The internet everywhere? Only if you’ve got access to a laptop and can pay for wi-fi. I was expecting a jaunt round London this afternoon visiting a few second hand bookshops and generally idling around - well it is a day off. Instead I get a phone call while on the train with someone sending me a proposal about some possible work… so I need to find an internet connection which I can put a flash stick into, and I need to do it quick…

First call, the British Library. A very civilised place to work (and according to some newspaper reports start illicit affairs). But they don’t allow web email access. ‘Because we’re not a public library’. ?????? In fact, more ???? So I try Camden library over the road. A row of screens but no sign of anyone going anywhere. I sit and read the paper when to everyone’s surprise, someone does leave. But I get 3 minutes before the next person who has booked, just as I open my email…

There are a number of what look like quite dodgy ‘internet’ cafes around King’s Cross. I don’t think I’ll bother here.

It’s surprising how expensive it actually is to use the internet in this way. Between one and two pounds an hour it seems. There is one place on Charing Cross road which offers a pound an hour but it is so crammed with people that I don’t see where I would squeeze in. Also I need to *concentrate*. How does anyone manage to do that anymore?

Eventually I arrive at some orange coloured monstrosity in Tottenham Court Road. This is also a cafe so there are lots of people eating buns and slurping sugary drinks. What care they for the wheels of industry? One person manages to sit in the furthest corner from anyone and then shout across the entire building at his friend? or maybe imaginary friend, or maybe his demons.

I-will-concentrate…the noise is so loud - a woman is singing, but the chorus sounds like a pig being sick. Every song has the same bass line. It’s so f*cking loud I’m going to go to Boots next door and get some ear plugs.

I’ve spend four quid, the internet connection isn’t very fast, the keyboard is rubbish ( the return tab sticks) I have listened to half of London shouting at the other half through their mobile phones and I have developed a pathological hatred of the music industry.

But I did get my work done. Just.