Busy day today, for two reasons. First, I have a Brian's Friday to get ready for, and second, last night I lost my Filofax (and yes I still use a Filofax) and spent the first half of the day first looking for it, and then wokring out where I had left it. I worked it out eventually. I had left it at Sloane Square tube station, on top of one of the public telephones there.

I had a couple of hours to think about what I would do if my Filofax was permanently lost, and it was an interesting experience. Here, I soon realised, was a potential enforced opportunity to do what I have been meaning to do for years, which is decide who my significant others really are, and archive everyone else. Also, it would be an opportune moment to work out what everyone's up-to-date emails are.

It turned out that simply by sitting down with a bit of paper, starting with the few phone numbers I already know, I would have a decent shot at reconstructing my life within, say, two hours. It's amazing, when I think about it, how well my friends seem to know one other. Not surprising really, when you consider that everybody knows everybody at about six removes, or whatever it is.

The other vaguely cultural thing that happened in connection with all this was that the first London Transport person I spoke to at Sloane Square tube was a scary looking individual with his arms (revealed because of his sleaves being short or rolled up, I forget which) covered entirely in lurid tattoos, and no doubt other parts of him too that were concealed.

I have always associated tattoos with criminality, or at least lowness of life. But this man could not have been more courteous and helpful. Perhaps when he was a teenager, this man did some questionable things, but judging by his demeanour towards me, those days, if they ever happened, were now long gone, and he is now a pillar of society. (That picture isn't him, because the person in the picture has no tattoos on his arms.)

I guess men covered in tattoos are no now more of a threat to civilisation than men sporting long hair were in 1980.