SIs and the WSJ.

In the middle of an excellent article in the Wall St Journal today, about how Citadel decided to bail out E*trade, there was this sentence:
"It is a humiliating comedown for E*Trade and its now-deposed chief executive, Mitch Caplan, who failed sufficiently to anticipate the impact of mortgage failures. "
To me, this sentence with its clumsy positioning of 'sufficiently' is very inelegant. I'm surprised, I'd expect to see this clumsy avoidance of a split infinitive in an English newspaper, but the US papers have been mercifully free of this. They seem to abide by the rule that if avoiding the SI makes the sentence too clunky or unnatural, you should just use it. Fowler calls this idea about avoiding split infinitives altogether a 'superstition', and Gowers calls it a 'bad rule'. When I have this argument with English colleagues I invariably cite the WSJ and NYT as examples of publications that are better-written then their UK counterparts (especially true of the WSJ) and which aren't bound by this stricture. And which, for good measure, don't carry horoscopes either.
I've emailed the WSJ reporter, I expect she'll think I'm a complete nutter and hit the delete key.

POSTSCRIPT: She emailed back! It wasn't her fault, it was edited by someone else, and she attached his explanatory note. As an extra-special bonus, she said it made her laugh. (With me, I'm assuming, not at me.)

POST POSTSCRIPT: Thanks to Fausgang for pointing out the two hideous typos in the original entry. This is why I need G&F friends.

Roommate

I came home quite late on Wednesday night and was checking my mail when I realised I had a roommate. I've become very used to living by myself, and I wasn't best pleased to discover that I was sharing my apartment with a large huntsman spider. The thing was about the size of my hand, and the last one I'd seen this big was in the house I lived in with my ex before we separated. I remember that one well, the kids found it and there was pandemonium in the house, it was like the circus had come to town. The twins came running "daddy there's a spider in our room and the boys are trying to kill it" (you have to imagine this said as though it's all one word to really get the effect), and so I went off to investigate. I was expecting a spider about the size of a 50c coin.

It wasn't, it was f&*cking enormous and I realised, as the boys looked at me, that I was going to have to be brave. While I'm not arachnophic I do have a healthy dose of fear when it comes to spiders, especially ones that look big enough to eat. I trapped it (between a glass dish and a newspaper) and then took it outside, where we released it into the garden to kill bugs. "Spiders", I told the children, "are our friends", and then went off discreetly to have a nervous breakdown.

My roommate spider was in a tricky position and I don't have a garden and having weighed up all the options, I decided to kill it. I had a couple of tries, even using my tennis racquet (backhand, it's more accurate for me) but he was too nimble. Eventually, after he'd wedged himself into a box containing CDs and stuff, I decided that we'd call it a draw. I went to sleep, hoping that the spider understood the deal we had: I stick to my end of the apartment, he sticks to his and if we don't see each other in the morning we pretend nothing happened. (As I described this to one of my colleagues he couldn't help wondering whether I'd had any other houseguests in this category. But my private life's not that lurid.)

Next morning he was gone, or maybe just hiding and I haven't seen him since. My favorite bit in the wiki entry on huntsmans is "They also tend to exhibit a 'cling' reflex if picked up, making them difficult to shake off and much more likely to bite".

Lazy

It occurred to me when I was at the gym today being bossed around by Quentin (which I don't mind, it's like I've outsourced my willpower) that the weights weren't going to lift themselves. Fine, I knew that. Then I started to wonder whether there was any way that, given the amount I'm paying, I could get Quentin to lift the weights, and I just watch. But at the same time, I'd want the benefit of the lifting. Is that too much to ask? I'd pay double.

G & F

I love this. Someone in Chile found this blog as a result of googling 'glamorous & funny'. I tried it myself, it comes up as the second hit. Whahey!

Music.

While I'm at it, here's my piano and guitar. Speaking of retail therapy, I'm going out on the weekend with my mate E to buy a new guitar. I've had this one since 1986 (first thing I bought when I got to NY - well, just about) and even though I love the way it looks I think I need another one. E asked me what I wanted. "One just like the one I have now, only better". The piano I bought early this year, I love it. This pic, now that I look at it, also gives a good sense for how chaotic my flat is.

E once made a record called "Music is a beautiful lady". I have a copy.

Malaise

I'm (again) in the grip of some existential malaise. I flick through the songs on my iPod, I don't like any of them. I mentally sift through my friends and acquaintances and wonder if they really like me, or, in some cases, whether I really like them. I play piano but in a fairly haphazard way.

