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Infectious Viral Mutations

¦ dialling in from the sky bunker ¦

07:59 on a Thursday morning. Pale blue sky beyond the blister window, struggling to show through rapidly moving bands of grey and white clouds. I've had to switch life-support on as the temperature continues to hover below comfortable. I'm wearing Starsky and thick woollen socks, supping tea laced with honey, and have just munched some 500gram superpill Jo bought in France. Yes, you guessed it, I have man-flu. It could be the long weekend in London - several late nights and getting soaked in the rain meeting Ben; or it could have been the Tuesday night in the smokey pub with Tony, Hagen, (Phil and Barry, ex-agency operatives; but I'm going to blame my car, and for that reason, I'm going to rename it from "The Biscuit Tin" to "Swampy".

My car floods when it rains. Just in one part, in the driver footwell, but the dirty water can often reach past the pedals. It was flooded when I left the car last week to go to London, and I'm figuring it's had a few days to fester, plus more rain over weekend kept it topped up. I can't complain because the car cost me less than my computer printer, but when I climbed in on Tuesday night, I was sure there were little tiny flying things buzzing around. And don't lets forget the monster spider that's taken up residence in the sunvisor flap. I discovered that hairy beauty a couple weeks ago whilst driving - I nearly went off the bloody road. So, I'm figuring my body immune system is fighting off a varient of some tropical infection that's cultivated itself in Swampy. All rather a dramatic excuse for something as lowly as man flu.

The weekend in London was good. Met up with a group of creatives that have an excellent idea; but nothing seems to have happened since the  meeting so I'm pondering the reality of the project being born. We shall see. I also hooked up with Alex, my childhood buddy from Jesus Mound, the final of the three muskateers along with Ciaran and myself. I last saw Alex at my Dad's funeral in December (Alex and Ciaran helped me carry my dad's coffin in), but before that I'd not seen Alex in 6 or 7 years. So this was really our first time to properly reconnect and it was lovely. I met his wife (Kat) and their incredible dog Rags, who has a Charisma score of 360 percent. I woke up on Alex's sofa the next morning with Rags lying on top of me; when I rolled over, Rags repositioned herself to  lie beside me like a human, head on pillow, like spoons.

I caught up with Ben, who've I've not seen since December 2005; he's been working on animation for the DaVinci Code, Posiedon, Sunshine and others. It was good to see him but by the end of the encounter I felt a little drained; there was sense that we're almost strangers with the only connection between us being the time we've known each other. A shame because he's a wonderful character within life's variety.

Then I spent a night and day with my sister and Nk; I wanted to see her this day because it was dad's birthday, or would have been. The evening was fabulous and chilled. Watched Jackass2, and Smoking Aces, both were great; I went to sleep in a loft conversion with Velux skylight right above my face... when the rain came it was a wonderful delight to lie there only inches from the impacts on the glass. Am currently re-reading Bruce Sterling's Heavy Weather.

So now I'm back in Bristol, making good progress with Yellow Dawn, spending time on Myspace, enjoying the fact my books are selling despite the lack of marketting (on hold til Summer or later) and really enjoying the feedback I've been getting from people who've been reading them.

Djr