I go to see <B>Enduring Love</b> at one of my favourite Odeons in London, the Wardour St branch. To gain entrance, one has to take an ordinary tower block-style lift to the third floor. It's like visiting someone's flat rather than a multiplex cinema.

This is a New British Film, an adaptation of a 1998 novel by Ian McEwan. His stories win big, dinner-jacketed literary prizes in print and make small, creepy little films on celluloid. The film version of The Cement Garden is a particular favourite of mine.

So as the Odeon lights dip, I am cheering it on from the sidelines, hoping so much that Mr Daniel Craig, who's in nearly every scene, won't let me down. Which is appropriate, as that's exactly what his character is so obsessed about. Has he let down a stranger whose lethal fall he's witnessed? Or his girlfriend? Or himself as a Good Man? Or has he let down all three? It doesn't help that an unkempt loner, Mr Rhys Ifans, has started to follow him about, living purely to deliver Mr Craig to God's Love. By way of his own love for Mr Craig.

No wonder Mr Craig gets through so much wine in the film.

Enduring Love is at the mercy of its own opening scene. Mr Craig and his girlfriend, Ms Samantha Morton, are having a nice sunny picnic in a coruscatingly beautiful open field, somewhere in the Oxfordshire countryside. All seems perfect. But they've barely opened the first of the movie's many bottles of wine when a big red helium balloon drifts into the field and changes their lives.

The balloon's grey-haired pilot is being dragged helplessly along the ground by its anchor rope, and there's a terrified young grandson in the passenger basket. Mr Craig chooses to do The Decent Thing and rushes to help, along with some other male Samaritans, including Mr Ifans. At first, this enormous, silent, angry symbol of Man Versus Nature is brought under control. It's clear at this point – and entirely relevant – that Mr Craig has become the default leader of the group, being the fittest, strongest, quickest-thinking and most sensible Man in attendance. The other Men have deferred to him instinctively, while Ms Morton has chosen not to get involved at all. Oh, the rich symbolism of it all! That Mr McEwan's original novel is on the A-level syllabus should surprise no one.

Then the camera cuts ominously to Nature's Point Of View. We become <i>the wind itself</i>, rushing into the field, scooping the balloon and all the manly rescuers up into the air. A man is killed – and it may or may not be the fault of Mr Craig.

It's a scene that's at once terrifying and awe-inspiringly beautiful in its silent execution (in every sense). Balloons are beautiful, noiseless and graceful things, even when they're killing people. Lesser film-makers would have used CGI and an intrusive soundtrack. So all credit to the director for choosing to film a real balloon and keep the scene heart-stoppingly free of a composer telling us how to feel. If only they gave out awards for Best Opening Sequence, Enduring Love would clinch every one. Saving Private Ryan would come second.

Sadly, one must consider the rest of the film. After reeling from this startling opening of beauty and horror, a brilliant depiction of Mr McEwan's imagination; we are wrenched away and dropped head first into Enduring Love London. Which appears to be a depiction of Mr McEwan's own life.

It is a London of nice white middle-class types, with their successful careers as artists and academics, having countless dinner parties, wearing glasses in bookshops and meaning it, typing away on laptops, appearing in The Guardian, and having lunch at the Tate Modern to discuss being on The South Bank Show. I'm not making this up.

I start to wonder if the director, who also made Notting Hill, is referencing and sending up Richard Curtis's notoriously idyllic version of London. After the emotionally exhausting first scene, perhaps he wants to have a bit more fun than the original novel permits. Cue sly insertion of a Peter Cook joke (see my earlier diary entry).

To consolidate this theory, he has cast Mr Nighy as someone funny (like he was in Mr Curtis's Love Actually), and Mr Ifans as a scruffy Welshman who gets in the way (like he was in Notting Hill). At one point Mr Ifans sinisterly sings the Beach Boys song, God Only Knows, which soundtracks the final scene of Love Actually.

Also, Mr Craig's Tate Modern dining partner is played by Mr Andrew Lincoln. Who was in Love Actually playing a kind of… stalker. There, he dealt with his camcording infatuation of Ms Keira Knightly by showing her cue cards, then walking away saying "Enough" to himself; his stalking days apparently out of his system.

