Coming out of Clapham South station yesterday evening, I turned down Balham Hill. Walking towards me I noticed a text book example of mutton dressed as lamb, exposing far too much dried out flesh on the top half of her body, so orange it would have put Donatella Versace to shame. Inevitably her bottom half was clad in one of those ubiquitous white gypsy skirts. Surely the only statement these things now make is 'my smug balding partner is cheating on me with the porcine hired help.'

Then she stepped on a dog, a small terrier innocently trotting along the pavement with his owner. The dog let out a shriek, which I initially took to be the opening note of a nearby siren, before shakily trying to hide himself in between his owner's legs. The owner turned to look at the old hag, waiting for an apology. None was forthcoming. The woman, who has clearly never taken responsibility for a thing in her life, simply looked disgusted with everyone in the world bar herself, before continuing to drag her carcass towards the nearest Yates's Wine Lodge (or wherever).

When I'm walking on the street and someone bumps into me or steps on my toe, I normally wait until they are a safe distance away and proffer up a small curse (e.g. 'I hope all your children have very small dicks...and that includes the girls'). Despite this, a part of me recognises that I'm not a helpless victim, being blessed with the ability to move (at least until I misjudge the appropriate volume of some post-collision insult). But this woman was about 5 times the height of the mutt, and, unlike him, not hindered by a lead. And yet somehow it was the dog's fault. To fall back on my extensive knowledge of canine terminology, what a bitch.

Further down the hill I passed the Duke of Devonshire. The pub, not the grandee. On the blackboard outside was written, in that spiky chalk lettering so beloved of aspirational boozers, 'As winter draws in, enjoy the fire in our saloon bar.'

It's 10 August, for fuck's sake! Don't take summer away from me just yet. I don't get to enjoy it much, being cooped up in a tall chunk of glass for the best part of the day. I'm stuck in an office, the window of which doesn't entice streams of sunlight to fall across my joyfully tapping fingers. Instead it looks even further into the tower, all artificial light and Sick Building Syndrome. So let summer stay, just for a while.

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I spent the weekend with the lemon curd, wandering around my new neighbourhood, and very pleasant it is too, all wide pavements and tall houses. And trees. Happily I've also found a good Dim Sum restaurant in which to spend lazy Sunday afternoons. I'm rather suspicious that the Sunday lunch crowd in the local pubs consists largely of posing trustafarians, so countless bamboo baskets of steamed dumplings and chickens' feet are a perfect alternative to roast beef and mustard.

But I'm obviously not keeping a close enough eye on the missus - she needs watching. As I was finishing off a plate of Cheung Fun, she noticed that our pot of tea was getting a bit strong.

"Shall I add some hot water?" she asked, picking up a spouted vessel from the table.

"Yes," I said, "but make sure that isn't soy sauce".

Completely ignoring me, she proceeded to pour, a gloopy black liquid slithering into our previously delicious pot of tea.

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I'm commuting in and out of work everyday, thanks to the location of my new flat. It's odd to feel apprehensive when it's time to go home, and I never really relax on the tube. These feelings are not particularly rational. When people say that statistically the chances of being murdered on the Underground are very small (although not so small as winning the lottery) they are, of course correct. Despite this, I feel uneasy, like many people. I look around for potential bombers (as if spotting them would do any good). I feel relieved when I step off the train. Logically, it's insane, but I just can't help it. Nor can a lot of other Londoners if various website and blog comments are anything to go by.

So it wasn't especially helpful for LoveFilm to mail me 9/11 the other day. And it wasn't especially helpful for me to feed it into the DVD player and settle down to watch it yesterday evening.

Back in 2001, filmmakers Jules and Gedeon Naudet were shooting a fly-on-the-wall documentary in a downtown Manhattan fire station. Early on 11 September the camera followed some firefighters responding to a report of a gas leak. As the firemen wave their odd looking gas detector gadget over a grating in the pavement, the sound of a plane causes them to look up briefly before returning to their work. The camera however finds the plane, and follows it into the side of one of the towers of the World Trade centre. The footage is one of only two known images of the first plane crashing into the building. The film goes on to record the events of the next few hours - one camera is on the streets, the other inside the WTC.

