YOU can’t open a national newspaper these days without tripping over an article by someone who is leaving London or another by a writer committed to remaining.

Either version provides further proof of the London-centric ways of our media. Sometimes you could be forgiven for thinking that other parts of the country had evaporated. As for the writer who made many magazine pages and much mileage out of moving his family to Brighton, well that’s almost an outer borough of London, isn’t it?

The impetus for these exercises in staying or going seems to the changing face of London, houses prices with no ceiling, and Russian oligarchs buying up fine old houses and digging beneath them to create vast subterranean extensions where most ordinary people might think of adding a conservatory.

It is obligatory under the rules of an ancient journalistic code covering the insertion of hallowed clichés for the writer to dig up that quotation by Samuel Johnson. You know the one. “Sir, when a man is tired of London he should hop on the next Virgin train to York.”

Well, the most quoted man of the 18^th century didn’t say that. What he said was this: “Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.”
Perhaps he had a point, but the trouble nowadays is not what London affords but who can afford the place. When we moved to York 27 years ago, there was already a difference in house prices, but not a substantial one. A two-bed flat in south-east London was exchanged for an Edwardian terrace house in York. Nowadays that same flat would buy a much bigger house, but it is hardly worth fretting about disappeared things.

As a Bristol-born, Manchester-raised, London-matured long-term resident of York, I no longer have to worry about London. More of my life has been spent in the north, although never beyond York. Yet I do worry that London will soon become somewhere only the super-wealthy can afford to live, a great city still, but without its bumps and eccentricities, cleansed of the wonderful ordinary people who once flowed through its veins.

Maybe that’s romantic tosh, I’ve been too long gone to have an opinion based on fact. What should worry a citizen of York is that people might follow the example of what Samuel Johnson said in my invented quotation, allowing the London effect to creep up here. Already this city is wage-poor and property rich, with houses costing more than people on ordinary incomes can easily afford.

Years ago the editor of the newspaper where I used to work, an imperious man now no longer with us, became excited by the idea of people commuting to London from York. Reporters were dispatched to the station and a red-eyed traveller or two were and paraded before us as examples of those living the aspirational life. Man On Ledge never did quite understand the aspirational life and suspects most readers of the day were unimpressed, thinking: “Daft buggers going all that way to London when they could stay here.”

As for Johnson, he must have been tiring company what with all those aphorisms and witty sayings, forever spouting forth in the hope of posterity. He got that all right and hasn’t been forgotten. If he’d been around today perhaps he would have written a blog.

In the famous quote, incidentally, Johnson was discussing with Boswell, the Scottish lawyer, biographer and writer, whether Boswell’s affection for London would wear thin if he lived there, as opposed to being an enthusiastic visitor from Scotland. The discussion took place on September 20, 1777 – and to this day journalists, writers and bloggers shamelessly trot it out. Man On Ledge felt it was only fair and proper to continue this tradition.

LAST night we walked amid the locomotives and crossed the tracks. This is not as dangerous as it may sound. We weren’t hopping lines but watching a play.

Nearly two years ago, York witnessed a remarkable performance when Blood + Chocolate took to the streets of the city. Written for the people of York and performed by them, that drama was inspired by the chocolates the Lord Mayor sent to troops on the front line in 1914, packed into tins by Rowntrees.

The wandering show was a joint effort by Pilot Theatre, Slung Low and York Theatre Royal. Now a different collaboration takes shape with In Fog And Falling Snow.

As with Blood + Chocolate, the story is set in York for York people to perform, and for other York people to watch. It is all pleasingly inclusive, letting you enjoy the play for what it is, while also spotting friends who have a role (that scene-setting beard is certainly coming on nicely).

This time round, the York story being told is that of George Hudson, the Railway King of York, who rose high while shaping our railways, then fell into ignominy when everything he had created collapsed, taking many who had believed in him down too, clutching now worthless shares.

The Theatre Royal joins again with Pilot Theatre and, this time, the National Railway Museum, which provides the unbeatable setting for the drama, written by Bridget Foreman and Mike Kenny, and directed by Damian Cruden, Juliet Forster and Katie Posner.

