Sink.

So, when we got in from circuits last night, there was a blinking blue light at the end of our street. Some sort of accident, cordoned off with stripey police tape and surrounded by emergency services.

We turned on the telly and there was Jon Snow talking with the controlled animation of a journalist helming a big story.

Then we felt a lurch as the house tipped suddenly sideways, pans clanging against the boiler on the swinging hanger and plates sliding across the work tops as we continued to put dinner together.

So this is a banking crisis.

A chuffing, sodding, frightening, arsing-great big one, apparently.

..Oh well, eh.

—

Yes, the accident was the British – and basically the global – banking system and the blue lights turned out to be metaphorical. ..Although we have had a surprising number of police incidents in our quiet little street over the years (..and they never tell you what’s going on…).

They’re yabbering on the wire this morning (by which I mean Radio 4, but that sounds WAY less dramatic) that the effective nationalisation of the UK banks announced lastnight is a seismic moment for western business. And it is. ..NATIONALISING the BANKS? The government becoming a major stakeholder in Natwest, Lloyds TSB, HSBC? Owning and controlling the FREE market economy?

Hang on, though. Does this mean, ironically, that in this time of evaporating investments, and governments around the world having to promise ordinary people like me that they’ll guarantee a lump of their savings, should the banks just, oh I dunno, lose them, I have just become a major investor for the first time in my life?

As a UK taxpayer, can I go to the AGMs of all the banks now? Eat the free sarnies?

If I can, can I also ask them where exactly ALL THE CHUFFING MONEY’S GOING! Down a sink, or something?

Well, it is, kind of. Value is relative, isn’t it; if no-one wants to buy your thing, it becomes worthless. And if banks are too nervous to lend things to each other in case they inherit a worthless thing from an unscrupulous chain of indifferent lending, then the money system grinds to a halt, because no-one can get the petty cash they need to buy things, lubricate things and keep things moving.

Yeah.

So.

..I’m trying to figure out the best way to work in the word ‘plunger’ here.

Twenties.

So here I am. Thirty-eight today, my passport tells me. As does the entire technical support staff of Facebook, apparently. Can’t wait to see what they’ve all whipped ’round to get me. Those guys. ..Ooh, let’s see – now, they know how much I love old funk records… or big books of poster design… or Parisian café culture, er… or sharp shirts – ooh! – or Berlin inter-war, realist cinema or… Dr Who, so it should be easy for them to choose something good…

Actually, I talk of German silent cinema but we did, in fact, spend most of yesterday in the twenties. In celebration of me taking a significant diary-date step nearer the end of my thirties. Hmm. Anyway – Joe May’s syruppy gorgeous Asphalt, 1928, followed by Deutsch directorial legend Fritz Lang’s M, 1931. Films so closely linked by time, place and production people, yet so different in dialogue – not simply because one’s a late silent movie and one’s an early talkie.

Won’t bore you here, but you should see M in particular – launched the career of Peter Lorre with a quietly startling kangaroo court scene. ..Which you now can’t help thinking is because a kangaroo’s is a bloody odd costume to put a paedofile protagonist in – in any film. But you’re just being silly. So stop it.

Anyway – again – here I am. Apparently older. Apparently almost none-the-wiser.

If you’d like to know, Caroline bought me a nice big book of graphic-type stuff, in a little-veiled attempt to make me stop using bloody arrows in everything I design. To little avail, perhaps, as I found a fair few in it. I’m also sitting here in a birthday shirt, of course, listening to another birthday CD – John Coltrane. Helpful stuff to write to, as I continue with the sumptuous come-to-bed copywriting for Halo’s catalogue this afternoon, because I usually employ the clink of Martini glasses, a swinging walk and a wry wink whenever I’m making advances to my poor, beleaguered wife. So I, at least, am in the mood.

