I have been sick. That usual thing, where you announce that you never get sick and scoff at those people getting ’flu injections. Then you get really, really sick and have to tell all the people you told that you never get sick, that you are sick. Then they tell you about how great they are feeling, thanks to their jab. I still have that pre-millennium fear of super-bugs. Call me old-fashioned... I don’t mind too much about being sick. I was sent home from work- I could think of far worse ways to spend a day! It makes it easier to tell people to leave me alone and gives me absolute permission to do nothing else than read books and sleep. So I have finished the library book and almost finished the other. Joyous. The other is a bizarre little book that made its way to me. It was sitting on the counter at a second hand bookshop as I was paying for some other books. It was small with a little yellow $3 sticker on the cover. As I looked closer I saw a very young Sean Connery climbing up some sort of mast with New York building tops in the background. I flicked through the book, it had small densely written text, smelled musty and had mottled oil stains on some pages. These kind of unloved books are my favourites. The back cover sealed the deal:

He is a poet, and the world is not made for poets. His ex-wife's father his
after him for long overdue alimony and his violent relationship with the woman
he now lives with threatens to destroy them both. So when the psychiatrists
start to 'help' him, they had better watch out for their own minds- and their
wives! Because this poet will always flee from sanity.

How could you say no? It's called 'A fine madness' and is by Elliott Baker. It is also a film made by Irvin Kershner in 1966 and in 50 pages I'm going to track it down to see Sean in his baby faced prime.

I am having trouble deciding whether to go to work tomorrow. After a few days off, it is quite hard to imagine spending 8 hours in an air-conditioned building with people I don't really know, but with whom I am spending a huge chunk of my life. I went in briefly today. By their reaction to me I think I have another day up my sleeve. Just enough to finish my wee book.