This rail journey comes in two stages. For the first part, the audience is divided into groups and led round the museum as actors perform on and around the locos. Then after the break, the play continues in the tented theatre.

The play opens tremendously, as George Stephenson steams in on his Rocket. He is splendid, trim and proper, an accusation in flesh to his showman partner George Hudson, rotund, avaricious and driven by rash ambition, pursuing his dream of a northern powerhouse long before that other George had the idea.

The two men stand on the engine and bicker, with Hudson (George Costigan) ruefully pointing out that the city of his glorious rise, before his later sudden fall, does not remember him. ‘What no statue?’ says Hudson. ‘Not even a plaque? A tea towel?’

The first half is delightful, if a tad exhausting, as you tramp from scene to scene. Often you can hear another section being acted out nearby, but in the end this is all very enjoyable, especially the massed rally before the interval, in which actors and audience become the braying crowd, greedy for shares that will wither to nowt in worth.

The second half in the tented theatre is more traditional, with ranks of seats on either side of a narrow railway track, through which sections of stage can be wheeled. Some of the scenes really do astonish, including the drunken dinner at Guildhall. The long table is fully laden with diners and drink as it slides into view. Later a tragic accident is summoned up with little more than sliding sections of stage colliding, with one loco represented by only by the actors, and the other built of white boxes scattered by the crash (a similar sort of trick to those umbrellas in the York Mystery Plays three years ago).

In Fog And Falling Snow might have been too long for some tastes (some audience members could be heard making this point on the way out), but it was done brilliantly, making solid and inventive use of a cast of 200.

Putting together something like this must be a headache to end all headaches, but the result is well worth. Sadly, it ends tonight, so apologies for the late notice. Our group visit was booked ages ago in part so that we could witness the role behind the beard.

But knowing York these days, it shouldn’t be too long before another inventive drama takes shape. And you know, sometimes theatre works really well away from the theatre.

WATCHING the TV news can bring the world into your front room, in bad ways and good. Sometimes it can seem as if an endless parade of tragedy is passing before your misery-glazed eyes. Often the geography is vague to those who watch, certainly to this watcher. So you peer at your flat-screen portal to the world and witness half-understand horrors happening to other people in far-flung locations you have never visited, probably never will visit.

Sometimes you know the country in question, as with the Tunisia killings. Here was a country happily familiar to many, transformed into a place of tragedy.

And while you try to make sense of the misery, or attempt to understand another country’s politics, or grapple with other faiths, or with faith as it displays itself in the world, you sit and eat a sandwich or drink a coffee. You watch the big things spat out by the world and talk about small things.

Sometimes the TV news brings a total loon on to your screen. And, no, Man On Ledge is not about to have a go at David Cameron again. This loon had no name, or none that was given to the BBC reporter in South Carolina in the US. The report was about the state’s decision to remove the Confederate flag, following the massacre at a black church in Charleston. The alleged gunman, Dylann Roof, was shown in photographs carrying the contentious flag, and this led to calls for the flag to be removed from capitol grounds.

Among those spoken to by the reporter was a fruitcake religious woman. This is not to suggest that she belonged to a faith that venerates fruitcake. No, it is to point out that she appeared a little overheated. She was late middle-aged at a glance, or probably older. It was hard to tell because she was waving a Confederate flag and ranting at the same time. So at least she could do two things at once. It was what she said that struck home to this viewer with his cup of coffee.

“God wouldn’t want this flag to come down for nobody,” she shouted, her feet describing an angry scrawl on the ground as she swerved here and there. Now I have no hotline to God and no religion to speak of, and no wish to offend those who do believe. But I think it’s a fair guess that if such a higher being exists, God will have graver concerns passing beneath his furrowed brow.

Yet this woman clearly believed, at least from the gruesome glimpse we were treated to, that God would wish to keep flying a flag that represents the oppression of black people. If nothing else, God might surely be more concerned with the slaughter of innocent people who had gathered in a church in his name.

