End of the noughties Feel I should put some chin stroking thoughtful stuff in here today, but I've never been one for seeing random calendar events as major landmarks. But the noughties were a lively time for me. I look forward to the new year with a mix of vague apprehension and great excitement. Spent the day working up my new short story, called Where the beauty is which has turned out well, and clocking in very short at 1.5k. Celebrated new year's eve with Lorraine. We sloped off to the Agra, our usual curry haunt, for an early curry. The food back on form again, which is good. Ash the chatty owner loves Lorraine and so gave us a free glass of bubbly with our poppadoms. Then we walked back through Brighton, back through knots of lightly-clothed revellers off to the dives of West Street. We repaired to the Battle of Trafalgar, which was crammed. A band called Flat Stanley , a "trad-jazz-ska-punk-country outfit" parped bizarrely through a diverse repertoire, and wer...
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A waxing moon Wrote a short self-contained Skelton Yawngrave story this morning and sent this off to Mindy to record. It has Skelton going to the Natural History Museum and the staff thinking he was an escaped exhibit. In the afternoon did some cosmetic housecleaning and worked more on my Guernsey Anthology site, which is just beginning to take shape, and will soon be ready to unleash. Otherwise feeling tetchy. It is a significant birthday this month, and so naturally I have not been able to let this happen without a drift into brooding about failure and underachievement. At times like this meditation helps, so I meditated and then continued working with the waxing moon in my window until Lorraine came. Talking to Lorraine made things seem better, and halfway through a pint of beer in the Cricketers, the world seemed positively fine, and I recalled that I was fairly big and clever. Thence to the Agra where we were warmly welcome by Ash the owner. There was a good new chef too. Chattin...
One Planet, two beers Up early and preparing to interview Pooran Desai of One Planet Living. He is a sustainability pioneer, I'd met him once before, at a meal instigated by the Cat in the Hat. There is a new housing development on the other side of the station called One Brighton, which has been built to One Planet guidelines, and is the UK's (and possibly the world's) most sustainable residential development. It is zero carbon, and has a host of features that make it utterly spiffy, even the concrete it is made with is the greenest concrete available, made with recycled aggregate. I met Pooran at the marketing suite, and he quickly showed me around the show appartment, then popped around the corner so I could interview him in a quiet cafe. Tremendously nice man. And very positive too, saying Martin Luther King didn't say "I have a nightmare", but "I have a dream". Among lots of other stuff, I cheekily asked him about his OBE, and laughing he said i...
Feeling better To the doctor. Lurking horribly in the waiting room for 40 minutes which provided an excellent backdrop for hypochondria. Looking at pamphlets pinned to the wall with titles like Heart Attack? and Coping with Cancer? Fortunately Lorraine came too, which was well beyond the call of duty, and prevented me from balling into a foetus position and sobbing under the chairs. Finally in to see the pleasant doctor who took my blood pressure again. Fortunately today's reading was on more of a human scale, but still higher than it ought to be. So before long I was toddling around the corner to score myself a dose of blood pressure pills. Only another hypochondriac could sympathise with the various horrors I have been through in the last days. Today is the first day in getting a grip on my health and this is to be welcomed. The dragon faced, I bought Lorraine a coffee and fruit juice (me a decaf and fruit juice) as a token of thanks for her support. After salad sandwiches, t...
Zaffrani and skellys Spent Friday back with my skeleton story, which seems easy and much less intense than working on the poems. I have missed thinking about Skelton Yawngrave. The poems and this story come from entirely different sub-personalities, and you'd be hard pressed to say that they were written by the same person. Arranged for a yearly check up at my doctors next week. As a hypochondriac the prospect of this is appalling. I'd rather eat a cactus. Also arranged for an eye test as I am fretting about my eyes. Sigh. The thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. In the afternoon broke off for a swim. The pool was stuffed full of people including several larger dugong-like gentlemen like me. However I persisted for half an hour or so, nosing hopefully for seagrasses, and felt fairly good for it. Brighton exuberant this evening as Lorraine and I walked through the streets, as this is the Pride weekend. For us however, the now traditional Cricketers & curry combo. ...