Maybe what I need is a new computer? This old G4 Powerbook's four and a half years old. It's missing the L key and the K's a bit wobbly. The hinge where it opens is a bit wobbly, on account of it having been dropped on the floor by the twins when they were toddlers.

I went down to the Apple shop near work (no, there's not an Apple Store here yet, that's next year) and did a bit of tyre-kicking, which I always like. They know me there now. I suspect that by the end of the week I'll have a lovely new toy. Then I can donate this laptop (remember I have two, this one - the good one - and the bad one, in a crushingly obvious metaphor for my life) to my kids.

She feels what?

Lovely headline in this Telegraph(UK) article about Patricia Cornwell. (Non-australian readers will be scratching their heads. Sorry.)

Also, on the weekend an article in the New York Times which says that according to Pew Research, 40% of american women aged 25-40 have tattoos. Find the link yourselves if you're interested, I'm going out to buy some mangoes.

Kevin

Headline in today's New York Times, "Bush ally defeated in Australia". So that's it then.

(I won about $500 in bets on this election.)

Tag Game

I was asked today - it was that sort of day - what was the most inspiring thing I'd ever read or heard, and I was at a bit of a loss. I'm a bit too cynical to get inspired by much so I couldn't really answer. But as I was leaving work today I remembered something.

In the late 80s I was living in a graduate student dormitory at Columbia, on 116th. It was miserable, I couldn't sleep, the place was designed so that if anyone in any of the rooms made a noise, I could hear it. For solace I used to listen to the radio, and there was a vaguely alternative station coming out of somewhere on Long Island...Garden City? Late one night, as I was hearing the guy next door, Joel, dribbling a f&*cking basketball in his room (I'm not joking) they played a Jonathan Richman song, 'Tag Game'.

I'd been, like anyone else with any sort of sensibility who'd come of age in the 70s (I know this dates me) unnerved and amazed at the Modern Lovers album, with its strange musicality and naive aggression, and Jonathan's nasal delivery. I knew that afterwards he'd gone a bit strange, songs about being a little dinosaur, a little airplane and whatnot. I only heard the Tag Game once but for years afterwards I could still remember the melody and bit of the lyrics.

Years later I found it on a CD, and I had my own copy. There's one bit in it that I felt was almost a direct challenge to me, my cowardice, lack of participation in things, my general not-being-thereness. It goes...

Well now when Paul starts up the tag game
don't let me be
someone sittin on the side sayin
'sorry, it's not for me'

And each time I heard it I cringed, knowing that when Paul did, in fact, start up the Tag Game, I would be sitting on the side making some excuse or generally trying to convince myself that I was above it all, but at the same time desperately wishing I was the sort of person who'd just relax and join in. I could picture the scene quite clearly in my minds' eye, even down to the colors and the sort of light, and the feeling of guilt and hopeless despair as I excuse myself awkwardly from the game.

I used to sometimes summon up this Tag Game thing as a way of forcing myself to participate, to let go. It worked. And I used the song as a reward too sometimes, if I'd done something particularly exciting or memorable (and this was at its height when I lived in Singapore, of all places) I'd play it in the car over and over as i was driving home.

Postscript: This makes me sound miserable, I'm not. The despair and hopelessness was enhanced for dramatic effect.

Nice girl like you, place like this...?

Fauzward asked me other day why I was so keen to get people to read this blog (he described my relentless self-promotion as 'tacky', which I think is a sign that I've not gone far enough) and was speculating whether I have some pay-per-click arrangement with someone. Nothing could be further from the truth, I assured him. It's purely an attention-seeking thing: I want people to read it, and to tell their friends to read it.

On that note, I'm always curious as to how people stumble across it. Yesterday there was someone from Sweden who found it by googling for 'crisis how to kill monster'. I've spent the best part of this morning trying to imagine the circumstances that would lead someone to type that into a search, and all I can come up with is some swede stuck in a basement somewhere, a looming shadow, flickering light, guttural moans... and the trapped protagonist reaching for his laptop and furiously typing in 'crisis how to kill monster' in a last-ditch effort to save his life and instead finding semi-coherent musing about A, T, V, D, Peter, Quentin and lots of stuff about mis-read signs.

