Sickness has its pleasures. I had spent a cold night vomiting up throat stinging red stuff which had once been a meal and then I rested , stretched out on the landing waiting for the next inevitable wave of sickness. But everything comes to an end and so next morning I asked my daughter ( busy with her holiday cardboard) to bring the extension lead and find my favourite detective and balance him on my knees. He fitted so well. The battered car, the cuban cigar and that familiar squint. His hair even darker than before. And this time he was chasing a man in black who had done his time and wanted more. Much more. Many more places to imagine and to sing into life, to sing unto death.
He sang some evangelical rally call and all these doe eyed creatures of the late 1970s swayed in time to his guitar and I knew that this was new. This man was more than celebrity guest, killing his way to his arrest by the man with the knowing eye. This man caught at something in me. He laughed deeper than any human should dare and even his pursuer would stop and nod, knowing this guy could reach. He could reach you, me, all of them. I couldn’t decide if he was mocking all the walls of convention shakily closing in or if he just didn’t care. Because he had a voice that knew more, knew why and where we have to go places where we might be scared but then we go anyway, all ways, where the false light just fades away. I started to smile like him, broader than it was polite, I felt this parting of my head-my soul rippling and then all these sounds yippeeing out, soaring above and laughter, yes laughter, consoling everything, my fever richer, wilder, a crazy pixie skip and dance!