I seem to have done something to my back. Before I left San Francisco, I went to the Kabuki spa and got a half-hour massage from a man with very strong hands called Kyle. It felt delicious at the time, but ever since, I've been walking around with a grimace and a dowager's hump.
It's nine days since I left home and I am really hankering for my two girls, Frankie (9) and Lula (5). Yesterday, at the little schoolhouse they attend in the Bahamas, there was a celebration of Commonwealth Day and all the pupils had to wear the national dress of a Commonwealth country. Frankie went as an Indian. Lula went as an Australian.
One of the mortifying side-effects of missing my daughters is that I become slightly verklemmt whenever I see kids on the street. I even get a little teary-eyed looking at children's books in bookstores.
Last night, after poring, weepily, over the Commonwealth pictures, I decided to distract myself by playing around with some hair rollers that my friend Claudia left me when she visited me in San Francisco. I have never done anything more complicated to my hair than tying it back in an elastic band, so I thought it would be fun to experiment. I put the rollers in, sat down to read a book and... hey presto, I am flying to Los Angeles this morning, looking like Shirley Temple with osteoporosis. This is the kind of thing that happens to road-weary authors when they spend too much time in their hotel rooms.