Many of you will know that Neil Smith, the former tech guru at fotoLibra, and I have been working on a set of iPhone apps.

The first one was released yesterday.

It’s called Aaron’s Time Machine: London Lyte! and it’s FREE!

Go to Apple’s iTunes store, then go to App Store > Books > Aaron’s Time Machine: London Lyte! and click on Get App.

Oh — you need to have an iPhone or an iPod Touch. It works all around the world, but it’s even better when you’re physically in the City of London.

We’ll very soon be launching the full London version, which covers the Great Wen from Primrose Hill to Chelsea, from Deptford to Victoria Park, and contains 160 fascinating, scary, surprising and frankly unbelievable events that have shaped London over the past two millennia. That app will carry a minute price tag.

Then in fairly quick succession will come Aaron’s Time Machine: New York; Paris; Rome; Chicago; Athens; San Francisco; Berlin and maybe more.

It’s listed under Books because it’s a true born ebook — it couldn’t have existed in print format. The full version is a non-linear book (you can read it in whatever order you choose) with 160 ‘pages’ and one huge illustration — if the map was printed out it would measure 8 feet wide by 6 feet 4 inches deep (266 x 193 cm). A tricky print job.

Here’s what you see when the free version loads:

Aaron's Time Machine

You click on a red dot, it spins and the map flips to tell you the event that happened on that spot. Wow.

Touch the button on the bottom right, and if you’re in the locality, the map flips to show you where you are on the present day map. Wow. Wow.

Get it now!

And please let us know what you think.

That’s the tempting offer that dropped on my mat this morning.

Who could resist? But before I rushed to send off for it, I read a little more.

For example, what did it do, other than recharge my iPod or iPhone?

Well, when I read a little further, it turned out it didn’t do those things. In fact, all it did was plug into my computer, suck all the data out (I assume) and mail it, along with the contents of my bank account, to Scottish Power.

Not quite so attractive. However, you could plug it into something, so it still retained a visceral fascination for men. The fact that the device only does one thing — send your money to a single company — isn’t enough to dull its attraction. I mean, Amazon’s Kindle does much the same thing — sends your money to a single company — but at least it allows you to read a book while it’s doing it. As far as I can gather, the PowerPod just sits there, quietly sending out your money. No flashing lights, no meters, nothing.

And it’s only £19.99! I wonder how many they sold before they started giving them away?

Then to my disappointment I found it only worked on Microsoft Vista and Internet Explorer. Shame. I’ll have to pass on that one.

Anglicanism must be the world’s most non-prescriptive faith. It follows the Ten Commandments, the teachings of Jesus and the 39 Articles. It urges you to love your neighbour.

It doesn’t say that’s conditional on her not being black, or Muslim, or homosexual; it’s simply Christ’s teaching: Love Thy Neighbour.

Anglicanism doesn’t say you can’t drink wine, or whisky; there are no proscriptions imposed against eating prosciutto, bacon, salami di Milano or Scottish hen lobster; you don’t have to treat women like second class citizens; you don’t have to wear fur hats all year round or appear in public as a moving black object. You can even wear condoms, which help protect against sexually transmitted diseases and prevent unwanted pregnancies. You don’t have to pray five times a day. You don’t have to have your genitalia mutilated.

In Anglicanism men and women are (virtually) treated as equals. A person’s sexuality is a matter for themselves, not a barrier to certain occupations. Anglican priests can marry and have normal families, putting themselves in the position of most of their parishioners. They are not compelled to live lonely celibate lives, with dreams of young boys.

The leader of the Anglicans is a human being, and like all human beings he can make a mistake. The leader of the Roman Catholics is also a human being, but he cannot make a mistake. He is infallible, by the decree of his Church.

So when the nice, pleasant, intelligent, gentle, agreeable, middle class Welshman Dr. Rowan Williams met the former Hitler Youth member Joseph Ratzinger (that is, when the Archbishop of Canterbury met the Pope last week) to gently enquire why the Roman Catholic Church had performed an Anschluss on the Church of England, capturing the disaffected homophobic anti-feminist factor who vehemently disapproved of the liberalism of the Church of England, the meeting was an abrupt 20 minutes. At the end the Pope smiled beatifically and handed the Archbishop a bishop’s cross, a strange and still to be explained gesture.

Very nice, but why don’t the Anglicans just make a counter-offer?

If there are any Catholics out there who believe that priests might be allowed to have families, who accept that homosexuality is now legal in civilised countries, that some form of birth control may not be such a bad idea for the future of the world, that woman can lead as well as men, that pederasty among the clergy should not be hushed up, then come over to the Anglicans!

Love thy neighbour, after all.

How quickly would we see Benedict arriving in Canterbury?

This evening representatives of 25 states will watch as France and Germany decide who they will appoint as President and Foreign Minister of Europe. I’m a strong pro-European, and the reason Britain isn’t involved in this decision-making process is because over the years our politicians of all colours have maintained an unhealthy Euro-scepticism. It’s blindingly obvious to anyone who sets foot out of this lovely country that those states which strongly support the EU are doing rather better than we are. I want a slice of this too, but no, we have to trudge our “independent” path as a non-voting satellite of the USA.

Why are we the last to emerge from the global recession, when we were assured we were the country best placed to weather it? Why, after a triumphant promise that we had reached the end of boom and bust, are we now bust? Why was Britain still enduring rationing in 1955, nine years after the war ended, and long after the defeated nations had got their economies back on keel? Why are we in Afghanistan?

