8:71) Dirk Flinthart 19-JAN-98 20:38

It's those moments that things go into overdrive that I hate. The article has to be done yesterday. Nobody will develop slide film in time. The photographer can't make it. We'll change the location, and make it the California Cafe instead of the Breakfast Creek Hotel; the Creek's been done to death anyway, right. But what about the rewrites? And it looks like three of the nine chapters didn't make it through the e-mail gauntlet, but that's all right, because the printer in the publisher's office is down for the count, so you've got at least five days. To put in that extra 15000 words you really wanted to.

And don't forget to show up for the publicity shots on Friday, oh no - front steps of the Art Gallery, you and Birmingham. Trying to look cool in black in the heat and glare from the too-white angled concrete wasteland of the Museum complex, and meanwhile Natalie's on night duty, so no sleep by night, no sound by day, and I just remembered, only just now that on Friday I will be thirty-two years of age...