Elsewhere in the report, a man with a long grey beard in which a squirrel or two were probably hiding out argued with another man. You don’t really need to know the race of the other man to guess which of these two characters was outraged about the flag’s removal.

Yup, it was the hillbilly having difficulties with his diction, not the angry but sensible black man.

If a flag is a symbol of oppression to many, a cry to an old battle, then it shouldn’t be flown on official buildings that in effect belong to everybody. That seems sensible to this man without a flag to wave.

As for the news, I can’t help watching at least once a day, with further radio reminders too. Sometimes I have a thought sacrilegious to a life-long journalist: does all this news actually get us anywhere, or does it just leave us half-informed at best and suffering from a vague sense of unease? Not sure. And the only way to find out would be to stop watching, to go cold turkey on the news. And that would make me even more anxious.

Thursday

SO how was it for you? Personally I cannot say for sure. Is George Osborne really lying next to me and lighting up a post-amorous cigarette and blowing smoke rings in my face? Or is that image just too disturbing to contemplate?

Budgets are political theatre, yes, and an attempted seduction too. The theatricals were evident in the photographs of yesterday’s stage-managed piece of financial and political jiggery-pokery. Gaze, if you dare, at the Chancellor and his Treasury team heading to the Commons with smarmy grins fixed wide. Gawp, if you have the stomach for it, at Iain Duncan Smith double-punching the air as Osborne announces his plans for a living wage.

And notice, if you glance in the other direction, the glum indignation on the faces of the Opposition benches as the Chancellor flourishes ideas he found while rummaging through Labour’s now redundant election drawer. A living wage and plans to move against nom-doms were Labour ideas, but governments are in the lucky position of being able to plunder ideas from wherever they wish.

Many of the smoke rings Osborne was blowing were floated in the air to fall round Labour like those plastic circles you throw at fairs. Only these aren’t rings but shackles thrown to trip Labour up.

Cleverly, and never forget what a shrewd and calculating politician Osborne is, the main and barely hidden purpose of the budget seems to have been to cast the Tories as the friend to the worker, while pushing Labour to the margins occupied by those who choose not to work or depend too heavily on benefits. This is dangerous stuff for Labour.

Man On Ledge has commented before on the absurdity of the government topping up low wages and in effect subsidising employers, often large corporations, which decline to pay their workers a decent rate for the job. Osborne’s surprise announcement yesterday appeared to answer that, although we shall have to hold back on that for a while. Budgets seems to arrive all the time nowadays, and their frequency should remind us that this is all about politics and not economics; all about the headlines and not what is going on beneath the star-glittered surface of the Westminster lake.

As for the living wage, this still doesn’t look like something most politicians would deign to live on. For those in penurious jobs, the rise – only applying to those over 25 – could well be eaten away by the removed benefits. And will the employers really be willing or able to pay the higher rate? A nice idea in theory, and certainly good politics, but will the living wage really be what it proclaims to be, or merely a marginally more generous minimum wage?

It’s always hard to tell with budgets. You have to wait for all those smoke rings to settle. Only time will tell and time doesn’t always do any favours to the excitable headlines on the day.

My own skim of what is proposed has so far failed to locate any measures designed to help men who sit on ledges while working on shaping a post-redundancy life.

I SEE that northern powerhouse has been in the news again. First up many of the promised improvements to railways in the north were scrapped shortly after the election had been won by the Tories. Network Rail was blamed for the sudden evaporation of the pre-election pledge. Vote for us and the north will be a place of power and wonder, or so Chancellor George Osborne was happy to suggest, brandishing dodgy promises of the £13 billion he was going to splurge on the north.

This blandishment turned out to have been backdated, and the rail improvements quickly morphed into a forgotten episode of Thomas The Tank Engine (Thomas And The Politician’s Promise).

Now we are all sad-faced engines. Further peering at the small print (other dubious promises are available and don’t leave home without your scepticism) has devalued even more the Chancellor’s special offer for the north.