No such cue cards and unlikely London snow for Mr Craig. He hides his Blue-Eyed Sensitive Boxer looks and well-toned physique behind a nice pair of glasses (this means he is An Academic), and tries to get over the nasty Big Red Round Thing of his recent past. But the accident eats away at him, he sees red spheres everywhere, he acts obsessively, and when Mr Ifans starts stalking him, he over-reacts significantly, shouting "Keep away from me – or I shall <i>gut you like a fish</i>!"

Now, Mr Craig is such a physically wonderful actor, so at home within his own skin, that we entirely believe he could rip the skinny Mr Ifans apart with his bare hands, let alone require a fish knife. It's hinted that his sense of Potential Violence is a direct influence on Mr Ifans's later actions, that by doing so he has changed Mr Ifans from a sad, harmless sort who just needs professional help to a dangerous violent threat to him and Ms Morton. That it it may be Mr Craig who is the truly dangerous one. So it's just a shame that the film then plays this down in favour of a cliched kill-or-be-killed struggle for a kitchen knife, turning it into just another sub-Fatal Attraction thriller. Bring back the balloon, I say.

I leave the cinema so unsatisfied that I pop into Borders and buy the Ian McEwan novel, hoping it contains a better ending. Which, I'm pleased to report, it does. The book finishes with a letter, giving us a terrific insight into Mr Ifans's character that the film denies us. It also posits the thought-provoking idea (also suggested in the Peter Schaffer play "Equus") that Deranged Love outstrips Normal Love in terms of pure, poetic passion, in terms of certainty about one's lot, and that this may even make it an enviable state of mind.

To be fair, the film doesn't entirely leave this theme out. In a scene halfway through, the two men accuse each other of being "lost". But that's as far as it goes; there's no follow-up. No last letter. Never mind the men: the real loss is this film's potential.

The film does improve on other aspects of the novel, though. Mr McEwan's balloon as he originally meant it is grey, not red. For all its faults, the film would be a far less poetic animal if the makers hadn't made this crucial revision. I wonder if their choice of red might not be a knowing adult twist on the 50s French film "The Red Balloon", which also had a small boy and a red balloon with a mind of its own. Or perhaps it's a nod to Don't Look Now, another film with a tragic opening scene, a sinister use of scarlet, and a bloody ending with a big knife.

I note that Mr Craig's character in the novel is pushing 50, fat and balding, unlike the rippling thirtysomething he is in the film. In the book, Mr Ifans is a wealthy, ex-public school English-accented Londoner living in a huge house in Hampstead; as opposed to Welsh and living in a small flat in what looks like Kilburn. Quite why they asked Mr Ifans to keep his accent is beyond me – he's played Peter Cook with convincing enough Posh English tones. Did they really prefer a slightly sadder Spike from Notting Hill?

The Fatal Attraction knife of the film isn't in the book either – there's a gun (in fact, a whole sequence of gun-getting), a small pen knife, a shooting in a restaurant and a suicide threat. All of which are omitted by the film, and I just can't understand why. The movie could only benefit from them.

Ms Morton's character has also been changed for the worse. In the book, she's a sensible literary biographer. In the film, she is a Guardian-featured artist who makes bad clay busts of Mr Nighy and Mr Craig, tempting audience members of a certain age to start whistling Mr Lionel Richie's "Hello".

One final complaint. After the impressive lack of music in the opening scene, the rest of the film resorts to featuring one of the most inappropriately tacked-on cod-classical scores I've ever heard at the cinema. Backing music is meant to enhance a film. Here, it grates and distracts.

My conclusion to you, Dear Reader, is to see the film for its opening sequence and excellent acting all round, then read the novel immediately afterwards to wash away the movie's baffling shortcomings.

Otherwise, Enduring Love will only endure in the mind as Love Actually meets Fatal Attraction… on Chardonnay.

After viewing Mr Nicholson Senior's art at the RA, I sit in Borders Books Cafe, Charing Cross Road. The cafe is now a Starbucks, so I only use it if the one in Foyles (still an independent family business) is full-up. And then, as I do in all Starbucks, I only ever order tea. Tea drinking as a revolutionary act, I like to think. The joke's on me, as their tea is revolting. Clever, very clever.

A young couple seated near to me are talking loudly to each other about "gigs".

It is only after some time that I realise it's not concerts they are discussing.

