Adjectiveless prose of everyday life

Sometimes I detest the way I’ve crafted this journal into a thing of one dimension. I want to broaden its perspectives. I abandoned the unlined format idea because I couldn’t throw over 3½ years of continuity. I’ve been flirting with the idea of two or more books on the go at once, one for this level-headed sober write of old, the other for a far freer and less inhibited style of expression. What is this endless narrative? Too often it’s clouded by the miseries of fatigue, boredom, lack of inspiration, etc. The very idea of what this journal is is strangling me.

The irony! Defeated by a tradition I’ve created for myself.

I’m striving to achieve some kind of purpose, but even now, as the words form coldly at the tip of my pen, I don’t grasp their depth fully; I can only do this at those times when I’m inspired, and those times come so rarely nowadays. Perhaps I’m thinking too hard. This ritual of writing, writing, writing should be aiding me in my search, but there’s too much mundane particularity. What I’m trying to say in so many words is that the structure of the thing is stagnating the content; it’s too inflexible and chained to the prose logic of chronological description. I can feel the certainty of what I know I’m saying slipping away from me even now.

Example: what happened at Colin Pasmore’s tutorial is immaterial—an idea attracted me for a while, I found something momentarily fascinating, something provoked by Pasmore’s comments and I flirted with the fantasy of constructing prose theories on this foundation of an idea—stories and poems, looping reoccurrences and echoing torrents of adjectiveless prose of everyday life . . . The opening paragraphs of A Farewell To Arms illustrate this perfectly. It took the glib environment of tutorial ‘discussion’ to bring me to the above.

This narrative seems to either be a limited chronologue of life’s moments (lists of names and places and events), or an inward exploratory delve divorced from external context. Can I resolve the two in one form?

How?

Hasty

Today’s American Lit. tutorial was slightly less of a bind than I’d feared. Our discussion of Hemingway was interesting, and it was actually more of a real discussion than the usual monologue by Colin Pasmore. . . .

My judgment of Hemingway was a little hasty. I don’t think I fully appreciated what he was trying to do with the repetitious prose looping back on itself, reemphasizing the same images and words over and over again.

Colourations of the mind

Barry, Lee and I went back to Pouncey’s in the early hours of this morning and loaded the rest of the subsistence foods into our bags. We made two visits, and when Pete came back from Castle Mount Court with Mo, they both made a trip as well. I’ve got enough food to last me several weeks, perhaps even until the end of term if I’m very careful, and certainly enough soaps & talcum powder, etc., to take me through to the summer. For some reason we were very nervy this second time, as if something was about to go wrong. We’ve now virtually emptied the shelves in that shop and got around £150-worth of goods. I got to bed at 4.30 a.m.

Today I’ve struggled with the beginnings of an essay on A Farewell To Arms. Sometimes I doubt whether I deserve the support Mum and Dad give me; if I put in commitment to my ‘studies’ here then I should have a first no problem. As it is, I think I’ll be lucky to get a third.

My attitude is the problem: for example, before Watermouth, I’d frequently search the libraries and bookshops for a copy of Thoreau’s Walden, but when it was assigned for my major a few terms ago here and I knew I had to read it and look at it critically, I struggled to find the motivation to even pick it up, let alone finish it. Is it some chronic mental malaise? This attitude is like a cancer, clouding my perceptions. Sometimes I feel so frustrated and imprisoned by circumstances that I can’t bring myself to sit and settle on one thing. I find it hard to rationalise these moods, feelings and colourations of the mind, & force myself to write about them.

Barry’s Mum and Dad and sister came down to Watermouth this afternoon. He met them in town and they came round here to see the flat. Just Lee and I were in, and we were quite amused by Barry’s obvious unease and embarrassment as his Mum, fur-clad and showy, discussed tea-towels and mug-trees. . . . I wouldn’t like my parents to see this place; they’d be shocked at the shabbiness and air of decay, which living here immunizes you against.

When his Mum saw the kitchen shelves overflowing with obviously newly acquired jars of jam, honey, lemon curd, tins of celery soup, and Vesta curries, etc., she seemed pleased that Barry was “eating well.”

John Turney turned up as we watched the F.A. Cup tie between Brighton and Liverpool live on TV. He seemed to want to be ‘muckers’ again (as Del would say) and held himself in check, but by the evening the John of old was pushing through again. Brighton beat Liverpool 2-0 (two goals in one minute) and could be at Wembley again. I like to see the big clubs go out of the Cup.

