Days roll on, and pass without me noticing. I can imagine myself waking with a start early one morning, shuffling to the bathroom and standing in front of the mirror, examining my withered blotched face in horror. I'm in old age, and the years have quietly passed, politely adding up without complaint. What's provoked this is that it's been over 6 weeks since I got back from East Asia - longer than I was away, but I wouldn't notice this unless I had a calendar in front of me, because days in London just drift past, mainly as a rainy parade of computer screens and concrete, scowls and abuse.

Don't get me wrong - it's hardly the worst place in the world to live - I've seen Pyongyang and the slums of Nairobi. And what would the citizens of Falluja or Baghdad give to be anywhere but there? But I can't help but persist in my view of London - a claustrophobic and oppressive sewer of exhaust fumes, delays and selfishness. For me, the stickers on the tube train windows supporting the farcical bid for the 2012 Olympics sum up the city's shambolic indifference to efficiency, standards of living and social values. It's just a little thing, but the stickers can't be viewed for the most part on the tube. They are see-through, the text on them is in black - so when you're in the darkness of a tunnel (and on the London Underground you normally are, often motionless) they serve no purpose at all. Someone's been paid lots of money to come up with them, the job has been half-heartedly done, no-one's thought it through, and no-one really cares.

But away with the self-indulgent wankery - surely I've been doing some worthwhile things? As seen below, I've spent an evening with Sir Roger Moore - I've also been to see him read Kipling at the British Library. I've enjoyed Bill Bailey's fantastic Part Troll, been pleasantly surprised by The Thrills' set at Brixton Academy and vaguely disappointed by the Gwen and Augustus John exhibition at Tate Britain. And along with its beautiful districts (all too expensive to live in) and its acres of parkland, the diversity and accessibility of art and culture is a seriously redeeming feature of London.

And so it was that I turned up at the Queen Elizabeth Hall the other day to hear some authors reading their work. Laila had a spare ticket, so I said I'd go along, without knowing who I was going to see. Noticing 'Faber & Faber's 75th Anniversary' imprinted on the ticket was intriguing, but I still didn't expect the startlingly impressive line-up. The whole thing was MCed by Andrew O'Hagen, who fumbled through his opening speech before welcoming PD James onto the stage. In a 1930's continuity announcer's voice she read a forgettable scene from a forgettable murder novel, and soon O'Hagen was back, introducing the next reader.

An Asian man, in black jeans and black t-shirt, with floppy centre-parted hair lolloped to the podium and read from his most famous work. Despite appearances, he wasn't a physics student reading from a dissertation, but Kazuo Ishiguro reading from The Remains of the Day. His reading was slightly stilted, but it didn't detract from the excellent material - although the audience seemed a little underwhelmed. Conversely, they opened up to Alan Bennett who was on next, snorting with laughter and love at his cuddly English ways. Amongst other things, Bennett read a compelling passage from The History Boys, which turned from an analysis of Hardy's Drummer Hodge into an easy-going muse on the nature of reading.

After the interval, literature's most famous transsexual took to the stage (assuming Nadia Almada's autobiography, Chop and Change, has yet to be published). Jan Morris was charming and self-deprecating. She read from her poetic and thoughtful books on Trieste and Venice, all the time with her hand against her face, apart from when making witty asides. Next Hanif Kureishi read from the Buddha of Suburbia, before the Nobel prize winner himself, Seamus Heaney, was wheeled out to gruffly mutter through his poems (including the obligatory Digging), which he did excellently. What struck me about all the readers was their lack of arrogance and pride. They are all hugely successful (whether commercially or critically) authors, but they all seemed down-to-earth and personable. I wondered if it would be the same if the evening had presented a handful of famous actors or artists.

Fighting through the scrum for signed books after the event, I realised that evenings like this make London worthwhile, even for a 'miserable, moody old shit' like me (to quote one of my 'friends'). At least the streets can be escaped, and the exhausted city-dweller can find refuge in a cinema or theatre, at a gig venue or in a gallery. Given the buses that arrive with the regularity of a solar eclipse, the elusive 'for hire' taxis and the feckless underground system, the only problem is getting there.

