The Hours

What I find strangely humbling is sitting in a room within a row of houses which were once home to Clive and Vanessa Bell, Lytton Strachey and Virginia Woolf, and discussing the notions upheld by the Bloomsbury set. I'm looking out of their windows at the same view of Gordon Square that they would've gazed out at, discussing extracts from diaries written in those very rooms and debating the strengths and weaknesses of their arguments and philosophies. A presence in the room whispers "You are not worthy!" But we ignore it. Bloody Virginia shuffling around in her slippers and dressing gown with stones in the pockets, sucking on those filthy roll-ups. And if she thinks that prosthetic nose makes her look anything like Nicole Kidman she's got another think coming.

What a day. Jude walking and then discussing the pros and cons of stand-up comedians with Anna - our good friend, cleaner and dog-walker - and general saviour at times of emergency. In a heated debate over coffee Anna upheld the merits of Roy 'Chubby' Brown whilst I batted for Ricky Gervais' team. We agreed on Eddie Izzard and Peter Kaye, but agreed to differ on Lee Evans. I stuffed several hefty tomes into my rucksack (the Thompson Local and last spring's Ikea catalogue) and headed off into town.

The library was reassuringly quiet and I piled up a stack of books on a desk and started to plough through. I always get a strange sensation when I'm looking up at the highest shelf that the whole cabinet is toppling towards me. Crushed by books - what a way to go.

The theme of this evening's lecture was the Bloomsbury Set (well, enough about them already) and the changing attitudes towards Victorian art of the type shown at the top of this entry. That's Frith's The Derby Day by the way. The everyday Victorian middle-classes loved them (we spit on the everyday Victorian middle-classes), the Bloomsbury set loathed their sugary sentimental narratives, later historians didn't have anything nice to say about them either until the 1960's and 70's that is, when they began to be reexamined in terms of their cultural relevance as opposed to aesthetic quality. By the way, we're not talking about the Pre-Raphelites here, they were coming from another place altogether. ("Another place!" Thank you.) The lecturer then raised the issue of semen - which I thought was uncalled for quite frankly. Apparently Lytton Strachey had pointed to a stain on Virginia's pinafore dress and said, "Semen?" That incident had kick-started those worthy intellectuals into discussing such risque subjects as sex thirteen to the dozen in a context that was to pave the way for things to come as it were, which brings us neatly back to the semen stains. We all put in our two-penneth worth, then shuffled home for our tea.

Jade Goody on Jonathan Ross again! Pur-leeeze! It was funny the first time, but now the joke's worn a bit thin. I switched off and wrote a letter of disgust to Anne Robinson. She likes them - allegedly.