Other than that, I’m ignoring the screams of bankers and investment managers echoing from around the world and looking forward to a little mexican dinner at Coriander’s tonight with Mater and m’lady. Whether we’re facing a second Great Depression or not, I shall aim to stay chirpy in all things – because it seems clear to me that it’s all good. It’s all good.

However old I’m supposed to be.

Bed.

I’m having a bleak, north European moment.

Y’know, the kind of style-life moment that, ah – how do I put it? – uncamouflaged tossers enjoy. People who still buy the Guardian to leave it lying around under a casual Penguin classic, and who feign interest in the US presidential race and who wish they could more easily afford a newer Audi and who have just rediscovered the idea of department store shopping, lingering around the leather Man Bag island. Y’know. People like me.

To be fair, I rediscovered the idea of department store shopping because TJ have recently pulled some all-nighters fitting new branding to every floor of Beales. With a little glow of pride, I stroked the neat, sans serif vinyl lettering and followed their clear signposting to the men’s luggage department…

Right now it’s raining hard against the studio window and the jelly lamps are pooling low, luminous warmth on the desks while I audition some new, stylishly bleak jazz album. The very cool and also stylishly bleak album cover is sitting beside me, teasing my designer’s eye. And I’m sitting here typing a pointless string of thoughts that no one is likely to read, by way of enjoying sitting in this thinly metro atmosphere for ten minutes. And by way of putting off some homework.

I think I first heard one of these pieces on FIP. A station that I usually listen to in the rain, harking back to our last visit to the French capital when it piscened it down all weekend. Leucocyte, by the Esbjörn Svensson Trio, is a kind of sparing, jazz noodle with faint echos of Boards of Canada. Faint. And the artwork on the cover is a black and white linear repeat of the title in cascading deconstructions of Helvetica. Like a neat Letraset accident.

Yum.

Of course, sonic noodling about like this might create an atmosphere in which you can begin to consider yourself somehow… what’s the word? ..sophisticated, that’s it… while simultaneously numbing the thought of people in your home town having to sleep out in this shite Autumn evening. But it can all of a sudden make you throw a shoe at the CD player and want to turn on some ruddy lights. I mean, I’ll be in an insomnial stupor before tea time at this rate.

It’s good though.

—

The homework I’m putting off is a planning application. You heard me. For signage for a client. ..WHAT a pain in the elevations. I’m having to do drawings of the site and show how we’re fixing the lights to the wall. Like I’d have the first clue.

I may, if I get it done in a while, do some more work too. I mean, why not? We’re planning a John & Yoko-style bed-in all day tomorrow, to make the most of the gloriously lashing-shite weather with some old movies and a pre-emptive celebration of my birthday. I’ll be, they tell me, thirty-eight. ..I mean, come on… so why not get some practical stuff out of the way now? Did I have some other socially explosive plans for my Saturday night?

Tomorrow’s plan’s an appropriate one, actually. When I haven’t been stealing moments to embelish and over-work the branding for Momo’s new album – in favour of finishing any actual music, it seems – this week, I’ve been writing words to get people into bed.

Long-time design chums, Halo, periodically invite me over to politely laugh at my jokes and give me briefs to write flamboyant nonsense. This time it’s for a client of theirs that’s a bedroom furniture specialist, for whom they’re finishing a sharp new sales catalogue. I’m doing the sharp verbal intros.

Of course, I didn’t like to say that I’ve been married for a hundred Earth Years and haven’t had to concoct successful words to get people into the bedroom since before I was old enough to really manage it.

Hmm.

Anyway, some of the gang are in Brighton tonight, seeing one half of panto-gothic, vaudeville darlings The Dresden Dolls. I look forward to the Facebook pics. It means that much-loved, much-handed-around Harris mascot, Alice, is curled up in the cosy warmth of the evening’s low, studio lighting, in her bed, just at my feet. And she’s giving me those big, seductive eyes.

The ones that say: please turn off this bloody arthouse noise and make a fuss of me. Or get on with your homework.

Think I need a lie down.