under another sun

Had an introductory session from a likeable hypnotist and NLP practitioner called Michael. I want to lose some of my extensive collection of phobias. The most pressing being the so called "white coat syndrome". I always get very anxious before my blood pressure is taken, so my readings are always high and it becomes a vicious circle. The hypnotist said he would have a go at fixing this in the few minutes that remained. First he asked me to imagine how I felt when the quack brandishes the blood pressure kit, and dwell in that anxiety. Then he swung his arm back and forth clicking his fingers and I had to follow this movement with my eyes but without moving my head. Then got me to focus at a point in the air above his head. And imagine the feeling, it was instantly sunnier and more friendly, he was talking to reinforce the message. I felt fully conscious at the time although was aware that I had begun to breathe in a deeper and more relaxed way. Afterwards he asked me to imagin...

Woke with two ideas for poems this morning. Also feeling better than I have felt for at least a week. Spent the morning getting these down. One is about saying things backwards (as in the poems by Pascale Petit and Joyce Harjo plus the one I had published years ago) the other is sort of a Pandora's box thing. Walked again by the sea and had a coffee on the pier. Otherwise little to report. Hung out, spoke on the phone to Mum and to Sarah about her novella which she has only two days to finish. Reading a grimly enjoyable book called Autobiography of a Geisha by Sayo Masuda. It describes her life as an illiterate geisha who made her "debut" i.e. started sleeping with customers in 1940. Interested by how the war had little effect on her until in the week before it ended, the house she had just moved into was burned down in a firebomb attack. I hadn't really experienced the war in any direct way, and so I didn't understand clearly what it meant for the war to end. Bu...

Signed off work by the quack till the end of the week, but feeling marginally better today. Surprised to hear my ex-wife in her Annie Mole persona on Radio 4 this morning, giving an excellent interview about blogs and the London Underground. Made me think it must be strange to have had a relationship with someone incredibly famous; if you'd gone out with someone like Tony Blair or Madonna and have references to them cropping up almost every day. Before visiting the doctor, I went for a brief walk by the sea and took the two shots below. It was sunny and breezy; a lovely morning. I stopped to have a cup of coffee on the pier looking down at the sea, which made me feel momentarily very cheerful. Not much else to report. Spoke to Matty boy for a while, and Sarah sent me this about the rubbishness of dogs.

I was fate's guinea pig today. Tracey trained it down to Brighton for a few hours, armed with her large Tarot cards wrapped in silk. After a cup of tea in the yard, and a roll-up cigarette for Trace, we got down to her very first reading for someone else. The cards did, however, uncompromisingly reflect my emotional landscape this year. I'm not sure what to do with that accurate reflection, though, other than listen to its advice on not idealising the past. After, we walked down to the sea and ate fish and chips while sitting in deck chairs in the intermittent sun. I love being able to saunter down to the seaside and watch the bank holiday crowds. Trace brooding over last boyfriend somewhat. Apparently three psychics have said he will try to get back with her soon. While chatting with Trace, had an oddly comforting vision of a much older Peter Kenny happy to sit on a deckchair and watch the world go by with a flask of tea and a book and many long looks at the sea. By the time I...

No noticable upturn in health, and rather gloomy about this. Sarah came down to Brighton. It was her birthday and she was escaping London for the day. We went to the seafront and sat on the pebbles and ate fish and chips from styrofoam platters, and among other things talked about her novella for her creative writing degree, which she'd emailed me yesterday. As we picked at the fish and chips Sarah got the urge to throw stones and then had to fight an impulse not to pelt them at innocent people wading in the water. Left under gathering black clouds, and rain which fell upon the masses on Brighton Beach. Home and I felt drained. Ate Pizza and watched Frazier episodes, I think Frazier should be my new role model.

A day's vacation for me. Health still rubbish, but apart from that fine. I am writing a poem again, the first new one since I broke up with MJ. Not sure how publishable it is... It's about time, returning to Guernsey, and witchcraft. Between June 1550 and October 1661 upwards of 175 people appeared in court accused of sorcery in the Channel Islands. Forty-six were found guilty in Guernsey (36 in Jersey). In Guernsey they used to burn them in St Peter Port near the market. They hung them over a brushwood fire so it's likely that they were dead before they burned, but I dare say there were aberrations. Their ashes were thrown to the wind. The main source for it is a book I've had for years called These Haunted Islands by Chris Lake. It has the court records as an appendix. Funny there are some years when they had crazes for it. In November 1563, for example, five Guernsey people were burnt at the stake (Francoise Regnouff, Martin Tulouff, Colette Salmon, Graçene Gousset,...

Stupid cat yowling woke me at 5 this morning. I swear it has three lungs, able to hold a note like a feline version of Bill Withers singing Lovely Day . Got up at 8:00am and had a last cup of tea with Tobs before he set off to Gatwick. As usual, very sad to see him go. Made my final decision not to go to Caroline's wedding up in Birmingham. Had to send my apologies and spoke to Christiane and Anton. Am sorry not to see them all. Worked on a new poem, read, and went out for an hour, returning I felt less shattered than before. Watched a TV documentary about beating fear of flying. I may try some of the techniques between the bouts of frozen horror on my next flight.