On a completely unrelated note, someone in the UK once found this blog by googling for 'my lovely older lady'. As previously noted. And once, memorably, 'dry cleaner Wonthaggi'.

You get it in a kit?

I was at the gym at lunch (again), doing the body-is-a-temple thing. Today it was treadmill, and the only consolation with that is that I get to watch TV while I'm running. I was a bit late to catch much of Dr Phil, so I had to flip between Oprah and the PM's address to the National Press Club. The PM's a sorry figure now, he seems to know he's beat. I saw him yesterday, funnily enough, as I was walking down Philip St, he drove past in a car full of security guys. Earlier that day I'd seen Costello crossing the street, surrounded by journalists and trying to look like he was enjoying himself. For those who care, I have a substantial bet on Costello retaining Higgins, and if he wins, I get enough tax-free money to buy a lovely dinner for 2 at, say, Toko a couple of times. So I do care.

Anyway, as I was flicking between the two, something on another screen caught my eye. SBS, I think. It was an ad (when did they get ads on SBS? I'm so old I can remember when SBS was set up. It was there as a shining beacon of multicultural diversity. Or as a way of getting a handful of extra votes for the Fraser Goverment from the New Australian community, take your pick).

The ad said, in very big green letters "FREE WILL KIT". I had to read it a couple of times to understand what it meant, and to realise that there wasn't some achingly profound existential thing behind it.

Carnivores

I had dinner with my friend D tonight. She's a vegetarian, and fairly strict too, but apparently has a weakness for pepperoni. In much the same way that the Queen is designated an honorary man when she visits Saudi Arabia (otherwise she couldn't go anywhere and whatnot. Is this true, by the way? It should be) pepperoni's an honorary vegetable. We had thai.

I mentioned to her the story about the German Cannibal, and how apparently he's turned vegetarian in prison. It seemed relevant at the time, but I'm scratching my head a bit now. I was in a shop in rural Victoria with A once, a shop that sold pizzas among other things. A told the pimply teenage girl behind the counter that I was a meatlover (name of a pizza, try to keep up). I had to leave the shop.

Glamorous and funny

I'm lucky to have so many glamorous and funny friends. The most G&F of them all, of course, is F. For all his globe-trotting, fire-hydrant sitting-on ways, he was still good enough to have dinner with me here in tawdry, sad Potts Point and then listen to me mumble incoherently (local anaesthetic, not cocktails. for once).

(In the extremely unlikely even that you don't know who Fauzmond is, look at my facebook friends.)

UPDATE: I knew there was a reason the Fauzmeister and I became friends. I just discovered that he's the only other person on the entire internet who knows the difference between blond and blonde, and like me, has disdain for people who don't!

Tricks

I was having a drink with V last night - and I can proudly say I kept it to just one cocktail, so I wasn't all over the place like I usually am - and we got around to talking about body image and plastic surgery. She was surprised (or more likely, feigned surprise) when I told her what I would have done if I ever got around to it, and to prove my point I showed her how I can waggle my ears. It's a trick that used to send my ex-wife into paroxysms of disgust, and V, to her credit was also vaguely perturbed and horrified.

Texas

There was a lovely piece in the Wall Street Journal called "Freaked Out: Teens' Dance Moves Split a Texas Town". I like the Journal very much; it's beautifully-written, pithy, intelligent, and (on the news pages at least) fairly neutral. Now that it's going to be part of News Corp I'm a little worried. Do we have horoscopes? Bingo? Maybe not. Anyway , this article (and I won't give you a link, you have to be a paid subscriber to read the WSJ) starts...


ARGYLE, Texas -- Karen Miller, 53 years old, saw her first "freak dance" four years ago when she was chaperoning a high-school dance attended by her freshman daughter.
One boy was up close to a girl's back, bumping and grinding to the pounding beat of the music.
"I thought, 'That's just dadgum nasty,'" Ms. Miller recalls. "It really had me sick to my stomach."

And that's where I stopped cold, a sharp intake of breath. Dadgum? It's almost beyond parody. I've never been to Texas but I've always wanted to go. I was once offered a scholarship to do grad school at Rice and was very sorely tempted. I sometimes wonder how I would have turned out if I'd spent those few years in Houston; I suspect it would have been good for me.

Persia!

Get me the smelling salts (no, not the naughty salt)! I got a hit on this blog from Iran!

"It's dead, he's did!"

