Poddy-dodging and Exploding Heads!

Dear Juliet

If it seems I am later than 6.00 pm, I am sorry.

I got back about 4.30 pm your time (no jokes about crashes because I don't think you'd like that) after a good trip north and a great reconnection with the guys at the Welcome Break. I stayed at the Days Inn there for the first time, got reacquainted with their Starbucks and saw Alice Amanda in Forth, South Lanarkshire. She's been disabled all her life and bust her femur a few months ago. Hope I was some help.

Tidied up the parents' grave, saw Longwood again, great chat with Tina MacArthur, who used to be our cleaning lady and heard all the stories about you over the years. It would be very very strange yet perhaps quite fitting if you ended up in her living room one afternoon...

Tried to find that Thing for you, and it will come from Scotland but I'm going to have to use the internet. Don't worry, it won't be a T-shirt saying "JAMES WENT TO SCOTLAND AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT!"

I listened to a bit of your podcast with David Greenwalt and got a rather interesting image of both Drusillas sitting there in the studio, and of course you were always on my mind.

It's now about four in the morning and I haven't got enough functioning brain to write anything great, so perhaps a few basics. I read some of your articles about narcissism over the years and noticed the interesting comment that you didn't really know what love was.

Love is putting the health and welfare of another before your own; and in this case loving that person as she is, warts and all, and not holding her to some impossible standard of perfection. You made one hilarious comment in London once (which I won't transcribe here) and I actually rather like one of our photos which you "didn't love." I liked your humour and fretted about your tendency to work too long and sleep too little, saying I hoped your head wouldn't explode. I enjoyed telling you the recipe for my mocha - it was strong enough to kill a horse - and I always worried about you a bit. There's even a fleeting reference to that in one of my poems. I was sad for you if something wasn't working out (not getting a recurring role one time), you didn't say much about it but I could get the subtext.

Simple things of incredible importance. The history of all that, like Mr Polly, nudges me now and then. It is insignificant in the scheme of things, yet immutable and eternal.

Glad I got back in one piece so I could write this, I might be a bit embarrassed in the morning but biscuits and Frasier will compensate.

I'm also reminded of the last paragraph of A Town Like Alice (didn't I give that to you once?), with it's deeply poignant ending:

I have sat here day after day this winter, sleeping a good deal in my chair, hardly knowing if I was in London or the Gulf country, dreaming of the blazing sunshine, of poddy-dodging and black stockmen, of Cairns and Green Island. Of a girl that I met forty years too late, and of her life in that small town that I shall never see again, that holds so much of my affection.

I went to Australia once (1988-1989), I'll probably never see it again, time is fleeting.

Are you okay?