Praxis

Mum and Dad went shopping and came back in stinking moods; something wrong with the car. I sat out of the way in the other room. They eventually gave me a lift into Easterby at twelve. I took along £11.50, plus my receipt for my boots and an extra fiver Mum had given me to get some more. I spent ages in Smith’s; there’s a sudden rash of books about Man’s origins around. I ended up at Praxis, of course, where I was perfectly happy browsing for an hour or two. I bought second-hand copies of Deutscher’s biography of Trotsky (The Prophet Unarmed and The Prophet Outcast), Trotsky’s 1905, Lenin’s Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution and, finally, Briefing for a Descent into Hell by Doris Lessing, who Mr. Scott recommended to me after the staff v pupils rugby match. I was really pleased and went to buy shoes.

Villa are champions for first time since 1910 and Norwich have been relegated to Division Two. West Ham, Swansea and Notts County are up, and I was amazed to hear that Sheffield United are now in the Fourth. I bet they go straight back up as Champions. There was a brilliant sunset; a few ragged cumulus and the sun blazing orange all the way to the horizon. After it’d set there was a perfectly vertical coloumn of light up from the horizon.