This is the second time the time funnel’s got me this week. The night before last I was in a supermarket, searching the shelves of spirits and sticky drinks for something to take to a friend’s house. Each bottle seemed to snatch me back to a day of drinking, 10, 15, 20 and getting on for 30 years ago. That makes me sound very old, but I first tasted alcohol very young and it was probably something sugary. Suddenly I found myself rolled inside snatches of memory, of parties, incidents, moments, even single thoughts I had with my mouth full of sweet stinging liquor.

The last time I saw Spiritualized live was in 1998 at Glastonbury. They were playing in the late afternoon. I’d just had a stupid row with my boyfriend in his band’s tour bus, and a line of something nasty, and I stomped off out into a thick field of mud with a can of beer. Goddamn tour buses with their engines on all weekend! I found a stage nearby and watched Bentley Rhythm Ace, I think it was. Then the sun began to set, and then came Jason and the band. Alone and wired I watched them, and their fuzzy, trippy, blue light show, and the sun went down and the moon came up – I might have invented the moon bit, but it fits anyway – and I can honestly say it was a spiritual experience, and it made my weekend, and probably my summer.

That album sat around in my life for a couple more years, being the soundtrack to many stoned bedtime headphone sessions before passing out. I remember wishing someone was into me enough to write a whole bloody amazing record about me, and feeling very jealous of that bloody keyboard woman.

And tonight it all came back. My friend Kim told me his friend Huw had a spare ticket, which felt like fate. I felt tears coming at the start, even before they’d begun playing, but I hung in there. I’m not enough of a muso to critique the interpretation, except that it was loud and sometimes punctuated by a violent strobe display that went on and on, faster and faster, to the point where half the audience had their hands over their already closed eyes. I thought I would throw up, in truth.

They did an encore, playing one song and ending with Silent Night. I thought they would spin it into a ten-minute cacophony of twisting trumpets and howling violins, but they played it very straight and ended it, gently, there.

I’d forgotten how that music had dragged me up and down and around and told me exactly where I was at the time. Thank you, Jason Pierce.

I’ve done next to nothing today, except get a bit of festive food, muck about on Facebook and Twitter, and read Watchmen. I’m about half way through now.

Anyway, enjoy a restful day tomorrow if you can. Either that or some extreme sport or other, but preferably not involving animal death, or that of relatives. Even if you can’t stand all the religious stuff, think of Christmas as a time marker, and a rest before the new year. Regeneration and all that.

Most of all, thank you for reading my book – if you have, of course – and thank you for sending me such lovely emails about it.

Among the supportive ones, and there seem to be quite a few at least, is an astonishing variety of what I can only describe as spurts of rancid poison from those who consider themselves superior to, well, everybody – but particularly anyone who has admitted their vulnerability in public.

I actually haven’t been able to read them all. I’ve skimmed where I can, but I can’t take any more. This echoes some of the comments on other pieces of mine round the web, and a couple of the reviews that the book got as well. I’ll deal with those in another post, but they are symptomatic of something much bigger and nastier going on all around us.

As an author who has chosen to stick my neck out like this and reveal a lot about my past life, I can’t expect every reader to greet me like a long-lost friend, despite the lovely emails I’ve received from some of you. And, if you write a memoir, someone from your murkier past years is going to get their knickers in a twist, so I have to accept that there are a few of them out there as well. See, for example, my Amazon page, where I have attracted a wee band of professional haters. However, I now see, from exploring further, that anyone who writes a memoir of a bad time gets this treatment from Twisted Up Of Telford.

What’s even more worrying is that some of the poison posse on AlterNet seem to be recovering alcoholics! I find it extraordinary that people buy into the AA/12 step thing to the extent that they take any criticism of it personally, as if their own sobriety itself was under threat. I’m hearing shades of Scientology here and I don’t like it. I particularly don’t like the hopeful taunts from other recoverers that I’ll be back on the bottle soon.

Must people be competitive about things as subjective as depression and addiction? It appears that they must.

Shudder. The good news is that I’ve finally learned my lesson, and I won’t be reading any comments or reviews again, unless someone tells me they’re actually libellous.

I’m really touched by all your emails. At some point I hope to reply, although I have to say that I’m really not qualified to give anyone else advice about how to give up drinking – much as I have loved giving my opinion on it while telling my own story.

Alex has given me a squashy banana toy (!) which is meant to be a stress-reliever, but is more like a cosh due to the strange substance inside it. It’s definitely helping my left hand.

It seems fitting that I’ve started using the new macro lens. It’s helping me find a new world at home, as I’m spending so much time here.

Unfortunately, there’s a very good reason why I haven’t posted since 27th January, and it’s nothing to do with me being sent to the Caribbean to review the facilities at the latest Hollywood drying-out clinic…