Writing in a MacDonalds on a Saturday morning

I'm upstairs in a MacDonalds on Kingsland Road in Dalston, sipping at weak foamy coffee in a paper cup and trying to write. Procrastination is high, thanks to the decent Wi-Fi service and the newspaper. No matter how much I try to concentrate, my mind slips and I start reading about forthcoming football fixtures and surf various sites looking for Christmas presents for the kids.

Next to my laptop is a notebook with my list of weekly tasks for the next few months. I only drew up the list last week but I'm already behind. My eye strays towards a man on the other side of the restaurant. It's late period Leo Tolstoy, drinking coffee and eating a donut, content in the knowledge that he's already written great books and can soon go back to his own time via a pan-dimensional wormhole in the smelly toilets. He'd have been better off going further back in time, where coffee and donuts would have been cheaper.

Crappy Christmas music blares out from the speakers. Tolstoy gets up and stares out of the window. A woman to my left is writing what looks like a dissertation on an old Compaq laptop. Further away two middle ages people talk vaguely about shopping and TV programmes. No-one is eating burgers or chips. In fact, no-one is eating anything. McDonald's has become a drop in centre for drifters.

Tolstoy is now staring at me. I sense the possibility that he'll decide to kidnap me and take me back to the 19th century. It would be interesting but I have presents to buy. Books to write.

The Crow Road - A Walk in Roxeth

Last week I went on a walk with deep topographer Nick Papadimitriou and the writer/producer John Rogers, as part of their radio show 'Ventures and Adventures in Topography'. Each week they pick a different part of the Greater London area and do a walk, usually aided by a book from the early 20th century.

Our walk started at South Harrow station and ended up a few hundred yards away in a crow-infested patch of parkland.

The podcast is here