under another sun

Felt ill and sore throaty and wussy. Lorraine shattered too. Got up and Lorraine and I sauntered around to Arkwrights and brought some reassuringly middle class breakfast, which we had with Betty and John before they travelled back to London. Lorraine and I then watched football focus in the morning, and fell asleep again. In the afternoon roused ourselves to do packing, got started on the books in the study but had to stop this after a while and go for another rest. Then a mindless and washed out watch of the X factor. And an early night. Below Lorraine doing a spot of packing.

The Tobster's birthday. A good morning's work on the book, revelling in a bit of clarity and time. Broke off to go to the gym, a spontaneous carefree feeling as I trundled creakily on the cross trainer, and even did a bit of rowing on the rowing machine. Feeling cheery all day. Lorraine singing in her choir and I walked off to the old market in Hove to hear some poetry and read a few of mine. Sat awkwardly at a table with uncommunicative poets until the thing was over and beat a retreat. Not really enjoying the poetry there, and can't enter the social side of it with any gusto. Walked back along Western Road loving the fresh air after being in a stuffy room, and being able to glimpse the sea. There has been a rubbish collectors industrial action lately, and central Brighton is disfigured by piles of rubbish being spread about in the breeze. Several homeless people about, and I hurried past a ring of half a dozen homeless folks in a doorway. On the way home, I met Ma...

A sober day of restraint. Up late and off shopping, after eating a Quorn sausage sandwich with mustard in bed, brought to me by my lovely, and discussing plans for the wedding. Drove off, taking circuitous routes around the place to avoid the bulgy-calfed London to Brighton bicycle riders. I needed a new office chair, mine having spontaneously exploded a week or so ago while I was innocently sitting on it. We ended up at a place called Staples where I bought a chair called a Tweddle, which after assembling (and then reassembling it as I noticed it didn't look like the picture on the Chinese instructions) comfortable on the back, but a tad unforgiving on the rear. Perhaps my buns will steel themselves. Otherwise shopping with Lorraine. I always thought Lorraine and I were very happy together, but it seems that having become engaged has made us even closer. Pootling about shopping together great fun. Life is sweet. Eating salad this evening, and Lorraine went off to meet one of h...

Another lazy morning. I wrote a blog post about astrology in bed. Lorraine read the sample of the business book and liked it. The weather still miserably cold and the great outdoors uninviting. Listening to Classical music on Classic FM's annual top of the pops for Classical music. Working on the editing and reworking of the Defenders of Guernsey too. In the afternoon we drove to the seafront for a bracing walk, the cafes a bit melancholy when they should be buzzing at this time of year. The pebble beach and grey sea of Brighton and Hove untroubled by hoards of tourists and it feels like the Spring will never start. I read it was officially the coldest March since 1962. The UK weather has been wretched for a year now. Home and L and I watched The Voyage of the Dawn Treader . The three films of the Narnia books have been far less successful than Peter Jackson's Tolkien efforts, a heavy handedness about the symbolism and a lack of flow generally.  Then L and I sneaked off to...

The Shard spearing into low murky cloud this morning. Spoke to Hamish, a freelance designer at the agency, was telling me that he had worked on visualisations of the shard dropping computer generated images of it into the surrounding landscape, so whenever he goes past it, it still surprises him to see it unfinished. A pleasant day at the agency. Popped out to buy lunch from the  King of Falafel with Nicola.  Then an afternoon writing a report about how Inflammatory Bowel Diseases impact people's working lives. Although I am finding there is only so much reading about loose stools  I can do without wanting to think about something else. Home reading Jung and shooting zombies. Lorraine cooking surprisingly delicious roast vegetables and couscous, and later skyping on her iPad with Betty.

To London, and finishing off the pitch work I was involved in before those presenting it zoomed off to Zurich. I had a leisurely sandwich from Waitrose, and a slightly lower key afternoon, with only the  photographs the innards of people with ulcerative colitis to distract me. I finished Solar by Ian McEwan yesterday. Well written, and a comic novel which made me guffaw once while listening to it. Noticed McEwan's trick of slowing the action down for humorous effect, so that something that took a few seconds spreads over pages.  This wore a bit thin for me, but McEwan is generally fantastic I think. Instead, I spent the journey home playing Zombie Gunship, an app I downloaded where you shoot at zombies from a big plane. The zombies are chasing handfuls of people as they try to escape into a bunker. Your job is to clear the way for them by slaughtering zombies. I combined this ultraviolence with listening to classical music. Felt a strange serenity sweep over me as I slaugh...

Zombie crows An event-free day. Worked on the story, and went to the gym to make amends for some of the vittles and boozes I engulfed over the weekend. In the evening sipped mineral water and watched the doomsday zombie film Resident Evil: Extinction . It was rubbish as you'd expect, but had one excellent scene when a flock of zombie crows attacked people in a Hitchcockian manner till the photogenic Milla Jovovich used an unexplained power to set them all ablaze in the sky. Below: Zombie crows get peckish.

All starts and no finishes I'd earmarked today as a day for my own projects. I have lost momentum lately and lack clarity and focus. Nevertheless I progressed my Atlantis poems a little, and looked at the long short story called Echoes set in Guernsey. The Atlantis poems are intended to follow on from The Boy Who Fell Upwards . However simply could not build momentum, a hundred ideas started, none followed through. Argh. Lorraine called with a bit of urgent work on her form from hell, which is thankfully now dispatched. Spoke to Mum whose cat Salty has worryingly gone AWOL. Went to the gym, at noon. In the evening read more of The Maimed and then watched most of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead , widely acclaimed as the best Zombie movie of all time. Annoyingly I was too tired to watch all of it, but it may have to be a DVD purchase. One of the characters says: "When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the Earth". I am increasingly attracted to Zombies....