Smoke lingers round yer fingers...

I'm travelling home. I don't have to go anywhere after this. I have no plans at all. The trip was interesting and saw me belting out a Foo Fighter's song I didn't know to a sweaty room full of middle-aged women after being awake for twenty hours straight. The next day saw me chip my front tooth on an onion ring (something my magnificent teeth have bested only once before when I left a brand new filling in a cheese soufflé).I spent Sunday snoozing on a sofa with a pregnant woman, trying to convince her that the best possible name for her unborn child would be "Stella". I'm glad I didn't convince her now as I've gone off it a bit and, as we were watching both "Countess Dracula" and "Crucible of Terror" (my choices - a guest's privilege!)the choice seems so obvious to me now: Jess, Simon, the name of your daughter should be INGRID RAVEN ENDICOTT! (a name designed to inspire ire, no doubt!)

I took a shopping trip to Carnaby Street with the other tourists, bought shoes identical to the ones I was wearing, skipped over the river like a stone. Wrote a poem about Alan Price, and a film treatment for a blues based rom-com and cast it (Eric Stoltz to direct!). There was even a minor role for Joss Stone and bizarrely, as I write this in a bar in Heathrow, a news report flashes up that two men from Manchester have been arrested for plotting to kill the soul-diva-by-royal-appointment: I was only plotting to cast as a snippy secretary!)

I've drunk a lot of wine, eaten very little and bathed less and all i all had a very good time with my remarkable friends. I'm continually amazed that I'm able to inspire loyalty and kindness in people that I'm uniformly rude and sarcastic to. It can only be Kelly's benign influence; it would certainly never have happened before. In fact her beautiful face beaming sleepily down from our bedroom window as I drove off in a taxi at five in the morning has haunted me throughout this trip. I can't believe I'm loved by such a remarkable woman. Nor can a lot of my friends, mind you! I miss her so much that I don't think I'll ever be able to leave her again. A holiday is a luxury that I can ill afford.

That said I haven't laughed so much in a long time: when Mike suggested that a workable punk-rock analogue for Johnny Rotten would be "Ernie Fartz", with that dead-pan innocence that he does so well, I creased about six different fluids out of my body. In fact he had said "Ernie Farce" - in his mind there is an exact correlation between saying something is rotten is the same as saying "this is a bloody farce". This is because, in his heart of hearts, Mike is a 1960's Soho bookie's runner. But I do prefer Ernie Fartz because I nearly died laughing at it and by the end of the evening we had the entire band: Ernie Fartz, Peter Zout, Walter Torcher, Sven Diagram and Kenny B. Leivitt. I'd buy that record any day.

The Visitors

We're halfway through (more than halfway through) the visiting season and all has gone well thus far. Visits from D & G and M & R went swimmingly but the news that my mother was preparing to visit and stay for a week came with some trepidation...I needn't have worried. She was a joy from start to finish.

Kelly is bearing up well. She has lost a lot of weight because of stomach pains and is surviving mainly on a diet of compliments and energy drinks. Unfortunately the cough that she developed over Christmas is back again and this time the Codeine Linctus seems less effective; the coughing fits are sometimes so severe that she throws up the food that she struggles so hard to keep down. It is heart-breaking.

She says that her panic, her terminal dread, has left her now. And certainly since we moved back there had been a panicked, haunted look in her eyes. She seems less despairing now and says as much. But then again most of her time is taken up with a choking cough, anxiety and bone-deep fatigue: I'm not sure she has time to despair.

One thing that does lend creedence to her statement that the dread has lifted (and I do believe her, but this is corrobarative)is that she has started writing again! This pleases me more than anything as she is a fabulous, lucid and human writer. A new computer arrives tomorrow ( unbelievably kindly donated by beyond-the-call-of-duty friends D & G) - I can't wait to see what she does with it.

We're off to Scotland on the weekend, visiting my sister and brother-in-law and their delightful children. I hope she's well.