Fitter, happier, more productive
Apologies to those of you who've been checking back here fairly regularly for new posts. Truth of the matter is that, as suggested in my recent posts, i've been feeling (a) healthy and (b) bored enough to return to work. As a result, my blogging schedule has been disrupted by having to do silly, pointless things like ironing shirts...

Never fear, tho, for my barmy self remains intact, however much suppressed by having to live in the same everyday world as everyone else. I'm clever enough to do both, and long for the day when the outfit i can wear to work is not a crisply ironed shirt, but instead something designed by this guy.

The day will undoubtedly come...

Congratulation Mrs Badger, it's a goal!
Now that I'm no longer a freakin' loon, i can look forward to the footie tournament about to kick off in Portugal as much as the rest of you. Well, apart from the fact that i'm from the land of haggis and scotch eggs (thanks Dom!).

Good luck England! And all the other countries as well!

PS...
Thanks to all of my fri3nds and family for the help and support while i needed it. I didn't know how lucky i was until i needed some help.

So what was it all about...?
For the past six weeks, i've become a psychonaut, delving beneath the surface of everyday reality, trying to piece together the conspiracies and plots, to fathom a way for the human race to find its way out of the mess it's in, to find a way for myself to rejoin the rest of you in the everyday reality in which we are all, ultimately, obliged to live. Some of the questions i asked, it seems now, don't have any simple answers, nor is there a single truth which will bring all the others into the sharper focus required to find the solution.

Or so i thought, until today, when it hit me with a blinding flash. I'm not mad, i'm sane, completely, utterly sane. I've found the truth.

If you think you're prepared to face the truth, here it is. And I'm ready to join the rest of the human race once again.

Or am i just bored...? (Thanks Rob!)

So how are you...?
Me, i'm getting better, thanks for asking. I visited my Doctor (hi Dr Varma!) again this morning, and for the first time since my, ahem, "episode", raised the subject of how best to manage my return to work. He suggested we discuss it next time round instead, so i guess he thinks i'm still medically incapable of working.

Hasn't stopped me getting out and about though (and enough cracks about playing squash, you there at the back!)... Since my last post i've been careening off the bumpers and flashing lights of the pinball table that is London's rich cultural life. Saw Pixies at Brixton Academy (superb and life-affirming), The Black Rider at the Barbican (disappointingly self-indulgent and overlong), the Pain exhibition at the Science Museum (highly recommended for those of you with an interest in the relationship between religions and power structures), the Cy Twombly exhibition at the Serpentine (a waste of time) and The Mindscape of Alan Moore at the ICA.

This last was probably the most interesting, to me anyway. Horses for courses, as I've said to many of you over the last few weeks, and i recognise that the abstruse, apocalyptic ramblings of a comic book writer-cum-magician (not illusionist, note) might not be to everyone's taste, but it was right up my street. If you get a chance do go see, then you might get some kind of an insight into what i've been describing, to those of you who're interested, as my "psychotic delusion".

This might surprise some of you who've known me for a while, particularly those with whom i've had discussions about the nature of reality (more than i'd care to admit, i know!). But my "episode" has caused me to revisit a number of my own belief structures, and while i'm beginning to feel sufficiently well to contemplate a return to work, i think that it will take a while to shake off some of the thoughts which i've been experiencing for the last six weeks or so. Which is not to try to alarm you, merely to point out that if, six weeks ago, a very good fri3nd of mine (hi Nic!) had sent me this, i might have glanced at it and dismissed it like most of you will. But because (a) i have some time on my hands and (b) i'm a freakin' loon, i'll probably spend a bit of time today reading it and thinking about it.

To reassure you, i'm also reading (amongst about another 40 books!) John Gribbin's excellent "Science: A History", partly as research for a short story / novel i'm currently working on, about someone who experiences a paradigm-shattering psychotic vision which completely changes how everybody thinks about the universe. And i can only write this story if i have a good notion of what we all believe about the universe, and how we came to believe these things.

Hot day today, might do my reading in the park. My pale scottish skin will no doubt suffer as a result.

Make sure you get out for a while yourselves, and make sure you drink a lot of water. If you know me, you know i love and care about you, so look after yourself.

It's the end of the world as we know it, and i feel fine
Fascinating piece in The Guardian about the potential long-term geopolitical repercussions of the current oil crisis, and its relation to the war on terror.