Decided to go to work today. Got the train to Victoria and felt so poor that I simply phoned work and got on the next train home again. Can't seem to shake this dratted virus off. My colleagues okay about me being off however. Home. Spoke to Matty for a bit. Did resting until Toby came to stay before zooming off back to Canada from Gatwick tomorrow. Lurked about chit chatting and watching TV, as I was not up to going out again. Also spoke to Mum too. The poem I put in yesterday's entry had the idea of running backwards as a spooky element. The backwards thing also crops up in this excerpt from a poem called Call it Fear by Joyce Harjo: Not that, but a string of shadow horses kicking and pulling me out of my belly, not in the Rio Grande but into the music barely coming through Sunday church singing from the radio. Battery worn down but the voices talking backwards. The backwards thing also appea...

Sat in the doctor's office for an hour this evening as I needed to see him on another matter, and threw in the man flu for good measure. He also took my blood pressure which read high. This mainly due to my white coat syndrome and sitting about feeling anxious. Also weighed me and I am heavy... So that last six months of constant exercise has done the trick then. Waves of futility. Left the doctor feeling like I wasn't long for this world and significantly less healthy than when I went in. Fortunately spoke to Sarah this evening who laughed at me and reminded me that I was chosing to interpret it as doomy. Read some poems from the selected poems of Sophie Hannah. They seem quite nicely done, and a very confident style using a variety of forms. I also read most of The Huntress by Pascale Petit. Very different kettle of fish here but I liked it a lot. Loads of Mexican imagery in the poems (which I like having spent a few weeks there). The poems seem to be about a daughter being ...

Slept till 10am, watched my DVD of Return of the King and slept. Stupid man flu worse than yesterday. Narrowly avoided a gloomfest, and slipped out for some fresh air for half an hour. Soaked some seaweed to put in a miso based soup, which made my kitchen smell like the sea. Got an email from Nick who I will see at Caroline's wedding which will be great. (He's Caroline's brother.) He sent me a picture of him and his daughter Lily who I've not yet seen. Nick and Lily.

Still feeling off colour today. Slept in late (for me) thanks to new thick blind. Spent the morning tinkering ineffectually with poems. Then met Hannah, a friend from work who was down in Brighton for the weekend, to a virtuous lunch of vegetarian nosh at Food for Friends . Ate excellent vegetarian sausages ("snorkers") and mash, accompanied by sparkling water and orange juice, followed by some species of pear tart. She's good fun, and it turns out she knows Guernsey well too. After this I sloped off home and phoned Mas to wish him a happy birthday. He said that he looked up his age this year and realised that he was 72. He'd gone through the previous year telling eveyone he was 72 when he was really 71. This year he is going to be 71 seeing as he missed out on it last year. Felt absolutely shattered after these exertions and slept for a couple of hours. Loafed about later ineffectually and feeling increasingly rough and achey and went to bed early.

Woken at 8.00am by men delivering my tumble dryer. As I let them in I discovered that I was feeling wussy and ill. After breakfast I called Anton to cancel our planned 12 mile walk tomorrow and ditched my plans to go to London in the afternoon. Romy's three point initiative continues to bear fruit. The tumble dryer removes the stage where my house is cluttered with clothes for days on end. And today I had an orgy of laundry, which is now all dry and folded away. I popped out to collect my framed prints, one of a picture Jean Howell gave me a couple of years ago, and it looks wonderful. Jean is the mother of an ex-girlfriend who I don't see any more, and so have lost touch. But I really liked her, and her work. My nightwork picture looks fine too. Across the lane from the frameshop was a barbers and I and had my hair cut by an almost silent woman with a stomach ache. Romy had also suggested that I replace my bedroom blind with one that actually cuts out the light. During the wee...

Feeling a bit rough: sore throat and ennervated. Met Anton in the station and travelled up with him, which always makes the journey more cheerful. Thinking about pitching for a film... Snakes on the Train... Horror at Burgess Hill! Etc. Walked through Hammersmith Graveyard. The graves are subsiding, and so many are at increasingly strange angles. But I am growing to love the strange and ghostly Victorian grave sculptures. Like the two figures below. Spent most of my limited mental energy on deciding what should be in The Nightwork . Otherwise kept my head down and made my way home as soon as possible. Slumped in front of the TV and watched something about gardens, which took in Kew Gardens in London and Central Park in New York. Two places with strong emotional resonances for me. My bed must have an enormous Peter Kenny magnet in it, as I am being attracted to it as I write. Sweet dreams!