At ten o’clock Gareth, Stu, Lindsey and Susie called round and we all went out for a drink to the Westdorgan. They have moved in to a house five minutes from us on Westdorgan Road. We went for a look at the place after the pub, a claustrophobic building of narrow stairwells and landings. The décor didn’t help, all garish reds and blues and clashing patterns, giving everything a two-dimensional feel, but the rooms are large and clean and comfortable and it’s only costing them £17.50 a week each.

Lindsey came back from the IFM demo early: the snow and Leon Brittan’s ban on marches in South Yorkshire complicated things, although she sounded to have enjoyed it. She seems to be growing sure of herself, politically speaking. I remember our mutual doubts at the last IFM conference a year ago. In this—as in all other things—she and I seems aeons apart.

It’s scarcely credible that things happened the way they did and the era of Wollstonecraft Hall is another age away. I can’t allow myself the luxury of thinking about her in that way anymore—if I did, I’d be just as susceptible to her quiet charms as ever, so he less I see of her, the easier it is for me, or at least, that’s the way it appears. I fantasize about her often enough, and tonight’s contact, brief as it was, triggered plenty of echoes inside.

I’m playing Stanley Clarke’s Journey To Love as I write this. It reminds me of those long ago days at home with Andrew, before he went to college, those hot evenings baking in my bedroom, watching the sun set beyond Knowlesbeck and listening to records.

Back then the future seemed a little like those sunsets, bright and hopeful: there are more clouds now.

Strong determination and access to liquids

I didn't get to bed until six a.m.

We carried out another daring raid, this time on Pouncey's mini-supermarket across the road. It’s been empty for weeks and the sight of the shelves stocked up with tinned foods lying idle started us planning last week. We made one abortive attempt to jemmy the back door with Lee's crow bar a few days ago, making a lot of noise and mess in the process, so this time we went prepared.

Lee’d bought a glass cutter and plunger and did the job professionally, scoring a diagonal line across one corner of the kitchen window and forcing it until the grass cracked along the score-mark. From then on it was an easy job to reach inside, open the window and climb through. Del and Barry brought across a suitcase, rucksacks and various holdalls, and Pete, Lee and I hurriedly loaded these up from the well-stocked shelves. We even had time to browse.

Lee and I went back inside a second-time, accompanied by Del and Barry and got a second lot. We had a scare when a newspaper delivery van pulled up across the road and parked there for long, nerve-racking minutes with engine idling. Tension reached fever-pitch before finally the van drove away.

Oddly enough, there was no fear, just excitement and nervous energy. I imagine we’d be almost blasé about it if we were caught. I don't think there are many places which would defeat Lee. He has become an expert. This haul eases my bankrupt position at the moment. Ironically, although I've been consumed with hunger the last few days, as soon as I had all this food available, my hunger vanished and I just went through the motions of eating. This confirms my suspicion that many of our gut reactions are purely physiological and can be conquered with the correct mental attitude. Strong determination and access to liquids could take you a long way in a prolonged fast, and I want to test this when the time is right.

When I got up at three o'clock this afternoon, Del had gone back to Milton Keynes. He couldn’t stand the chaos of his situation without any money, and so his parents came down to pick him up. John Turney hasn't shown his face since the conflagration of the other night, and he has been round at Ade's place testing out the attitude toward him here.

I've fallen behind with my work again. I should hand in two essays on Monday. Why do I allow myself to fall into these traps? I finished A Farewell To Arms today and I thought it was quite good, although not as impressive as I'd expected it to be. I don't know what I thought I’d find.

I've also written to Grant inviting him down here whenever he cares to come, and Dad finally replied to my long overdue letter of last week.

Farewell to arms

The entire country as far south as London is covered in deep snow, yet we've escaped with rain to date. I like that novel feeling of newness and the world being different after it’s snowed, the white landscape beyond the windows somehow dwarfing the usual day to day concerns of the scurriers in the snow . . .

I read Hemingway throughout the afternoon while the others played cards and watched snooker on TV in the front room. Weather wet, with intermittent sun, cars splashing through the rain, the noise of kids on their way home from school.