Neither is it "gig" as in "job", used in a spirit of matey modesty. As in "I got the Spielberg gig".

They are, in fact, discussing different types of <i>iPod.</i>

2005 London in a nutshell.

I watch the movie Enduring Love at the Odeon Wardour Street. At one point in all the intense psychological goings-on, there's a rather good joke that's not in the original book by Ian McEwan:

<b>Joe (Daniel Craig):</b> You're mad!
<b>Jed (Rhys Ifans):</b> They said that about Jesus.
<b>Joe:</b> They said it about a lot of mad people as well!

Then I start to think. Where have I heard this line before?

<b>Dudley Moore:</b> You're a nutcase! You're a bleeding nutcase!
<b>Peter Cook:</b> They said the same of Jesus Christ, Freud, and Galileo…
<b>Dudley Moore:</b> They said it of a lot of nutcases too!

<i>- from BEDAZZLED, the late 60s Cook and Moore movie. Script by Peter Cook.</i>

Mr Ifans played Mr Cook in the recent biopic "Not Only But Always", which includes scenes from the making of "Bedazzled". I suspect that has something to do with it.

I feel far too pleased with myself for spotting this.

Two films recently watched, with a few things in common.

The Station Agent. Quiet little US indie-flick. Music by queer indie muso (Mr Stephen “Hedwig And The Angry Inch” Trask), former Dawson’s Creek actor in cast (Ms Williams), Ms Patricia Clarkson (from Far From Heaven and Dogville) excelling in a main role. Like Mr H Macy and Mr Nighy, she must give hope to actors everywhere that, even in these youth-obsessed times, Movie Life can really begin at 40.

Here she’s a scatty, coffee-spilling artist who befriends Finn, a trainspotting loner. Finn inherits a disused railway shack, where’s he’s happy to be left alone by people. Entirely understandable, given the unkind reception he gets from strangers due to his restricted stature. Children shout “where’s Snow White?” as he passes them on the street, while a shopkeeper takes his photo without asking. I’m not convinced people would be THAT outwardly cruel in real life – and these moments are my only criticisms of an otherwise brilliant film.

The DVD box blurb cunningly evades using the word “dwarf”, leaving it to the sleeve photos to make Finn’s – or, rather, the actor Mr Dinklage’s – most distinguishing feature apparent. The Daily Mail would probably call this sort of thing Political Correctness, but it’s really DVD blurb as Good Manners.

I’m reminded of Thora Hird’s fading resident of an old people’s home in Mr Bennett’s “Waiting For The Telegram”.

“Then we start doing these exercises, naming folks. I’m quite good at that… Rene, Mary, Hilda. And then I get stuck. She says, “Describe, Violet. Say, the lady in the yellow frock.” I said, “The black lady.” She said, “No, Violet. It’s better to say the lady in the yellow frock.”

“I says to Francis, “It’s a complicated business, talking.”

The best character in the movie, though, is Joe: a gregarious Cuban hot dog salesman. He is an almost puppy-like boyish man who lights up the screen, his absence equally palpable in the scenes without him. Reminiscent of one of the more cheering characters in Dickens. Joe Gargery in Great Expectations springs to mind.

These three well-written characters mope around quietly in the leafy New Jersey wilds, along with Ms Dawsons Creek and a bored loafing schoolgirl, for 90 minutes. They become tentative friends, the tentative friendship is challenged, a lasting friendship is confirmed. It’s a tried and tested basic story, but with memorably original characters. And it’s so easy on the ears. Nothing explodes. No car chases. Actually, there is a train-chase. But it’s quite a quiet train-chase. A marvellous film.

Pieces Of April Another quiet little US indie flick. Though as with the other film, I use the word “little” purely in terms of budget and duration. Pieces Of April takes a mere eighty minutes of one’s attention.

Again the music is by a queer indie muso (Mr Stephin “Magnetic Fields” Merritt), again there’s a former Dawson’s Creek actor in the cast (Ms Holmes), and again Ms Clarkson is present and correct.

Here she’s an unkind mother riddled with breast cancer. Rather than improving her character, even making her saintly (as cancer films tend to do), her illness has rendered her even more unpleasant. When asked if she has one single nice memory about her estranged eldest daughter (Ms Holmes), she cites an incident that turns out to be her other daughter. She also takes delight in showing her mastectomy photos to her own Alzheimer’s-stricken mother. Not something one sees very often in the movies.

