Finally emerge from an extended spiral of bed-centred fluey gloom, convince friends and family that I’m more or less okay, and face the world once more. Onwards and upwards.

Today – polish off a live review of the womanly dream-pop duo Sing-Sing for Plan B Magazine. I muse on how guitarist & songwriter Emma Anderson looks exactly the same as she did when I saw her play Norwich Arts Club in 1990, then in her former band Lush. Sing-Sing are far more musically multi-dimensional and far less at the mercy of Faustian music scenes than Lush were, though I fear the latter matters more in the UK success scheme of things, as ever, but I’m happy to be proved wrong. The new album, ‘Sing-Sing & I’ is classy and contagious, the CD featuring a curious animated video about a transvestite courting a male mannequin.

To the Horse Hospital for the latest Dedalus Books event. It’s a showing of a new 25 minute black& white silent film, “Prayer-Cushions Of The Flesh: An Irrational Erotic Fantasy”, starring dapper pencil-moustached London club host David Piper and chanteuse Anne Pigalle. Adapted from a Dedalus novel by Robert Irwin, all manner of surreal and naughty things go on in a harem, including puppet giraffes, zips on mouths, stop-frame animation, fetish wear, tattooed nudity and more, though it’s more funny and sinister than actually explicit. Good value for the duration. Kenneth Anger would approve. The showing goes down well, and DVD copies are snapped up.

The event is also to launch Phil Baker’s ‘Dedalus Book Of Absinthe – Premium Edition’, and appropriately enough there’s free green stuff on hand. A chapter toward the back of the book carefully grades all the various available brands of absinthe, and gives the highest mark jointly to Mari Mayans (Spanish) and La Feé Parisian (French). The latter is served at this event.

I hadn’t realised that the whole business of setting a spoonful of sugar soaked in absinthe alight (without setting the whole glass alight) is specifically for a 1920s Prague recipe, known as ‘Bohemian Absinth’ (note Czech spelling, with ‘Bohemia’ referring to the actual place). The more traditional nineteenth-century Parisian drink is rather more sedately prepared with a slotted spoon, a sugar lump, and chilled water. I’m pleased about this; knowing my inner slapstick child, I’ve always steered clear of any drink that involves playing with matches. So Parisian Absinthe it is.