Travis Elborough has been a freelance writer, author, and cultural commentator for more than a decade. His books include The Bus We Loved: London’s Affair with the Routemaster, Wish You Were Here: England on Sea and London Bridge in America. With Bob Stanley from the band Saint Etienne, he co-wrote the script for How We Used to Live, a BFI London archive film directed by Paul Kelly, that premiered at the 2013 London Film Festival. He is currently the Chisenhale Gallery’s 2014/5 Offsite Artist in Residence in Victoria Park, East London.

1. Are you happy?

Well, as Ivor Cutler once put it, ‘I’ll punch the man who says I’m not.’ Not that Ivor seemed especially happy whenever I occasionally ran into him in Camden Sainsburys in the late-1990s. Though he didn’t punch me. On one occasion, he did ask me about the quality of the tomatoes. As I rarely bought fresh tomatoes back then I felt unable to offer an opinion on them, which perhaps might explain why he became a little grumpy.

2. What are you reading at the moment?

I have just finished Amit Chaudhuri’s Odysseus Abroad which is a such a brilliantly delicate London novel, a semi-autobiographical snapshot of a day in the life of an Indian student in digs in Warren Street in 1985. Hardly anything happens, the main character , Ananda, visits his wastrel uncle in his bedsit in Belsize Park, who always claims to live in ‘Hampstead’ and consults the Pan Book of Horror Stories as others might the I-Ching, and they wander about a bit. But the digressions that emerge, which range from what’s reassuring about Postman Pat and Mr Ben to the absence of toilet breaks in James Bond, and much else besides, make it an absolutely wonderful book. To paraphrase V S Pritchett on Turgenev, it is the sort of novel where the whole meaning of life is revealed, seemingly unintentionally, on a Thursday. I’ve also just started another ‘historical’ work of London fiction. Cathi Unsworth’s Without the Moon, a fabulously realised crime novel whose setting is the bomb-scarred capital of the early 1940s during the blackout and the blitz. So far, a vicious, if debonair, serial killer is seemingly busy picking off brassy streetwalkers and good-time girls alike.

 3. What was your worst job?

In terms of financial renumeration, perhaps this one. But in terms of general working conditions… there were some lower moments retrieving shopping trolleys from a multi-storey car park one snowy January.

4. How many hours do you work each day?

It varies enormously but it always seems far too many for minimal sums of cash actually earned.

5. Town mouse or country mouse?

Definitely town, there are more than enough trees for me in the park.

6. Does love bring happiness or misery?

True love, happiness, misguided infatuation taken for love, misery.

7. Mp3 or vinyl, real or e book?

I remain wedded by habit, age and stubbornness to vinyl. The rituals of the LP, in particular, the sleeves, the sides played, the needle, fluff and cloths, the whole experience enhanced by the scents of the record (rather waxy) and the cover (woodlouse dampish) which remains as heady as incense to me and equally intoxicating, before we even get to the music. As perhaps can be surmised I am all for real books too: books where you mark your place by folding the corner of a page, or you can doodle on with a pencil if you feel like it. As Dickon Edwards, one the diarists who appears in A London Year, recently commented, at least print doesn’t suddenly open up mid-page and try and sell you a Volvo.

8. What are your three greatest pleasures?

My wife, wine and song.

9. Do you believe in the nap?

I doze. I suspect I drink far too much coffee to nap.

10. What advice do you have for young people?

Don’t listen to anything anyone over forty tells you, and especially not this piece of advice from someone who was born in 1971.

A London Year: 365 Days of City Life in Diaries, Journals and Letters is published this week in paperback by Frances Lincoln. Edited by Travis Elborough and Nick Rennison it is available to buy through the Idler bookshop by following the link to the right.