The film is refreshingly unpoliticised (limited more or less to one fireman muttering "son-of-a-bitch" at George W. Bush) and free from religious commentary. Any patriotism is also pleasantly muted (by American standards). It is simple reportage. I found the film profoundly affecting. The ability of those images, which we no longer see on the television, to astound and horrify with almost the same impact as four years ago surprised me. They are also a chilling reminder of the lengths to which some will go, gripped by vicious faith in their actions and an unshakeable belief that they are right.

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Back in those care free June days it seemed like a good idea to move further away from work. In between smugly blogging plans to move, I relished emancipation from EC1's concrete and the daily sight of the Barbican's jagged towers. Now following "a major incident" (in the awkwardly coy language of Transport for London) I wonder whether living within walking distance of the office was such a bad thing.

But it's done now, and it was all pretty painless - especially finding the new flat, which is a lovely place on a quiet treelined road. Following one and half years in Clerkenwell I'd almost forgotten what a leaf looked like. On Friday I took the day off work, as did my wonderfully supportive girlfriend, and hired a white van. All Congestion Charged up with my foot hesistantly tapping the gas, we headed into the maelstrom. The traffic in London on Friday was horrific, as the Budget car hire man cheerfully predicted when he handed me the keys that morning. Apparently a large number of citizens have, since 7 July, abandoned the buses and tubes and taken their cars out for a spin. It didn't help that I had to putter along the Euston road, even more snarled up than the rest of this blighted city. Half the streets off it were closed, including the one leading to Tavistock Square, the route shielded by 20 foot high tarpaulin stretching from building to building. It took over an hour to get from Clerkenwell to Belsize Park and I rarely moved out of first gear, spending most of the time staring out at the chaotic tangle of vehicles, grimy and spluttering. Thank God I managed to cram everything I owned into the back of the Renault Kangoo (except, alas two tea towels, currently sitting forgotten in a deserted EC1 kitchen). Two trips in that heat and traffic would have severely tested my resolve.

I've already taken advantage of the new neighbourhood. Earlier in the week, I sidled down the hill towards Camden to catch JJ72 attempting to propel themselves back into the city's collective CD player. The last time I enjoyed their fantastically fey rock was in 2002, when they filled the London Forum. Then they disappeared. Last Tuesday they failed to sell out the Camden Underworld and were without their (ahem) watchable original bass player. But they still sounded stunning and their new bass player is equally watchable. And they're nothing like Placebo.

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A week ago London was attacked with the same savage and indiscriminate cruelty that was the hallmark of the attacks on New York and Madrid, and is a feature of everyday life for citizens in areas of Iraq and other troubled parts of the world. The complete disregard that such attackers have for the sanctity of human life has always been unsettlingly alien to the way most people think in this country. To suddenly find that it has arrived here and crashed into daily life is terrifying.

Tony Blair, Ken Livingstone and various other figures in authority advocated "Business as Usual" and subsequently praised Londoners for their defiance in getting on with life. Perhaps the people of London are more stoic than those in, for example, Madrid - who quickly assembled a mass demonstration soon after their tragedy and appeared to be moved to remove their government because of it (I am making no judgement on which is the better reaction to have). And in certain other parts of the world I can imagine riots and further deaths as a result. But, I am afraid and ashamed to say, that the times I've been on a bus or a tube in the past week I haven't been consciously sending a message to the terrorists. I've had to do it. There was no choice.

Just before midday today around 300 people assembled in the large square in front of my building. There was an incessant babbling of voices. I wondered how we would know when midday arrived. Then, suddenly, with no obvious provocation, the talking stopped and the traffic stopped. As well as those in the square, people lined the pavements and stood at their office windows. Recently I had started to feel that these silences were becoming too common and too long. Every football match seemed to start with one for somebody or other. But today, despite myself, I felt very moved. Of course people are being killed daily in various trouble spots through the world. December's tsunami in South East Asia killed thousands more than died on their way to work last week. But I ran through the photos of those people in my head and thought about the pure stupidity that drives fanatics. I briefly thought about the wider mess this is part of. And I thought, selfishly but inevitably, about myself ("It could have been me") and a new awareness of how vulnerable we are.

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