wish I'd been there

My friend Susie (the one that's a writer) has just come back from Croatia. She was invited to a short story festival, and had a brilliant time apparently, though she told me this while lying down with a damp cloth over her eyes, because she was feeling a bit 'feeble' she said. Labyrinthitis. It's nothing to do with Minotaurs, or with that amazingly successful novel by Kate Mosse (not the model) - it's something that happens in your ear canals, when wee crystals get shoogled around. Since Susie and all the other writers and organisers (there were about 25 of them) had some pretty exciting moments of turbulence during a flight from Zagreb to Dubrovnik, and then got half-roasted walking round the city, and then gave readings and then slept for about 3 hours and then got up to go on a day's sightseeing by boat (which she said was absolutely amazing) and walked miles across an island to a tiny beach with very very very hot sand and then swam (she says she didn't have a swimsuit with her and didnt' want to swim in her underwear in case the underwire bit in her bra got rusty) or didn't...and then did another reading, it's not surprising if her ear canals got confused and filled with noise like a boat going down niagara falls, and she felt a bit dizzy.

Anyway, she's back now, and still holding onto the walls when she moves round the house, but I've been here, helping her, doing her correspondence, bringing her cups of tea. She says there's a word for what I am in her life - it could have been a manuensis, but I need to ask her again and then look it up, because her mouth was full of biscuits at the time.