Wednesday

Looking in from the outside, you might say tonight that I am lucklustre in presence and partially absent of heart, a sleek shadow skulking about the flat whilst the wind gently rattles the windows. But from the inside, I can definitely tell you that the lights are still on and I am definitely home. I just don't want to do any kind of entertaining this evening. I am pyjama-ed and bed-socked. Passers by are most definitely not welcome.

Tonight, all those things that people need to keep them going, all their endearing little idiosycrasies that make them who they are, their quirks of nature, their habits, well, I'd like them to all kindly scuttle away and leave me in my hideyhole, at peace.

Hideyholes are the best, a vital necessity in this day and age where nothing is private, no lines of communication are ever blocked, and people can get a hold of you with the click of a switch just about wherever you are, whenever they wish. Don't we just love all that technology? I know I do. And this post harbours no resentment towards it or towards folk going about their way, in their way. But just for tonight, I want them all to do it somewhere else.

I've spent four solid hours today watching dvds, something I don't actually think I've done since I was a kid, and I'm feeling like a bit of a shameless tv set junkie. You know, it's one of the first signs of a junkie - when suddenly other people become less important, mere side players in the addict's great quest for their own fix and the bliss that ensues.

I tell you, it felt like some kind of divine intervention today when the lady in the Jubilee Library told me that the dvd set I've been chasing had finally arrived back - five minutes before I entered the Library. And when you start bringing God into the equation in such a matter, I think it definitely marks the onset of addiction.

So what else? Well, as we all may have noticed, in one swift and cruel move, winter seems to have arrived, bypassing autumn altogether. Perhaps yesterday counted for both the first day of autumn and also its last. The day had that feeling of summer ending as the first chill of the new season breathed into the sunlight that was still dancing upon the metallic sea. I absolutely love that time of year - frail and filled with poignancy and nostalgia, echoes and fading warmth. Unfortunately, it seems like that might have been it. Today was a bedraggled dog of a day, damp and chilled to the bone, the misery of winter too close on the horizon, etched on people's faces, a lost summer without climax following everybody's steps home.

If I can make some money this winter, I shan't be bothered about its dourness. In fact, I shall welcome it. I have loved my winters in Brighton for the last few years. There's been something so bitterly romantic about them, holed up writing, loving, losing; you know, all the usual stuff. However, significant portions of joy have come from the adventures abroad I plan during winter, because it's then that I can actually afford to travel abroad. Without that, I can see it's going to be a long season, as I haven't got away to any of the places I most yearn to get back to at all this year. And I am seriously pining.

So I can see that without money, life may become an endless trail of trips to the Jubilee Library to get my fill of imagination and excitement, my backside numb from lolling around on couches staring at LA lesbians and New York mafiosi, my eyebrows crinkled and mouth permanently mishapen by all the grimacing I've been doing at the high-octane emotional drama unfolding before my eyes.

Rock n roll. Bring on Episode Five quick.