If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Sitting on the train this morning, a guy got on at Shenfield and sat down beside me. He pulled out a copy of Personal Computer World and started leafing through the pages. I have mixed feelings whenever that happens. On the one hand it’s very rewarding to see someone reading the mag. One the other, I find it very distracting.

No matter how hard I tried to concentrate on reading my book I spent most of the journey watching what he did with the magazine, what he read and what he leafed straight past.

I think he’d just bought it, as he was doing that new-mag browse everyone does, no matter what the publication, so he opened at the front and skimmed the headlines in the news section, browsed the letters page then turned to the columns. He paused briefly on mine and looked across through the window beside me. He briefly looked straight at me and I looked away, then he turned back to the mag where my column, with my picture on the top, was open on his lap.

No recognition, it would seem. Probably just as well.

It was interesting watching what he did, though, as he zizzed past a couple of my favourite bits, but nonetheless stopped on many of the pages I’d always suspected people read first. I almost spoke to him as we pulled into Liverpool Street. I was going to ask him what he’d liked best, but though it would probably look like I was fishing for compliments, so let it drop.

Intended to go to the gym on the way home, but stopped in at the party at Sanderson, described by GQ magazine as ‘the hippest hotel in the whole world’, apparently. I’ve walked past it loads of times and from the outside always though it was just a dowdy 70s office block. Turns out it’s actually a very posh place to stay, with exclusive bars for residents and, in the rooms, no wall between the bedroom and the bathroom - just a few curtains to pull around the toilet.

It used to be a wallpaper factory.

Inevitably the one drink I was intending to have turned into several, with canapes and long chats with people from practically every tech mag in London. At some point I got into a very animated discussion about why Romford is not in Essex and the Eurovision song contest will be two days, not just three hours long next year.

Home late.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 7th, 2003 at 11:53 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.