Wednesday, March 25th
It occurred to me that if I am to write the story of my life I could do worse than adopt the format (if that is the correct word) used by Suetonius when he wrote of the lives of the Caesars back in the days of the Roman empire. His method was to deal with the life by theme rather than chronologically, so you get the family background, then the military stuff (there was almost always military stuff), then the political machinations, then what the subject did as actual numero uno, and later there would be the physical appearance, tastes in food and drink, the sex life . . . but each bit was dealt with more or less separately instead of, as I say, the chronological approach to which we have become accustomed. I remember (because I just dug out the book and had a browse; it is years since I read the whole thing) how he would deal with the good things the chap did, and then turn his attention to the bad stuff. Most famously, in his life of Gaius – Caligula to you and I – after a few pages of describing some fairly decent things the emperor, or princeps, had done, he begins a paragraph thus:
But enough of the princeps – what now remains to be described is the monster.
That, if I may say so, is a tremendous transition. And what follows is more than monstrous. If I had the time I might read Suetonius again. Or perhaps just the juicy bits. Some of the things those emperor chaps got up to are gorgeously gut-wrenchingly disgusting. Leafing through the volume over a light lunch of beans on toast I was reminded of a number of wonderful horrors but, on a lighter note, one of the things that has always amused me is that in those times if someone was found guilty of killing one’s parent the punishment was to be sewn into a sack with a dog, a cock, a snake and a monkey, and chucked into the river Tiber. A little bit tough on the innocent dog, cock, snake and monkey, do you not think? But no, I do not have time to re-read the entire book: I have a lot on my plate at the moment. Of course, Suetonius was writing biographies sans the auto, but I see no reason why I cannot go about things in much the same way. It may be a little unconventional, but that is me to a T: I am nothing if not unconventional. And far be it from me to think of myself as a Caesar among poets. That would be ridiculous. I leave it to others to reach that conclusion.
Thursday, March 26th
Algernon Tenderloin dropped in this morning as is his wont and would have me believe that someone called Partridge Boswell has won the National Poetry Competition. I had to tell him that (a) I am not at all interested in poetry competitions and (b) if he is going to make up silly names he is going to have to do better than that. Partridge Boswell! I ask you!
Friday, March 27th
I have had to call my agent, because the people who dish out a bit of money every year for your publications and if somebody somewhere photocopies them, royalties of a sort, I suppose – I forget what the organisation is called – well, they seem to have missed at least one zero from off the end of what they have paid me – again! He needs to chase them up, because the same thing happened last year, and as far as I know he is still discussing it with them. It is a good job I do not need the money.
Saturday, March 28th
Jethro reminded me that the clocks go forward tonight, because from tomorrow it is the summertime. I was somewhat taken aback, because usually Jethro does not know what day of the week it is, nevermind details like the changing of the clocks. And then for some reason he treated me to a fairly grotesque rendition of Mungo Jerry’s “In the Summertime”, a song from my early years I really did not wish to be reminded of, and I had to cut him off after the first few lines. Any more and I might have had to actually kill him. There is classical music, there is pop music, and there are songs like that.
Monday, March 30th
Because my mind is usually focussed upon being a genius I often lose track of more menial things, including religious festivals, and I have just realized that it is Easter this weekend, mainly because Cook came to me and asked if I would like to try some what she called non-traditional hot cross buns. I had to ask her what she was talking about. Apparently now one can get hot cross buns flavoured with all kinds of things – chocolate, cheese, beetroot, cigarettes . . . I do not know, but it all sounded quite horrific, so I told her to keep them away from me and just get in loads of the real thing, with plenty of butter. I LOVE HOT CROSS BUNS!
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James Henderson
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