Saturday December 13th

I awoke at midday with neck ache, head throbbing and a blocked nose. God! I hate getting up so late. I had half-contemplated going into Easterby today to buy Christmas presents and cards (the latter more so than the former) but as I lay there in bed, the wind blasting my windows with rain and my neck aching I knew I just couldn’t.

I felt so overwhelmed and desperate – desperate’s too strong a word but I didn’t know what to do for the best (I still don’t). Should I buy presents for people at school, and if so, what?, and to who? (how many?).

Dad said he’d run me into Easterby because he was going to N.B’s but somehow I decided that I’ll go on Monday. I’ll have to go to the bank and draw some money out; probably about £15. Mum and Dad went to NB’s, leaving me at home.

Andrew is coming ‘home’ again today, although he didn’t get back until six fifteen or so. He’s growing a beard – just a whispy one but it suits him.

Everything was rather uneasy at first, starched and wooden conversation, but it’s good to see him. I could sense though that coming back here is really quite predictable because everything is always just the same – Dad still moaning about the wind; as if he’d never been away. The evening went by quickly. I played records upstairs while Andrew unpacked in his ‘cell’, and conducted artificial conversation with him. An air of boredom, somehow. I was interested and surprised to hear what he said about Lennon. In his opinion, he was merely a good singer/songwriter, and all this is going over the top. It was quite true really – it’s just because he symbolised the whole sixties thing.

Late on an altercation with Dad. I, when I heard that Enoch Powell was on “Parkinson,” said that “I’m not stopping up to listen to him,” to which Dad replied that we (the ‘young’) are narrow-minded. He was right, so I stayed down and listened. He’s quite a strange bloke – an individualist and arrogant. That made me think. The way I am is so predictably ‘now’ – I’m terrified of not running with the tide and of being seen as completely unconventional. Yet history sees that the only people who ever make a mark on the world are those who go against things like that – who are unfashionable and controversial – like Enoch Powell. Also, before I’ve got any authority at all to comment on things I’ve got to read – just read anything and everything – new ideas; differing opinions. I don’t like the way I appear – trashy, trendy and narrow-mindedly opinioned.