According to a report in The Observer, only £3billion from that much-flaunted sum is actually for railways, of which nearly half had already been allocated, mainly to upgrading the railways round Manchester. As for the remaining £10billion only half of that is for major road schemes: including the A1, which may end up in the north but doesn’t start here. The remainder is said to consist of standard allocations of money made to local councils for bus lanes, local highway maintenance, cycle lanes and filling in potholes.

A spokesman for the Department for Communities and Local Government, or possibly the Department for Telling Porkies, told The Observer: ‘The northern powerhouse is more than transport investment.’ The spokesman went on a bit more – ‘this gives the north a powerful new voice’ possibly adding ‘and if you believe that you must be dumber than your whippet’.

It’s worth remembering on Budget Day, and the first Tory-only one in nearly 20 years, that tank engines and voters should always be wary of whatever is pulled out of a hat today. The good things will probably turn out on later inspection to be full of holes, while the bad things will mostly only be discovered once we get to the bottom of the small print.

Budgets are really just about political grandstanding, and nowadays most of the surprises are leaked beforehand. Among the leaky pipes this time is George Osborne’s Keep Sunday Special Offer bid, allowing shops to stay open even longer on a Sunday.

Man On Ledge recalls a time when the shops in York were all closed on a Sunday. How pleasant it was to wander round the streets. Sometimes you do wonder where all this constant spending has got us.

SO THE BBC has struck a dubious deal with the Chancellor, George Osborne. Ahead of tomorrow’s budget, the first Tory-only one in a long time, the BBC Director General Tony Hall has agreed that the BBC will carry the £650 million annual cost of free licences for the over-75s.

This has apparently been forced on Mr Hall by Osborne, who appears in typical Tory fashion to be no friend of the BBC. Conservatives often dislike the BBC, which is odd in away as the Corporation is a conservative organisation in many senses.

As the country’s leading media institution, the Beeb should be free from government interference, not forced to carry out policies by the Chancellor. This enormous amount should be spent on programmes, instead of being forced out of the BBC budget. Such a cost can only reduce what the BBC is able to do. Perhaps that is the idea from Osborne: keep weakening the BBC until it is no longer worth defending.

Also, harming the BBC is likely eventually to harm broadcasting as a whole: if the BBC in its pillar-like position has to diminish what it does in the name of Government policy, then the danger is that the general standard will be set lower.

Mr Hall was on the Today programme this morning explaining why this was a decent deal as he had secured other demands, but he sounded like a man admiring the view after walking to the end of the plank.

Also in the news this week has been Camilla Batmanghelidgh, the children’s campaigner and founder of Kids Company. In more hidden shenanigans, she has been told by the Government to step down in return for £3 million funding. Without dwelling on the details, what this illustrates is the dangers of charities taking on work for the government. What happens first is that ministers approach a charity and say: ‘You’re jolly good at doing all this noble work and we’d rather not be so hands-on. So why don’t you work with us?’

This might seem to be a sensible arrangement, and perhaps up to a point it is. But the charities chosen to do such work are often loud advocates for their particular cause, which is right and proper, but then they become a distant arm of government. And at some point the minister will rest a heavy arm on their shoulders and say: ‘Would you mind piping down a bit with all the criticism? Only you do keep laying into us, and yet we’re the ones paying bills.’

This potentially toxic mix of charity and government springs from David Cameron’s once much-vaunted Big Society. Yet these Faustian arrangements are not without their difficulties. Kids Company has done sterling work in looking after thousands of vulnerable and troubled children let down by the state. If such a charity then becomes closely entangled in the state, does that create new problems?

When charities receive government support, this both allows them to do their important work, yet also sees assorted wires crossed. Sometimes crossed wires will give off sparks. Kids Company, shaped round the eccentric energies of its founder, tackles child poverty, something which can arguably be seen as the product of policies by this and other governments. After tomorrow’s Budget, with more cuts promised to the lowest paid, perhaps more charities will be asked to step in. Already it is reported that the Trussell Trust and Shelter have been asked to tone their criticism of the government, which now picks up some of the tab: yet criticising governments is part of what such charities should do, isn’t it?