I didn't get to play piano as much as I'd hoped to last night, but that's not neccessarily a bad thing. I try to keep Friday evenings clear of engagements but generally something crops up, so last night I ended up going out, launching myself into the night all full of promise and blind faith. It was a very interesting evening and I was alseep by midnight (even better).

This morning, after I'd read the papers and had breakfast, I went to a spin class at the gym. (Or maybe it was RPM.. is there a difference?) Until I did one of these classes I thought it was a complete waste of time. My reasoning was that you could, if you wanted to, do it yourself. You could just get on a stationary bike whenever you liked and you could just pedal away like mad and if you knew what you were doing - which i didn't, but that doesn't affect the logic - you'd have the same result but you wouldn't be tied to an arbitrary class schedule, or have to fight with the lyrca princesses for a bike.

But I was so wrong. The critical ingredient is something very old-fashioned and sadly underrated: shame. I don't know if this happens to the others in the class, but whenever I do this I reach a point within about the first 10 minutes where if I wasn't in a group setting I'd just get off the bike and go lie down. But I can't. There's the instructor, for a start, and then there's the 20 or 30 other people in the class, and the walk to the door would be a March of Shame, especially when you factor in (as I have to) the extra embarassment of somehow extricating myself from the bike in a way that's not completely graceless.

So I'm stuck there, and I just have to grin and bear it. I clockwatch, I let my mind wander (and I have some of my best thoughts when I'm under this sort of stress, trying desperately for a distraction. I use the word 'best' very cautiously here), I check out other people in the class.

Today we had a charming New Zealand woman with just about the strongest Kiwi accent I've ever heard. I know it's all very cliched but I do love an accent, and at one point she told us "bug strong ligs". An acquaintance of mine in London (one of the about two dozen people who forwarded me the sex-with-bike story) swears that one day he was watching a Kiwi soap opera (I'm guessing 'Shortland Street' but he can't recall) and he heard this line of dialogue:

It's dead, he's did!

My mate realised that when you run this backwards through the vowel shifts, you arrive at the message "it's Dad, he's dead".

Last note on accents. I have a particular thing for South African accents. And no, I'm not proud if it.

Failover

"Dear BlackBerry user, as a 9 hour power down will take place in Hong Kong this weekend, we will failover the BlackBerry service to the Singapore environment. Unfortunately, we are unable to maintain a service whilst the maintenance is carried out due to the nature of the maintenance." My italics, obviously.

At first I thought 'failover' was a madeup word, or an error. But if you look on Wikipedia it's there (which doesn't make it real, I know. But it's start.)

But if you look the definition of 'failover' it implies that service is maintained through the primary outage. This doesn't appear to be the case on this Blackberry failover. It raises the awful possibility that I may not be able to send or receive text massages for part of the weekend. That's a disaster!

Photo

I was at the gym today with Quentin, my personal trainer. We've been doing this for almost 2 years and we don't talk much, but over time we've developed a bit of a rapport. Today he said "I saw a picture of you on the internet", and as you can imagine my blood ran cold. I think he saw the panic on my face, so he described the picture. It was a snap of me and a friend taken at a gallery opening a few weeks ago.

Weird

Recently a colleague - to whom I really hadn't disclosed anything startling at all - said that I was the weirdest person he'd ever met. But I think that's really just a reflection of the fact that he needs to get out more, rather anything about my intrinsic weirdness. (Which is actually pretty low, I'm remarkably well-adjusted.)

Legless

Four cocktails (or, more strictly, one mixed drink and three cockatails) tonight, and it was with a colleague. I managed to resist the urge to tell all my secrets, although I did let one out. Bizarrely enough, I think he told me something but I was too addled to register it. I suspect I'm not going to be in great shape tomorrow...

Fine

It was, of course, all a misunderstanding. I went over with food and beer. We talked, watched tv. Had a few laughs, marvelled at how life gets stranger as you go on (especially if you work at it a little).

I read a line a while ago about how life is lived forwards but can only be understood backwards. Mine's so chaotic and rococo now that I don't think even that's true any more.

Charming

I was supposed to be having dinner with a friend, who (rather charmlessly, I thought) texted me this afternoon to say that he is about to move house and he has to stay home tonight and pack. But that I'm still welcome to come over and amuse myself in the corner.

