For how much longer?

I went into into Easterby again, and again the weather was wet, wild and windy. Rashly I suppose, I spent £7 on The Pop Group’s For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder? and Aswad’s “Warrior Charge” 12,” before going up Morningside Road in the rain to visit Nanna P. Mum was there cleaning the flat while N. P. talked happily. Apparently she had an intruder in her flat a few days ago. Andrew called round as well, and then Dad to pick us all up.

Dad's been writing much of the evening; in seven weeks he’s written a quarter of a million words and he's reached page 1366: that’s something like five thousand words a day! But he's not writing a diary: he can rework his writing until he has it just right, which highlights a drawback I’ve discovered to keeping this. Once they've been transcribed, the accounts of gone forever events are set down and can't be rewritten, to be true to the diary form at least. A particularly uneventful day leads to poor writing, etc.

But what do I want from this diary? Do I want it as a merely factual account of my life, as I keep telling myself? Or do I want it to be something more? I have the barest framework around which to build something else, I suppose, a scrawl which will keep my memory fresh. In years to come—who knows?—it could lead on to bigger things. Pipe dreams!

Discord before bed, Andrew and Dad arguing about South Africa, this inspired by The Wild Geese, a TV film about mercenaries. I’m trying to steer clear of pointless, negative confrontations.