Today’s Man On Ledge is delivered courtesy of a confusing new laptop. Such are the demands placed on redundant men who lurk on the edge of rocky outcrops.

A STRAY thought enters my post-office mind. Imagine if your brain was like one of those Apple updates that pop up on your computer. Man On Ledge lacks the means for an Apple computer, so the messages in question are usually just to say that a new version of iTunes is available (click here to confuse yourself). The new version is sometimes only slightly different, but occasionally it is totally new and you can no longer work out how to do anything on your iPod.

So here goes, with a glimpse into the dystopian future, taking the shape of a computer-to-mind conversation between a man and the brain updating service.

‘Your brain needs to be updated. Please click here for your brain improvements.’

‘But I like my old brain. I know where everything is in my old brain. Well, most things, as there are a few dusty corners. And whatever part of the brain controls where you’ve left things down could do with a mild upgrade.’

‘The new brain download will remove all traces of dust and leave you with a shiny new brain, fully purposed for the demands of modern life. And you will never lose anything ever again.’

‘But are brains supposed to be shiny and new? A brain should have all sorts of oddments rolling about inside, assorted weird personal connections. I assert the right to lose things and get confused and to say things I’ve already said before.’

‘Please download Cloud Brain Update now or we shall issue an Automatic Brain Cleanse so that your iBrain does not cause difficulties for you and other members of the iCommune.’

‘But I wish to keep control of my old brain, with all its faults and foibles, all its dead ends and curious cul-de-sacs, its gaps and lacunae and those strange dark pools of half-remembered thoughts.’

‘Warning: Automatic Brain Cleanse now in progress.’

Scene: sometime later. A man with an officially updated iBrain works through the day purposefully and achieves everything that has been asked of him. At the end of the day, he sits down to watch television and realises that he can’t remember what he likes or what he has seen recently. His freshly rebooted brain is no help, as all the old likes and dislikes, prejudices and enthusiasm, have been cleansed.

In a way can blame my wife for these thoughts (or being exiled from the office for a month). She told me that she’d heard about a man being unable to leave his iTunes collection to his children in his will. She couldn’t remember anything else, so is perhaps in need of an Automatic Brain Cleanse. I did whatever everyone does now and Googled it (the brain of our times, sadly) and discovered that the man in question was Bruce Willis three years ago. The Hollywood actor was reported in the Daily Mail to be considering a legal bid to ensure he can pass on his iTunes to his children when he dies. Later reports suggested that Willis was not considering such legal action, but this does raise an interesting quandary of modern life, as well as the possibility for a new movie, Die Hard: The iPod Files.

If you own a library of hardback books or a collection of vinyl records and CDs, it is very easy to irritate your descendants with an unwanted bequest. But passing on iTunes collections or Kindle libraries is more problematic.

This seems to be one of those shiny aspects of modern life that turn out not to be so shiny, or not so simple. A book is a book, a record is a record. But a downloaded book or album doesn’t belong to you; you have just bought a licence to read the book or listen to the music. Whether this is a good or bad thing depends partly on your tolerance of clutter versus your love or having physical objects around you. As for bequeathing music, my three children are at this moment taking legal advice to ensure they don’t have to inherit their father’s record collection.

A STRAY thought enters my post-office mind. Imagine if your brain was like one of those Apple updates that pop up on your computer. Man On Ledge lacks the means for an Apple computer, so the messages in question are usually just to say that a new version of iTunes is available (click here to confuse yourself). The new version is sometimes only slightly different, but occasionally it is totally new and you can no longer work out how to do anything on your iPod.

So here goes, with a glimpse into the dystopian future, taking the shape of a computer-to-mind conversation between a man and the brain updating service.

‘Your brain needs to be updated. Please click here for your brain improvements.’

‘But I like my old brain. I know where everything is in my old brain. Well, most things, as there are a few dusty corners. And whatever part of the brain controls where you’ve left things down could do with a mild upgrade.’

