On Easter Sunday, I walked out of the ICA cinema feeling desperately stupid. I’d booked a ticket to see The Tale of Princess Kaguya, but the guy at the desk didn’t warn me it was dubbed, not subtitled. On the one hand: why should he? The information was available on the website, I should have checked. But I thought the ICA was an art house cinema, so I automatically assumed they’d show the proper version.

I’m not a total anti-dubbing fascist. If you use proper voice actors it can be a great skill to get it right, coupled with a sensitive translation. And I grew up watching dubbed spaghetti westerns, Jackie Chan action flicks and late night animes. I could handle it, or so I thought.

Wrong. This was excruciating. They’d hired in Hollywood actors to do the voices, which I can understand if you’re looking to put famous names on the poster and attract a new audience. But voice acting is a subtle and different skill to acting on screen. I’m sure James Caan and Lucy Lui are great, but they were terrible here: at turns booming, screeching and whining, distracting from the gorgeous, almost impressionistic animation on show.

So I walked out after twenty minutes. the staff were sympathetic and understanding. Without giving me my money back, obviously.

On Monday night I got to see the film as nature intended, at the Prince Charles cinema. Writing this two days later, I’m still haunted by the loving depiction of the mountain forest home of the young princess, a dreamlike scene where she rushes from the capital by moonlight, and the beautiful end sequence, which left me sobbing in the dark.

Feeling awkward about going to the cinema on your own is ludicrous. It’s the ideal solo activity, particularly if you have esoteric movie tastes / no friends. But it’s still taken me years – decades – to feel comfortable with it. I remember going to see some (quite dull) Chinese romantic epic when at university. When the lights went up at the end to reveal I was the only solo viewer, I wanted to skulk out without anyone noticing. But university is a strange time, when humans tend to surround themselves with people and validation – when it seems perfectly acceptable to hang out in groups of twenty five of an evening. Perceived judgement is itself a touch of teenage arrogance: to think that you’re so important that the people around you have noticed what you’re doing.

Fast forward sixteen years or so, and I’ve just about got the hang of it. I still talk in a slightly overly friendly fashion with the person at the ticket desk – hey look how well-adjusted I am, I’ve got friends honest – but once that dance is over I relax into the anonymity.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve seen Bladerunner: the final cut and Laputa: City in the sky. Bladerunner needs no introduction, but I hadn’t seen it since I was young, and it had merged into a few key themes and images. In fact, what had left the largest impression on my young brain was mood: a kind of underlying rainy despondency, but a sexy one. It made the future seem impossibly terrible and impossibly glamorous, and it shaped so many of the books, films and anime I was to go on to seek.

Watching it again, it’s remarkable how well it stands up. The architecture of the future LA is still dazzling and dreamlike, the corporate pyramids scraping the sky over the litter and noodles down below. Not much jars – though I did have a wry smile on my face when I saw the vast corporate ads for Atari – and so much was left unseen, unsaid, merely suggested.

The other film was a Ghibli classic. Laputa has yer classic Miyazaki signifiers: anti war, in thrall to nature and the magic of flying, and strong female characters who give not a proverbial shit.

The film introduced to me Captain Dola, the air pirate matriarch of my dreams. Fast flying, hard drinking, belly laughing and despairing of her useless pirate sons, Dola stomps all over this film from the moment she arrives. Dola quite rightly keeps her husband working the machines on board their sky galleon while she heads off raiding and buccaneering. But there’s tenderness too: there’s one short, gorgeous scene where Dola and her husband are playing chess on board their magnificent flying machine. Irritable, honest, and utterly the match of each other, these mythical animated sky pirates are a lovely, inspiring couple.

To wankers’ paradise, Clapham, last night, to discuss Japan, the election and The Bofmeister General (our mutual friend Andreas) with Paul. I’ve known Paul since the days he was complaining about the radio edit of Oasis’ seminal 1997 comeback single D’you know what I mean (?) in our sixth form common room. An exquisitely well adjusted and kind man, Paul also rages against the passing of the years and the dying of the light like a man who knows it’s not 1997 any more.

We also talked about the election. He thinks the Tories will win. I think they’ll continue their tradition of not winning a general election since I was 12. We’ll see.

Met Russell for a climb. I told him I was covering my colleague’s tenor ukulele. He says he’ll help me buy one. Owning two ukuleles seems the height of twee decadence, but I can probably live with that.

I spent last night desperately pawing at my phone in an attempt to let it let me compel it to delete some songs and add some new ones. I ended up accidentally updating to a new operating system, which meant while it was deliberating I couldn’t go to sleep, because my phone is my alarm, and I hadn’t set it yet. Somewhere, somehow, a past version of me is pointing and laughing at the present me.

This morning I am tired but I can listen to some new music. Today’s trundle through the suburbs has been soundtracked by Jonnie Common, the charming moustache wearing gentleman I saw on Saturday. First listen, it’s Pagan Wanderer Lu meets Steve Mason, with a tiny tinkle of early Hot Chip in his soft wee voice.

