Last night, I got the most powerful sense, as I looked at the people we walked past on the way home, that there was something wrong about their faces. A mask-like quality, angles too stiff, origami-fold flesh around flattened eyeballs,none of the angles entirely meeting. It would have been scary had it not come with phantom pain, faint nausea, an elevated sense of taste and smell. New, but quite recognisable. My fortnightly friend, my migrainous phase.

This was a very mild effect. Some people fetch up with the centre of their vision punched out, but because of the way the brain works you don't necessarily see the hole unless you're looking directly at something compicated, like a person's face. This is common enough to have a name: "doughnut face". This was so barely there it almost looked real, a distortion of my vision so subtle it took the complications of a human face to bring it out.

I went home, took my pill. Packed up all those letters for people, pasted up Drake's 7, did the washing up. My pills are great. But today I've forgotten them (they're still where I left them last night). I try to carry them always, but you always forget them when you most need them, stuff that acts on your brain is just like that.

So. Stabbing pain in my head. Vision already beginning to tangle. Floaty arms. Sick. Head wrong weight. Fifteen minutes before I can take (more conventional but much less effective) pills. At least they'll dim the pain. I don't even have a cool flannel here ...