where to begin

This really is not the beginning. That won't be for a month or so, for now I just want to see how it works, and what the words look like on the screen.

That said, while I'm here, I may as well run through what some of the people who appear in In Search of the English Eccentric are up to - after all that's what I've just said I'd do in filling out the bit at the top that asks you what your blog is about. No more than 500 words. So. How are they? Arthur's doing very well, he's just written a book, and although a bit broke, is in good spirits and looking forward to Gordon Brown calling a General Election so he can start his campaign for Salisbury. I am right behind him. He's also about to start a picket at Stone Henge in the next few weeks. I had lunch with him yesterday in a pub in Kennington because I'm trying to make a film about him. Though this might be in jeopardy- there's a slim chance that one of his videos went missing while it was in my care. It's a compilation tape that he lent me a few months ago. This makes me feel really bad. Not only do I hate losing things that belong to other people but Arthur is someone I don't want to piss off - probably a combination of fear and liking him a lot.

Sebastian Horsley, the Dandy, was deported from America a few weeks ago on account of, as he told me this afternoon, lips curling themselves around the words as if they were female and getting undressed, 'moral turpitude'. What he said will go up on my website fairly soon as I had a camera on my lap.

There are plenty of other things to say about the people in my book, since the book has gone to the printers, but I will leave the rest until later and close with the beginning of the letter that arrived today. It came in a dinky cream-coloured envelope, second-class post. On the back the following words had been stamped: THE ONLY GOOD GERMAN IS A DEAD ONE. Because a stamp had been used, rather than one of those gold stickers people with stationery disorders used in the 90s, it looked for a moment like a Royal Mail frank. Perhaps they were trying to promote a new line of first edition stamps I thought for a moment. Or it was a new advertising space - what a great place to advertise. But I knew by then who it was from, and that I'd interviewed him a year ago.

'Dear Henry', it began, 'Thank you for your letter warning me that your book is actually going to happen. This is going to cause me much embarrassment, so I will have to hope the work proves a miserable failure. In any case I shall arrange to live abroad for a couple of years.'

The rest can wait for a little bit.