At 4 p.m., Lee and I walked down to the Wickbourne Road to Old John's fleamarket to buy a brass camping stove for £4 but it was closed. I fantasise about moving into a place on my own, so I'll be protected from my own weaknesses—not have a TV, just a radio and my books and records . . .

Fast

I’m desperate for some money. I owe Lee and Pete £9 apiece, Stu £5 and my share of the £95.66 electric bill is £26, but I have to wait until next week for Mum and Dad’s installment of money to arrive. Add to these financial problems the slow, steady slide into apathy and lack of action and I feel pretty low at times.

I haven’t made a start on the two essays I’m expected to hand in on Monday. I also have to read a couple of plays and Hemingway’s Farewell to Arms. I don’t feel any incentive to do so, and a great groan goes up inside when I think of the tedious struggles ahead.

I was going to help Lee complete his 3-D photographs of a model room today but cried off because of work, which is like a ball and chain perpetually weighing my mind down. If I had to make the choice again then I would go to Art College. I realise such talk is futile, but it helps me put my yearnings into perspective. Lee is only in his second term and seems to have done so much more than me in my four terms at the University and I feel that when I leave I won’t be able to choose one path to follow out of the many I’ll come across. I’m so tired of all the indecision and helplessness.

That’s probably why the idea of not eating for a period of time – say a week – quite appeals to me in a curious sort of way. I’m interested in physical and psychological effects that a prolonged fast could have. Lee tried fasting for three days when he was in the seventh year and says that after the first two days he felt able to continue without much difficulty.

In the evening Guy came round and he, Lee, Barry, Del and I played five stud poker for plastic counters. Del has got a conditional place at Watermouth to do Philosophy and is moving in to Guy’s place on Sutton Road next week. Lindsey, Stu, Susie and Gareth are moving into a house quite near us, in Westdorgan Road.

Speaking of Lindsey, she is the only person from Watermouth who is making the trip up to the IFM Bloody Sunday remembrance conference and demo on Saturday. Del is unable to go due to his dire poverty, and everyone else has various excuses. Carl Cotton made a brief attempt to get me to go but I’ve made myself scarce, thereby avoiding the issue. I’m too interested in other things at the moment to devote time, money and energy to the RCP. With the RCP it's ‘all or nothing.’ I'm not about to give my all, therefore I shall give nothing. And that's the way it'll remain for the foreseeable future.

Turned

Tonight, the grievances we’ve harboured since last term finally spilled out into the open in a rancorous and bitter way.

John Turney and Del called round, ostensibly to watch the football on TV, and we endured two hours or more of Turney wind-ups and what felt like malicious (and successful) attempts to create ill-feeling. He never shut up about Lindsey, saying Carl Cotton had been to bed with her and then citing her as the reason for my attendance at RCP events last year. With this latter point he hit too near to home and I froze into embarrassed silence. The rest of the time he and Del were generally taking the piss. Things went on and on and after John had left, both Barry and Pete erupted.

What followed was three hours of raised voices and tortuous arguments over the rights and wrongs of the situation. We feel that John has taken advantage of our friendship and exploited us for all he can get. Del said we were partly to blame for not kicking him out and said that complaining now was like shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted.

I feel as though I’ll be happy never to see John Turney again.

Dig a hole

Pete, Lee and I trailed round Watermouth from eleven thirty in the morning until four in the afternoon trying unsuccessfully to sell the old domed bell from the empty Church. I stayed outside each shop as I look too much the heavy browed criminal, and let Pete and Lee do the work. The most we were offered was £25 and Lee’s £70 asking price got him laughed out of one shop. We must’ve tried every antique dealer in central Watermouth before giving up, tired and miserable.

Afterwards I saw a few videos at the Art College made by two film makers who’ve been brought over from Holland. They were being shown on three monitors simultaneously. There were about a dozen people in the audience. The videos featured the usual heavy scenes of north European urban decay, Grantish undertones, and hackneyed ‘industrial’ sound-track (contact mikes being struck against oil drums and metal grating etc.), men digging holes with the video colour balance distorted, to a backing of “Dig-A-Hole, Dig-A-Hole,” repeated slowly over and over again.

There was nothing at all memorable about them and both Lee and I were quite bored. But, for some reason that was inexplicable to us both, Ian and Gav liked the videos, and they, George and a girl from Whincliffe (Sarah?) went out to eat with the two Dutch film makers and to discuss their work.

