Thursday, October 16th
I need some new underpants. This is probably not something usually deemed worthy of a diary entry, but life is a lot of little things (was it Plato or Aristotle said that?) and nothing is too small to notice, even when it is something as intimate as underpant wear and tear. I thought about going into town to shop for the aforementioned garments, but it began to rain so I decided to put off that adventure for another day. Diary entries have now become notes of things I did not do. I also did not write an epic poem, fall in love, win the lottery, or dance naked in the meadow.
Friday, October 17th
Algernon Tenderloin stopped by this afternoon because he was 9and I quote) “just passing”. I had not seen him for quite a while, but I am not complaining. He seemed inordinately keen to let me know that he has been told by his doctor that his genitals are in good order, and that sometimes minor issues just come and go. He has, however, been advised to take more care when it comes to his social life. I could not think of how to respond to that, and changed the subject, asking him, apropos of nothing, if he knew anything about wasps beyond what everyone else knows.
Apropos of said wasps, it occurred to me today that I seem to attract straight-up annoying and often dysfunctional people like honey attracts the wasp. Over recent years I have been temporary friends with an alcoholic who fell apart at the seams and who I had to abandon because he was too much to cope with unless I was also drunk; with a schizophrenic who both disappeared (I think they left town); and with another chap whose behaviour was so erratic and unpredictable that finally I could not handle him and banished him (by royal decree) from my presence. I began to think he may have the kind of sexual inclinations I did not at all welcome. They were all decent pals when they were functioning what I would call normally, but a real pain when they were not. And people wonder why I am becoming increasingly reclusive . . . I ponder, and wonder if I am losing what little empathy for other people I might have once had, and if I am heading for purest solitude. I should be so lucky! People refuse to leave you alone, and are always talking, even when they have nothing to say.
Tenderloin’s visit reminded me of this, in Martial’s “Epigrams”:
Why you ask, whenever you show your face
Is there a public stampede, a vast unpopulated space?
The answer – you may as well know it –
Is that you overact the poet:
A grave fault,
Ligurinus, and one which could easily earn you assault.
The tigress robbed of her young,
The scorpion’s tail, the heat-crazed puff-adder’s tongue
Are proverbial, but you’re worse;
For who can endure ordeal by verse?
I could not have said it better myself.
Saturday, October 18th
Twiddling the dial on the wireless I came across a dreadful woman talking to someone about death and despair and what it is like to have a mental and physical impairment in the home. You have to be careful these days. The wireless is becoming increasingly filled with people like that being miserable all over your living room. It can be a real downer, to be honest, and I had to retune to Radio 3 to find something to cheer things up a bit.
Were I to write the story of my life – as has been suggested by one or two people who evidently have no sense of what is or is not commercial – I think I would make most of it up. I suppose then it would not be the story of my life, but since I live most of the time inside my head perhaps it would also be quite accurate and, from the psychologist’s and psychiatrist’s point of view, very revealing. I am not going to do it. It is just a thought that occurred, and I wrote it down, which is what I do.
More trivia: I am thinking of letting my hair and beard grow for the winter months. It is just a thought at the moment. Also today, I received an invitation in the mail to join a “fitness centre” – which is a gym – at a discount price. They evidently do not know me at all.
Cook and Jethro have been busy gathering and storing apples, eaters and cookers, as we have what Cook describes as a glut and Jethro describes (out of Cook’s hearing) as “fucking loads”. Cook asked my permission to invite some people to come and help themselves to any leftovers and windfalls should there be any when they have finished. I am dubious. The last time she did that we were swamped by folk of doubtful origin who seemed to think they had been invited to help themselves to anything they fancied in the vegetable garden. Jethro had to wield his musket at them to scare them away. I think I must refuse. Life gets on my nerves enough as it is.
Sunday, October 19th
Some rather dirty-looking and ill-dressed children dropped by this afternoon ‘Trick or Treating’. Not only is it a Sunday (when they should be at Sunday School, learning about Jesus) but it is not even Halloween yet! I think they were just trying it on, and I duly threatened them with police and legal action if they did not fuck off very smartish. The language they used! That is no way to speak to your elders and betters, and I am both.
Monday, October 20th
I really must get around to shopping for new underpants. The clean ones I put on this morning – no, I cannot go into detail, except to say that I think Philip Larkin wrote a poem about a similar situation, and that Messrs. Marks and Spencer will be seeing me anon.
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James Henderson