This morning as I made my way between Putney & Hammersmith bridges I felt accompanied by the rat tat tat of builders as Bishops park renovations continue and a house on Holyport road had scaffolding erected.

Turning a corner onto Stevenage road, as sometimes happens, the smell of hops brewing was strong. The river carrying it on its merry way.

Starting my working week off with a drained river, seems somehow appropriate. One of those half misty mornings where the dew is still waking up while people move around – some quickly and focused, some distracted or in the phone, others already on a break.

My view this morning, as I made my way across Putney Bridge, was not the peaceful flow of the river waking up, as I so often find it. Today the river was being churned up. In its wake the mud, flotsam and jetsam of urban life emerged.

My early guitar career had the sole purpose of playing in the school church group. Like so many others I suppose, my catalogue of chords was simple, subtle and provided just enough range to make any sound possible.

Somewhere over the last 18 years the sounds from my guitar have quietened. Although I always had one with me, it no longer gave a voice to ease and soothe whatever ache or adventure I was going through. I’ve dabbled and banged things out but it’s always felt pretty soul less, until tonight.

I sit here now, the fingertips of my left hand blissfully aching having played for hours. It’s a painful tingle because the skin was no longer hardened to take the abuse steel strings throw up. Hasn’t been for years.

Felt good. In tune. In time

I noticed lots of negative comment appear from some Spurs fans spitting about their sense of betrayal and disgust at Keane for leaving hence this entry at all.

From my perspective Keane will be missed, he’s been a super player for Spurs over the last 6 years. He consistently ran his socks off, supplied, scored and led by example. To suggest that overnight because he’s wearing a different colour jersey those attributes are no longer valued and absolves us from admiring is bigoted.

If he chose to accept Liverpool’s offer that’s his business. He grew up supporting them – as a child of the 80′s who can deny the sleek skills Dalglish, Hansen, Keegan, Rush, Barnes & Co would have been intoxicating to any aspiring young footballer. For Spurs, there’s £20.3 million worth of new dreams for Juande Ramos to help ease the pain.

I wish Keane well. I am sorry his move will be thought of poorly in certain quarters. I’m more sorry I won’t get a chance to salute him while still in a white shirt for all his service.

In the immortal words of Jed Bartlett, what’s next?

I was totally looking forward to Batman: The Dark Knight tonight. Batman Begins was (and remains the uncontested) best of the Batman bunch not to mention a stand out film on its own. It had a plot that flowed, made sense, engaged its audience, had cool gadgets, clearly knew how to build and maintain tension and crucially didn’t take itself too seriously.

I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this …

While I’d love to say its out of some high brow sense of fair play to not give the story away to anyone who hasn’t seen the film yet (only opened in the UK yesterday) but I’m not going to go into more detail at this point.

Truth is, I just can’t bring myself to write about it. My initial reaction is that the joke ultimately was on us and with so many moral absolutes drowning the film’s laughter I’m simply too tired to care.

Who knows what it’ll lead to .. 2012?

My back is entering into a world of pain competition. I’m sure of it, there’s no other possible reason for all this discomfort.

My car has started telling me it needs a service – there’s a light that comes on when it wants attention – it feels like only yesterday I got it serviced before going to France for the rugby world cup. Surely more than a Munster Heineken Cup victory and ten years have passed since that dreadful period of time?

I have a stack of ironing that resembles the leaning tower of colour looking at me – not necessarily the most restful thing to see before nodding off to dreamworld.

Finally, a nod to Madame Marie and her telling fortunes better than everyone else.

Gourmet food = nice food for very small people. The tiniest of the smalls. Gapping mouths around a table may cause waiters to run for extra side dishes that may arrive ten minutes after main dish quickly inhaled. I’m just saying things like this could happen.

Virgin trains are the singular cause of global warming judging by the full air con they’d going on this morning between London and Liverpool when there was absolutely no need for it.

Taking down the make and number details of random cars in a random car park will draw the attention of the security guards, especially on the docks in Liverpool.

I’ve stayed in this same hotel room before, in Dublin.

There is no way for me to be productive after 4pm on only four hours sleep and no biscuits or sweeties with afternoon tea.

Irish coffee doesn’t come with whiskey in this town, judging by the taste, what’s that all about?

What do you get when you put a bunch of people together who all work for the same company across different locations and functional areas but don’t know each other? A hefty food and wine bill that no sane individual wants to be responsible for.

So ends my first day in Liverpool (aka city #44) and I have to say it’s gone well. It was a lovely, if brief drive from the train station to our hotel with some stunning looking buildings and not a hint of Cilla Black anywhere.

Let’s see what tomorrow brings in this European City of Culture 2008 – at the very least I hope it involves me no longer having “so ferry, ‘cross the Mersey” going round my head like a car doing handbrake turns.

I can only hope.