The use of electric drills, hammers and iron bars etc., to produce ‘industrial’ sounds is such a cliché nowadays in the wake of Einsturzende Neubauten and co. It’s surprising anyone can get excited about it.

Tin wreath

A day of tutorial drudgery: I got up at eight after just three hours of sleep (reading Ezra Pound’s Hugh Selwyn Mauberly). I had Conflict and Consensus at 11.30 a.m. and Pasmore's American Lit Since 1914 at four. Both the tutorials seemed to depress me and make me wonder what I am, after all, doing at Watermouth University.

The second tutorial especially left me utterly cold and unmoved. There were four of us tutees: me, a brash American (Sam) with the sensibilities of an ox; an American girl from Northwestern and Alice, plump inoffensive Alice, who may or may not be going out with he of the grey Renault and speed. I didn’t say one word. I just couldn’t rouse the effort of will needed to exert myself and so sat there wondering why I wasn’t somewhere else. It’s the old thing of ‘what am I getting out of it’? Ought oughts are ought I know, but still; the work seems so remote and meaningless to me. It dampened my optimism a little.

Torrential rain until after dark. In the North, snow is causing havoc and has already killed a dozen or so people. I rang Mum and she told me that the snow is piled “three feet high on top of the privets.”

Triptych

In the face of Lee’s unstructured, undisciplined Combined Arts course I find it difficult to muster any great enthusiasm for my chore of reading, reading, reading.

He’s hardly been into College in the last week but is planning several projects: a painted triptych, based on a self portrait of what he is and was and hopes to be; various film experiments—films projected simultaneously onto the same spot, say a figure sitting in a corner filmed from three separate angles, these films then projected onto and over same figure sitting in same spot at the angle from which the film was taken; plus he’s continuing with his 3-D photographs. He’s meeting a woman from the ICA who’s developed similar ideas.

Doug is here to stay for the weekend; tonight was a high-spirited evening. Ade came round, and while he, Doug and Barry smoked dope in the front room I lounged about watching Lee paint his room; grey walls, black skirting boards and door panels . . .

I painted my door black.

For most of the time everyone (apart from Lee and I) watched the Superbowl Final, Redskins vs. Raiders. The latter won 38-9. Then I entertained everyone for a little while by pouring lighter fuel over my hand and lighting it, which seemed to amuse them and earned me £5 from Barry. Doug took a photograph.

2019

I went out for the first time in a week and watched two films, Altered States and Blade Runner at the Phoenix cinema. The first was a visually entertaining if pretentious story about a man experimenting with mind-expanding drugs and sensory deprivation chambers, undergoing mental and physical regression back to the man-ape and the 'First Thought.'

The second was a futuristic thriller: bounty hunter/policeman (Harrison Ford) hunting down robotic human replicants through the rain-drenched high-tech gutters of Los Angeles, 2019.

Steal this book

I’ve hardly been out in the evening since the term began other than maybe two or three occasions; I was called a “miserable old cunt” by John tonight for not partaking of the drugs in the other room. I’ve abstained totally over the last fortnight.

I thought I had £42 in the bank after I’d paid off my £250 overdraft with grant and money from home, but when I came to close my Midland account (reasoning that the bank manager there might not view future requests for overdrafts kindly after my £250 unauthorised one), I was shocked to be told I had just £1.99. It threw me off completely. So I went into town and bought a copy of the Golden Bough for £7.50 & tried (in vain) to steal this journal book.

I hung about for ¾ of an hour and was just slipping it into my coat when a shop assistant saw me. I pulled it out quickly and, as our eyes met, I saw in hers the clear recognition of what I was doing. I stumbled to the cash desk, paid for it, and left the shop hot faced and angry. £3.10 for paper and compressed cardboard!

For a long time over the last two weeks I’ve festered in a morose state of apathy and prickly misunderstanding. Part of it has been deliberate. What I suppose I should be trying for is a steeliness towards these weaknesses in myself. It’s not important. My current lack of effort towards anything constructive is far more worrying; I’m in danger of forgetting the real reasons behind my attempted change of outlook, which is to strip away the clatter & fruitless drudgery of existence and to turn these into moments of meaning. I must keep in mind that to deny some things in a blindly consistent way, is to deny those aspects of Living these ‘things’ (activities, rituals, qualities) affirm and represent.

What bothers me is my lack of creativity.