Walked through Hammersmith graveyard this morning talking to Mike Ferg who I met at Victoria. He is being treated for some early signs of cancer but is remarkably cheerful and upbeat about it. Makes you remember that people all around you are dealing with all kinds of challenges all the time. Work was composed of sporadic writing about breast cancer, a swim at lunchtime and a few bouts of ping pong, in which I lost every game. Had a very nice evening with Marja and Snairs. Met them at Victoria and went off to eat some fishy Sri Lankan food. Marja arrived first, looking more relaxed and happier than when I last saw her. She is just back from Finland recently and is house hunting as she and her husband are on the verge of divorce. Fortunately she has lots of capital and so is looking at some swanky places, and has a business wheeze that I didn't quite understand, involving tablecloths and separating newly-rich Russians from their money. We talked about depression, as her husband is e...

Quiet day at work broken by a satisfying swim at lunchtime. The evening much more interesting, however, and I met one of Janet's MA students, the delightfully named Naomi Trickey after work in The Battle of Trafalgar. She is working on a thesis examining how creativity and collaboration fit, and we had an interesting discussion. Quite nice to go straight from the train and end up talking about creativity. It is a very strange statistical anomaly but every other person I meet these days is a Virgo. MJ is a Virgo. Anton is a Virgo. My new friend Sarah, even my recent "blind date" Penny was a Virgo, arranged by Max the Mentor a Virgo.... So it was no surprise that Naomi turned out to be Virgo too. She said her important relationships, including her husband, were all with Gemini people. Then home for a brief bacon sarnie before Anton and Christiane called around. Christiane reads this blog in Australia from time to time. Strangely she had pictured the Twitten to be an area of...

Day started nicely as Anton was travelling up to London with me. We were overheard talking on the train by an old University friend of mine called Callum who came over and shook my hand. Got his number, and we talked about us meeting up with another old friend from Warwick, called Will. Callum is a journalist, and a really decent man who once got me a job as a sub editor for the Architects' Journal where he was then working. The job, however, didn't pan out for me and I don't think I've seen him since then. Will is now the author of The Hungry Years: Confessions of a Food Addict so it will be interesting to hook up with him too. Felt quite cheery going into work due to this, but by the end of the day any gusto had been leeched from me by stultifying meetings. Caroline and James unable to see me tonight, as Caroline is now in a frenzy of wedding arrangements for their big day in a week and a half. But was very pleased to come home, and have a much-needed evening of quie...

Off to work leaving Toby asleep upstairs. Bumped into Janet as I walked out of my front door, only to discover that I'd forgotten my train tickets and so on. Met her again briefly at the station with two women, one of whom being the splendidly named Naomi Trickey, one of Janet's MA students who I will be seeing on Wednesday to discuss collaboration and creativity. The Gnome away. An email in my inbasket from him with an "I'm on holiday and you're not" message with 60 or 70 Ha-ha s in a column underneath. Wrote interminable breast cancer publications. But slipped away at lunch, not for the intended swim, but to hang out with the French Bloke and get a mental breath of fresh air. Left work ultra punctually and got home in good time to meet up with Remo and have a discussion about shelves for my study, which is all part of the plot to gain control of my own home and become tidy and efficient . Had to hurry this process up as Anton and Anna had just invited me up...

Lazy day. Toby and I collected by Anna and Anton and the bairns to go for leisurely Sunday breakfast at Bills. I had salmon and scrambled egg and a huge freshly-squeezed juice. Toby said that Romy would have loved it there. Tobs and I then struck off to score a couple of umbrellas as it was drizzling and wandered around talking for two or three hours, heading up along the coast to the marina and back. Toby spoke to Romy who was safely home in Toronto, with a very happy Meaty the cat for company. Returning to Brighton we stopped off at the Mock Turtle cafe for soup and cream tea, feeling distinctly like the Crane brothers from Frazier, especially as we were complimenting them on the excellence of their pea and spinach soup. Anton, with Klaudia asleep on his back, turned up and we threaded about through Brighton some more doing a spots of shopping here and there before stopping briefly at the Tin Drum. Toby and I went home and drank tea and listened to Piper at the Gates of Dawn by Pin...

Below: ages ago Janet gave me a watercolour painted by her aunt Barbara, who I knew. I took it to the framers yesterday to change the mounting card from a slightly overpowering pink. It has transformed the picture. It is of Strand on the Green in Chiswick where I lived when I first moved to West London some 20 years ago. It was there I lodged with Janet and Ken.

After toast and small dish of cherries, Romy set off this morning to Gatwick Airport. She managed to get through security fairly quickly and easily despite all the terror alerts. However the plane flying from Canada had something wrong with its wing, and had to have a new part flown in from somewhere. She was put up in a hotel waiting for a middle of the night flight, last we heard. As for this whole plot to blow up aircraft, again the timing seems incredibly convenient. It makes me think of the tanks at Heathrow fiasco a few years ago. Who are the terrorists? If a terrorist is someone who creates terror and fear, my prime candidates would be those so called democratic governments of the UK, the US and Israel, who not only backing illegal wars that manufacture enemies, but are using fear to ensure they protect their own interests. Read an excellent article in the Independent by Robert Fisk who has lived in Lebanon for 30 years. I was amused to see Bush... still mendaciously telling us ...