It’s been a good month. I’ve spent most of it chronically exhausted from nightmare-induced sleep deprivation, ill, or feeling like I’m drowning in a treacle comprised of my own meaningless words, but still somehow a good month. Despite feeling like I’m getting nowhere with anything, I’ve written twenty-six pages of articles for the next issue to hit the shelves, and two of them have been the result of investigative digital tampering to acquire information no-one else has, something you could almost call journalism if it was about something serious. It wasn’t; it was about robotic aliens and death Gods; but that just made it more fun.

Now I’m sitting in my newly tidied room listening to the bluesy new Cat Power with my window open and bare feet, freezing slightly but enjoying the night air too much to do anything about it, and idly researching a link between avian flu and a fictional virus dreamed up last millenium.

I used to have a ritual, once I’d finished the disc each month, of stopping at Shakeaway for a carrot cake milkshake on the way back from delivering the masters to the postroom. Since I’m no longer a disc editor, I’m enstating a new ritual for when my work on an issue is done, based on a throwaway line by Amy Gardner from the West Wing:

Amy: I fought you, I lost, I went home, took a shower, had a drink. You know what I do when I win? Two drinks.

This month: two drinks!