‘The new brain download will remove all traces of dust and leave you with a shiny new brain, fully purposed for the demands of modern life. And you will never lose anything ever again.’

‘But are brains supposed to be shiny and new? A brain should have all sorts of oddments rolling about inside, assorted weird personal connections. I assert the right to lose things and get confused and to say things I’ve already said before.’

‘Please download Cloud Brain Update now or we shall issue an Automatic Brain Cleanse so that your iBrain does not cause difficulties for you and other members of the iCommune.’

‘But I wish to keep control of my old brain, with all its faults and foibles, all its dead ends and curious cul-de-sacs, its gaps and lacunae and those strange dark pools of half-remembered thoughts.’

‘Warning: Automatic Brain Cleanse now in progress.’

Scene: sometime later. A man with an officially updated iBrain works through the day purposefully and achieves everything that has been asked of him. At the end of the day, he sits down to watch television and realises that he can’t remember what he likes or what he has seen recently. His freshly rebooted brain is no help, as all the old likes and dislikes, prejudices and enthusiasm, have been cleansed.

In a way can blame my wife for these thoughts (or being exiled from the office for a month). She told me that she’d heard about a man being unable to leave his iTunes collection to his children in his will. She couldn’t remember anything else, so is perhaps in need of an Automatic Brain Cleanse. I did whatever everyone does now and Googled it (the brain of our times, sadly) and discovered that the man in question was Bruce Willis three years ago. The Hollywood actor was reported in the Daily Mail to be considering a legal bid to ensure he can pass on his iTunes to his children when he dies. Later reports suggested that Willis was not considering such legal action, but this does raise an interesting quandary of modern life, as well as the possibility for a new movie, Die Hard: The iPod Files.

If you own a library of hardback books or a collection of vinyl records and CDs, it is very easy to irritate your descendants with an unwanted bequest. But passing on iTunes collections or Kindle libraries is more problematic.

This seems to be one of those shiny aspects of modern life that turn out not to be so shiny, or not so simple. A book is a book, a record is a record. But a downloaded book or album doesn’t belong to you; you have just bought a licence to read the book or listen to the music. Whether this is a good or bad thing depends partly on your tolerance of clutter versus your love or having physical objects around you. As for bequeathing music, my three children are at this moment taking legal advice to ensure they don’t have to inherit their father’s record collection.

WHAT a shock to discover that I am Richard Thompson’s dad. This unlikely scenario will be explained in a paragraph or two.

Guitars and me go back a long way. There has been a guitar in my life since my early teens. First came two or maybe three classical guitars, the last long cherished and eventually dismembered in a domestic accident. Now I have been two guitars: a steel-string Yamaha acoustic and an Aria electric guitar.

In the early days I performed in a couple of school concerts, before drifting from the classical guitar into decades of strumming, picking, messing around and generally annoying people unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity.

You see, I have a problem with playing music. Not the chords or the scales, I can handle those perfectly well. I can use open tunings where the guitar is tuned to play a chord. On the electric guitar, I can make a noise that keeps me amused. A passing person with little musical knowledge would think I was pretty good. But the trouble is that you can’t count on me, or you count on me to count. Timing has never been my thing, even with those long-ago classical lessons somewhere in the dusty vault.

I make up little pieces, I compose half-songs, often but not always starting with the D chord and, for guitar-heads, the bottom E-string tuned down to D for a nice bit of resonance. But everything I play is poorly structured and timed to some internal rhythm no one has yet got round to putting down on a piece of sheet music.

Occasionally my wife will tick me off about this. Down the years she has mostly stopped commenting on my guitar playing, although occasionally when I stop my arrhythmic strumming, I hear can hear her mumble. Well, it’s all right for her. Years ago I bought her ten saxophone lessons as a surprise birthday present, introducing her to a good and strict teacher, who got her counting and tapping her feet. Now, post-saxophone, she sings in a choir and is even better versed in counting out those rhythms.

As for me, I do my own thing, often late at night, watching the television news while strumming or picking away. The other night I did worry that Hugh Edwards was frowning at me, unless he always looks like that.

