Why I write this stupid blog/ Why do I write this stupid blog?

Macaulay Road, Clapham, in autumn. Sometimes it is good just to celebrate the beauty of the place you live in.

It's always a joy to have some time - and the necessary drive - to write something for this blog.

What's wonderful about writing a blog named Microgroove 33 is that i can write about anything I bloody well like.

It doesn't have to be local, it doesn't have to be news, it doesn't have to be about music or art or people or linguistics or bicycles or Penguin Classics or charity shops or architecture  or even about London - although those are all things I'd love to be expert enough to write a blog on.

It doesn't even have to be about dogs.

Like I said, I have been looking back at the blog, and especially at dozens -  five dozen in fact -  of unpublished entries that are scattered around in the blogger editing and design area, like so many unfinished projects in a bike workshop.

I trip over them, frequently - especially two or three unpublished updates to the totally subjective south-west London charity shop survey for bibliophiles first published in 2013.

Ever since I have been promising myself to update and extend this series, and have even written new stuff, about the charity shops of Streatham, and Stroud Green, and Kilburn, for example (there are lots, and lots).

Recent visits to the Barnado's shop in Brixton confirm and re-confirm my feeling that this would be the number one shop if I were to update that silly top 10. It's solid on my staples - books and music and good old clothes - and it keeps throwing up interesting oddities. This week there's a whole glass case full of vintage cameras, and a whole shelf of cut-price bath products.

Not long ago it had a rack-full of over-size string vests - you know, the type some Rastas wore back in the 80s? But these were not just in the Rasta red green and gold, but in the colours of lots of other African flags. Reader I bought one - but no-one outside this blog will ever find out, and no-one will ever see me wearing it either!

So, there you go ....maybe one day I will complete some more of these beached, stranded stories.

Like the one on the strange increase in people getting caught short and crapping on the streets. Twice within 150 yards of where I am now sitting, in the past two months. I'm talking humans, not dogs. Young humans. I could continue but I will not.

Or the story on the mystic Xanadu of Dawson Heights.

Some of the articles are no more than a headline that  for some reason I liked at the time. In a long career as a mediocre journalist, I remember how every so often a sub would come up with a perfect headline for a story that did not exist, and we'd try to find that story and write it.

I also want to write about the beauty of the wisteria in three streets, and the beauty of Californian Lilac in another three; or maybe one just about the beauty of the residential streets of SW8 in spring.

I could write a hundred more posts on my curious work pattern, which takes me to Vauxhall, Bermondsey,  Camberwell, Dulwich, Forest Hill, New Cross and New Malden on a regular basis, sometimes in the evenings. And once to Stoke-on-Trent.

And to converted shops in Angell Town ...

I want to write about the writers I love, and about places I love; about bikes and bike shops.

But I'm sure I will soon be back to ranting about Range Rovers, posh types and luxury apartments.
It's so much easier to write when you're really stirred up with anger!

(Almost) mown down on Landor Road

Cycling home from a strange round trip involving the Barnardo's charity shop in Brixton, the Phtotogrpahers' Gallery off Oxford Street, and then the 99p Shop in brixton - I took the shortcut around the back of the JobCentre, onto Stockwell Road, past the skatepark and the bike shop, then swerve left into what must once have been Stockwell's village green and into Landor Road.

Then a sort of whirlwind hit me, almost sending me over the handlebars. It was followed by a high-pitched howl and the sight of a large black car vitally flying up the street, crashing on brakes, then accelerating away again like a formula 1 racer.

A black kid on one of those little bmx-style bikes almost got hit by this vehicle, but he swerved in time and carried on regardless. I was shaking.

You wonder what. There must have been three to four hundred horsepower under the bonnet of that bastard car.

Where were they going, where had they been? Was it a getaway car from a murder scene? Or just some   blunt-nosed podgy yuppie trying to impress someone?

Most days I see these scenes, and these days the image that often floats to the surface is that of Putin, the barrel-chested bully-boy on his hunting steed.

And then the arseholes of the BNP who can still wield enough threat and fear to force Legoland - of all people - to cancel a private event for a Muslim group.

What the hell is going on, in 2014, 100 years after nationalism's worst hour?

Amnd how do I link a souped-up Merc in Brixton with  right-wing thugs in England and the president of the Russian Federation?

Dunno. It all seems to have a lot to do with machismo, male swaggering. What a dear friend once called "big swinging dick" syndrome.

Perhaps alongside the 5-a-day campaign, the NHS should introduce a new "dick reduction" programme to temper this rampant and unpleasant outbreak of testosterone-stenching masculinity.

Anyway, to cut to a happy ending, after an unhappy middle-phase looking at macho photos by WIlliam S Burroughs etc,  I found a copy of John Peel's  Olivetti Chronicles at the Barnados Shop for £2. Now, there was a real man….