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Fucking hell! I've actually won something

Look!

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An Evening with Sir Roger Moore

Last Sunday I was absent-mindedly flicking through the pages of the Barbican's cinema program for October - I don't live far from the concrete fortress, and have a made a resolution to make more use of it. I was slightly disappointed that I had missed 'Travels in Greeneland', a season of films based on novels or screenplays by Graham Greene, and turned over the page to find out what seasons were currently running. A Roger Moore season.

My excited fingers fumbled over the keys, but I eventually managed to phone the box office. Unsurprisingly, all tickets for 'An Evening with Roger Moore', in which a film was to be shown followed by an interview with the man himself, were sold out. I despondently booked a couple of tickets for a showing of The Spy Who Loved Me and consoled myself with the thought that there was no way I could have acted earlier to get tickets. When they were freely available, I was probably still cooped up in North Korea, where I imagine they haven't even heard of Lord Rogerson of Mooreshire - although my guide there was aware of the North Korea element in Die Another Day, despite not having seen the film.

I didn't give up. Over the next few days I pestered the box office for returns, and e-mailed the marketing department at work to see if they could get any tickets. Eventually, Leo and I decided to simply head down to Cinema 1 on Thursday evening and hope that there would be some no-shows. But then, yesterday afternoon my phone rang. It was the woman from marketing. She'd come up with the goods - plus they were press tickets, so I didn't even have to pay.

The evening started with a showing of The Man Who Haunted Himself, a psychological thriller from 1970. Roger Moore plays an uptight City gent, who is involved in a car accident, and briefly dies on the operating table before being resuscitated. Once he's up and about again strange things start to happen - he is reminded of events and conversations he's sure he hasn't experienced, he is charged with business deals and negotiations he doesn't recall and a beautiful photographer swears blind that he is having an affair with her - sadly for Roger he can't even remember any details of this. Either he's going mad or there's a doppelganger on the loose. It's an engaging film, shot through with some fascinating footage of London in the early '70s. Roger and a debonair moustache turn in an impressive performance, which should silence those detractors who say he can't act.

A recent article contains his rather touching account of that performance:

When asked about the film nowadays, I always reflect that it was one of the few times I was allowed to act. It's a terrible admission from someone who has made a living from walking in front of cameras. Though, in my defence, I'd previously been cast in roles that required a relatively straightforward approach, either as a romantic lead, heroic lead - or just holding a spear, as I did in my first movie. I'd never been dramatically stretched, as they say.

The credits rolled, the lights came up and Roger entered the auditorium. He walked past my seat, down the stairs and on to the stage where he chatted to his biographer, Gareth Owen, for an hour or so, before the audience were invited to ask questions. Sadly I wasn't given the opportunity to ask any of the array of questions I had for him (What was it like working with the Richards Burton and Harris? Are you still interested in animation and cartooning? What do you think of John Sessions's depiction of you in Stella Street And, (after reciting some specific lines from Octopussy) what do you think of my impression of you?) I also couldn't thank him for escorting me around the Forbidden City last month. Some of the questions that were asked were well presented and interesting. Others, including one asked by the obligatory stalker (not me), were a complete waste of time and were along the lines of 'You once turned on the illuminations in Morecambe in 1974, do you remember a small boy who looked at you a bit funny?' Morons.

So he chatted amiably for another hour or so, about his work for UNICEF, Bond, his on-stage collapse and told and re-told countless anecdotes about his mostly dead actor friends. He came across as a warm and genial man, genuinely self-deprecating and surprisingly down-to-earth. For a 77 year old he has plenty of energy and enthusiasm and took every question, moronic or otherwise, with good humour and charm. It was an excellent evening and I was very lucky to get tickets. All being well I'm off to see him read Kipling at the British Library next week as well.

