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Back in Newcastle

¦ dialling in from Jesus Mound ¦

10:43 GMT, Friday 7th August 2009.  Listening to Linkin Park on my MP3 player; unable to play music through my battered laptop.  Sitting at the oak refectory table in a flood of sunlight filtered through heavy cloud... a misty white effect.  The house is utterly silent.  Mum's upstairs: enjoying a coffee and "her time".  My sister's spending a month in the South of France... taking a break from being a carer.  The fact she can is a testatment to how positive our mum's health is right now.  

I'm feeling a little disorientated. A combination of things.  I've been coming up to Newcastle so often this year, that I can't quite recall when I was actually last here... my memories of each visit are just a seamless blurr; I kow it's been longer than usual.  Being here so abruptly, thanks to the fact I'm flying, after the manic rush of the past few weeks... the current ongoing intensity of work, especially the past 8 days since I've been acting head of department; and entertaining so many people during the gathering of the Fellowship.  I'm also disorientated because I'm out of my writing groove. At last.  But sitting here, in the still silence of the house, that Pavlovian auto-suggestion is tugging at my neurons: you should be writing, you should be writing.

Maybe I'l get back into it. Or maybe I'll just go for an 8 mile walk.  *smiles*

I'm currently reading "I Am Legend" by Richard Matheson; I'm really enjoying it, and pretty impressed by the fact it was penned way back in the early 1950's.

Oooo, the sun has burned through the clouds.  No blue sky yet but the light is rich and golden... pouring through the skylights and reflecting off floors of polished pacific oak.

I woke up this morning thinking about my car.  Is that sad?  I don't know.  I've never experienced anything like this before, dwelling on material objects.  Everytime I left work this week and made my way to the car park, my guts have tightened up with excitement.

Right, time to grab a shower, freshen up, knock back another black coffee, then get out and about.