My first reaction was that this was a deliberate slight, and I was angry and upset. But I've calmed down now. I know him pretty well and I just can't see him doing that, so I have to take it on face value. But at the same time, I hate going around to people's houses to chat when it turns out they're doing something. I've described to Peter (my shrink, please do try to keep up) in great detail my primal fear of not being able to hold people's attention, and if the person I'm talking to is busy doing something else I get these downward spirals of self-doubt and panic. Same is true if i'm talking to someone wearing sunglasses, so I have a new policy of just ignoring them.

He (my friend, not Peter) has a piano, so if worst comes to worst I can have a bit of practice. A friend wants to come over to my place on Sunday and go through my wardrobe (!!) and wants to hear me play piano. This terrifies me a little. I think she's under the impression that I play actual songs and 'pieces', but the reality is that I can spend a whole afternoon just playing II-V-I progressions in different keys and it keeps me very happy. And when I'm reasonably fluent and can improvise reasonably well, it only works when noone's listening. I fall apart when I have an audience.

Melbourne

I handed over the kids last night then checked into my hotel here in Melbourne, which by some bizarre non-coincidence is where I spent the first night of my honeymoon. I have a colleague staying here too, and we went out for a drink. He assumed that because I'm from Melbourne I'd have a clue where to go, but I almost never go out here so I'm pretty useless. We did, however, find Toff of the Town, which was very agreeable. I didn't have much at all to drink because I was terrified that my urge to disclose would kick and and it so wouldn't be appropriate. The colleague in question sits next to me and it just works better for everyone if I keep my private life and my professional life separate.

I did let out that I was probably having dinner tonight with an ex - an ex that's more recent than my marriage - and he seemed very interested. "What's she like?" etc. For someone who sits next to me and really can't not overhear my phone calls he misses a lot. Then again, he's almost young enough to be my son.

LOTR

My sister said today that she's read the Lord of the Rings trilogy many times, she says she feels a compelling need to read it every few years. This explains a lot.

Cocktails

You may notice I've been rabbiting on about cocktails. I strongly suggest you check out this site. It's my friend V, she runs cocktail safaris and tastings. I don't drink wine (except with you, J) and so all the guff that people talk when they talk about wine leaves me a bit cold, but V does the same thing about cocktails and it's infinitely more entertaining.

Exhausted

My life in Sydney is busy, to be sure, but nothing compares to how busy I am when I'm in Melbourne (like now). Every second weekend my life takes an abrupt turn - I go from being a carefree bachelor and man-about-town in Sydney to being a single parent of 4 in Melbourne, and no matter how much I try to prepare myself for it (sleep is the best thing, and lots of it) it still catches me out. We had a great day today but by 730 I'm drained. We're staying at my mother's, as we often do, and at some level that depresses me too. I'm too old to be staying at my mother's house and doing so reinforces the notion that somehow something's gone horribly wrong, and it's all my fault. Of course I know it hasn't; if anything it's all gone horribly right but when you're a man in his 40s stuck in house in Glen Waverley with his mother (who kindness itself would have to admit has had a couple of drinks and is not entirely on the ball - but am I in a position to judge? Thinking all this just makes it worse...) it's hard to shake.

The children are watching a movie and mercifully are not arguing. I think we're all headed for an early night. I'm in Melbourne til Wednesday (and from tomorrow will be in a nice hotel, thanks to my employer) but there aren't all that many people for me to see here. M is away still, I think. And A..? Well, I just don't know. We sort of arranged to have dinner on Monday night but he's working late and I'm starting to read too much into his fairly terse communications.

Seedy

I'm feeling a little underdone today after having 3 cocktails with V last night -and that was after tennis, and then a very pleasant dinner with my old neighbor, Craig. I now know enough about my relationship with cocktails that I can predict my behavior. I peak at about halfway thru my first one, I get very chatty and sparky. It levels off from there until about the end of the second cocktail, but as I go along I feel the urge to tell all my secrets. And I know that's a bit tiresome, noone wants to hear all that. But the end is in sight. Once I start on my third cocktail I'm struck dumb, and everything (including my brain) is covered in fine gauze. I can still think, just very slowly, but I have no ability to move my mouth in any way that resembles normal speech. (I used to see this happen to my father, but he had a much bigger tolerance than me.)

So yes, I was a bit seeedy today but luckily I was very busy so just channeled my seediness into activity.

It's true

This is worth always bearing in mind:

Unsolicited advice is criticism.

