Paperboy

Thursday: To recap; the weekend before last my brother had come to visit. It was over my birthday, and my birthday weekend went something like this: thursday - went to Loss to take pix for the book. People I didn''t want to run into were there. Friday - had some crappy news in the day, then went to Lucha. People I didn't want to run int were there. Saturday - was going to go to Egg, although people I didn't want to run into would be there, but as I was getting up to set my hard-drive to backing itself up while I was out, I trod on the power cable and knocked it off my bed onto the floor. The drop is about a foot, but when I plugged it back in, it didn't work. The hard-drive contains all the pictures I've ever taken, including all of the ones for the book I'm working on - the most recent, being the only copy of them. Also all my other photos - trying to put an article in NME about Dice Club, and all the pictures from it are in the hard drive. Also all my old scanned photographs, esssential for my magnum application. Not a good situation. So, via some panicking, some hasty research, some begging for a loan off people I shouldn't ever ask for such things from, I managed to find a company who could fix it fairly quickly for a reasonable price - reasonable in comparison that is, they still said it'd cost about £250. Then, once they looked at it, they said they'd have to pass it on to their partners, and it's cost £460. Which is about what I'm expecting to get from the book. So, Thursday, I pick it up, take it to Mat's, to get what we can off it. There's a good number of pictures for the book on there, but, all the Dice Club pictures are gone, as are most of the scanned pictures. Heartbreak, expensive heartbreak. Beyond photography there isn't really much going on in my life at the moment, and I get a lot of reassurance from my photographs, to see that they're good is to know that I'm not wasting my time. To lose them is a bit like losing a part of me. On the good side, that evening I'm wondering what to do, when Terence Teh calls - he's someone who's writing on the book, a genuinely nice guy. He asks me if I'm free to do some pix for Dazed Digital that night and the following day. So, I took pictures of an exhibition opening, and then the following day, a portrait of a graffiti artist called Saber, and though it's not the magazine, it's certainly a start.

Sunday: the previous evening had found me going down to Richmix to watch Be Kind Rewind, and on the way home wandering along Brick Lane, which included a visit to the bagel shop as is par for the course. I wasn't too tired when I got home, and ended up falling asleep at about 3am. 8am I was woken up by a strange pressure in my belly; I had to rush to the bathroom, half in a daze. When I stood up to go back to bed, a violent retching burst from my stomach, which emptied itself with a certain force. So, for most of the rest of the day, I was back and forth between my bed and the bathroom, dozing and incoherent, shivvering, sweating, too hot or too cold. It was not fun. Standing up was difficult and my back ached intolerably; I'd become dehydrated very quickly. Now I lie in bed with a belly that feels like a water balloon, sloshes from side to side when I move, but not so sick, and the shaking has gone. Food poisoning is terribly sudden; that bagel was no good, obviously. But now that I've had a sleep and woken up again, and had a long bath, I feel a bit better. But, all things considered, it has not been a good couple of weeks.