How hard it is to really know anyone in this life

What have I done today? Very little.

I got up at two and sat about idly, winding Pete up most of the day. . . . I’ve done no reading lately and I’ve quite let work and other things slip. I started off the term well but things have deteriorated.

I’ve got to read the 200-odd pages of Hermsprong for tomorrow at eleven a.m., but it’s nearly half-ten already and I’m only on page 26 and so I may have to stay up all night.

Barry has gone to Masquerades by himself. Earlier today he went round to see the girl he met at the Cellar and she and her friends are going to the club tonight too, so Barry once again sets out with raised hopes. Ade returned today to tell us his “love life is just about going again”; he’s in Barry’s room listening to records.

I keep pretending both to myself and to others that at the end of the year I’m going to shave my head and give up all drugs and drink, but I should realise that this would require more mental resolution and effort than I’m capable of . . . Why would I want to do this?. . .

It’s not important.

I still can’t decide about America—I wish I could make up my mind. I can’t even answer this simple question, so what hope for me? Decisions! Current financial position: £104 overdrawn . . . I look at Grant’s poems and they make me think how hard it is to really know anyone in this life.

This diary says so little. No doubt there are innumerable thoughts and passing shades of mood that have touched me and marked the last two days, but my words have such limited power against the great yawning gulfs of time they strive to combat. One day when I read these words again I’ll curse my lack of skill at fleshing out these transitory moments. What’s clear now won’t be when the surrounding chaff of living and peripheral thoughts have been swallowed up by the years.

This narrative is dull and uninspired because I’m a bit drunk on the whisky Mo brought back from London as her payment towards rent.