While I was shaving off the candyfloss fuzz, a silverfish ran across the floor. Caught in a flurry of fluff it froze, and as I passed the clippers over and over, hanks of bleach-dried hair the colour of burnt coconut cream raining down around it, I wondered if they followed scent-trails, like ants do. It seemed unlikely; silverfish are astonishingly primitive, fragments from an unimaginable prehistory, tiny dinosaurs that slithered off the Burgess Shale and onto your kitchen floor. They probably can't even smell; certainly they're unsophisticated compared to most insects. I cut it far too short, down to soft pinkish fuzz that'll make people glance twice to check there's hair there at all, but once you've hit a guard-level there's nothing for it but to cut it all down to smooth. While I was checking for tufts in the glass door (the most convenient mirror in the kitchen) the silverfish finally made a break for it, threading through the sheared-off hair and away, back to the safety of under the shelf. Maybe one of the spiders will eat it. Do they like silverfish? Is it like lobster for insectivores? Or is it more like a slug, edible, but really, you wouldn't? Upstairs the first tube of hairdye that came to hand was Blueberry Hill, so I'm purple now, or will be once it's cooked for a half hour or so. Maybe it'll be a goth autumn. Hmmm ... Well if I hate it, I can always dye it black tomorrow. It's always interesting, having black hair.

[Summary: horror comics are very now, sindee virtue, kempble and faraday, house in hill hole ... dreams that crack me open in the morning are better than no dreams, DIY pacings thinking about glue and screws and how to make plastic stick reliably to hardboard, and all this again and again until something goes pinc ... couldn't find the chemical brothers until two hours in, time on, time in, friends unexpected and awaited and long bitchy conversations ... cat in the pub garden, sometimes it feel like I am everybody's social secretary and that depresses me, can't talk when the music*'s playing it's nothing personal but oh, I miss just going down the pub and chatting, but dancing is good good drinking is good and parties all that and that ... virtuous, social, wonderful when friends hit that golden seam of success (bras, champagne, tiny black hats), and then there's always more to do for the house, new lights glasses vases and Howl's Moving Castle and the Jericho Tavern and damn it who would decide to flavour a sausage with mint and passion fruit? Not I, not I.]

*Suitable Case for Treatment, Thumb Quintet, Keyboard Choir, good night well done.