What I want in life

I've decided what I want in life: I want to want a 12-place dining table.

Note the above. I don't want a 12-place dining table; I want to want a 12-place dining table. Because wanting to want a 12-place dining table brings so many things to the, er y'know, that it's worth wanting.

Wanting a table capable of seating 12 for dinner means you've achieved quite a few other things in life. It means you've got a house with space for a huge dining table, for one thing. It means you've got a minimum of 6 friends (5 of whom have partners) you'd want to invite over for dinner. It of course means you feel yourself to be a capable enough cook to process 12 human beings through starter, mains and dessert, with enough cutlery in the drawer to not have to stagger the courses while you frantically grapple with Fairy Liquid in the background. Damn, I know some restaurants that can't handle that.

What riles me now is that I've got a kitchen capable of it, but not a table. (There aren't many 60sq m Zone 2 townhouses whose kitchen has four glorious metres of worktop and a six-ring range cooker, but I put them in mine.) Damn. I've been so happy in this house. It takes just an hour a week to keep spotless; this private mews is so secure I can practically leave the door flapping open; the wooden floors and freestanding furniture (what little furniture I have, anyway) mean it laughs in the face of dust. I remodelled this place to be my private capsule, the place where I recharge after night's sport, a crypt for a 21st century vampire. And now, it has to go - or at least be added to, part of a portfolio instead of the main show. Damn.

Losing it

What a classic white male mid-life crisis I'm having.

The 'pump's calendar is full and billings are at an all-time high. I have a life most Londoners dream of. House, business, fully engaged with the cultural scene. I'm happy. But... not content.

I used to hack through jungles, swim in ancient Balinese temple pools, bike across islands in the Indonesian archipelago. Now, I'm a suited professional who thinks Triathlon is an extreme activity (OK, it is, but that's not the point. It's extreme for a normal person, not for me.)

I'm respectable. Normal. Settled. Old, the way so many mid-twentysomethings are old, in the sense that they've already made their life choices and are effectively DEAD even if they won't stop moving for another fifty years or so. Lacking the sluicing rush of killer edge that makes life *living* instead of *existing*. I've become what I most feared: just a face on the Tube. I like anonymity, but not anodynity. (Sp?)

So after five years back in the UK, I think it's time for a career break. Maybe I'll take a month, or a summer, or a year. Never be afraid to destroy things, especially when they lead to other things. Need to take some time to think.

A running problem worth tackling

I've started running home from the office.

It's about 15km from a client's building northwest of central London to my house in the southeast, and thanks to the number of stops my crowded Tube makes, running home isn't that much slower than commuting, although it's obviously harder to carry your briefcase. It's a fun urban route through crowded West End streets, across a Thames bridge, and taking in a lot of the South Bank. But there's one problem when you wear skintight running gear... what to do with one's male equipment.

It's all about context, really. Got called into a short meeting at 6.40pm - just after changing into my running gear. Drifit T and calf-length tights that cleave to every contour, and a couple of velcro arm pockets for phone and keys; I look like a transvestite Lara Croft, but it's ultra-efficient. But at the office, everyone's attention is drawn to your groin, so the issue is with minimising it - covering your crotch unobtrusively, pulling at the lycra to make the bulge less obvious, that sort of thing. I mean, displaying your physical assets should only go so far in the modern workplace.

Once outside, though, the dynamic changes completely. On a cold-ish evening and with lots of strangers around, the main task becomes MAXimisation - plumping up the area for maximum effect; wish I'd brought a spare sock along, except that creates problems of its own. I mean, there were about 2000 people milling around Tot Ct Rd waiting for a Pearl Jam concert last night - and EVERYONE glances at your crotch.

It's not that I'm hugely sensitive about prancing around London streets in something resembling a bodystocking; I do Triathlon after all, and people who run in their swimsuits and ride bikes while soaking wet tend to have a high embarrasment threshold. But the basic contextual issue remains - when your route includes both the unwritten rules of the workplace and the free-for-all parade of the Street, how exactly do you treat your package?

Conversely, the best bet is probably to ask some female pals. After all, their equivalent problem (boobs) is much more widespread, and they know far better how to deal with it.

Elephant and Castle: heaven in hell

For some odd reason, I love Elephant and Castle.

The South London 'hood is being razed and rebuilt over the next ten years, but for now it's still the Elephant. And it's up there with Sadr City and Tivoli Gardens as one of the worst places on earth.

It's one of those 60s civic planning dreams that cracked and faded like the cheap concrete they were built from. A time when big ideas - separate pedestrians and traffic, define walkways between dwellings, cluster shops together in single buildings - had to be executed by people who had no idea how they'd work in practice. And so we get urine-soaked subterreanean hellholes, sink estates where only the dealers are happy, and fearful rat runs home where there's never any light at the end of the tunnel. Today, Elephant and Castle screams Failed Project so loudly that councillors, planners, residents and redevelopers all agree on what happens next: bulldoze the buildings, fill in the tunnels, and bury this cauldron of humanity beneath the next soaring vision. I love the place.

I love it because - like the Barbican, another concrete hellhole that would have looked terrific as an architect's model - if you give the walls a thousand-yard stare, it's still possible to see what the original planners saw. The hope they thought they could ingrain. The communities they wanted to create. The dreams they wanted to build, and - at the time - genuinely believed they could.

It starts with the tiles. The kilometres of tunnels that crisscross the area - built with the noble aims of keeping people and traffic apart, but which ended up alienating the people from their surroundings - are lined with millions of coloured tiles, patterned tiles arranged with thought and care. However filth-seeping and mugger-infested they've become, it's still possible to imagine how they'd have filled the residents with bright sunbeams of hope.

Then there's the centre itself. Elephant and Castle shopping centre, complete with elephant and castle on the top. A strange, empty place today - where some businesses still thrive, despite the low passing trade - it's eclipsed by the outdoor markets around the Tube entrance. Selling everything from lightbulbs to saris, and often for pence, the retail area is proof that commerce thrives no matter how close to the edge you are.

And the Tube station. Oh, what a Tube. Barely a building; it's a collection of tunnels, intimately interwoven with the dank corridors of the estate itself, less a station than a mark on some of its walls - and a few turnstiles. Here, the tiles have come down, removed or perhaps fallen with the hot breath of thousands of commuters who fill the passages like rats. No colour here, down in the depths of the Northern line. The walls are crumbling; I've seen abandoned Tube stations in better shape than this.

And that's why I love Elephant and Castle. It's a real place; somehow the failed dreams of planners resulted in somewhere that feels earthy and genuine. The Elephant will be gone soon, and unloved by most. But for now, I'll keep on appreciating every damp crack in its crumbling concrete.

Gene Pitney: finally finds out what's got a hold of his...

Hmmmm. Singer Gene Pitney has been found dead in his hotel room in the middle of his UK tour.

Of course, this is the guy who sang 'Something's got a hold of my heart'... angina perhaps? Ba-boom tish.