2004-05-24 - 3:39 p.m.

Home is a smoothing balm which calms the brain wrongs caused by repetitive travel. Yeah, I�m beginning to feel it. Part of me, though, wants to crank up the pace, keep moving, because then nothing could ever catch up with you. If you�ve constantly just skipped town, your problems are left lost in a new city, spinning on their heels, trying to book a flight out, always one step behind. How long could you keep up being batted around the globe like some giant, airline owning kitten is using you as plaything? To paraphrase Peter Marwood, it�s like a dozen transatlantic flights without ever getting off the plane. Time change. You lose, you gain. Makes no difference so long as you keep moving. But sooner or later you've got to get out because it's crashing, and then all at once the frozen hours melt through the nervous system and seep out the pores.

The last night in Malaysia, a festival with royalty and assorted posh nobs, the press pack having been made to dress in identical shirts and baseball caps, and walking along in a group, waving, like a delegation of colour blindness sufferers at the Special Olympics. Then six thousand brightly decorated indigenous peoples come out and dance their dances, a mix of precision-drilled infants, bored looking girls and every Asian closet case this side of the Hindu Kush. It�s impressive and exhausting, the colours moving too fast to register and all about you, a flurry of fists, like being mugged by a gang of rainbows.

Afterwards at the bar, a big farewell, but my mind is already back on the time difference, slowly making its way back over the time zones with each drink and drooping eyelid � a Singapore Sling in Afghanistan, a Gin and Tonic south of Tehran, a beer in a long glass over Istanbul, Kir Royal in the Heathrow arrivals lounge.

The next day, a twelve hour flight bolstered by a two hour transfer and a six hour delay. Have some of that. Those delays are where the things you left behind catch up with you, kicking your shins in the duty free, where it�s always too cheap to give up smoking. They�re on your flight, and they want to talk.

So back for a day, then back into reverse, but only a short way, eating back one hour into the eight gained yesterday, which were claimed back from the eight I lost the week before. That�s the thing about hours, you always get them back, but they�re never the ones you lost. But let�s see how far we can go. Barcelona tomorrow, then Valencia two days later, then back but with Bangkok, Phuket, Austria, Greece, Mexico, Oman, all loitering with intent, so disappear here and I don�t mind if you forget me.

And the book thing? I�ve got an offer. It�s not for four novels, free lunches for life and as many lit groupies as I can snort, but it�s a start. It relies on one word from people high up in business, though, so I�m not holding my breath. Actually I am, but only out of stubbornness.

Keep on moving. I�m going to get my head down. To sleep, perchance to pack.