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I'm still in Beijing, and it still surprises, infuriates and delights in equal measures. An oddly moving moment last night - Claire and I headed to the Houhai Lake area to find some food, and having satisfied our hunger we slowly made our way back to the hotel. On the way, flanked by the lake on one side, and a busy road thick with trundling electric buses on the other, we found dozens of couples in each other's arms, dancing. A rudimentary speaker system played slow and more upbeat Chinese songs, while the couples delicately twirled or gently stepped back and forth to the music.

Over the weekend we headed north out of the city on a train. Fortunately we had bought our tickets a couple of days previously - the station at first seems impenetrable for a foreigner. There is a special ticket desk for non-Chinese - it just takes a while to learn of its existence a track down. We were headed for Chengde, a medium sized town, four hours away by rail. The journey there was pleasant - the train smoothly took us past more rural scenes, as well as dusty mountains and small towns. For some reason I was harassed for much of the journey by a couple of small Chinese children - their courage grew from simply staring to, nearing the end of the journey, open physical abuse.

Chengde is home to a huge park and palace complex - similar to the Summer Palace in Beijing, it served as a holiday home for the Qing dynasty emperors. The literal name of the park, as translated, is 'Resort for Escaping the Heat', and it took us a day or so in all to explore. As well as heading into the hills in the west of the park, where we shared our walk with various creatures including deer and chipmunk, we went rowing on the large willow lined lake. There are also plenty of temples in Chengde to keep the tourist amused, and we visited a couple, including one called Putuozongcheng Miao, a Lamaist temple, the outside of which is designed to look almost identical to the Potala Palace in Lhasa.

But Chengde also offered a rich variety in the food we ate - or tried to eat. We almost managed to order successfully in a restaurant and a tea-house with no English menus. But on both occasions we miscalculated slightly. In the restaurant, an order for a pork dish turned out to be a large plate of wobbling dark orange pig fat, while in the tea house, on ordering chicken on a stick, we were presented with some things on a stick that looked as though they had been designed by H.R. Giger. They were, I think, silkworm pupae. They tasted OK. We also enjoyed a Mongolian hotpot in Chengde - since the diner chucks his own ingredients into the bubbling soup stock, we were on safer grounds with this.

Back in Beijing, yesterday we stocked up on souvenirs such as kites and a lot of various types of tea. And today, we headed up to a section of the Great Wall of China. We walked 10km along the crumbling structure, from Jinshanling to Simatai. It was exciting to finally get to the wall, and see it snaking over the hills into the distance. The walk wasn't too demanding, although there are some tough uphill stretches and parts where the path has disintegrated to the extent that finding an easy way is challenging. But the real difficulty was presented by the weather. The rain poured down for most of the three hours we were walking, and the wind rushed through us at the highest parts of the wall. At one point mist closed in, and all we could see was the track in front of us, as cloud bubbled up on either side of the wall - it seemed for a second like a pathway to a mythical kingdom. Unfortunately the reality behind such fantastical thoughts was hard to ignore, and arriving at Simatai thoroughly soaking, we had to buy a whole change of clothes from eager stall holders - for our own health and to preserve the upholstery of the car that took us on the long journey back to Beijing.

The day after tomorrow I'm off to a country which prohibits cameras with excessive zooms and mobile phones. Sadly, internet access is definitely out of the question, I should imagine.

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The colour that best defines Beijing is grey. The roads, the buildings, the sky - all are grey, a colour which mutes the bright temples and red lanterns that swing above streets and doorways. But despite the impression this might give, the city is captivating and dazzling, the streets full of constant diversions and for a foreigner, almost everything can give rise to endless speculation.

What first struck me was the traffic. Gridlock characterised much of the journey from the airport, which eventually ended in a narrow hutong close to the centre of Beijing, the location of the charismatic hotel - where I managed to meet up with Claire. That evening we struck out towards the flashy shopping area of Wangfujing, where, to continue the traffic theme, we discovered that many of the main roads through Beijing's centre take both courage and minutes to cross - they seem as wide as motorways.