One of the main incentives behind this journal is this need in my life for pattern and purpose, however poorly defined. I may leave these pages for weeks or even months, but I’ll always come back to them and write at least once about the things I’ve seen and done. I write a lot of crap here, but I also feel that I’ve spoken truthfully and with power at times. It’s the only lasting achievement of my life so far. But I haven’t even begun to tell of all the things I want to.

This evening I helped Lee paint the walls of his room slate grey.

Cry for control

Lee and I sold the large brass vase from the church to an antique shop in the centre of Watermouth. We refused an offer of £30, saying we’d been offered £50, but as we walked away, one of the dealer’s assistants came running up to us and said he’d have it for £40, which we took. There's even a piano in the Church and we thought of borrowing a van and going and retrieving that.

After this, we met Alex near Attlee Square and went for a coffee with him at a nearby Wimpy. He’s been staying with his parents in Berlin over Christmas; they work and live over there. He came round to 44A afterwards to see our ecclesiastical haul and stayed until nine o’clock. He’s off to London in two or three weeks and his plan is to live there and take a day course at an Art College. I remember his formless, colourful and messy drawings from our trip to see Psychic TV. His visit cheered me up a bit.

Like John, Del has been in Holland but he stayed only a couple of days as he was ill; he’s been down here a few times but went back to Milton Keynes today.

I’m buffeted by the shifting forces of circumstance, and all my desire for a change can be perhaps seen as nothing more than a cry for control.

The light of the world

Tonight Lee and I discovered the derelict Church of the Sacred Heart and associated vicarage, both up Albany Mount, not far from the Art College and near the police station. The Church is a big, imposing building, its white-washed front dominated by a large statue of the crucified Christ hanging on his cross high above the central doorway. The cornerstone was laid in 1863.

The vicarage stands across the road, boarded up and forgotten, a fine red-brick house with tall chimney stacks and an imposing doorway fronted by stone steps. It’s an important looking building and reminded me a little of the pictures you see of Borley Rectory with its sharply angled high roof and slightly haunted feel.

We had to get inside, so we returned after dark with Lee’s newly purchased crow-bar and forced a way in through a cellar door. The house has three storeys and all the rooms were empty save for those in the cellar which looked to have recently been in use—maybe by squatters? A few faded newspapers upstairs dated from May 1981.

We gained entry to the Church through a side window which we reached by climbing onto the low roof of the boiler house. Lee chipped away at the lead in the window with his penknife while I crouched anxiously beside him and watched for any signs of movement in the lighted windows of the large building next door. It took about fifteen minutes for him to pry loose four panes of glass and for us to slither inside, head first.

The church was derelict but only recently so, for pews, altar and carpets still remain. I quickly discovered a side room in which were hoarded some of the furnishings; a large brass vase, a heavy brass bell topped by a cross and the wooden striker, a couple of glass jugs full of water (one with a silver stopper), and a set of chime bells (‘Bells for Life Boys’). We wandered about for over an hour, and we also found a couple of staffs topped by crosses, a candle extinguisher, a macabre framed study of the head of Christ, an engraving showing JC as ‘The Light of the World,’ clerical vestments, a churchman's black robe (which fit Lee), a large metal cross on a base and a couple of fine old trunks.

Inability

Workwise I’ve begun well and trailed off. I read Yonnondio & ¾ of Grapes of Wrath for today’s tutorial but ended up missing it anyway. So I plead chronic inability to get up in the mornings and switched to the Monday four p.m. time.

Uneasy

John Turney has returned from a stay in Holland; he’s descended on us a couple of times but I’ve hardly spoken to him, feeling unable to muster anything other than a monosyllabic grunt when he’s around. His insistence about all manner of uncomfortable subjects makes me uneasy and I find his selfishness annoying.

This was illustrated tonight: he sold Barry two joints for 50p each and then proceeded to join in their smoking.

Castle mount court

Barry has moved into the largest room at the front of the house; Pete is hardly ever here. He’s round at Castle Mount Court now.

Panic

Lee has gone ahead and sewn a Grey Triangle on the sleeve of his greatcoat but for me all these ideas remain abstractions.

Sometimes I see no hope of ever escaping the trap laid for me, just an increasingly frantic struggle to stave off the panic of advancing years—so little achieved, so much to do.