Ms Clarkson spends most of the film holding court in the back seat of the family car with her loving but long-suffering relatives, on the way to visit Ms Holmes in New York. Despite having to stop to vomit messily in a service station bathroom, one hand on the sink, the other guarding her chemotherapy wig, Ms Clarkson is very much the vehicle’s strongest spirit. She uses her cancer as a whip to order others around, or to belittle them with impunity. Terminal illness as an extreme form of passive aggression. Once again, not something too common in films.

Meanwhile we get to spy on the car’s destination: the minimum-rent NYC flat of eldest daughter Ms Holmes. She is preparing them a Thanksgiving meal. It will be a final attempt, the poor father hopes, to make one pleasant memory between mother and daughter, before mother dies. But as soon as her live-in boyfriend goes out, her oven breaks down, forcing her to seek aid from the mixed batch of residents in the other flats. This being the metropolis, her neighbours are complete strangers to her. This being a rather well-written film, they’re all characters that could get films of their own, even if their dialogue amounts to a few lines of turning Ms Holmes’s appeal down.

One such neighbour is a slightly strange, immaculately-dressed man played rather well by Jack from Will & Grace. Far less camp than Jack, far more… worrying. His only companion is a pampered pug dog constantly cradled under one arm. At one point he holds Ms Holmes’s uncooked turkey to hostage, as punishment for her lack of manners. She calls the police to report a kidnapping.

Needless to expatiate, Mr Jack’s character is the sort of part I’d love to play myself.

Despite the subject matter, Pieces of April is frequently genuinely funny and genuinely moving without resorting to crass sentimentality. Like The Station Agent, it’s the perfect film to watch if one is feeling pessimistic about The Soul Of Man, and indeed The Soul Of American Screenplays. Hats off to the makers of both films.

I get in and turn on the TV to see what life is like in 2005. Brigitte Nielsen and Bez From Happy Mondays are standing silently next to each other at the bathroom mirror, cleaning their teeth. I turn it off, lie on my bed, and feel like I am the last man on earth.

A sign of the times. "The Motorcycle Diaries" is available to rent, but only on DVD, not VHS as well. It's happening to more of more of the big new titles. I'm having to explain to AV customers with no DVD player exactly why they can't watch this highly-acclaimed and popular film. It's often middle-age couples who are VHS-only; never keen on new technology. Well, my 60-something father can operate a DVD machine. Though I admit he's not a typical 60-something.

"Haven't you got the <EM>normal </EM>version of this?"

I sometimes apologise to these customers on behalf of the entire movie industry. There's no video version, sorry, they just didn't make one. DVD is the normal version now.

Such annoyance is understandable, but it's not like CDs replacing vinyl. No one will miss "the feel" of VHS. Not really. With its moving parts and twisting tape, with its shelf-guzzling bulk, postage-guzzling weight, and ability to shatter when dropped out of its case.

I'll miss it the least. It's quite personal. I'm still seething from the time VHS bullied Betamax out of the domestic video market. Betamax: a compact, cute, fast, sexy, less clunky little cassette. Everyone knew it was the better format. But VHS had more financial clout, spent money to promote itself, and won the 80s format battle. It's a bit like Concorde. Just because an invention is better, doesn't mean it won't become obsolete, leaving us forced to use an inferior version. The love of money for the few taking priority over the love of improving life for all.

Like many, my family started off with a Betamax, but were eventually forced to switch, leaving us with dozens of obsolete Beta tapes. One day, I thought, you'll get yours, VHS. Now that day is here.

No sympathy with occasional customer sighs. I'm dancing merrily on the VHS grave. Revenge at last. God bless Professor DVD and his invention.

And how sweetly appropriate that it is The Motorcycle Diaries that's helping to accelerate this format revolution with something small and shiny. It is, after all, about a revolutionary leader. In the format of the compact (5ft 6) and definitely shiny Mr Gael Garcia Benal.

Thanks to Ms Naher (<lj user=bettinflammen>), I find a computer shop on Tottenham Court Road that recovers all the data from my deceased hard drive. Old mails, mp3s, images, the lot. Cost is £140. Still not cheap, but far preferable to the £500 I'd been quoted elsewhere. The phrase my father would use is Tuition Fee. The price&nbsp;paid&nbsp;for learning a lesson. In this case, always make regular backups in future. A happy ending to one recent source of woe.

