Remember me
I woke up at 8.20 this morning. That’s not right. That’s when normal people get up. (I gather that there are also normal people who have things called “jobs” for which they have to get up even earlier. The world is full of untold suffering.) I don’t know why I was up so early either. I didn’t have any work to do, apart from write this. I wasn’t going to do it at that time of day, though.
For a start, it’s no fun sitting at a desk in an unheated flat in winter trying to be amusing. It’s worse when you don’t have a jumper, only a fleece whose zip doesn’t work. Actually, I think I do have a jumper somewhere, but such is the level of chaos I live in that I don’t know where it is. Which I think is quite impressive in a one-bedroom flat. But I haven’t used my jumper since March and I have forgotten where I put it down. Does anyone else have this problem? I never have a problem finding my pair of trousers, I use them almost every day.
I’d also been up fairly late the night before. I know this because I made a note before I went to bed, and put a time stamp on it: “Incredibly depressing Radio 4 programme about the death of reading, 01.49.” (Previous entry: “Hugely depressing Radio 4 programme about AI, 21.45.”) I poured myself a medicinal whisky and read some more of my book (Beryl Bainbridge, The Bottle Factory Outing. Bloody good. Why had no one told me about Beryl Bainbridge before? Or rather, why had I not listened?)
However, the long day yawned ahead of me like the grave. I would have had a much better time if I’d been meant to be doing something else. This is the first time all year, I think, when I have not had a book review looming over me. Only then can I truly enjoy not working. We are put on Earth to goof off, as Kurt Vonnegut almost said. (I think his actual words were “fart around”.) Having lots of time on your hands is no fun if you’re not ignoring a deadline. I toyed with the idea of not writing this piece at all until tomorrow, when it would be a day late, but I have been doing this rather too much lately and my editor suffers enough as it is. My excuses, though, have been valid.
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Sometimes when I wake up early feeling fine, this is the prelude to a total physical collapse around 11am, but it’s now 3.40pm and nothing has happened yet. Apart from the low-level (thank goodness) pain from the gallstones, I seem to have recovered from a concatenation of lurgies that even kept me from going for a pint with Ben. I was feeling that poorly.
The mental health seems to be, touch wood, OK at the moment. I alternate between utter joy at being alive – real “hullo clouds, hullo sky” stuff – and cursing my miserable existence. Neither of these positions is tenable for long, so today I’m feeling mildly bored, and waiting for the bar to open – which it will do the instant I have pressed “send” – and this seems to be the right level of anguish.
The only real worries, though, are, apart of course from the usual trifecta of not having enough money/not getting laid/gallstones, are my impending death and little holes appearing in my mind. The fact that friends and the kind of celebrities I actually give a damn about have been dropping like flies lately hasn’t helped. I can’t do much about the mortality apart from perhaps drink less and not smoke at all, but where would be the pleasure in that? The lacunae in the brain are worrying, though.
Yesterday I forgot Damon Runyon’s name for the entire time it took me to walk from Waitrose to the crossing by my flat. That’s two and a half minutes of mounting panic. I’ve timed that walk. “Come on,” I said to myself: “writes in the present tense, New York petty gangster types, you actually have a copy of his best collection in the Hove-l because you bought it, with your own money, from a second-hand bookshop, because you couldn’t bear to be without a copy, and the last one you had is probably sitting in a box in East Finchley being ruined by mould”. I should add that I was sober at the time.
Well, I got it in the end but this kind of thing seems to be happening more and more frequently. My mother’s mind is getting a little ropey these days but she’s 98 for crying out loud. That’s 36 winters on me; her mind is meant to be going. I cheer myself up by thinking of all the things I can remember.
Frank Hayes’s 106 not out against the West Indies at the Oval in 1973. The word for the things at the end of your shoelaces so you can get them through the holes (aglets). The fact that I haven’t paid my council tax yet. Oh yeah, and those two depressing Radio 4 programmes last night. Time for a drink.
[Further reading: Paddington The Musical escapes the uncanny valley]
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