Matt Sullivan

I've recently taken to triffid-raising -- a rather hair-raising, and potentially blinding, past-time -- and the beast has attempted to take over the kitchen. It must have grown about four feet this year alone, and got so top-heavy that it snapped in half.

I now have two triffids.

After much triffid-centric care and attention (through very dark sunglasses), it seems to have recovered, though I have been forced to bind the wayward killer shrub for its own protection.

Here's the bound triffid, already attempting once again to retake the kitchen.

Well, well. A few weeks have passed since I last wrote anything here. Was it because little has happened? No; quite the opposite in fact. It was been an extremely eventful time, and I have been rushing around like some decapitated fowl. It has also been a time of upheaval and there will be some significant changes to my lifestyle over the coming months -- hopefully all for the better. More on that if and when things happen.

I arrived home late from Dublin last night, and immediately drove to my father's place, where a clowder of cats awaited impatiently to be fed. My father, you see, is away enjoying himself for the weekend, so someone is required to provide nourishment -- and a target -- to Bilbo, Jinx and Triscal. And that little task falls to me.

So I managed to stagger into bed and sleep like the dead by midnight after ensuring the well-being of the cattery; and being bitten twice for my troubles. Bilbo has anger management issues ...

I'm preparing to say farewell to London for the time being; I fly out this evening to Cork and then up at the crack of dawn to train it back to Dublin. Ah, the jet-setting lifestyle that I lead ...

I have been in London now for four days and it has been the longest that I've spent in the city since I left back in 2001. Four days of rushing around (London is hardly a place for a casual stroll -- well, not when you're fighting your way down Oxford Street on a Friday afternoon, or braving rush-hour in Green Park tube station) and reacquainting myself with the London Underground. It's all very deja-vu: places I have not seen in a few years; streets that are both once familiar and yet I'm completely lost; new landmarks on the cityscape that were not there just a few years back.

It was yet another bank holiday weekend here in Ireland. We're endowed with nearly one a month during the summer and autumn -- though not as plentiful as some of our European neighbours; Austria, for example, has 13 in total (it's a wonder Ms. K. ever left) -- and it is a typical weekend for Irish people to get married, and so it was with my good friend Dan.

Last week was primarily a week of submissions, in that I dispatched a handful of stories for potential publication and am now playing the waiting game to see if any of them pass with flying colours.

The Coyote and Chloe Smells have left home and travelled somewhere deep underground to that secret Editor's Vault, where all lonely and hopeful scripts go under scrutiny for that mysterious and arcane Review Process. Many fail and lie wasted on the immense Heap of Rejectedness; the chosen few end up in The Land of the Published.

I was walking to my Abode Under The Bridge on Tuesday evening, and I passed by a boarded up shop-front. It was scrawled with graffiti, and right in the middle of it were the words CHLOE SMELLS, written bold and proud.

I've had enough -- it's time declared a war on Bloatâ„¢. I've recently come to discover, you see, that I am an avid practitioner of Bloatâ„¢; so much so that I feel I have a claim on the vile technique, and have decided to copyright it. I know others suffer from the same affliction, but I think I may have a monopoly on the technique.

It has been a while since I posted anything and I'm hard pressed to explain the strange acceleration in the the space-time continuum that magically spirited away an entire week. I have a blurred memory of far too many meetings, presentations, and two full days spent wearing a suit (which is the most time I have spent in a suit in about five years). The weekend also mysteriously vanished -- and now it's Tuesday.