Gayl

Later yesterday evening Mark went to Capone’s with Guy, so Lee, Michael and I went back into town and broke into a derelict house which stands in a three-storey block of buildings opposite the Art College.

We climbed in through a partially boarded window in the basement (this a very conspicuous entrance) reached down steps choked with dead leaves, next to a busy bus stop and main road. Earlier we’d filched two flashing road works hazard lamps and these were the only lights we had; each time the yellow lamps blinked on we could barely glimpse the floor of the darkened interior, a chaos of rubble, planks and discarded newspapers, tantalising shapes that were lost moments later as the lights switched off.

Our progress was slow and ludicrous, clutching our yellow flashing lamps and whispering loudly. Upstairs there was more light from the street outside, but all we found were a few forlorn reminders that some people have been dossing down here recently—empty cider bottles, old broken shoes etc. We had a close shave on climbing out as the pavement above was full of noisy laughing drunks waiting for a bus, who scuffled and fooled inches from our hiding place.

“I thrive on the excitement,” says Lee.

Michael and Lee stayed the night and we jammed two mattresses into my room.

I got up at twelve thirty today—a grey dismal Sunday in November. Lee washed up and cleaned the kitchen, but it got very messy again when Mo cooked Pete a meal. I slammed out of the house in a real mood, leaving everyone else watching TV, and hitched in to University. I didn’t even tell them I was going.

I went to the library and in a few hours my inexplicable anger had spent itself in the restful silence. It seems Pete and I are nearly constantly at odds these days over some trifling matter or other.

Bill moved into his new flat yesterday, taking the TV aerial with him, so we had to shift the TV back into Pete’s room. I haven’t seen Shelley, Gareth and Lindsey for days. Susie says Shelley is “settling down to a cosy domestic routine with her menagerie of doting males.”

I stayed at the library until seven and hitched back. It began to rain as I walked down the library steps. I have Corregidora by Gayl Jones to read for 2.45 p.m. tomorrow. Stu has just come round, and he and Pete have bought a gramme of speed between them. I have a lot of work to clear up in the next week, two essays to write by this time next Sunday, one for each course. The term is drawing in to a close already; in just three weeks I’ll be going home again.

It seems so long since I was there last.