83.

To the Doctors; I'd a lingering tickly cough, residues of a cold a few weeks back.

Dr. Hello Frances, come in, sit down. I see you've not been here for three years!

Me. Well, you sure can't say I'm a tax on NHS resorces; I don't do ill. However, I've this tickly cough and it won't go away.

Dr. Do you smoke or suffer from hay fever, everyone is coming down with it this year.

Me. No, I don't smoke, but I do enjoy the odd cigar. If I do have hay fever I must have the lowest degree one could have?

Doctor listens to my chest and back, all seems fine and so deduces it must be something to do with the high pollen rate this year and suggests an antihistamine drug.

Dr. Frances, we still have you down as 'Mr' on our records, would you like to change that?

Me. Well, I now have a female passport, as are my credit cards, so I guess we should change it. Best I warn any unsuspecting Doctors though, I don't want to give them a fright now do I? (Dr laughs)

Dr. Take four times a day and I'll see you in three weeks; bye.

Sunday saw me up with the lark, well OK, before 10am. I had a talking-head interview to do for BBC4; a six part series on what it is to be English called Citizen Smith (airing the Feb 2008).

I guess I'm deemed a classic and fitting English eccentric; I didn't disappoint.

I arrived wearing a dressage riding outfit, pink jodhpurs and a ukulele tucked under my arm; as you do.

There was a cameraman, sound-man, director and Micheal the presenter, who asked various questions about being English and why I came to live in London?

'London, I said, affords us the chance to start all over again.'

'It presents us with an A4 blank piece of paper, upon which we get to both re-write and re-invent ourselves, a fresh start, a clean slate.'

'In any given day, one can be famous, infamous, invisible, a star; only in London can one be afford all these things in the same day.'

We finished with me turning to camera and singing 'Tip toe through the tulips,' whilst strumming upon my uke. We'll have to wait and see how much of it ends up on the editors floor?

What I'm reading in bed...

1. Down and out in Paris. George Orwell.
2. A Shepherds life. W. H. Hudson.

And so to bed. Anon.