Not much to report today, but by Tautatis this is a daily diary, and so I shall squeeze some words out from the bottom of the toothpaste tube. If only I’d started with the words at the bottom to begin with, then we wouldn’t be in this situation.

I have spent much of the evening watching the Nazis spread across Europe, narrated by Lawrence Olivier. The World At War is available on the BBC Iplayer, and I am finding it compelling all over again. We live in pretty appalling geopolitical times, but I think we can all agree that the Nazis really took the biscuit.

Tomorrow morning sees an eclipse. If you’re lucky enough to be in the Faroe Islands it’s a full eclipse. London’s is 85%, still pretty high. The last one round these parts was 1999, as predicted by Kula Shaker in their career-ending “mystical machine gun” single.

I remember it clearly. I was in my garden in New Malden, with Alastair, who had flown back from Indonesia earlier the same day. In fact, the route of the eclipse followed Alastair across the globe, like a harbinger of unique evil. At least, this is how I remembered it at the time.

Shortly before the eclipse, we had had a Wimpy, in New Malden Wimpy, now a Korean restaurant. The waiter, nicknamed Whirlwind on account of his speedy service, was nonplussed by the imminent majestic dance of heavenly bodies. He said he’d watch it through his car’s tinted windshield.

I followed the advice of Patrick Moore and used the pinhole and piece of card technique. Soon enough an image of the moon eating into the sun was flickering its way across my bit of card. As the skies darkened and the birds fell ominously silent, I worried for Whirlwind’s burnt retinas, and whether the sun would ever appear again.

There was a moment of hysteria, pagan magnificence and some slight giggling, before the sun started to reassert its mastery. Then my grandma appeared to tell the family that a milk float had crashed into a house up the road.

We hurried up to see for ourselves. Sure enough, the float had smashed through the low garden wall, coming to rest just outside the kitchen window. Mysteriously, the driver was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he’d gone to join Kula Shaker?

I hope tomorrow’s eclipse proves similarly memorable.

An evening of climbing in a former biscuit factory in Bermondsey tonight, with my old friend Russell. He’s a very calming presence, like a 24 hour shop or a warm radiator on a stormy night. His main news since our last meeting is the discovery of the horror channel on freeview, and with it the ability to watch the Incredible Hulk. We also discussed a proposed Arnie all-nighter at the Prince Charles cinema, conspiracy theories about the Japanese economy at the fall of the Berlin Wall, Terry Pratchett, and the 1980s cartoon MASK. 

Thereafter we retired to a kebab shop in London Bridge. As we waited for our Lamb Doners, a resting member of staff painted several pieces of cheap white bread with Nutella, before placing each inside his face. It was not the best advert for the shop’s wares. But man cannot live on kebab alone. 

We also found our way into a pub for a quick drink: the market porter, beloved of Borough traders who can go for a post-shift pint between 6 and 9am on a weekday morning. Years ago, when a still ascendant New Labour were luring young voters with the promise of 24 hour drinking, some friends and I hatched a plan to finish a night of drinking in said pub at 6am. But it never happened. Another terrible plan, terribly never brought to fruition. And now everyone else has children.

Home to housemate and the cat, both located on or in blankets on the sofa. The cat now has most of the living room dedicated to her whims and assumed pleasure. It’s a mess of boxes, more boxes, and assorted toys and hides. I see no problem with this, though. Cats spent thousands of years domesticating us, so we might as well make them comfortable. 

This blog has, until now, been only sporadically updated, with overheard conversations, travels, and the odd review. But from today, reenergised as I am by a visit to the unexotic East, I intend to write a daily update. In short, this will become a public diary, regardless of whether I have anything interesting to say. In fact: especially if I have nothing of interest to say. 

I will write whatever comes into my head, be it a simple account of daily events, treasties on the big issues of the day, or profound insights gleaned from my life of varied experiences and unexpected incidents. One recurring anxiety of mine is that life is just whooshing by, like one of Douglas Adams’ deadlines, without the time or perhaps the inclination to take stock.

Another is that I’m not writing enough. There are so many sentences in my head, and perhaps by allowing some of them to leak out, I can retain some equilibrium, like a quack self-prescribing a bit of light bleeding in order to rebalance the humours. 

And lo: at some future date, many years hence, I will gaze on this diary and rejoice at a life well lived and reasonably well recounted. Or weep boozy tears at the terrible waste of it all.

I do not expect this diary to be particularly well read. Not many are. Samuel Pepys’ own writings only achieved widespread fame because of the extraordinary times in which he lived. Plus of course he murdered all of his literate contemporaries. Today, with much of London rebuilt and far fewer suffering from plague, there are many more with the ability to write. Killing all of them would simply be too time consuming, before we even consider the moral implications. 

I find myself in Sainsbury’s, a shop, with no memory of deciding to come here. I will write more later.