Paintwork

Lee's badgered me into ringing Crown Racing and asking for the third time about paint, and by the evening it’d been delivered. He’s rehung the door in the doorway through to the kitchen and is now decorating.

Back room

Lee has now moved into the neglected back room of Jervis Terrace and solved all our accommodation problems in one go. He’s paying £9 per week while Barry, Pete and I are paying £13.

The back room was always the coldest, dampest and most depressing room in the house, so Lee has spent the last few days hanging new curtains, carpeting it with tiles scrounged from the derelict pub’ down the road and generally cleaning it out.

It was his idea to move in and he’s providing the impetus and tide of enthusiasm.

Stiff task

I’ve set myself a stiff task—to rid myself of lazy, non-productive and stale ways of perception and to try adopt a more creative and controlled way in which to live my life. When I think seriously about what that means, the enormity of the task makes me pale.

I haven’t made any real progress in that direction at all, despite all the ritualised jottings in the margins of these pages in late December about Grey Triangles and the Will to Purpose. . . .

Bedeviled

I’m as bedeviled by doubts as ever, tiny, trivial doubts that hardly deserve a mention. I do so only because they regulate my mental outlook at times.

Breakage

There’s been no dramatic breakage with ways of old; I haven’t shaved my head, although I’ve thought about it constantly, nor have I retreated into the rigorous, monastic seclusion I half-imagined for myself before Christmas.

South

Lee and I traveled down to Watermouth by coach.

Not having it

I was up early if not very brightly, with a day of travel ahead. Outside it was still deep with the shadows of night. Cold speeded my dressing and I hurried downstairs shivering, knowing full well I will have a lot of chilly, disorganised and uncomfortable times in the next few weeks.

Outside the sun was gleaming coldly on the chimney pots and the wind sighed through the gloom.

Lee and I struggled with heavy bags from Whincliffe bus station to the motorway slip road and got a lift fairly quickly to Thorpworth services, on the motorway near Dearnelow. We stood there, frozen and impatient, from one until four o’clock in the afternoon, lashed by hail and rain and cut through by chill winds: after three futile hours we finally gave up our attempt to reach London. We crossed the motorway and decided to get home.

It was horribly frustrating standing in the cold, completely at the mercy of motorists who had no mercy, a plight made all the more irritating considering how near we were to home. We alternately plead with and cursed the blank faces which passed, and I began to stick up two fingers at every car which refused to stop. It didn’t help but gave me great satisfaction. I suppose our four large bags were partly to blame. The light was fading from the sky and the wind biting even deeper when at last, a Ford Transit van with four students inside pulled up...

We got back to Easterby at quarter to six. It was a humiliating homecoming but I walked into the house little expecting the tongue lashing I received. Mum was nearly in tears, accusing me of thoughtlessness for not ringing, of leading a “parasitic lifestyle” and demanding angrily that as long as they are funding me I should travel like a “decent and normal human being.”

I could only stand in dumb amazement at the tirade. Robert sprawled in front of the TV and Carol sat on the sofa in embarrassed silence. “You take me for granted and I’m not having it” yelled Mum, near to tears again.

At Thorpworth Lee had rung home to ask his Mum to get him a coach ticket. I’d tried to ring home too but the ‘phone was engaged and so, innocently thinking I’d save Mum a lot of unnecessary worry, I decided to buy my ticket when I got back to Easterby. Lee’s Mum rang my Mum and there ensued a confused afternoon until it was eventually decided she would get me a ticket too. It was my ‘thoughtlessness’ in not ringing that caused Mum the upset.

So I retreated into the backroom full of sullen regret, wishing I were miles away. Even news of another Athletic win failed to rouse me from my gloom, and I’ve remained quiet and chastened all evening.

Badly planned

I went out to the Red Grouse for a drink with Deborah, Lee, and Jeremy and I spent a fairly innocuous and pleasant hour being told I “hadn’t changed.” Deborah forecast our futures for us: Jeremy’s destiny will be one of eventual fulfillment and happiness after the usual traumas, but she felt that ultimate satisfaction and contentment would elude me. I will, she says, go on to be “quite successful” but I’ll “never be really happy.” She’s undecided about going on to college because at the moment she’s enjoying life and transplanting herself to a campus seems too much of a gamble. We said goodbye to Deborah after an hour. She was quite genuinely shocked at some of the things L. and I confessed to I think. We have become so blasé about it.

