It's ok, I'm not dead. And Amelie's still breathing too. Lisa will probably have snuffed it by the time you read this, but two out of three ain't bad.

As things stand right now, we've left the bleak midwinter of Wiltshire behind us and returned to Brighton. We were planning to stay on in Big Sis's plague house until 2010 (or 'tomorrow' as some people like to call it), but in the end we decided to cut short our trip and come home on Tuesday, after realising that we didn't have travel insurance and I was unlikely to make my fortune if Lisa died away from home.

We rounded off our stay in appropriate fashion by choosing to return home in the worst weather of the entire week, thus ensuring that the journey back was a three hour nightmare of torrential rain and fog, complete with coughing, sneezing and high-pitched screaming. And that was just me.

The three of us have spent the last forty-eight hours competing to see who can cough the loudest, as a result of which Lisa and I have both developed splitting headaches. The only relief I get from the noise is when my sinuses become so congested that I lose my sense of hearing. Fortunately that happens regularly. I could barely hear the assistant in Boots yesterday when he said he couldn't sell me both Day Nurse and Sudafed in case I used it to make crystal meth.

But fortunately the slow, painful death of my entire family hasn't stopped me from creating another piece of movie magic in my spare time. I did it this afternoon while Amelie coughed herself to sleep in the bedroom, and Lisa slipped into a painkiller-induced coma on the sofa. It's my Boxing Day tribute to Charlie's Angels, when I successfully filmed Big Sis putting on an evening dress and trainers, picking up a neighbour's cat from outside her house, and taking it along the road and up three flights of stairs to the flat of somebody who doesn't own it and didn't want it. The fact that she persuaded Lisa and my sister-in-law to join her in this endeavour is a testament to the power and influence of the mad.


But you've got to admire her uncanny ability to predict the future.