several private-members-club-priced drinks, it was dancing time. I have to admit that I'd never heard set by any of the nights DJs but was told several times that Greg Wilson was playing and he's really good. He was.

Around 5 am the sun started to rise. That was also really good. Especially when soundtracked with Take That's Relight My Fire.

Self belief

I think Will Self is a brilliant writer so when I found out that he was appearing at The Roundhouse, not going was out of the question. I had no idea what he'd be doing, so went along with great expectations.

Before going into the smaller Dr. Martens FREEDM Studio section of the venue, or "the arsehole of the Roundhouse" as Mr Self described it, I was caught by a camera crew asking people why they wanted to see the author. I babbled some absolute shite about liking how he uses language, using flamboyant adjectives to add to the stories. And also how this was at odds with my work as a sub editor, cutting out superfluous words. Or something. I don't know what they were filming for and hope I never find out.

So onto the show. Interspersed with effortlessly funny and expertly observed comments, Will Self read extracts from the two paperbacks he has coming out this year, The Butt and Liver. I've found some of his novels quite hard to get into but hearing him read the first scene of The Butt, complete with convincing accents for the characters, everything was immediately clear. I'd have been happy for him to have carried on for the whole book.

He rounded off the night taking questions from the audience on topics ranging from the death of J.G. Ballard, heroin and the state of modern journalism. All in all, it was an extremely funny and interesting evening with Will Self coming across as very intelligent and genuinely pleasant, albeit a little cynical. But there's nothing wrong with that.

I bought a copy of The Butt, which he was nice enough to write his name in for me. Having babbled at the camera earlier, could I find anything to say to him? Could I bollox – utterly star struck.

Floored

At long last, the vinyl floor has been replaced in my bathroom. No more sticking to the glue that secured the old covering to the (sodden) floor boards.

For those of you who don't know. When my bathroom was originally fitted, the builders decided that sealing, or even tightening, the bath's plug hole wasn't necessary. So, for the whole of last year, whenever anyone had a shower, a large amount of the water was draining down the sides of the plug, onto the floor below and soaking into the wooden boards. I didn't notice because it was under the bath and spreading under the vinyl floor covering. I was also oblivious because the shower screen wasn't sealed properly – which the housing people told me was just because it was cheap and crap, really it also hadn't be sealed properly – so I thought this was the cause of the water that managed to break through to the surface.

Anyway, for over 2 months, the boards have been exposed to the world, taking ages to dry out. I had to peel off all the glue used to stick the vinyl down. Which was fun. It also stank.

It's not quite finished yet though. The boxing and side of the bath needs to be replaced. So that should happen around September then.

Like a nun possessed

Sorry posts have been quite slow recently. I've been a busy doing assorted things that I may get round to writing about at some point. But one thing that wasn't slow was me last weekend on the Barnardo's Nun Run.

It was only four miles and I came in 378th out of 1000 runners, clocking a time of 00:50:40. Marie got the exact same time (we did spend much of the race with the balloons tied to the back of our habits tangled together and I was pushing her round the course rest of the time) but was ranked 377th but I'm not bitter or anything.

50 minutes isn't exactly a record-breaking time for 4 miles (nun costume or not) but it wasn't too bad considering there wasn't a roped-off course. We were running through underpasses, over bridges and along the Southbank weaving through herds of bewildered tourists.

My sponsorship total is rising slowly but since it was really a just a bit of fun, I haven't been asking too many people. It's not like I ran the marathon, grew a ridiculous 'tache or anything. If you do want to give some money to the Barnardo's kids, please do at: https://www.bmycharity.com/V2/Timsinthehabit

There are quite a lot of photos of the run on t'interweb but the official photography was done by Perfect-Timing Photography (which you should be able to see once they've sorted their bandwidth issues). I haven't managed to spot myself yet but if you see runner number 66, that's me. Marie was 68.

What's that sound? I like that sound. I love that sound.

I've been getting pretty excited about the impending release of CIAO!, the second album from on Dr Timothy Tiga.

Getting sent a link, to an exclusive album-preview My Name Is Tiga podcast, just made my day. It's meant to be only for mailing list members, but I'm sure he won't mind (or even find out, which would require someone to actually read this).

Download/listen to it here

The album is out on May 11th in the UK. I know you're gonna want it.