August 8, 2003. 3am. West central London. I'm jamming coins into the road.

Coming home from an excellent night's clubbing with Simon I chanced upon a road where the yellow "no parking" lines were being re-painted. The machine that does this is like a tall wheelbarrow whose main wheel is a paintbrush, dispensing lines of thick yellow goop, durable, and incredibly viscose even when fresh.

I noticed that there was a gap in the line, and immediately before it an extra specially large dollop of paint. As though the machine had hit a bump, coughed up a little more phlegm than it was supposed to, regained its composure, and then carried on.

A blob of fresh paint, I thought, what could be done with this? I opened my wallet, found a suitably shiny 10pence piece and proceeded to squish it into the drying paint with pretty much every ounce of energy I could summon. No joke, despite still being warm to the touch, yellow lines are thick. There's a reason they use industrial blowtorches to remove this stuff. I had to stack a pound coin on top of it and then stack myself on top of that, bouncing to drive the disc of metal into its new home.

A couple of guys across the street starting their milk-round gave me some odd looks. But not as odd as when I whipped out my camera and appeared to be photographing a small kerbside section of a London street.

Wanna see?