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Like I said, I have been looking back at the blog, and especially at dozens -  five dozen in fact -  of unpublished entries that are scattered around in the blogger editing and design area, like so many unfinished projects in a bike workshop.

I trip over them, frequently - especially two or three unpublished updates to the totally subjective south-west London charity shop survey for bibliophiles first published in 2013.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