Spring has sprung and the new year's in with something less than a bang. No Ruz (new day), which is to goldfish what Christmas is to turkey, felt early in the coming because there were an extra two days of holiday in the week preceding it this year - with the mourning of the Imam Hassan rotating on the Islamic calendar to two days before oil nationalisation day.



Cue picnics, quiet Tehran streets and mountain walks. Leaves are forced through the buds of trees and the sun is suddenly a little warmer. Two clear weeks of national holiday are upon us, which after the frenetic rush to get things done before No Ruz is something of a blessing. It's a magical time of year when people celebrate new life and a new start from the exact moment of the spring equinox.



And cue goldfish. Little ones swimming nervously in big tanks outside every supermarket. They will be playthings for a couple of weeks and then, in many cases, flushed. When Tehran was smaller and life simpler, so my Iranian friends say, this annual piscene holocaust was avoided. Houses used to have a pool in the basement connected to jubs and qanats, and the fish would be returned to these. A watery haven instead of a watery grave. Such is modern city life.

I plan to visit a couple of picturesque neighbouring towns for day trips and take in the sights and sounds of Rey and Varamin, the old southern quarters of Tehran. Over the next fortnight Iran's larger tourist spots will be heaving with crowds as holidaymakers head for the Caspian, Isfahan and Shiraz to see in 1386 with their families.

The last Tuesday night of the year is for bonfires and fireworks. But this year the occasion went like a damp squib. In recent years the streets have been crowded till well after midnight as revellers leap over fires and throw bangers at each other. It is a teenage paradise, where the rules are broken for a night amid huge public gatherings. As you can imagine, the security people hate it, and recent years have seen confrontations between police and angry kids with a grudge against authority.

This year was different. The bangs and whizzes were fewer and came from gardens out of the public realm. Bar a few small family gatherings, the streets were largely quiet. Dozens of riot cops loafed around Mohseni Square on Mirdamad Street, often a focal-point for flare ups with local youths. They lounged against police cars and stared insolently at passers by. A few streets down there were a couple of bonfires with younger kids jumping over them and letting off bangers. I saw a family suddenly cast against a tall whitewashed wall by a roman candle at the end of a street and in the distance heard the whining siren of an aged fire engine that thundered past a minute later.



We went up to Darband, where a disused house had caught fire and a crowd shouted instructions to firemen as they worked to extinguish it. "It's flaming again this side... no - over there." I thought the roof might collapse on their heads but when we passed the same way an hour or two later, it was charred but erect. The taxi driver told us why the Chaharshambe Suri crowds stayed in: "They said it on the radio a couple of days ago. If they arrest anyone tonight, they're in prison till after No Ruz - that's three clear weeks!"

It's a bit mean to take the mickey out of mistranslations - especially if you can't speak other languages very well. But this one is class. And it's had the English-speaking population of Tehran in giggles for weeks. It's the film we all now want to see...

This must be one of the longest city streets in the world. I measured it on my Tehran map with a ruler at about 14 kilometres, running from the railway station downtown to Tajrish square in the richer northern suburbs. Apparently it was built to improve military communications between the centre of Tehran and the royal palaces uptown - modern traffic has put paid to that idea, leaving the tree-sheltered, shop-lined, traffic-clogged street so beloved of Tehranis today.



Walking the length of it was always an appealing idea. It felt a bit like trying to capture something of what Tehran means by cutting a straight line through its varied neighbourhoods. The city topography is easy: north is up, south is down. Chronologically, socially and financially the same is largely - but not always - true. Tori Egherman and I decided to walk up. The joobs, deep roadside gutters, were flowing slowly with melt water from the mountains above, carrying the filth of rich people to the older, poorer bowels of the city.



Around the train station you can feel the hardship. As we looked for camera batteries an old man walked past with a polio-crippled leg, puffing the last embers of a cigarette stub. The shops sold overalls and hardware. A long line of people queued outside a warehouse for subsidised food. Every woman wore a chador. Trade down here goes by neighbourhood. A few motorbike shops all close together. Shoe shops further up, with sports and camping shops. Then medical supplies. Tori and I agreed it is good to know where these places are.



A man had returned from Canada and accosted us somewhere south of Jomhuri St. He wanted to talk politics. "If the Americans attack, we will be ready," he said. People were stooping as they passed to pick dates and sweets from a tray, which is often laid out in the street by a bereaved family after a death (above). A few streets up, baseball, American football and basketball paraphernalia was on sale in the sports shopes. Tori befriended the men in a juice shop. They were traditional, open and sports-mad.



