Wednesday 15 October 2008

jet-lag joy

Two in the morning, a room bathed in light pollution gurgling through the uncurtained window from the flood-lit car park of the block next door, I stride in, fully awake and ready. Face paper-white in the glow of the laptop screen, I begin to type.

I admit it - in the small hours of Tuesday I got out of bed and wrote some hideous sentences. I am now a jet-lag author.

It seems so good, the words of a genius rattling around in your head, desperate to get out and be recorded before they fade and are only an ungraspable wraith in the morning, gradually drowned out by the daylight and the moans of "why didn't I write it down?" which you finally realise are coming from your own mouth. But this is nothing compared to the other side of the coin - the horror of discovering that you did write them down and, boy oh boy, is it rubbish. Not to be read again until the middle of another flummoxed sleep-deprived night.

I'll probably do it again, though. It was a whole lot of fun at the time and better than lying in bed wondering which mammal to count next. Anyway, the stuff I wrote (and yes, stuff is the appropriate term) might be salvageable - I'll look it over next time I've just flown across a few timezones.

Why should all good things come to an end? Or, to put it another way, here is the latest update on Mr Grass-Head - or, perhaps, Mr Mould-Face would be a better name given that he has entered a whole new phase. Consideration for you, dear reader, restrains me from displaying a stomach-churningly striking photograph but, with his hair trimmed, lipstick reapplied and eyes redrawn, he could be a shoe-in for Santa in your local shopping mall with his fluffy white beard. Only his lack of knee to sit on could hinder his job development.

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