under another sun

A quiet morning, enlivened only by a walk with Lorraine to the local shops. Feeling a bit peaky and hot again today, but perked up enough to heft the stumps from the car boot to the back garden. I enjoyed hanging about with Pat and Maureen, listening to Frank Sinatra, Perry Como and Nat King Cole, before Lorraine drove them off to the station. Also had a chat with Mum on FaceTime who was able to say howdy to them. In the evening I broke out my Twin Peaks DVDs and Lorraine to enjoy the Pilot and first episode. Not watched them in ages (and Lorraine not since they came out) and really loved it. Just the shots are so memorably Lynchian, the traffic light against a black background changing colours seems to stand for all kinds of things in his loaded world. Seeing it afresh, you realise just how influential it has been on dark thrillers and cop shows since, but for my money nothing comes close. Below: Laura Palmer.

Noticeably improving through the day. Bussed back to Churchill Square this morning to pick up the Microsoft Office I needed for my iMac, and spent much of the day setting it up, and transferring files across to the new one. It is a thing of beauty with a great big screen, which is really useful because I usually work having several things open at once on my desk. Beautiful. Felt a bit tired by lunchtime and took a couple of hours off, eating peas pudding on toast on the Gold and watching Blue Velvet by David Lynch again. It is plenty weird, as they say, but all the Lynch themes are in place.  Interesting how he keeps using the same actors, which included in Blue Velvet Kyle MacLachlan and a very young Laura Dern. He really is like some kind of cottage industry, manufacturing fabulous films meditating on the nature of evil. A relaxed evening in with Lorraine. She is very much looking forward to Thursday, the end of her first term.

Face furniture Yippee. The ghastly website business is mostly over. Pleasant people in the French Bloke's agency, which now include First Matie with whom I snuck off for lunch to the nearby all-you-can-eat Indian Buffet place. Rather pleasant and good value. Katie on the cusp of changes in where she is living, the work she is doing and so on. She is also training Puffin, with the help of a dog psychologist, to get over its separation anxiety and neediness. I really never knew that dogs could become psychologists, so this was fascinating news. After work up to the hospital to visit mum. She was looking brighter than yesterday, and standing up chatting to another patient when I arrived. The ward chaotic, with a new patient being brought in and beds being replaced, and more than a dozen people milling about besides me and the inmates. Opposite Mum was a new patient: a luxuriantly-bearded lady with an abrasive personality. All the curtains being swooshed around the beds and the woman w...

Firewalk on the sofa After a late start, got up to buy a present for Klaudia. Lorraine and I dropped a big pink box of Lego and a birthday card off and chatted with everyone briefly before they started their busy weekend. Those kids are excellent. Klaudia seeming to like her lego. More bits of small stuff for the vacuum cleaner to ingest. A very chilled day. I made Lorraine watch Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me . I enjoyed it even more the second time around. David Lynch is one of my heroes. Funnily enough this movie was panned on release but it is splendid and dark. I think Mark Kermode says it is his favourite Lynch film, and I can see why as it seems to sit bull's-eye on various Lynch tropes. Laura Palmer's descent into an abused darkness is horrible, and utterly brilliant. It was good to watch it in the afternoon sitting on my gold sofa, so not to be too scared afterwards. Below David Lynch at random. On the iPone.What a guy.

Catching the big fish Talk about a lightness of being. Writing so much about health issues as I have been lately is gloomy work, and being free of it again today was wonderful. What to do with all this time? I feel so free. Chillax is the answer. To that end, and already festively plump, I went down to the gym for an albeit rather mild-mannered session. Pottered briefly in the North Lanes. Once home, I discovered that I have been contacted again by Giles from a BBC website, asking for a comment on the Argos adverts so I sent him something (which I've also put on my daywork blog). This afternoon I sat down to watch the only David Lynch film I'd never seen: Eraserhead . This was his first movie, made with scraped together cash over a period of five years, and it is amazing. So many Lynch tropes are in place - the parallel world, the weird stage, curtains, and the general unexplained air. There is a thread in Lynch which is like Samuel Beckett, and this is his most Beckett-like f...

Mock turtle Woke up feeling somewhat better today. Down to the patisserie this morning to buy bread. Everyone in the shop clustered around a tiny puppy. These small animals make everyone lose grip of reality, especially me. Was pleased to see they all washed their hands before serving me my chewy brown bread afterwards though. Then Lorraine and I had a slow breakfast of kippers and toast, and read the papers. Calliope, despite pushing her face at the plates, spurned kipper scraps afterwards. Then as Lorraine went off to shop with Beth, I tidied up my front scrap of garden with the kitten charging about excitably with bits in her mouth, (see previous entry) and drawing coos of admiration from occasional passers-by. Kittens, like babies and puppies, are good icebreakers and should have been on the Titanic. My roses are still budding and flowering. As I pottered about I felt a deep welling up of joy not to be working on web pages however. Then off to the Library to join Lorraine for a wan...

