Dateline: Thursday 17 January. Dull, artsy clouds punctured with eye searing white sunlight, a fine drizzle or seaspray and everything beginning with A on my IPod, I am utterly alone on the stretch between the fish stall and the seductive pieds a terre of Messrs Slim and McCartney. It is Thursday afternoon, not even a jogger breaks my solitary journey. But I have a bizarre unsegued and therefore shocking combination of Bill Withers, Peter Green, Brenda Lee, Free and Joan Baez for company.

I have a moment of physical uplift near the tea hut when a seagull actually catches a thermal only about 15ft above me to the first strains of FMac's Albatross.

There I am, walking. After years of sitting around. Just a generously, too generously proportioned blonde nanna in a lycra snowboarding two piece barging purposefully along, there and back, wherever that may be. I am at the beginning of Project Walkabout.

I have decided to Walk....about. I've got an hour every day and I want to do something on my own.

See, people don't, generally, Walk About. When we were newly hatched reptiles in the media, we had to Walk About to Get Stories, but I haven't done it since.

Anyway, people go for walks to get fit, to escape, to arrive somewhere, usually a smart organic cafe with arcane legions of milkshakes and heavyweight Sunday papers, perhaps, but, always, there has to be a reason.

My reason for Walkabout is simply the Walkabout. To go out and see what is out there. On my doorstep.

OK, I am busted, I guess I will lose some weight and that's always good, but I have decided that I will Walkabout for no reason.

Like the Aboriginals.

Thursday is bracing but unpromising.

Friday I walk into Brighton. This is a walk I've done before but it's still a revelation because I haven't done it for a long time on my own.

I walk around Brighton's North Laine as if it were for the first time.

I see some colourful, gorgeous, legal graffiti on the old Argus building that's been there for two years. I'd never noticed it.

A homeless person defecates in front of me in a doorway opposite the Karen Millen shop, in broad daylight, I reel, this is just too much irony.

Around another corner another homeless person pees in the street, clutching the special brew can, an obscene performance poem perhaps to the true function of the human frame: merely a machine for turning beer into pee.

Saturday. Baz joins me on the walk. We stride pretty fast as he has much longer legs than me. They are roughly a foot longer than mine. This means he's an appropriate companion for my brisk walk although he is strolling.

There is a demonstration in Brighton in which we get caught up. It just looks like hundreds of young frightened cops against about 17 cross people in dreadlocks and rainbow jumpers to me.

The spectrum-clad ones do not want a local factory to make bits for nuclear warheads. Neither do I of course. A young girl caught up in the moment squirts her water bottle at some Police and I get the fallout.

Unfortunately the silly booby has been flicking her butts into it so I am smeared with a nicotine & fizzy water cocktail but it doesn't do any harm.

We get bored with the demo and pound off into the North Laine again.

Sunday I can't walk as I have to rehearse, but I stand in Alan's house for about three hours going through the 80 drum loops on his brand new keyboard, marvelling at the disappearance of the pantheon of old rock beats which have been replaced by the sort of stuff favoured by the terminally funky, Timbaland and Jan Garbarek.

I do not share with Al that I have some trepidation about matching these arcane beats to our menu of Old School chestnuts but I don't want to rain on his New Keyboard Thrill, so I keep schtum.

Monday. They are right about endorphin addiction. I leave the flat like a bullet, the small and achingly trendy rucksack on my back, ready to recieve coconut powder and chilli oil too yummy ever to make it into a supermarket. I strike off for Portland Road where the shops are very interesting to say the least.

Within yards you can buy any screw bolt or nut, a good health food shop which takes my anti bullying freephone helpline postcard for their noticeboard, a fancy dress hire shop will clad you for belly dancing or you can score a hundredweight of okra should you need it from an Asian greengrocery wholesalers. The whole glorious retail mishmash is garnished by a 'hydroponics' emporium which could be a front for, who knows.

I can't believe the arsend of Hove can host so many hair salons. Who are all these coiffed people? Where are they all? Are they in their houses admiring each other's bouffants? It's a complete mystery.

Tuesday. Going through the three thousand songs on your IPod alphabetically is almost alchemical in its genius.

The first thing that happens is that you realise you have a lot of music you've never actually heard. Some you never want to hear again. This includes, for me, Alfie, by Lily Allen.

Miss Allen squeaks in her faux Chav accent a lot of predictable prose over a horrible Euro beat. She is like Pam Ayres with a click track. The first 8 bars are a complete rip of Puppet on A String, how does she get away with it? Mind, her dad IS mates with Damien Hirst.

Anyway, today I am back in Portland Road, feeling more exploration may be needed. But this time I thump along and suddenly throw a left for no reason into the residential area.

I suddenly happen upon a row of shops, an island of poshness and independent retail preservation. It's almost picturesque, considering it's about two minutes walk from the dreary council estate that lies past the now empty bingo hall halfway along Portland Road itself.

Here, the substantial terraced houses are Victorian and desirable. There's a posh flower shop, a butchers with 27 varieties of sausage, a Post Office that is still thriving, and a deli.

I bound into the deli, pausing my backing track of the Pet Shops singing Always on My Mind. Don't ask..

'Don't suppose you have any real cream cheese?' I enquire.

A look of empathy and recognition passes between myself and the woman who is about to deliver. We both know that Philadelphia is pretend-food.

She merely holds up a 4 oz pot and raises one eyebrow.

I heft my rucksack around, grab my purse and the deal is done.

Later that evening I take a dollop of the gorgeous stuff, lather on some chilli oil and settle down for a rice cake dip.

The cream cheese is a bit off, actually. But I have a Buddhist view of disappointment - that it is inevitable. So I shrug.

All part of the rich tapas - try?

I do have a digeridoo, it came from Just Flutes in Walton on the Hill, Surrey, so it's a sort of modernised, G-Plan digeridoo, not a lovely chunk of Australian tree.

But we do what we can.