The most unexpected discovery was a stamp shop. The collection had been passed down for two generations and the shop was now run by a young man (above) who had let his little finger nails grow very long in an old fashioned affectation signifying he does no manual labour. He had stamps from the South Arabian sultanate of Hadramawt - which was absorbed into communist south Yemen in the 60s. He also had bank orders for tomans from the 1920s, printed in New Malden in Surrey, close to where I grew up, and payable only in certain Iranian cities. They bore the sumptious whiskers of Nassereddin Shah.



The oriental planes start at Neauphle le Chateau St, named for Khomeini's place of exile in France. It is the high boughs of these trees that give Vali Asr such a distinctive feel, sheltering the street from the sun in summer and the rain and snow in winter. They continue all the way to Tajrish, past Vali Asr crossroads (with Enqelab St), Vali Asr Square, Vanak Square and Parkway junction. Tori's husband Kamran (above, who despite not coming on the walk insists he's not lazy) took us to lunch at Vali Asr Square. There are good restaurants further up the road - Hani's cafeteria opposite Fatemi St is probably the best.



The shops are more expensive as you head up the hill - but not necessarily better. There are also more parks (the terraced sides of Park Saiee are very pretty), more places to eat and drink, and a greater sense of leisure. The murals improve too. Some show stylised scenes from old stories. More revolutionary ones show martyrs and the face of Khomeini - glimpsed here in an old picture just inside a doorway. The large mural at the junction with Mirdamad St shows war martyrs from the religious minorities, their names written in Hebrew and Armenian.



But in Park Mellat a little further up, most attention is given to a man walking a little Pekinese dog, abhored by the religious authorities but cooed at by almost every couple walking in the park. I suppose some things just defy legislation.

Another day, another demo. Yesterday was 22 Bahman, "the tenth day of dawn", 28th anniversary of the revolution and a rallying cry for regime loyalists in the face of increasing US hostility. It certainly seemed larger than last year, perhaps a reflection of the creeping concern about the threat of sanctions - or even war.



Iranians sometimes seem puzzled that the slogan "Death to America!" and similar ones are taken seriously by people in the West. "It's just a circus" said a friend last night. When you talk to the people who chant it, few of them (but definitely not all) seem overwhelmed by a burning hatred. This is not to say that they like the American government, but lots of these 'revolutionaries' seem almost put out if you suggest that their words would deeply offend many Americans.

Marzieh Naddaf, an idealistic, but perhaps rather naive, architecture student, insisted the slogan didn't mean Iranians were completely against the American people. "The message of our revolution is peace, humanity and trying to get a divine goal," she said. But she said every policy of America was against Iran and this made Iranians angry. Her words were echoed by Hamid, a 19-year-old student who said Iran and the US could have a "good connection" through conversation.



A few slogans and placards spotted yesterday: "George = donkey" on a picture of an ass drawn by a little boy; "The events of Ashura were the roots of the Islamic revolution", a speaker; “Onwards at the command of the leader, we’re all your soldiers Khamenei, we await your orders Khamenei, oh freedom loving leader, we’re ready” a group of women in chadors, fists raised. Effigies of George Bush, Condoleezza Rice and Tony Blair were brandished - and in some cases burnt (see above).

Away from these demonstrations, it's rare to meet people who harbour a grudge against the US or Americans themselves (unlike the wicked British). But even among the revolutionary hardcore, the relationship is more complex than you might expect. Fatimeh Marambegi, a housewife, repeated the more extremist slogans about the West and then asked which British universities would better suit her daughter. Her brother lives in the US with an American wife and has a greencard.

Occasionally an Iranian says to me "You know, I'd be really, really pleased if the Americans did come and get rid of this regime." That sort of comment certainly doesn't seem to reflect a widespread attitude either, and you wonder whether the people who say such things would really feel the same way once the bombs started to fall. I think we would be more likely to hear "Death to America" chanted in earnest.

Today is Ashura, the day of mourning for the martyrdom of the Imam al-Hossein at Kerbala in 680. Even in my sheeshy uptown neighbourhood, the drums and amplified laments have added a doleful soundtrack to the past few days. But this time it seems strangely subdued. Perhaps it is the relative absence of posters depicting the Imam as a handsome young knight, which have been criticised by Qom theologians. The only ones I saw at Tajrish were on a wall of the bazaar alongside images of pop stars (below). Last year a huge one hung next to the mosque.



Last Moharram also coincided with the Danish cartoons row. Protesters attacked Scandinavian embassies with cries of "Ya Hossein!" and "Kerbala!". Given that most of them seemed to know little about the cartoons themselves (or to care, much), they used Ashura as a sort of rallying cry before launching themselves at the indifferent ranks of riot police with stones and molotov cocktails. As a protest, it seemed as heartfelt as the tazziyeh plays that act out the last days of the Imam: a good way to let off some emotional steam, but fundamentally unreal and performed within strict boundaries.



