Benefit Street, Brighton.

None of the photos littering this blog have any relevance to content. They're just things it gives me pleasure to think about: a lotus in the heat of a Thai afternoon. Many, many wonderful people are using their twitter to send out words of cheer and support to others; posting Beautiful Thoughts; inspiring quotes, uplifting art, and solidarity. I'm rubbish at all that. While  Beautiful Thoughts & Art lose their capital letters at my hand they, and words of cheer and inspiration, are liable to be so idiosyncratic and (depending on where The Black Dog is at any given time) enigmatic, that people do not feel cheered at their receipt, but strangely chilled. There is also, of course the possibility that I have come straight from talking to *Mrs. Simpson and may respond in Georgian cant. (As, I have just realised, she's accompanied me here and forced me to say things like "at their receipt" and "accompanied me". It takes a bit of time for h

I've started to write this particular blog four (4!) times already. Each time I did so the very clear plan in my head for what I intended to say was clear.  But somewhere in the pathway from mind to fingers something went seriously awry.  With vague astonishment I discovered I had found it necessary to give a two page amusing account of walking in to my first room full of students in a Chinese University in Draft No. 1.  Draft No. 2 became a bit of a re-cap of the state of my mental health which began at the age of 12.  I'd only got to about the year 2000 after 1,500 words. I was sure I'd got it pegged by the time I began the 3rd draft and cunningly stopped after the first two sentences to see that my fingers were getting the message and doing as bidden. Well, at least this time they'd started off obediently - they were indeed typing about Twitter, and Followers, and  Positivity. It was only after the need to pee had desperately stifled all thought that I s