Lee and I are hitching back to Watermouth tomorrow. The return leg should be quicker than the trek north, and we should be in London quite quickly. Dad doesn’t seem to understand how I can set out to travel such long distances without being anxious about not getting a lift, but for that very reason hitching is an interesting way to travel.

The immediate plan is for Lee and I to sleep on Ian’s floor, a plan he’s unaware of, although I don’t think he’ll mind. Everything is very badly planned. I think Barry and Pete are intending paying their next installment of rent which Crown Racing promises to refund as soon as some unfortunate responds to the ad on the housing lists. I hope to move my boxes out sooner than that vague plan promises, although where I’ll put them exactly I don’t yet know. If I allowed myself to dwell on my financial plight I’d get very worried by it. I still have a £240 + overdraft to clear, plus a share of a £46 gas bill to pay and whatever the (no doubt enormous) electric bill will be. I’m going to have no money left to put as a deposit on a place, or to pay rent . . . Quite a hopeless situation in fact.

Despite all this I do feel quite optimistic about the future.

Well, I'm near the end of this particular entry. The decorations are down and packed away for another year. Tomorrow is a new day, and what I hope to be a new way, a new life even—inside, if not on the surface.

Will all my ‘symbolic’ gestures be proved hollow, and just ‘empty rituals’?

New regime

The last two days have been clear, cold and sunny. I’ve been stuck at home on my own each day, passing the hours between Dad’s departure for work at one and Mum’s return from school at four in a frustrated torpor, mindlessly scribbling on pieces of paper.

The sun has just now set and it is only three o’clock. I’m still in much doubt and indecision over what form (in precise terms) the new regime should take. I’ve begun to read one of the books set for over the vacation: The Twenties by Fred Hoffmann.

Filthy code

Jeremy rang tonight: it was the first contact I’ve had with him since Christmas Eve. I haven’t seen Lee since we came back from Barry’s on Sunday. Jeremy is seriously contemplating making a change of University. Ms Hirst has been encouraging him to do so.

After Mum and Dad had gone to bed I wrote a letter to the Echo in answer to one that accused the IRA of “indiscriminate murder.” I pointed out that most of the IRA and INLA victims in 1983 were soldiers, policemen and other security personnel.

Writing to the ‘papers is a fairly futile exercise, valuable only to provoke the sanctimonious millions into their cries of scandalised indignation. What made me to write was my anger at the sickening lies and hypocrisy peddled by the media and State in its dealings with N. Ireland. War and Murder amount to much the same thing in the long run I admit, yet the official line on this is inconsistent. What is a glorious and heroic thing for the British Army and Navy to do in the South Atlantic is, in the eyes of the Press, barbaric, senseless and cold-blooded if perpetrated by the IRA and INLA in N. Ireland.

Where were the shrill cries of “blood-thirsty psychopaths” after the massacre on “Bloody Sunday” in 1972? A filthy code of double-standards operates where “Our Boys” are concerned.

Cul-de-sac

At dinnertime I made one of my infrequent visits to Grant’s in Lodgehill.

Dad dropped me on Easterby Road and I walked up to Grant’s house. The pavements were covered in hailstones.

Thankfully, Grant was in good spirits and fairly cheerful. After listening to music, we went out for a walk and made our way to Woodhead Park. We were caught in a cloudburst of hail and sleet, so we dashed for cover in Hainsworth Hall. The swirling snow blanked everything out and Grant was genuinely anxious about being in the open when thunder crackled overhead. He ran ahead of me in the storm.

Hainsworth Hall seemed a haven of peace, quiet and musty warmth in the midst of that white gale lashing outside the windows. We drifted from gallery to gallery in an almost disinterested fashion. I enjoyed the timeless tranquility of those silent, echoing, wooden halls, as if the outside world wasn’t really there, just a picture behind the windows. We sat for an hour or two downstairs in the cafeteria drinking the acrid tea and coffee and talking before wandering back to his house.

In the evening we went to the Bridge Inn for a drink and walked back to my house to listen to the new Fall session on John Peel. I remembered three of the four tracks from the concert in Gloucester. By nightfall about a quarter of an inch of snow had settled & it covered the roads and gardens in a pure, unbroken white blanket.