While a nice young man called Hassam&nbsp;is fiddling with my hard drive, I go to the First Out cafe for tea and scrambled egg on toast. Ms Emma Jackson is there with&nbsp;Ms Isabel Waidner, distributing the curious new fanzine-cum-newspaper they've created together. It's called The High Horse, and is printed on yellowing tabloid-size newspaper stock, with photocopied handwritten corrections. Mostly text, with a pull-out collage art poster, featuring a horse and a Joseph Beuys quote. The first page cites Hegel and uses the word "hegemonic".&nbsp; The whole thing is styled as a kind of thoughtful punk rock Pravda. Anything goes, as long it's an interesting read. One laugh-out-loud piece is Mr J's evesdropping of a couple discussing how camels rear their young, their knowledge based entirely on looking at a poster for the film "The Story Of The Weeping Camel", and guessing.

Articles include Mr Bob Stanley on the origins of the London Music Hall, plus Ms J's erstwhile colleague in the band Kenickie, Ms Marie Nixon, on the troubled history of her hair. When I see Mr Adrian Lobb is also a contributor, I tell Ms J I spotted his name in the credits to "Finding Neverland", as a stand-in, presumably&nbsp;for Mr Depp. Mr Lobb, one of London's doe-eyed club boys, could easily look like Mr Depp's floppy-haired JM Barrie from a distance. Ms J reassures me that it must be a different Adrian Lobb.

She tells me she's currently doing an MA. I start to explain what I'm up to, but take too long in describing how the Jerome book and the Decadent Handbook came about. I really must&nbsp;prepare a concise, clear&nbsp;answer to the question "what are you up to?", along with the one, "what do you do?" for strangers. Other people manage this sort of thing with much less fuss. I used to always say "Oh… I slip and slide through gaps in time and gaps in make-up."&nbsp;That seemed to keep people happy. I may revert to it.

Walking down Charing Cross Road, "69 Love Songs" by the Magnetic Fields is blaring out of a practice amp set up outside the music shop Macari's.&nbsp;Shockingly blatant noise pollution for some, but for me it does the trick, and I go in to buy two packs of guitar strings purely out of gratitude. Music shops usually tend to have atrocious taste in music. Not this one.

I'd better use the strings, then.

<A href="mailto:thehighhorse@hotmail.co.uk" target=_blank>For a copy of The High Horse, price £1.50, email here.</A>

Mr Therapist thinks I should have taken the AV job. Just what I need after making an uneasy decision: people telling me I've made a mistake. He says I'm sexually attracted to sabotaging my own life, to destroying my own time. That the so-called accident prone side of me is a subconscious manifestation of this side. That I'm a perfectly normal person (with a modicum of talent with words), who has placed himself upon a pedestal and refuses to do Normal things. Rendering me immobile, stuck, but that's the only way I like it. Taking the job, getting off benefits, would mean a Life Change, and that's something I'm scared of doing. And this destructive side is also the source of my depression. So he says.

I don't deny I need SOMETHING. I'm just not convinced the retail side of things is what I'm best at. I've been at AV a few months now, and I'm still making basic mistakes, giving customers the wrong change, not knowing how to juggle customers with friends when friends come in to say hello. I've been told off a few times. My heart tells me I can't do this full-time. Is it possible one's heart is an idiot?

I must be good at <i>something</i> in this world. Something that can sustain a modest living.

Oh dear, now I'm at fully home to Dame Self-Doubt. Is it time to cut my hair off again?

Archway Video offer me a full time position. After much agonizing, I decline. I effectively turn down an enjoyable job in a pleasant part of London, within three minutes walk from my bed. It's not the money – I could do with the money. It's not the use of my time which I could be spending on more creative acts – I know all too well that having nothing to do all day often means one ends up doing… nothing all day. Even Mr Larkin continued to stamp library books until he died.

