under another sun

So, a ghastly night's sleep. I took the monitor off after 2am (they said I could) and I didn't sleep till about 4 so felt a bit blurry this morning. Got out of bed early and began work on the story I started yesterday. I have assembled it from previous material, and it is working a treat. I have not settled on a name for it yet. After an hour or so of this I walked down to the doctor's office with the blood pressure gubbins, and for an appointment. The doctor was able to give me the scores on the doors, which he said were reassuring. In fact my blood pressure was okay. All I have to do now is take care of myself, shun situations that freak me out, and I may not explode like an overfed leech at any moment after all. This is a bit of a win. Off then to Brighton station and up to Paddington where I met Mum. The first of my three birds. We had arranged to meet in the station entrance. Of which there are about 17. Luckily mum had her phone and we discovered we were at oppo...

A curiously excellent day. I hadn’t been looking forward to it at all, as my first job was to walk down to the doctor’s office and be wired up to my 24-hour blood pressure test. I have appalling white coat syndrome when it comes to having my blood pressure taken, so I always get an alarmingly high reading. Having half hourly blood pressure checks is not a perfect recipe for a happy day. Much to my own surprise I did not get hysterical all once. Every time the automatic sleeve inflated, I just said to myself, imagine how pleased you’ll feel when this comes back as normal tomorrow.   On the way to the surgery and on the way back I was beset by several good creative ideas about how I can make the most of projects I have been working on. Once home I simply spent the day executing one of them, a short story assembled from previous material, that I think works far better than I had hoped. I also had the idea of how I would start the sequel to The Second Kind of Darkness (now in an...

Up early and off to the quack first thing to have a conversation about my blood pressure. Turns out that the high readings I always have in the surgery are not the full story. Over my 24 hours it turned out the average was fine. We'll take that as good news, my nice doctor said. And so I did. Since it was early, I went for a walk down by the sea, which was in the teeth of a gale, which turned into a lashing rainstorm later. The skeletal remains of the West Pier were further damaged, which made the local TV news. Spoke to Carl, who was talking about the tender his business put into the local authority, which has had only partial success. Strange politics afoot in the local Government it seems. I hope to see Carl shortly. Otherwise a good day's work. In the evening, after I cooked supper for Lorraine and myself, I wandered up to The Foundry where I had a drink with Matt, and we were joined by others including Irish Tom, who is highly excited by the notion of a new cooker be...

A curiously terrible night's sleep, followed by a first thing visit to the quacks to get my long postponed 24 hour blood pressure monitor. Ridiculously, I am usually gripped by a hysterical white coat syndrome when having my blood pressure taken, so readings of my blood pressure are always readings of my blood pressure when highly stressed, not under normal conditions. Very nice nurse at the surgery, who remembered I had got married recently too and cheerfully endured my hypochondria. Having your blood pressure taken by a machine twice an hour in your own home is better - not completely relaxing of course - but but not hysteria inducing and a kind of exposure therapy too, in that after the thing had gone off a dozen times it was hard to get too excitable about it. I had feared it might just extend the twitching over 24 hours, but this didn't happen. Little other news, other than I had another Facetime call from Mum, who is well into her iPad now, was offered yet more work, ...