Grant too seems to feel he needs to make some change for the new year, some kind of decisive act. (Perhaps these resolutions are made annually by most people and it’s a sign of our failure to exert any self-control over our lives that we never keep to them?). He keeps talking about having his ears pierced, as though this trivial action will symbolically reaffirm his resolution, just as I toy with the idea of shaving my head to strengthen my determination to change.

In both our lives, there’s a need to seize control. I for one feel as though I’m drifting helplessly through life like a rudderless ship, and that one day I’ll open my eyes and I’ll be thirty, and the years will have slipped by and I’ll be as far from real understanding as I ever was.

I’ve suddenly noticed how I don’t have any conception of what the immediate future will bring, whereas before I went to University I felt that just going there would somehow be a catalyst to trigger happiness. This I felt on some level other than that of simple speculation, imagination, a less than concrete sense of the Possible . . .

Those spring months of 1982 were quite happy and certain ones for me. I knew where I was going and things were good. I felt like I was getting glimpses of another plane, a world separate from and yet sensed through and linked with the ordinary one. Kerouac’s novels pointed to this, and in that respect I defend him strenuously. His writing inspired me, fired me, gave me a breath of the tragic nature of the world. We’re all imprisoned within bodies that are subject to disease, decay and ultimate death, and while we can explore immortality with our minds, we know we’ll be dead within a certain number of years.

Kerouac captured this forlorn sense of melancholy for me, although I see now with the ‘wisdom’ and premature cynicism of my age that the man was a failure, was trapped in the emotional cul-de-sac of what I suppose Colin Wilson would call ‘the old existentialism’. He drank himself to death. But still, he touched a chord in my heart. So I went to University and the reality of that wasn’t what I’d anticipated, and now as we enter 1984, I’m “hanging in the air . . . without help, without fundamental beliefs.”

There’s no dream-vision of what the future should bring.

Fickle

Nineteen eighty four begins well on the football field at least. I saw Athletic notch up another victory, against Astlow Town, a win they hardly deserved. There was a large crowd at Cardigan Park, and quite a few had made the trip from Astlow and packed the Three Locks Road stand.

Conditions were foul, with continuous rain a strong wind blowing towards the Easterby end of the ground. Athletic played with their faces to this wind in the first half and almost went a goal down early on. Nussey was playing very badly and the swirling high balls had him beat every time.

Robert and I stood next to two Astlow supporters throughout the game, bespectacled, in their forties, quiet blokes. As the second-half continued Robert kept up a constant conversation with them. Astlow looked the better side and adapted to the mud and wind quicker than Athletic. They’d always looked dangerous and it seemed almost inevitable that they should go ahead, which they did in the 61st minute, but a minute later, Highmore lunged at a corner and the ball sailed over the heads of the Astlow defenders and into the net.

Two minutes after that Rippey scored direct from a corner and the ground exploded into cheers and shouts of joy. The same people who’d hurled seat cushions onto the pitch after Astlow had gone one up now threw the same seat cushions into the air in delight. They sang “We’re Proud of You” with hypocritical fervour. Easterby fans are more fickle than most.

The atmosphere was tremendous in the last few minutes and I felt for the hunched defeated figures across the pitch as they shambled towards the exit and the looks of black resignation on the faces of our two friends tempered our jubilation at the victory somewhat.

Robert and Carol drove back to Dearnelow in the evening. Dad is back at work today (2 p.m. to 10 p.m.) and Andrew returned South this morning too. . . .

Emptiness

In the afternoon, Barry gave Lee and I a lift out to the beginning of the motorway, and although we waited over an hour in the bitter wind and damp, we couldn't get a ride. So we caught the bus into town and a coach back to Easterby instead.

As we sat on the coach in Debdenshaw waiting to set off, the urban sprawl no longer looked as ugly and depressing as it had done earlier, thus illustrating to me the simple but fundamental way we ‘intentionalise’ our surroundings. In themselves, these concrete forms and structures possess no quality apart from that which we invest them with in accordance with our current mood.

Now the New Year is here I feel empty and devoid of any acknowledgement of what it is I’ve Got to Do. The idea of the decisive Act is there alright, but it isn’t Alive. It’s an empty notion so far. The spark of inspiration needed to vivify this idea is missing at this moment. I also catch myself experiencing real doubt and even fear at the consequences of what I’m planning, fear of being caught with my pants down so to speak, of finding myself in the midst of something I haven’t fully thought through.