In The Captive Part 1, (La Prisonnière), published in 1923, Marcel Proust wrote

“It is beyond question that in the remote future a Franco-German rapprochement might come into being and would be highly profitable to both countries, nor would France have the worst of the bargain, I dare say.”

He put these words into the mouth of the ambassador M. de Norpois. Proust moved in high social and political circles and knew of what he spoke.

And now it has come to pass, while we look on from the sidelines.

Slumped in front of the telly in my usual Monday evening stupor, I was idly watching “University Challenge”, one of my favourite quiz shows, and musing on the usual fodder of Schopenhauer and John Stuart Mill when I was startled awake by hearing a familiar name.

Mine.

Jeremy Paxman asked a question about one of my books. He asked the teams from Loughborough and St. John’s College Oxford: “In a 2005 encyclopaedia on the subject by Gwyn Headley, what are described as ‘the clothes words wear’?”

Loughborough suggested “Adjectives”.

St John’s suggested “Letters”.

Paxman dismissed them; ” No, it’s Fonts; it was The Encyclopaedia of Fonts.”

Well! This is the only publicity that book has ever received. I was astonished, dumbstruck, and you know what my reaction was, sitting with Von and the dog in front of the telly?

I blushed scarlet.

What a strange response. I remember at school if the class was assembled and we were sternly asked “Who’s got Matron pregnant again?” I would always blush to the roots of my hair, even on those occasions when it wasn’t my fault.

It’s sad for me that the cream of student intellect didn’t know the answer, but it would have been hard for the question setters to have unearthed a more obscure book.

“Fonts are the clothes words wear”. What a great line! Such a shame I didn’t write it myself, but borrowed it from Caroline Archer. Still, as long as the book got a credit I can live with that.

Where can I buy it, I hear you shout. Oh, all right: The Encyclopaedia of Fonts by Gwyn Headley, published by Cassell Illustrated on December 15th (thanks a bunch, Cassell and David Inmann) 2005, ISBN 1-84403-206-X

Every morning Milo and I have a two mile walk before breakfast.

But as it was raining heavily all last night and still hammering it down at 7 am I thought creeping back to bed was a more sensible option today.

So it wasn’t until half eight that a cross-legged Golden Retriever dragged me round the block to collect the paper and croissants.

There was police tape across the bottom of the road, blocking off the bus route and the Parkland Walk, part of our normal morning walk. So had we actually gone earlier, we would have been turned back.

A young PC was guarding the tape, and there was a white tent on the corner of the road. Evidently something had occurred, and the young PC was tetchy, snapping at a little old lady who had the temerity to ask what was going on.

So I asked Mr Patel in the newsagents. “I dunno. It might have been a stabbing.”

A stabbing? In bosky Stroud Green? On the corner of Lancaster Road / Stapleton Hall Road / Ferme Park Road? Surely not.

But how do I find out more?

It occurred to me that while I can find out minute details of hourly life in Helmand Province in an alien country thousands of miles away with the click of a mouse, and probably full details of President Obama’s bowel movements in Washington DC as well, I can’t get access to news that impinges more immediately on me.

Like a murder at the bottom of my road.

Whenever I’ve borrowed money from a bank they’ve always been curiously interested in finding out when I intended to pay them back.

After the huge bank bailouts earlier this year I noticed that the UK government had given more money to one company, Lloyds TSB, than it had given to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland combined for their entire annual budgets. That’s the money to govern and run three countries, and the lives of 9.7 million people.

I mentioned this to my friendly bank manager and he smiled and said “Ah yes, but the payment to Lloyds TSB was a one-off, whereas the budget for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland is spent every year.”

This week the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, announced he was handing out a further £30.5 billion of our money to the banks — £25 billion to the Royal Bank of Scotland and £5.5 billion to Lloyds TSB. I guess that’s a second-off.

I wonder if he asked them when they intended to pay us back? Because I’ve figured it out for him.

If representatives of RBS and Lloyds TSB were to stand in front of the Chancellor and hand him £60 every minute, for every hour of the day, 24 hours a day, every day of the week, every week of the year, how long do you think it would take to pay us back the £30.5 billion we’ve just given them?

Nine hundred and sixty seven years. All clear by the year 2976 AD then.

No excuses for not posting in nearly two months, but fotoLibra and Frankfurt have been keeping me too busy. As has our trade association, BAPLA.

Jenson Button has won the F1 World Drivers’ Championship (hooray!), Welsh teams have made a very indifferent start to the season in the Magners’ League (but acquitted themselves well in the Heineken Cup), the English cricket team has just flown out to South Africa and won’t be back till the end of January (too long away from home) and Wales faces New Zealand next Saturday evening.

Ulp.

I am one of the few people on this planet who was alive the last time Wales beat the All Blacks. We beat them fair and square in 1977, but they cheated and won an unfair penalty in the last minute which meant the match was awarded to them. I don’t like sides that cheat. New Zealand always fields a fantastic, world-class side and have no earthly reason to cheat — but somehow they can’t help themselves. They just do. I don’t care for that.

Leicester Tigers have a similar weakness, and it was no surprise to me that the Harlequins “Bloodgate” scandal was orchestrated by Dean Richards, a toweringly great rugby player who used to play for … Leicester.

There’s talk that Wales have a good chance against the All Blacks on Saturday. Good, I’m pleased. I will be very, very pleased indeed if it turns out to be true and we beat them legally for the first time since 1953. Very, VERY pleased.

But I’m not holding my breath.