2002-05-21 - 5:00 p.m.

This time last week I was arriving at the hotel in Bodega Bay in the Sonoma Valley. It�s where they filmed �The Birds� and to be honest, the town still looks as though it�s bracing itself for some kind of ornithological violence. Not the most inviting place I�ve ever seen, though the coastline is beautiful, in a kind of barren, windswept, wander-out-into-the-sea-and-resigningly-fill-your-lungs-with-the-sweet-water kind of way.

But I just remembered the hotel room.

I was about to kick back and fancied some music. By lucky hap, there was a CD player, together with a CD of The Beatles sitting next to it. Though not my favourite overrated scouse hacks (there, I�ve said it), I figured it would be nicer than switching on MTV and having to listen to Nazi Bumfluf, or whoever�s on �heavy rotation� these days. The opening strains, however, were not like any Beatles song I�ve ever heard and sounded like a trumpet being physically sucked through a trombone. Picking up the CD, I was casually mortified to discover that it was in fact �A Freeform Instrumental Jazz Tribute to The Beatles�. Heavens to Betsy, it was horrendous! I think the �musicians� should be hauled up in front of the disciplinary commission for The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Brass. Flicking off the caterwauling aural sewage, I decided to try a book instead. My own, well, let�s just call it �reading material�, was already overly-well thumbed, but, let joy be uncontained, if there wasn�t a little 3-book library on the shelf as well! I was to be given short literary shrift, however, as, on cursory inspection, we seemed to have the choice of two romance-spewing potboilers IN FRENCH, and the all-time feelgood classic, �On Dying and Denying � A Psychiatric Study of Terminality�. Granted, the book is probably the perfect accompaniment to Beatles Jazz Atrocity, but I didn�t want to risk the combination should the cold, unforgiving sea suddenly look quite appealing. I opted for a nap, which is the sensible option in almost any situation, I find.

In a Woody Allen-esque coda, I ended up stealing the Death Book, just out of interest. I�m working my way through the chapter headed �Indications of Impending Psychosocial Death� � if I understand the long words correctly, these apparently include not breathing and having no pulse, which is pretty groundbreaking, and the overlying theme is that dying is a part of life, which they surely just nicked from the film �Forrest Gump�? The good news is that patients in severe denial have the same survival rates as those who go in with that annoying �optimistic� attitude, showing it to be the wasted effort I always thought it might be, which is great for lazy chumps like me. Not that I�m dying. Oh, no. Never.