"THE SPIRIT IS WILLING, BUT THE FLESH IS SPONGY AND BRUISED" Jess feinted and slammed her head into the bathroom door and floor early this morning. She's fine now but finding her slumped behind the door, unconscious and unresponsive was probably the scariest moment of my life. I've been in similar positions and I know what to do but it's always terrifying when it's someone you love. She now has a couple of red marks and a few bruises but is pretty much back to normal. I spent the day being 'nurse' which was pretty cool because it's usually her running around after me when I'm ill. Thank fuck she's ok. Spoke to my mum again for the first time last night (and again about 15 minutes ago) and she's doing ok considering what she went through. Sounds like for once her delusional nature actually helped the situation. After speaking to her though it became obvious that this very real incident has already begun to mould itself into part of the fabricated landscape that she usually inhabits. We spoke briefly about her moving which was a complete non-starter and then I spent around 2 hours listening to her and one of the neighbours. Sometimes the people around my mum actually make her seen sane. For a portion of the conversation I felt as if I was trapped in Royston Vasey: "Ehh what do you call them things policemen use to talk to one another? Not telephones. You know what I mean. The machines that they talk with each on. The special machines..." There's no fucking way I'm setting foot in that town in the near future... I've had lots of interesting and odd emails lately - I'll get to them later in the week but the best came from Kerry. She'll hate me for this but she has such a beautiful way of writing (and speaking) that it just seems fairer to cut and paste: "As I understand it, your feelings about the dead firefighters relate to the fact that you have great respect for life and are appalled by the fact that they didn't seem to have any respect for their own and that no one above them in the chain of command showed enough respect to stop the insanity for them. An understandable and entirely humanitarian point of view." Reads better than my own 'dumb bastards' line huh? "This doesn't relate in even the most tenuous way to feelings relating to your family that have taken you years to sort out and will no doubt continue to fuck with your head for many years to come... Don't play the 'I care about my special people' card either because you care and care deeply about people and the thought of people you have never met and are never likely to meet because you know that most people don't deserve to live lives of pain and that most people deserve some sort of chance- I know you would fight shoulder to shoulder with anyone to preserve that." The great thing about wonderful friends like Kerry is that they can give you the kicking you deserve or in this case a slap to the senses and you just want to hug them for it. I had a lot more to talk about tonight but I'm feeling pretty wasted. I'm looking forward to a 'normal' day tomorrow... Mike is blogging to: nothing (not even the cool Zappa disk that Frank got him for his birthday)