okay, not a good time or frame of mind to write stuff, but i think the following are noteworthy:

- Neil Gaiman is lovely and marvellous.

- took advantage of being a bit sick to steal my dad's Harry Potter and spend most of Tuesday in bed reading it. i liked it better than the previous, but ulitmately feel like i just read a pageturner full of stuffing. neither as funny or dark or eventful as her better ones, and i predicted one of the Shock Things I'm Not Going To Mention On The OffChance That You Might Care As Well As Not Know Yet two or three books ago. i might be being unfair due to fast reading.

- managed to get two things signed by the lovely Neil without at any time wetting myself or trying to kidnap him (or his sushi, which i was eyeing off while in the queue). i feel functional.

(-i think it also noteworthy that Nic was eyeing off his handwriting. and someone's lost post-it note led to identity crisis.)

- what the hell was in that red wine? its sourness lurks in my belly pointing and mocking.

- one of the ncie things about Neil is that in his readings and talking and things, he does come across as someone who likes to tell stories and is good at it. i find this a reassuring thing in a writer.

- saw two people who really really depressed me. one was a good friend at uni and i kinda know her partner from just before the time they decided to dump all their friends. i used to be sorry about this, and now i am less so. always with a flair for applying grand narrative to her life, they are in some loop of self-fulfilling sadness. i wonder if their workmates know that he was a concert pianist and she was the most brilliant, literate and savagely witty person i've ever known. he laughed and shook his head when i told him that i have more spite than ambition. she had to go home rather than see a writer she'd adored for years.

- i walked home listening to Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen and spent a good few minutes walking the same three steps, forward and back, just because i could see the arc of moon's radiance in the clover dew.