ouch

Headaches have been plaguing me this week. Usually on the left hand side. On Tuesday it was particularly bad, and this morning it is not great either. Last night we went to the launch of Vagabond Holes, the book of reminiscences/ skerricks/ discussion/ etc about David McComb, and Beautiful Waste, a collected poetry tome. D McC has now been dead a decade, and he is obviously still sorely missed by many. I contributed a piece to VH which seems now to me to be a little outside the spirit of the rest of the book but whatever – that was the editor’s decision to make, not mine, and they must have been happy with it. There is a lot of interesting shorter memoir stuff in there which I enjoyed reading. I guess there is an elephant in the room when it comes to D McC (the drug stuff) which no-one is addressing in print. If it’s irrelevant, then perhaps we at least need to have the discussion about why. I don’t think it’s tasteless to bring it up. But in any case what really stands out for me in VH and what I find really interesting is his absolute dedication to his craft, and his concerted reworking of ideas and writings throughout. Last night we had Judith Lucy and Robert McComb reading a couple of poems each; Graham Lee and Robert McComb performing a couple of songs; the Black Eyed Susans performing about five songs.

Speaking of poorly functioning heads, Millie’s eye is back with us, what it is of course is not her eye but what a buildup of pus is doing to her eye, by distorting her cheek. It gives the right side of her face a sleek look – a bit deco – which in itself is not entirely gross but it doesn’t measure up well against the left. She is back on the antibiotics.



A co-worker said to me this afternoon, ‘are you sick or just tired?’