under another sun

Feeling cheery. Sudden clarity on the business book I have been writing after feeling wood for treesish on it.  I also emailed my glamorous accountant about a missing tax repayment, and she sorted it within an hour, which will soon be a boon for the Kenny coffers. I also ventured to the gym, and managed to do twelve minutes on a cross trainer. A few months ago I was doing 40 minutes at much higher load on it before starting on the rowing machine, and weights. But you have to start again somewhere. Scary what months of antiboitics have reduced me to. However even doing ten minutes made me feel good afterwards. The fightback starts here. Friday will see me back again going for a massive 15 minutes. Looking at the essay Julia wrote about D.G. Rossetti. Julia, it seems, is a card-carrying Rossetti boffin.

Working on a piece of flash fiction (i.e. a very short story with a hipper name) and one of the characters is a transexual. Blearily woke up this morning, gratefully sipping the tea Lorraine had brought me, and thumbing the Guardian app on my iPhone to read  an extraordinarily offensive rant by inflammatory hack Julie Birchill  about transexual people. The comments section had exploded, and people were saying how they had reported her insults to the police. During the day her article was taken offline, and replaced by an apology from the editor. She certainly has a talent for getting a reaction, and from a selfish point of view, the furore gave me some insights at exactly the right moment. Brighton avoiding snow, but enjoying rain as usual. A day of quiet reflection for me (something that Julie Burchill could have done with) troubled only by the demands of cats. Lorraine out this evening, and I worked on my very short story, and mooched about cheerfully but with variabl...

Poor Lorraine up at sixish, so I got up early too getting things ready for the estate agents, and tweaking diabetes pen copy before I sent it into cyberspace. Off into town to sit in Délice cafe and work happily on my business idea for a couple of hours, a simple thing that during the flu seemed like an impossible dream. The cafe, which I went to the first time with Anton the other day, is friendly and French. I strapped on the nosebag there too and wasn't disappointed. Home via Sainsbury's to reassure Sonia who was for some reason traumatised by having broken a cheap lamp, and offering to pay for it. I of course refused. Spent the late afternoon tired, but happily listening to Wodehouse stories and cooking. Also looking at some poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti that Julia, Bob's sister, sent me. Rossetti has passed me by, so this was an interesting exercise. Her blog about Rossetti is listed on the right, and is well worth a visit.

Julia on the threshold Work frustrating all day, with an increasingly crushing headache. Discovered at five o'clock that we had been pursuing all the wrong avenues and had to stay late to rework them. Finally left work to meet Bob at his sister Julia Monteiro's opening of her art exhibition at the Waterloo Gallery, near the Old Vic Theatre. Just before leaving heard that Sprinkles had been in a car crash but was fortunately unharmed. Arrived at the gallery in time to help with the tidying up. I liked Julia's work a lot, and in a Niles and Frazier Crane moment with Bob, decided it had an intriguingly liminal quality: that it was about thresholds. See for yourself with some of the work on Julia Monteiro's site here. Her star is in the ascendant and has more exhibitions coming up. It's great to see. Nice to see Julia. I'd not seen her for about nine years, since Bob got married, and before she started painting. We lurched into a nearby Italian restaurant and...