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.