Spain was delicious

the hothot sun and shinyblue sea were wonderful, but the day after returning home my skin reacted with fury to the fresh British autumn chill with an outrage of hives and I've been looking like a red crocodile for the last week.

I made a bit of effort

before heading into town yesterday. On the bus I sat near a man about ten years younger than myself. He was missing several teeth and his ears were stuck on to his head in a startlingly perpendicular manner. His eyes were a bit swivelly and I could see he was having a job pulling focus -  finally he managed to stabilise an image of me and held my gaze for long enough to say

Cor - you must've been right glamour back in your day

It's all done

Two years of planning and scheming to get on to a post grad in London, how to arrange finances to live/study in one of the world's most expensive cities

Two years of books and lectures and arguing and writing and exams and papers

The chef d'oeuvre was handed in on Monday -  the rest of this week I've been like one of those astronauts who falls out of a rocket and has to spend the rest of his life slowly spinning round in space.

It's my birthday next week, I'm heading off to a Spanish beach for a few days for perspective readjustment therapy

beach art by Jamie Harkins

I've cocooned

What Do You Call A Fly Without Wings? from Ammonite Films on Vimeo.

I'm like that bluebottle larva locked in a hard shell shuffling my molecules around trying to make something of myself.

That's what writing the the Big Essay feels like.

I'm staying in a dowdy ground floor flat on a busy road, the weather is dreich and there's a gloomy fat cat who doesn't move - he's like a furry companion cocoon. 

it will to stop soon and I can go home.