under another sun

This is England Stayed at Lorraine's last night, and was woken by a cat placing its paw on my forearm. Disorientated, I opened my eyes in the middle of a dream, and saw a face about six inches from mine, and in the half-light I mistook it for a small and intense child. This, for some reason, scared the bejasus out of me. I haven't been as alarmed by a cat since Paddy the Ghost Cat pattered into my bedroom. Did a morning's work as God's own copywriter for the religious charity I'd been doing a bit for through my old agency. Thanks to feline intervention I found I was up exceedingly early so also got quite a bit done on my Skeleton story, have written over 20,000 words of it now, which is er, cracking along. Another swim, the fourth of the week, left me feeling pretty shattered and still aghast at how fat and out of condition I am. Rented a movie about skinheads in the 80s called This is England which I thought was a really good, excellently acted, a great script, an...

Pitch slog blog Snowflakes over Hammersmith as I slunk hungover into work surrounded by a air of alcohol-induced wrongness. Strange phony war style pitch lull ended today and the Gnome and me hard at it again. Tends to narrow down other activities. You end up working with a team of people all growing increasingly tired and emotional. The sense of release when it is all over is fantastic though. The prospect of working through the weekend has become a reality now though. I stole out at lunchtime, however, and bought a grey-blue v-necked jumper, which I discover (preening myself in the "gentlemen's lounge" as Sarah calls it) is the same colour as my eyes. Had to break off mid-preen when somebody burst in for a large wee. Afternoon drinking coffee and slaving over a hot layout pad with the Gnome. I then worked late writing the pitch blog. Missed my train at Victoria by about five seconds due to tube evil. Listening to BBC podcasts on the trains, about religion and humour, a...

Enter a cat ghost Thanks to late night curry and drinking too much I lay awake starey-eyed from 3.00am to 6.00am. I have been reading a book about Vikings, so I read about folks chopping each other up in the name of Odin before I finally managed to drop to sleep again. Shortly after, however, I was awoken by the sound of a cat running into the room, jumping on the bed and springing over me to head towards the window. Now this would have been fine and dandy if I actually had a cat. But I don't. After a fruitless search for the mystery invader, and feeling a bit odd, I went downstairs and had a glass of sparkling water with a squeeze of lemon which seemed to help. I then returned to get a couple of hours sleep. Up woozily and soon was having a delightful conversation with Sarah Sprinkles, the Eastern US being only 4 hours behind us at the moment and she gets up unspeakably early. She is coming to England at the end of April, which I am looking forward to immensely. We'd not talke...