I love London. I was born here and with the exception of three years spent in a small university town - the lack of any and all public transport after 9pm still my primary scapegoat for my failure to get laid during that time - have lived here all my life.

London suits me. It is dirty, surly and unfriendly, and so am I.

I like the fact that in a city of seven million people I can be utterly alone. I do not wish to have a conversation with the person behind the counter about the weather or this thing they call Arsenal whenever I stop for Tampax or a family box of chocolate éclairs. I want to be left alone to enjoy my feminine hygiene products and saturated fat by myself and I marvel without comprehension or restraint, in the manner of a Victorian child at a bearded lady, at the people who pop up every now and then and bemoan that fact that no-one talks to one another here. I was once engaged against my will in a ten minute long episode of excruciating chit chat by the person in the left luggage office at a Glaswegian train station and the experience haunts my dreams still. If I want free and uninhibited conversation with strangers, I have drugs for that purpose.

Of course, I also profess to adore all the other things that people who live in London and are making an attempt at sounding cosmopolitan cite as being fabulous but hardly ever do. I buy my bread from Sainsburys, despite there being a Turkish bakery five minutes from my house that also does remarkable pizzas that are delicious but will leave you with random bodily ailments for three hours after consumption. I like arriving first thing on a Sunday to the Tate Modern, the better to enjoy two solid hours of the Rothko Room with minimal interruption from Joshua and Emily aged three whose enthusiastic screaming their unbearable parents gleefully take as signs of their offspring's budding genius as art critics, but I have more lie-ins.

But mostly, and without wishing to come over all Peter Ackroyd, I just like living a parallel existence with this city. Once every few years I'll have a brief yearning to go and live somewhere with an exotic postcode and it's own generator, but then I think of how long it would take anything from Amazon to reach me and realise I don't have many problems with London that the immediate and permanent disappearance of all the other inhabitants that annoy me wouldn't solve. Four million or so wiped out forever should do it - say four and a half if the powers that be are generous and let me include anyone who's ever said 'I used to be indecisive but now I'm not sure' too. Should that plan fail however - and unfortunately that's looking likely in the short term at least - I have been currently spending my commuting hours dreaming up some other suggestions for making the place even better while I wait.

1. A big helter skelter slide around the outside of the Gherkin. Office workers on their way back from lunch can pick up the mats and take them back up to the top with them.

That's as far as I've got. I don't have a long commute and what I do have is mostly spent worrying about who it is that's following me around with pad and pencil and turning my life into the Nemi cartoon in the Metro. Nevertheless, I'm open to ideas and support from all - I remain convinced that if I'd just had ten more people join me in my letter writing campaign of last year we'd currently be enjoying the whole stretch of the Thames from Westminster pier to the flood barrier drained and the water replaced with those multicoloured plastic balls from the children's play area at Ikea.