This morning my bath water was as if I had bathed a woolly mammoth in the mammoth molting season. Most alarming! – sadly to be expected after the last dose of chemicals but I had forgotten! How foolish to have had a trim from ‘Clare’s Mobile Hairdressing’ so shortly after treatment – I should have kept the offcuts and gone for the Elton Trump look. I noticed first because I kept getting eyelashes in my eyes – It did not occur to me that they were dropping like conkers. Intriguingly hair from those areas where hair loss is merely a qualification to appear in what ever the opposite to “hairy bear” films (those readers who do not understand this reference should not Google this at work) remains unaffected. How perverse of the creator to ensure that cancer is publicly but not privately disfiguring. Still got plenty of hair left so hopefully I won’t end up looking like an advert for MacMillan Nurses or a knob head. I don’t think I could bear to be a beacon of pity although looking like an up and coming contemporary composer or media type is worst – they are all shaven headed btw and don’t seems to realise that the bald head went out with Teli Savalis and the black polo went out with Alan Ginsberg.

I am back at work teaching and really enjoying it. Not too tired although the journey is a drag. Working on my next telephone piece as well as prepping my teaching which is focused on the digital arts scene which is right up my street. I hope to get the students over here to look at ‘Marge’ – thus combining the two, it will be interesting to see how they react to something which, in contemporary technology terms, is entirely non-visual.

The band ‘Gravityisback’ (see what i did there) is reforming in the summer and I have been practising my bass playing. While it remains lamentably bad, I can only assume my condition was upon me for many years as my fingers are now more, rather than less, agile and I no longer get cramp. I so wish I was musical like the rest of my family.

I have been churning out a few poems as well. As bad as ever but truly pleasurable – an opportunity to drift dreamily into rancid self indulgence – yes rancid – poetry like gone off cocktail sausages – cheap, short and tasteless.

I believe I am now replete with telephones so now it is just a matter of gently improving on those I have. My criteria is the quality and beauty of the item, it’s engineered purity rather than any issue of rarity. This puts me at a great advantage on the collecting scene. A rare example of a phone I possess recently sold for £800 the one I have cost £30 – much the same in my view just an earlier serial number. I am trying to drag Maria to a ‘swap meet’ in Bromsgrove for the Telecoms Heritage Group. The exhibition of early GPO switchboards promises ‘fun for all the family.’ Do you know I really would enjoy it. I am not so sure about Maria though.

War and Peace is brilliant on telly. The guy who plays Pierre is outstanding and I am very impressed with Lilly James. Clare Danes in Homeland is amazing (the whole series is) and the female leads in The Bridge and Dr Foster are remarkable. All in all telly acting and scripting is fantastic for female talent at the moment.

The American elections for presidential candidates is so depressing – how can a country that elects Obama also be considering electing from a group consisting of the rich and stupid, the self made and stupid, from a dynasty and stupid and the just plain stupid. Repellent people, repellent ideas and a repellent system, where all that seems to count is how much cash you can throw at the thoroughly corrupt TV networks. I despair for those lovely American people I know and work with. Why do we worry so much about extremist Muslims when we seems to a have a large swathe of gun touting evangelical Christians to worry about. For goodness sake world, wake up, we don’t need teams, borders, gods, rules, bankers, governments, or anything that annoys Chris.