The land of the lost

Last Saturday night I went to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, came home and collapsed straight into bed and didn't get up again.
It's been strange. First day or so I was quite feverish and demented so I didn't do anything at all except mutter like a nutter and cough. Then the pig pox turned into something else and I'm not sure which was worse.
I looked like a zombie, because the infection was in my eyes and my eyeballs were a fetching crimson, so if anyone had seen my staggering around in my pyjamas they might have called the SES. Or Buffy.
Luckily nobody was here. My girlfriend was in NZ and all she got from me was a sort of rusty squawk over Skype.
I've been in some kind of twilight zone - missed my nephew's birthday, the glamorous premiere of my friend's brilliant film [trailer here], the delivery of my brand new laptop, Geelong beating Hawthorn by a point, and about a million meetings at work.
Hours, days (eight so far), just vanished without trace.
Couldn't read or watch anything I hadn't already read or seen, which resulted in an awful lot of Harry Potter and Broadway musical rehashing, which in turn resulted in some fairly bizarre dreams (Hermione Granger in jail with Roxie Hart ... or something). Couldn't even read the newspaper. After a few days I have graduated to watching crap on YouTube, which, due to the constant buffering on our wireless connection, just about matches the pace of my brain.
All very odd. As if the brain needed to just stop.
If only it could do so without tearing out the lungs and throat as justification for lying down - speaking of which, I urgently need to go back to bed. Pathetic.

Lately I've been...

Writing
Or rather rewriting my book for young readers set during the Counter-Reformation.
(And clearly not writing on this blog)

Reading
Harry Potter again, from start to finish, because I saw a trailer for Half-Blood Prince and got a little too excited for my age.
Doctorow's The March - brilliant, of course, but not Ragtime. I know that's unfair, but that's what happens to people who write one of the great books of the 20th century.
Michael Dirda's Book by Book, which was a complete waste of my time, his publisher's ink, paper, and over-enthusiastic cover blurbs. Read like an undergraduate blog.

Watching
Tenko on DVD. Remember that?
The Lemon Tree

Waiting for
The Blessed premiere at the Melbourne Film Festival