Some of my more secular Iranian friends dislike Moharram, with its dour public face of grief. But I enjoy the processions of flagellants, the evocative drumming, the pageantry of tazzieh and customs like distributing food. The other night a friend remarked that if you transported officials from Washington to see a procession, they might want to bomb on the spot. There is, it is true, something a little sinister about the first view of a procession of men, all in black, green bands round their heads, extolling martyrdom as they thrash themselves with chain whips to the beat of a slow drum (above).



But take a closer look and you'll notice how many of these young men are the same ones who cruise the streets swapping phone numbers with girls. They wear their hair fashionably gelled, listen to Western music and wear the latest trendy clothes. It is a mistake to assume that cool kids can't be religious, but it's equally silly to interpret traditional rites as marks of fanaticism. For some of these young men (particularly the strong ones), Ashura processions seem to be expressions of machismo. Flagellants carry themselves with panache and the men chosen to bear the heavy ornate standards (above) do so with swagger. After all, everybody looks good in black.

Whenever you quit Tehran for a day or weekend trip, you wonder why you don't do it more often. Southwestern Iran - the cradle of ancient civilisation - was the venue for last week's jaunt, taking in Shushtar (very underrated as a tourist destination), Shush (overrated) and Choqa Zanbil (another extraordinary and unique Iranian building). An afternoon mountain drive through Luristan provided the scenic splendour; Kate brought the picnic.



Even if you've travelled a fair bit in Iran, it has great capacity to surprise. Shushtar has a bizarre network of ancient hydrolics, where a Sassanian canal of the Karun river cuts through the sandstone and once powered 30 flour mills. A charming mosque with a leaning minaret, a distinctly Khouzestani imamzadeh (above) and a couple of ancient bridges add to Shushtar's sense of a busy history. Arabs in dishdashas and Bakhtiari nomads in their stylish woollen coats and black bellbottom trousers lend it a colourful local identity sometimes missing in small Iranian towns.



Choqa Zanbil (above) is another of those one-off structures - like the palace at Firouzabad, Oljeitsu's dome at Soltaniyeh, the imamzadeh at Mahan, and, so I'm told, the tower at Gonbad-e Kavuus - that give Iran so much potential depth as a tourist destination. The 3,000-year-old ziggurat has a peculiarly modern feel. The brickwork is in excellent condition and could have been put up yesterday, with its stylish insets and elegant narrow stairways. My only problem was a complete inability to relate to the people who built it. What did Elamites look like? What did they do? It may as well have been plonked there by aliens.



Shush is pleasant but dull. The ancient palace of Apadana, once the seat of a great empire, is now a series of small walls overlooked by a tall castle, built out of ancient debris by French archaeologists to ward off rampaging bandits (such Gallic style!). A quick look (nobody could accuse us of being thorough) and we were off for the hills, and a picnic on the serrated edges of a tight gorge in what was once prime bandit country (above). It's smash-and-grab tourism - the southwest in a day.

I just tried to buy something with PayPal and got the following message:

Error 3028. You have accessed your account from a sanctioned country. In accordance with international sanctions regulations, you are not authorised to access the PayPal system. For more information about your PayPal account status, contact complianceverifications@paypal.com.

Friends say American credit cards have had this problem for some time. Are British ones following suit? I'm not sure how any country was brought to its knees by preventing people shopping at Amazon, but the ways of international finance are apparently mysterious.

An excellent new book of photographs from Iran is just coming out. The pictures give an unusual, often personal view of the country that will tell you far more than the classic shots of chadors, ancient ruins and turbans so beloved of the visitor.

Buy a copy at: http://ashtarydesign.com/

The BBC revelation of an Iranian offer to the US in 2003 shows how far the balance of regional power has changed. Back in early 2003, Iran was seriously worried about the threat posed by the US as its arrival in Afghanistan and Iraq threatened to surround the Islamic republic with "a ring of steel". It is not clear where the deal - involving compromise on Iran's support for Hezbollah and its nuclear transparency in return for promises to end aggression towards Iran and disband the MKO - came from. But it seems very unlikely such an offer could have been made without the approval of the Supreme Leader. That it was dismissed so summarily by Dick Cheney says a lot about the overconfidence of American leaders four years ago.

More recently the shoe has been on the other foot. American problems in Iraq, the high oil price and dissatisfaction at home with military adventures weakened its position. Iranian strategists played down the need to make concessions while President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad kicked up a storm.

But now there is a growing sense of concern in Tehran that Iran has overplayed its hand and missed a good time to negotiate from a position of strength. The Holocaust conference made it very difficult for Western politicians to sit down with Iran without being lambasted at home. The US is talking tough, sending more armour to the Persian Gulf, arresting Iranians in Iraq and generally rattling its sabre once more. Another opportunity to talk has slipped away and each side may come to regret the rejection of overtures made by the other in times past.