Particularly interesting is the almost footnote-like tone of the last couple of paragraphs.

Listen to the colour of your dreams...
I've started keeping a dream diary, in part so that i have something with which to fill the time and entertain the doctor when my talking cure begins in a couple of weeks, in part for the purpose of aiding my memory, as dreams fall away from you faster than real experiences. If you don't mind, i might occasionally share some of my dreams with you (as long as they don't contain anything too offensive or personal, of course)

So last night in my dream i was playing an Xbox game with my brother (hi Pete!). It was one of those fighting games, you know, in which you pummel various buttons in an attempt to kick, punch, or jump over the head of your opponent. Except in this game the characters looked like pacman - i.e. small and round and flat - and they could only move in two dimensions, left and right, and up and down. The game was pretty uninspiring, and we were getting pretty bored. Then i realised that in addition to moving left and right and up and down, you could also move in another dimension. This was harder to see, because the game took place in a two-dimensional environment, but being able to move in this other dimension gave you a distinct advantage over your opponent.

Then, this being a dream, i decided that i wanted to go and visit another fri3nd of mine (hi Gigs!) who was having afternoon drinks with a couple of guys from a band that i like (hi Gene! hi Dean!). Unfortunately they were in the States, so normally it would have taken the best part of a day to get over there, and i would have missed the afternoon drinks. However because of my experience playing the game i realised that it was possible to move in another dimension. So i climbed out of the window, then down a very long, very broad, very deep staircase, for quite a while (say 10 minutes or so). Then at the bottom i jumped out of the staircase, and sat and had afternoon drinks with the guys and a very nice girl (hi dream girl!).

Then, because life carries on, i realised that i had to get back home. So i climbed on the escalator that takes you back to Britain (come on - this was a dream!). But when i got there, they wouldn't let me back in, because i'd travelled without a passport (you don't need a passport to travel in other dimensions, silly!). And because the escalator only travelled in one direction, i couldn't get back to the States. So i was stuck there, in limbo.

And then i woke up.

What a funny dream! And what a long post, my longest ever, i think! Sorry for taking you away from your work this long! Sorry to your boss too!

Uh oh...
I've started to receive a lot of spam emails to the Kicking a Stone email address (all penis enlargement, thanks for asking), and while it's manageable for the moment, i might have to think about another way to maintain my public presence if it gets much worse.

This morning, however, something altogether more sinister, an email from "abuse@gov.us" informing me that "You have visited illegal websites. I have a big list of the websites you surfed.".

It would be worrying but for the fact that it's obviously an automated and vaguely illiterate email, most likely from a script kiddie, which contained a virus that had already been stripped out by those nice folks at Blueyonder by the time it got to me.

Feel dead from the neck up this morning. Is this because (a) i had a skinful of wine and beer last night, (b) i've increased the dosage of my medication, (c) i think i might have upset a very good fri3nd or (d) something altogether more sinister...?

Answers to the usual address: but no viruses, please...

Oooh, it's all a bit grisly and hopeless...
... This weather's horrible, isn't it? Just went round the corner to get my beer for the footie later and got soaked. Weather changes mood, as a very wise man once said.

Never mind. It might be better by the weekend, in London at least. And by, say, the start of next week, the world should be a cheerier place again, eh?

Listen, do you want to know a secret...?
Pssst... I didn't really go to Switzerland in the end, after all. My doctor (hi Doctor Varma!) thought i wasn't well enough to travel, and as all the advice he's given me so far has been excellent, i didn't go. I was tickled by the irony of the fact that i'm not well enough to work or well enough to go on holiday, tho...!

So what have i been doing then? Laying low, pretending to be on holiday, seeing fri3nds and family, and generally living life. I'd recommend it to everyone!

But i guess that most of you are back to work now, so it feels like time to do some more work.

Hope you all enjoyed your bank holiday Monday. Me, i went for a walk to take pictures of anything i saw and thought was interesting. Like this, for example.

I walked around the City of London. I only really like to walk around it on bank holidays, when you can pretend that some kind of apocalypse has happened, cos there's no people, only buildings. Funny thing is, these days the police look really hard at you when you stop to take pictures. It's as if they're worried about something...

More later...