Eighteen

My birthday. Eighteen, a quiet day of unpleasant sultry heat, most of which I spent reading and slobbing about, just wasting time. There's nothing to separate the start of my nineteenth year from all the wasted opportunities of the one just gone.

Dad unexpectedly got time off from work at 2.30, and he totally surprised me with a copy of Coltrane's 1957 LP Dakar. I’m listening to the first side at the moment and my initial impressions are that I want to hear more, especially this extended solo and improvisation stuff of the ‘60s. Dakar sounds more melodious, the sax flourishes subordinated more to the structure of the tune: although I like it I must admit I prefer the looser sax screeching of Coltrane (from 1962) but, “a succinct Coltrane is far superior to no Coltrane.”

I sometimes think that the continuity of this diary and the morbid pleasure I get writing entries and gazing at the past volumes filled with thoughts and sights (even though I too often lapse into tedious travelogue descriptions, especially up to summer 1981), is the one thing that keeps me going through day after day of blank nothingness. I can’t imagine life without it. Perhaps for this reason I tend to go on longer than necessary. . . .

Tesco card boarding was such draining mind-blowing boredom, but at least I got invited to Steve Brown's piss up tomorrow night with Darren Harriman and some others. It's a pub crawl beginning at the renowned gay pub’ The Victoria.