As for Richard Thompson, that folk-rock great, song-writing marvel and guitar genius, well he has long been a hero. I’ve seen him in concert countless times and have a couple of his songbooks, and have mastered how to play a few songs rather poorly. A few years ago in an interview, I said to Richard that some of his songs were difficult to play. ‘They’re meant to be,’ he said. And if he heard me attempting some of the songs, his wise head would implode with shock.

On the BBC Radio 4 show Midweek last Wednesday, Thompson was asked when he realised he was a better on the guitar than his father, a top policeman who had liked to strum a chord or two. ‘When I was about seven or eight,’ he said.

Well, that hit home. You see this ill-formed musical thing before you has a guitar wizard for a son. When he was seven or so I taught him some bar chords, and he almost cried in frustration at the effort. But he soon got the hang of those chords, spent many bedrooms years practising, and has since raced ahead of his father on assorted guitars and bass too. He really is very good, countless times better than I ever was or ever will be.

So there you have it. That’s why I am Richard Thompson’s dad. Does anyone know a good guitar teacher suitable for drumming some rhythmic sense into a middle-aged dimbo?

PEOPLE are often looking for a new diet and so here is a suggestion. This one calls for stress and beer. What you have to do is work somewhere for a very long time and then discover that your job is about to disappear in a septic puff of company reorganisation.

While you are trying to absorb this development, concerned friends and former colleagues invite you out for a drink. That’s the beer part. And the stress just comes with the rocky territory, especially when the news has come out of the blue and, from bombshell to “there’s the door”, the whole procedure takes only a month.

More brutal versions of this diet are available, when the company wishing to lose weight tells their employee to leave the desk that minute and never return. Man On Ledge cannot confirm the efficacy of that variant.

Anyway I easily lost half a stone on the Stress and Beer Diet. I might have been palely anxious, I might have felt like a man who stepped into a lift only to find the lift wasn’t there, but I did lose weight. Result!

One month on, and the weight has crept back. That’s the trouble with diets. Apart from the stress and anxiety, I felt good without that weight, but now the slight wodge is back. Hello old friend, but I can’t say it’s good to see you again.

Perhaps I am getting used to not working, although I can’t get too used to it, as the money will run out soon enough. A couple of freelance opportunities have arisen, so that’s encouraging, and assorted jobs have been applied for. Thousands of words have been written (more than 16,000 in this blog alone) and the first draft of the new thriller has gone beyond the 100,000 word notch.

Yesterday there was a lunch with the features team from the newspaper where I used to work, a small but lovely bunch of people. We met in a Thai restaurant in Walmgate and it was good to see everyone again. When you have to leave a long-held job, I guess one option is to cut yourself off from the past and your old friends, but that isn’t for me. The departed person does feel slightly dislocated, still connected to the office gossip but at a remove. But connections are important, especially when you spend too long sitting typing and getting a stiff neck in the study at home. Other lunches have been suggested so my stiff neck should have further outings.

Afterwards everyone went back to the place where I used to work, and I wandered off in the sunshine, cycled home, had an illicit doze, and then started typing again.

Political footnote: Yesterday Man On Ledge found himself agreeing with a former political adviser to David Cameron. This sort of thing does not happen often, and close scrutiny will be necessary to keep check on further outbreaks.

Steve Hilton is the slightly whacky former Downing Street guru who brought out David Cameron’s compassionate/green/cuddly-honestly side, qualities long since ditched. Known for his bare feet and a weird hippie variant of Conservatism, Hilton believes that companies should pay the living wage of £7.85 an hour. His basic argument is a sensible one: it’s madness for the government to pay benefits to workers in low-paid jobs when this lets employers, especially big corporations, pay people low wages. This state support for low-paid workers is, in effect, a sideways subsidy to big firms. Hilton said it was “the biggest loaded of BS” for companies to claim they could not afford to pay the living wage.

The pre-Budget stories are already being floated (inheritance tax cut, darky hinted at welfare cuts and so on) so we can expect more BS next week.