Bottom a flat!

I sang a bottom A flat this morning! I was so astonished that I did it again, and recorded myself. This is the range I longed for as a young man. What a desperate shame it comes as a bi-product of illness!

The cold stormed through my body last night. Fiona fed me pasta, carrot cake and Dairy Milk chocolate and I sat in front of her telly like a zombie under a rug, barely taking anything in...

The walk up to Hove Station with my suitcase was gruelling first thing this morning. I could feel the cold tickling my lungs and was getting more breathless with every step.

PK and I worked hard. The majority of today was spent on the song Letters. It's such a complicated piece of music and every element has to be individually isolated and polished. PK lulled me into a complete trance at one stage by looping sequences of vocal music whilst he steadily knocked all the soloists into rhythmic shape. There were moments when I started to feel really rather excited about how the final mix might sound. We thinned out some of the orchestrations to allow everything to start in a sort of dream-like place, but by the end it's gonna be like the Symphony of A Thousand.

It's Cat Wars at PK's house! His daughter has recently moved back in with her little moggy, but Chocko, the resident feline queen, is not at all happy to be sharing her territory, so it was whiskers at dawn, and, in fact, throughout much of the day. There's been a lot of hissing, gnashing of teeth and general sharpening of claws. I hate cats. They're such feral creatures at heart. I would genuinely hate to live with an animal which considered itself to be more important than me. Cats are like television execs or like those spiteful little girls at school who used to pinch and scratch, safe in the knowledge that no-one would retaliate. I once got into terrible trouble for hitting a girl who'd been all pinchy-pinchy-slappy-slappy-kicky-ballsy with me for a protracted period of time. When she starting dissing my Mum, I drew the line. I told her if she dissed my Mum again I'd punch her. She, of course, immediately realised she'd found my Achilles heel and started really badly slagging off my Mum, so I slapped her. Hard. And in the process I discovered HER Achilles heel: physical weakness! I'm a typical Leo. Happy to lounge placidly in the sun until someone threatens one of my gang, and then all bets are off! Anyway, according to The Pope we're allowed to hit anyone who criticises our mum, so there we go. Gotta love those religious leaders who advocate violence...

I got myself a brilliant deal on train travel from London to Worthing this time. Two singles for £5 each. This did, however, mean I had to travel on very specific trains, and as I reached the train station I realised I'd turned up a full hour early!

It wasn't a disaster by any stretch. I was hungry so got myself a lovely bowl of nachos at the pub opposite the train station. You know the one? The one where they don't sell coca-cola. (I kid you not!) Apparently they'd run out. That's right. Run out of a substance which is more plentiful on this planet than water itself.

The other curious thing about the pub was the music it was playing on the sound system. I think eclectic Easy Listening would sum it up. We had two random Eurovision songs, one from the 60s, one from the 80s, a Sing-Something-Simple version of "You Are My Sunshine," something performed by Caruso and "Grandma We Love You" by the St Winifred School Choir. What on earth was wrong with the little girl/ shrew who sang lead vocals on that song? She genuinely sounds like she's been inhaling a cocktail of helium and crack!

I got to the train station to discover that my train had been cancelled. Yay! To rub salt into the wound, the dot-matrix sign which listed the train with the word "cancelled" next to it, also opted to show me a list of all the train stations the non-existent train would be calling at!

Being stranded at West Worthing station in the freezing cold (when you have a wheezing cold) is not a great deal of fun, let me tell you. I was more bored than anything else. I attempted to occupy my mind any way I could. I tried to guess how many footsteps it would take to walk along the passageway under the tracks. I went for a little stroll to the local Co-op, which was a tragic affair with very little for sale. I was thrilled to discover that a single fresh orange is almost twice the price of a jam doughnut. I bought one of each by means of celebration. What do they say? Feed a cold, starve a fever.

The next train eventually arrived. Late, obviously, so it was 11pm by the time I'd reached Victoria and almost midnight by the time I'd returned home.