Damned Spots

Craig Smith and I made the CBCA shortlist with our greenish book, The Windy Farm. You can make it about sustainability, if you want to, otherwise just enjoy the flying pigs. Craig’s pictures always delight me and he somehow manages to find humour in just about everything he does. (This helps when you’re writing what are purported to be ‘funny books’ and Craig is the decorator.) I’ve been lazy with the blogging, so this post is for my stroke rehab team at The Alfred. I was supposed to be keeping a work diary this week, to make sure that I didn’t work too hard and undo the good recovery my brain is making by over-stressing it. I realise it all seems like an egregious excuse for laziness. But seriously, I had two solid ten-hour writing sessions last week, without a break and I knocked myself out completely. I got an idea for a sequel to the body-snatcher book, involving the head of Oliver Cromwell,  and I didn’t want to let that bloody muse go when I had her in my grasp.Ten hours used to be a reasonable, pleasant enough day’s writing  for me. These days it’s almost fatal. I have to stop work every hour, then meditate, then … oh my god I just read this post back and I seem to have become Mozart on his death bed all of a sudden, being coaxed by Salieri to write just one more crotchet or flying pig joke. To compound the historical allusion, the doctor has found strange lumps on the back of my neck, and they’ve cut them out to analyse them. I’ve either got the Black Plague or Lupus or acute hypochondria or something even more worrisome. The odd thing about my visit to the dermatological department of the Alfred, is that the doctor kept dragging in more and more people to look at the curious lumps on my neck. Some were students, others were various plague specialists and yet others were paying members of the public at a bit of a loose end. 

It became like the state room scene, and if you do not know what I'm referring to there, why on earth are you reading this blog? It made me wish I'd gone to more effort with my underwear, but I wasn't expecting Groucho and the rest coming to spectate. I find out tomorrow what the lumps are.

And I didn't bother to fill out my work diary yesterday, because I was far too busy celebrating The Windy Farm's success, but in a restful, meditative way. Quite.