LIZA CODY

Last week my friend joined the likes of TE Lawrence and Ernest Hemingway when he lost two crucial chapters of the book he's writing.

This concerns me because I was helping with rewrites and editing. In my clumsy way I take a hard copy and on it write in pencil all my corrections, suggestions and lyrical pensées. Pencil notes can be erased and ignored but if they're lost they're gone forever. No copy exists, no carbon, no electronic trace on a memory stick.

You'd think, in the electronic age, that this kind of incident was a thing of the past. Read More 

Today I had another email from Haggerty James which began, 'Hello my victim' and ended 'Think twice.'

Apparently I have been filmed masturbating to porn. My blackmailer will send the video to everyone on my hacked contact list tomorrow unless I pay $290 US using bitcoins. There are detailed instructions about how to mine bitcoins.

As scams go, I think this might be quite a good one. I like the idea of pornography being made using the customers of pornography as its subjects. And I like the idea that there might be a few people around ashamed enough to pay up.

Porn isn't a victimless crime.

All the movies I've seen in the past few months have been women led: Hidden Numbers, The Florida Project, Molly's Game, Three Billboards in Ebbing Missouri, Lady Bird, and I, Tonya. These are not all art house movies. They may not be big budget La-La-Land fare, but they're American and Hollywood-ish. There's a lot to applaud. And a lot more to hope for. Although I have to say I felt that I, Tonya was a true American tragedy, played for laughs.

I'm so impressed with two older actors: Frances McDormand and Laurie Metcalf – absolutely riveting, bad hair and all.

did not know that, among other airlines, Delta had been offering group travel discounts to NRA members. Insanity. Isn't it illegal to take guns onto planes anyway?

Their children are being killed by children with guns.

Yet there's such a ridiculous, cruel fuss about abortion in the USA. It's easier to get a gun than a termination. Again, insane – when it's been proved that there's such a dreadful knock-on effect on health, mental health, crime, and gun crime when women aren't allowed to decide for themselves how many children they can manage.

Our own dear NHS – yes, the one that wants to cut back on vasectomies etc – should listen and learn.

Stuck in the Middle with You

There's a magpie on the roof opposite. It's wagging its tail at me – which I will take as a sign of encouragement and approval. Starting a blog? Really?

When I begin a new piece of work I always start in pencil, on paper (as I'm doing now.) When I have about seven pages I copy it into the computer. Seven handwritten pages are roughly 2,000 words – which seems to be a critical mass.

That was what I was doing yesterday. And while doing that I found I needed to check out which of the Romantic Poets probably took opium and whether or not Keats' Endymion begins with a dream that fit the notion. It does. And then I found a rather entertaining chat-room by googling the question 'What does opium smoke smell like?'

Apparently the sweet flowery smell is a myth.  Read More