Monster

As I was getting the train to work I saw a big poster ad for Beowulf. The tagline for this movie is: "I will kill your monster". I will kill your monster! I'm going to be using that line a lot for the next couple of weeks, but of course I'll be saying it in the way that Death said "you have sunk my battleship" in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. (And no, I still haven't seen the Bergmann movie.)

Prom the Pilipines

I had dinner in Lidcombe tonight with my friend Ivan. ("Where the f*%k's Lidcombe?" someone texted me.) We started off as tennis partners, and we were well-matched. We'd play, maybe saying a few words as we changed ends, that was about it. Then when I did my ankle we started going out for dinners together instead. We share a craving for culinary and cultural exotica, and we jointly coined the word bizarricality to describe the exact quality we were looking for.

Originally our criterion for restaurants was that they had to be 1) representative of the cuisine of a country or region that was troubled, at the very least, or ideally, at war and 2) yummy and 3) weird in some other way. This last is where bizarricality comes in.

The highlight was probably a Lao restaurant in Fairfield where the waiter was a 10yo boy, the restaurant was next-door to a funeral parlour, the menu was on a series of laminated cards with a barbie-style holder and we had warm beer with ice in big cups (just like in a 'men-only' bar in Taipei, I told Ivan. I'm thinking of 'funky'). Food was great, and the whole evening had a surreal air to it with the wierdness just layering nicely.

Next best was the Polish Club in Ashfield, where the highight was the deli downstairs where the nice polish ladies made a huge fuss of us because we were so enthusiastic about the smallgoods. They recognised kindred spirits, I like to think. They were very pleased with our reaction to the tongue sausage. Then there was Peruvian, African, Burmese, Serbian (where we nearly died because Ivan forgot and called the bloke a Croat), Sri Lankan...

The Filipino place wasn't all that great. I remembered a colleague of mine who'd had occassion to visit the central bank of the philippines and discovered, there in the waiting area on the executive floor, a jukebox. He said that was when he finally understood the Philippines.

2 songs

Well, hardly songs. But see what you think.
vaguely countryish
not sure what you'd call this

Upside

I started off today in an existential fug, a what does it all mean, Basil? fit of soulsearching and disquiet. But then two very nice things happened around lunchtime. I got a very nice letter from the government with a big cheque attached to it (I'm a banker, I love money). And the other thing was absolutely none of your business. So there.

Weekend

Friday night, went home from work, had a 2-hour nap then out for a drink with S. Home and in bed by 1030. An amusing evening. But vaguely disappointing. She sees me as a friend and confidante (which is exactly right) but sometimes I'm left wondering whether I'm too nice.

Saturday night I had about sixteen thousand drinks with my lovely friend J (hello J) which was fun because it was about time I told her what my story was, as opposed to the vague half-truths I was peddling last time we were friends.

As a consequence I was a bit of a basket case yesterday. No gym, no yoga.

Contact

I went to see 'Control' during the week with J, her boyfriend and another friend of hers, who earned my undying emnity by whispering to me as the movie started "It's near Manchester". Ah fooking know where Macclesfield is!

I was vaguely aware of Joy Division before Ian Curtis died, but for about a month afterwards I must have heard that album about a thousand times and I got to really hate it. The music sounded better after 27 years. Hearing it immediately transported me back to the scuzzy flat in St Kilda that seemed to have been the center of my world back then. Music does that.

Lovely acronym

I can't believe I haven't stumbled across this one before, but I was reading an account of the Phil Spector trial, and it described the victim as an "AMW". This, apparently, is a widely-used expression in entertainment circles, and it stands for "actress, model, whatever...".

Napoleon

I was all ready to leave my place this morning for my weekly appointment with Peter, and as I was leaving he called me. He had leprosy or something, the whole side of his face had blown up. "But what about me, Pete? Who's going to address my needs?", I didn't say. Actually, I was quite pleased, I think I'm running out of problems and I think he knows it. Much as I love having someone listen to me for 50 minutes even I can recognise that it doesn't have the burning-wagon-rolling-towards-the-cliff-edge urgency it had mid last year.

So I went downstairs to the lesbian cafe to get a coffee, and the charming young women there mentioned how unusual it was for me not to be in a frantic rush. "I was supposed to go see my shrink, but he cancelled", I told them, and it seemed to stop them in their tracks. "I hear voices, and I'm often convinced I'm really Napoleon, or Sammy Davis Jr", I most certainly did not say, although judging by their reaction I might as well have. I went upstairs to play piano for a while after that. Nice coffee though.