Dear fans and admirers, sycophants and toadies, haters and waiters, creditors and hairdressers,
This is just to say that I am not keeping a Journal at the moment because nothing of any note is happening and I cannot be bothered to write about nothing. On the domestic front, Cook has taken permanently to her bed with what the Doctor has described to me as “advanced 3rd stage decrepita”, and I am currently being catered to food-wise by an Agency, which sends in a different imbecile each day. I may die soon from a mixture of starvation, malnourishment and boredom. Do not send flowers to my funeral. Or do send flowers. I do not care either way. Cook is visited by an occasional nurse, who looks at me quite fiercely and with evident disdain. I hide when she appears at the front door. Out of doors, on the land and around the grounds, Jethro is getting on with things, as far as I know. No news is half-decent news.
Personally, apart from the food issues, I have not written a genius poem since the last Queen died. I have written several very good ones, but I throw those away. Very good is nowhere near good enough. To pass the time, of which there is an inordinate amount, I am reading Marcel Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past”. The method I employ is to read ten pages, fall asleep, wake up and partake of a beverage (alcoholic), read ten more pages, fall asleep, then repeat that cycle until interrupted by the arrival of what passes for food here these days. It is a method I stumbled upon by accident but it seems to work. I cannot remember anything about what I am reading, which is either apt, or inapt, given the book’s title. Since nothing seems to ever happen in it I think I am doing alright.
I called in my lawyer and my financial adviser and, briefly, I have arranged my affairs so that in the future I need never go out and mix with other people, which is bliss, quite bliss, and all day-to-day contingencies will be dealt with and paid for automatically without my caring or knowing about the details. Between them they say they have found for me people who will take over the daily running of the house, and the catering etc., and have assured me that I can expect a high standard of the sort of looking after the well-to-do enjoyed in P.G. Wodehouse novels. As long as I do not have to think about anything much beyond where the next drink is coming from, and I have a steady supply of cheroots, I am quite happy. I have agreed that Cook can stay where she is until she is not, but have asked that a different nurse be found for her, in line with the new general policy of reducing the unpleasant to a barely discernible minimum.
It has been pointed out to me that the number of people who will be disappointed at the cessation of my diaristic missives could run into double figures, but that cannot be helped. Perhaps I shall on occasion dispatch a “newsletter’ into the big world if anything of genius quality occurs, but in the meantime this is Adieu for now.
Yours, etcetera etcetera
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James Henderson
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