Over the next couple of days we orientated ourselves - the obvious starting point was Tian'anmen Square, vast and liberally peppered with tourists and monuments, this place does, in a way, feel like the centre of China. Given my new-found hobby of viewing long-dead Communist leaders, Mao Zedong's mausoleum beckoned, a grand structure parked in the middle of the square. Visitors are allowed to see Mao in tightly regimented groups. Claire and I had to fall into ranks in such a small group, and then solemnly march towards the mausoleum. Many of the Chinese in front of us chaotically broke ranks on spotting a flower stall, running towards it and waving money at the vendor to buy tributes to Mao. But soon we were inside the mausoleum, passing by a statue of the erstwhile leader benignly relaxing on an arm chair. And then there he was, much thinner than I expected, lying under a hammer and sickle. To be honest, he looked like a waxwork - and there are rumours to this effect. Supposedly the real Mao was so distorted during the botched embalming process that a wax model had to be used instead.

We continued our acquaintance with the Tian'anmen Square area the following day, passing under the giant portrait of Mao to enter the Forbidden City. The place was packed with tourists - notably giant flag-following tour parties, each member identifiable from badges or colour-coded baseball caps. Like us, they wandered the collection of lavish pavilions, alleyways and gardens, enclosed by the high red walls of peeling paint. Perhaps like me they tried to imagine the palace as it was - populated by high officials, eunuchs and concubines. It wasn't an easy picture to conjure, despite remembered scenes from The Last Emperor. But the majesty and history emanating from the Forbidden City is awe-inspiring. Plus I had an excellent guide in the audio-tour. Sir Roger Moore provides English speaking tourists with a friendly and easy-going route through the main buildings.

Often, when directing me to the point when I should next turn on the guide he would say:

'Take a few minutes to discover the area, and I'll meet you over at marker number 5, just by the large incense burner'.

On finishing the tour, he hoped I had enjoyed it adding:

'Personally, I have enjoyed it immensely'. Which was good to know.

As well as the major sights, we have also enjoyed some of Beijing's many parks and lakes - a pleasant refuge from the bustling streets, they are also perfect for people watching. Tai Chi enthusiasts practice along side rehearsing opera singers. In the early evening, bats fill the sky flitting over pagodas and the still surfaces of the lakes. And as usual, people stare at us - surprising perhaps for such a cosmopolitan city.

Yesterday we took a hutong tour, riding a rickshaw through the ancient lanes of the low grey houses - Beijing used to be full of these little alleys, but now most have been demolished, the few hundred remaining cluster around the centre of the city. The tour was fascinating. As well as visiting the home of a hutong dwelling family and enjoying a tea ceremony, we visited a kindergarten. Claire was suspicious that the place was a 'show kindergarten' - and she may have been right. It was certainly well equipped, with CCTV cameras and a ball pool. We arrived during morning exercises when all the 'little emperors' were out in the playground, running in circles and generally being endearing. Some were shy, some pointed at me and laughed (not unusual among children here I have discovered) others came to talk to us through an interpreter. I asked some of them what they wanted to do. One loud little girl wanted to go to university and make money for her family. A boy wanted to be a policeman, another girl wanted to work at McDonald's.

'McDonald's is dustbin food' said a boy to the girl. She shouted back, as did he, and the conversation disintegrated into an uninterpreted, typical toddler brawl. I suddenly became a little overwhelmed with the innocence of the children. It was a great place to visit.

After a quick stop at the hotel to shave off my beard, we headed to Yonghe Gong, a Tibetan temple. The over-ornate pagodas and brash decor is more how I expected the comparatively restrained Forbidden City to be. The centrepiece of Yonghe Gong is a huge 180 metre standing Buddha carved out of sandalwood. I imagined him coming to life and rampaging through the city, like the marshmallow man in Ghostbusters.

There is too much going on in Beijing to write about in much detail - every aspect deserves a comment and every comment begs questions which can't be answered - so much is incomprehensible. As well as the above we have drank lots of tea, seen the ornate Temple of Heaven, picked our way through the hectic shopping of Dazhalan and gorged on fatty Peking Duck.

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