It's the responsibility. Working full time would mean me locking up at night, and I just don't trust myself. My accident-prone Frank Spencer side would see to it that sooner or later Something Would Happen. I'd find myself counting the days to being sacked in disgrace. I just couldn't take something awful happening on my shift. The place is unique. Much of AV's back catalogue video stock is deleted and irreplaceable. When "Before Sunset" ("one of the most romantic films ever made") came out last year, AV was one of the few places one could get hold of "Before Sunrise", the film it follows up. As you might imagine, many people wanted to watch this first film again. Rather startlingly, it was currently unavailable to buy on any format. Bit of an oversight on the film company's part, I thought. Possibly something to do with rights. Regardless, the AV video copy suddenly found itself upgraded from Weekly to Overnight, and has been constantly rented out ever since. It can finally get a break soon, as both films are finally released on DVD next month.

Pretty much every paid job I've ever had has featured me breaking something, or ruining something, or getting told off constantly. At 18, I worked in an Ipswich video shop. One night, the police called. I hadn't set the shop burglar alarm properly, resulting in a blaring siren waking up half of Ipswich. Which, as you might imagine, is no mean feat. I had to be driven into town to reset the alarm.

Then there was the time I worked in a convenience store in Bristol circa 1990, which also rented out videos. One day, I unplugged their computer from the mains, in order to plug in the hoover. Result: the computer's entire video rental records were wiped. It was one of those old 80s computers that needed to be closed down properly before switching off. I can still remember my tears as I was frogmarched to the filthy shop basement, plunked into a seat and told to wait till the manager arrived. Which he duly did, in a bad red tracksuit. The clothes some people wear when they're not meant to be at work. He couldn't sack me – they had trouble getting staff on their wages as it was. But the manager gave me this big pep talk – no, a lesson – about The Trouble With Me. About how I had "a monkey on my back". Or was it my shoulder? He said, "Some day, you'll thank me for what I'm telling you now."

Well, I can't remember a word of what he said. Just his appalling taste in clothes. That showed him.

Then there's the soup I spilled on a customer during my shortest ever job. I was a lunchtime waiter in a Suffolk pub. Hired and sacked within one hour.

And then there's the countless times I was Sat Down and Told Off about The Trouble With Me at Our Price, Hampstead AND Holloway branches. More tears.

I recall the time a friend told he'd met one of my erstwhile Our Price Colleagues.

"I used to work with Dickon, you know," she said.

Pause.

"Everyone really hated him."

I really did my best at that job to Get On and Work Hard. And if anyone I used to work with is reading this, I'm sorry if you hated me. I didn't hate you. What was it I did that annoyed you? Or didn't do? Perhaps you'd like to tell me about the Trouble With Me. Everyone other employer has. The usual email address.

Then there was the village pub washing-up job where I was attacked by their three small yapping dogs, ripping the bottom of my trousers to shreds. I wouldn't have minded, but they did it <i>every day</i>.

You see, Dear Reader, this is all very amusing for you to read, but I have to <i>be</i> me. This isn't a sitcom, it's my life. I'm 34 this year. I think I've effectively put the case for me being Unemployable in most normal jobs that other people find so easy to do. You can't accuse me of not giving the things a go.

Something unconscious inside me even seeks out this klutz-like trouble, I think. The other day, I found myself wrestling furiously in the window with a newly-erect Hellboy. He is a double-sided free-standing cardboard cut-out, backed with "Envy", a straight-to-video affair with Ben Stiller and Jack Black. Setting up this display unit had deckchair-like Comic Potential which somehow brought out my inner Slapstick Child. I wasn't falling over deliberately, but some side of my character wanted me to. No one was watching, needless to say. It was the saddest thing in the world.

Ye gods, what a history of woe. And this is only a fraction of my Record of Employment. The more I think about it, the more I feel the world truly does owe me a living. So the deal I have made with myself is this. I only have the right to turn down a pleasant full-time job if I treat writing like one too. Really, this time. Get up and clock on. Songs, stories, and at least one diary entry a day.

Above all, I know Archway Video could do better than me, and I would feel guilty occupying a position meant for someone else. <i>I</i> wouldn't hire me to lock the place up at night, so why should they?

So. There's a full-time position available at <a href="http://www.archwayvideo.com">Archway Video</a>, the greatest little film library in North London.

A good quote cited by Victor Lewis-Smith in the Evening Standard.

"The difference between kinky and perverted can be described as this. Kinky involves using a feather, while perverted involves using the whole chicken."