I'm coming to understand that it's only the smallest setbacks and pettiest squabbles that make me despair. Perhaps I should be ashamed of such a lame admission. After all, if you can't cope with minor distress, how will you cope with genuine difficulty?

There is a certain logic in such a question. Nonetheless, I have begun to think something like the opposite.

It seems to me that the genuine difficulties of life are not hard to process and therefore should not induce despair. The genuine difficulties may be incomprehensible, infuriating or heartbreaking, but at least they fit into those patterns of incomprehension, fury and heartbreak that human beings intuitively recognise and to which they can respond. Instead, therefore, it's the setbacks and squabbles - those moments that founder on minor selfishness, disrespect and scorn - that leave an honest man (well, me) bewildered and sometimes despairing.

An example: this afternoon, I was walking through Hammersmith Station, talking on my mobile. Coming the other way was a woman of about 45, likewise gassing on her phone. With both of us concentrating on our conversations, we almost blundered into one another. Now face to face, I raised my eyebrows at her and mouthed an 'excuse me'. She held the phone a little way from her cheek, sneered and spat 'you cunt' before stalking past.

I stumbled on a few steps before being overwhelmed by a profound sense of what can only be described as despair. The reason was this: I couldn't say that the woman was damaged or evil. She wasn't. She hadn't lost her temper or her marbles. I couldn't blame the fickle hand of fate for her behaviour, nor Father Time's often cruel sense of humour. In fact, the only possible explanation was that the woman was a little over-confident or insecure, self-important or plain selfish - small human inadequacies with which it's hard to sympathise. And so I didn't. Rather, I felt depressed, despairing even, at the state of people.

Funny - i've just read through the above and it does sound lame. Is that because it is lame or because I haven't expressed myself accurately? I'm not sure.

Closer to home, on the road where I live, I came across one of the infamous bags of shit that have become somewhat notorious in this neck of the woods. It seems that one of my neighbours takes her dog's shit and puts it in a plastic bag and then leaves it in the gutter. The Darkness has seen her at it. Often, several little shit sacks sit there for days at a time until someone parks on them or treads in them or, possibly, the council clears them away. I confess that this behaviour doesn't bother me as much as being called a cunt by a complete stranger. Nonetheless, I am a little baffled by my neighbour's thinking. I mean, you would have thought that when you'd put a dog shit in a bag, the hard work of the waste disposal process was done, wouldn't you? Apparently not.

I slightly wish I hadn't written this diary entry. I'm not sure this is how I want to represent myself; not even to myself. On good days, I still see a film star in the mirror.