Dans Le Noir? Interesting night out, with the healthcare homies from the agency. Went to Dans Le Noir? a novel restaurant. When I was told that we were going to go to a restaurant where you ate in complete darkness I thought it sounded like a terrible night out, especially as I was feeling rather tired. But it wasn't. The start of the evening was pure David Lynch: led in by a blind black waiter wearing shades. We walked down a short corridor lit by a single red light. We were walking in line with our hands on the person in front's shoulder. Mine was on the waiter's shoulder and Al was behind me. Shuffling on we pushed through sets of heavy black drapes into a room of absolute dark. Although I collect phobias like other people collect stamps, I am not actually scared of the dark. But something in me quailed momentarily on entering the pitch black room, full of chattering diners, where you literally could not see your hand before your face. Al laughing nervously behind me. I...

No accounting for it Nine hours sleep certainly helps things. Felt happy and cheerful this morning and simply got on with things. One of the things I simply got on with was popping into see my accountant who has an office near my work. Seana is a splendid accountant, and gave me lots of free advice. I did feel slightly short changed that she wasn't wearing the leopard skin leggings, but then I haven't had a chat with her in some time. My Florida correspondent has taught me all about nail technicians lately, and looking at her nails, I suspect that Seana is intimate with one. She talked with passion and at some length about tax and the Chancellor's recent Budget, in such a way that it almost made me wonder why I hadn't opted for the fascinating life of an accountant instead of being a writer. Into work, and only a few bits to do today. Regained my equilibrium thankfully. I also called the radio station. Spoke to the producer, and Anton and I will pop in next week to see ...

Inland Empire Pleasant Sunday. Something of a lie in. Then chatting with Sarah who introduced me to the delights of Hawaii's own Don Ho amongst other things. And looked at Hawaii recipes for pork "butt". Apparently standard US nomenclature. I learn lots of odd things from Sarah. Spoke to Mum who is finalising her website. I will have a link here as soon as it is up and running. Pottered about for a bit in the afternoon, with an eye to the Chelsea v Spurs FA cup match on TV, with the noble Chelsea recovering from a poor start to force a replay with the upstarts. Also applied for some ISBN numbers. Took myself off to see Inland Empire the new David Lynch film, at the Duke of York's Picturehouse in Brighton. Excellent venue, grand and slightly shabby. They seemed to have pumped all the oxygen from the cinema however, which made me almost nod off at one point. The film however was stunning, gruelling and mystifying all at the same time. It features Laura Dern as an ac...

Friday, Skyline and more Lynching Up surprisingly easily this morning having been entirely sensible the night before. Off to work, and met Max the Mentor not far from the office, who linked arms with me and we walked companionably into work. Today was her twentieth year in the agency. Made me think how one of the things about working at the same place for seven years is that you do make some good friends. For me, not a bad day, worked on another pitch blog, and was taken out for some Italian grub by a nice suit called Nicoletta to discuss the overarching strategy for a new pitch. I like her and we had a nice chat. Her fiance is the pleasant opera singer I met a few weeks ago. I am going to get sucked into a world of pitching again for the next couple of weeks. Back to work and the Gnome and I were slightly bogged down. Felt enervated and so I focused more on coughing impressively. However I encountered an even more jaded-looking French Bloke in a meet during the afternoon. He is simpl...

More Lynch A good deal more lively today, and able to walk further without feeling unsteady on my pins like some sort of Victorian maiden. I decided I am going to go back to work on Thursday after what has been the worst flu I can remember having. The night before full of strange dreams. Of standing by an orchestra which was playing such a protracted deep note that it was making the air lumpy and tactile. Also dreams set in Guernsey which happen all the time. Watched the David Lynch film Mulholland Drive. Quite Twin Peaky in some ways. Difficult to interpret, very dark and dream-like and with conflicting narrative threads and just lots of stunning scenes and disturbing bits flecked here and there with humour. Looking forward to watching it again, which I don't often feel with films so soon after. I really admire the strangeness Lynch is able to inject into everything - just like no one else. Looking forward to being able to focus better. Feeling frustrated to have an agenda for ch...

Muffins for breakfast Aroused from bed by Anton and Klaudia knocking on the door, and bearing some tasty home made muffins with blueberries. Klaudia had drawn a card too -- an abstract design with lots of purple and plenty of tasteful white space. Anton explaining how the blueberries were healthy and packed full of vitamin C, and the virtues of Internet radio. Feeling disconnected today. More coughing blood, and more telephone reassurances from doctors. And if anything I feel less lively today than yesterday. Spent the day on my gold sofa, watching DVDs on my laptop. The last of my Twin Peaks episodes and the film Don't Look Now by Nick Roeg, which is a wonderful film. Hungry for beautiful images at the moment, although they made off season Venice seem very washed out and sinister. My only positive activity of the day in between dozing and feeling wussy was writing a one hundred word short story for a competition run by BBC Radio 4's Front Row programme. The hundred words have...