Photo by Camilo, taken Dec 30, 2003

I was supposed to go to New York yesterday. But for the first time in years, I was to fly long-distance without either an upgrade (for business class was full) or an exit-row seat. I've done it in the past, when younger, and let me tell you, if you're 6'6, it's a horrible experience. For five or six hours, you're strapped into a position that permits no movement. Your knees are right up against the seat in front of you (great peril of the passenger in that seat chosing to recline). And your heat rests above the top of the seat, which means that the head-rest is in your upper back, leaving nothing to support your lower back, and the lack of legroom means you can't slump down into your seat. The impossibility of sleeping with nothing to support your neck. Ugh. I couldn't put myself through that again, so I decided to deliberately miss my flight and feign a one-day illness. It's something I've not done in a long, long time - faking a day off work, and I felt very guilty about it. Particularly when I called our travel office to cancel the flight, and had to endure the sympathetic advice of the kindly woman from our headquarters in the south.

My guilt was mixed with pleasure, however, because I had a cuddly, cute boy in my bed from the night before, when I'd gone out to San Francisco's premier monthly club event, the tea-dance Fresh @ Ruby Skye. I hadn't been to this event in several months, and I thought I'd show up around 7.30 and it would just be getting going. But no - we're early partiers in San Francisco, and there was hardly any line to get in: because hundreds and hundreds of San Francisco's finest were already packed inside. It was unusualy for me to go out by myself, but I soon ran into somebody I'd met the last time I went to Fresh, and hung out with him. It was great fun; there were quite a few people I knew, and it was nice to dance with them, shout meaningless comments in their ears, hug and hold each other, and enjoy feeling youthful and full of bonhommie and vitality, exchanging smiles with cute strangers.

One of those cute strangers, J, a lithe pretty boy from Brazil soon became my second companion of the evening. And we danced until the music was turned off around midnight. We drove back to my place together and fell asleep in each other's arms. In the morning of my guilt, we lay around and talked about our romantic histories. And it turned out that J was fresh from heart break three months earlier, and this was the first time he'd gone out dancing in almost a year. It was nice to be a part of his rebirth. We had breakfast at Baghdad Cafe, and I dropped him off at his place, and drove home, still smiling.

I'd thought there was little point in going to New York on Tuesday since it would rob me of a workday, when time is tight. But I was asked to come anyway, so I carefully booked a round-trip on flights that I knew ahead of time had either exit-rows or upgrade seats available. Which unfortunately meant I had to get up at 4.30 for a 6.20 a.m. flight to Dallas.

I spent the early evening, last night, watching the Iowa returns on CNN, and saw John Kerry steal in like a thief in the night with his suprise come-back. Poor Howard Dean - for months the front-runner, then such a flat crash-landing. I feel badly for him, but I'm somewhat relieved since I don't believe he's electable. I can't say that John Kerry sets my heart on fire; he seems like a great man, with much common sense, intellect and integrity wrapped around a masculine, courageous heart. But he comes across as grey and dry, and I fear he won't ignite the enthusiasm of voters who might be pulled from Bush's approval camp by the right candidate. So I'm still hoping that Clarke will win New Hampshire next week.

I went to bed at 8.00 so that I could get a decent night's sleep, but was kept up reading until 10.00, concluding The Silmarillion, Tolkien's pre-history to Lord of the Rings. As the final pages tore by, I admit I was in tears of what I could only describe as awe: the tales of the early history of Middle Earth were ending with a synopsis of the Wars of the Ring that we're now familiar with from the movies. If you loved the movies, you should do yourself a favor and read The Silmarillion. You'll wonder, like I did, at the strength of the language, at the breadth of imagination, and the layers of myth upon legend that Tolkien wove. I'm going to go on now and reread the Lord of the Rings for the first time since I was a teenager. Can't wait. Unfortunately, the first volume (the same copy I had as a teenager - somehow I've kept it with me all these years) is too large to bring with me to New York, so I'll have to content myself with John Kerry's spare time reading, Paris 1919, by Margaret Macmillan.