Sunday, August 9th
It was my birthday yesterday and a joyless affair it was too. As the years gallop by the number of people who remember the day and send me the appropriate good wishes (or amusing insults) becomes less and less. This year the only people who remembered and sent cards were a chap who claims to be my son but I am more or less sure is not, and my stockbroker, whose exorbitant fees and commission rates evidently allow him to splash out on birthday cards expressing insincere sentiments to his clients. Needless to say neither Cook nor Jethro took any notice of the event. Cook, who has of late been even more miserable than usual, seems constantly to be mumbling to herself, and ever since she came back from her sister’s (who had a very bad headache that lasted for 8 days) her cooking has been very rudimentary, to say the least. I am tempted to have words, but I have been here before, and once had to put up with beans on toast for 4 days on the trot, but she always recovers and gets back to being her usual curmudgeonly but top-notch-cookery-wizardessery. One has to treat her with kid gloves and like a sensitive artiste if one wants to experience the joy of her shepherd’s pies or bread and butter puddings. Last night it was bangers and mash, and the mash was lukewarm and lumpy. I will survive, but life is difficult sometimes.
I have not been attending to my Diary recently. So much of nothing has been happening that I have not been able to see the point of trying to keep it going. If anything momentous happens I will probably go back to it. But it hardly seems worth recording the fact that while Cook was away I was dining out of the freezer, which began to become monotonous. I missed her meal-time banter. (Yes, I have not lost my sense of humour.)
The only literary event of recent days has been an approach from a journal I have never heard of asking me to send some poems because “we very much admire your oeuvre, and would be honoured if your verse were to grace our pages. We are sorry we are unable to pay our contributors, but we can offer a discount on our annual subscription as follows . . .” Well, I somewhat loath the words “oeuvre” and “verse” and since I do not feel in the mood to give my genius away for free they are going to be disappointed. Yes, I am mean. Yes, I am a miserable cuss. And yes, I do not care.
On top of everything else, I read in my newspaper today about how more people than usual are buying poetry books and how poetry is fantastic, and they gave the reader a few recommendations of poets to read. I really ought to have a word with my agent because those are the kinds of lists I should be on although, if truth be told, if I were to be classed with the people they recommended I would be insulted. They are not fit to sharpen my quills or empty my waste paper basket. They probably do not even know what a quill is, and use Artificial Intelligence to help write their “verse”.
As it happens, in spite of all the domestic miseries being inflicted upon me, I am engaged upon a new work which I am pretty sure will turn out to be major with a capital M. I am very much tempted to include a snippet of this “work in progress” here because it is quite brilliant, but although I know you will very disappointed I have to resist the temptation. Experience tells me to hold my horses, and not to listen to what I know will now be a clamour from my admirers begging to see just a few genius lines. What I will tell you is that it has what we writers call a “working title” of “The Eggs of Expectation”, but that may change. I am sorry, my dears, but that is all you get for now. Be patient!
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James Henderson
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